Smoter-in-Chief

Obama smote Mitt.  For example, he won the navel war:


 A vote for Romney is a vote for a very shaky character as Commander-in-Chief.  That's the take home message of tonight's debate.

The rest is just spin.

Medieval

The GOP War on Women's Reproductive Rights - astounding to other developed Western countries.

On the campaign trail, Presidential contender Mitt Romney couldn't care less if the loss of Planned Parenthood means women can't get the health services they depend upon. He's got so much money, he tells other people to "go elsewhere."

Using the assumption God's name to punish women...it's got a long and sordid history. In the Olde Days, they called them witches.

It's a 21st Century witch hunt, once again from the most inflexibly Conservative among us.

Can Democracy beat them back?

Warzone Oakland

WTF, Oakland? WTF, Mayor Jean Quan? Last night in Oakland you unleashed the cops on Occupy Oakland and the resultant news is bad news for the powers that be -- as well as for the injured Iraq War vet:

An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Jay Finneburgh, a photographer who was covering the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying on the ground.

"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.

Damning video here:

The irony:

"He survived two tours in Iraq," said Adele Carpenter, a friend of Olsen's and a member of the Civilian Soldier Alliance. "This struggle has high stakes, I really respect the fact that Scott was standing up for what he believes in. He's really passionate about social justice causes."

Olsen appears to be the first serious injury nationwide of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to virtually every major American city -- and several smaller ones -- as millions of people continue to express their rage and disappointment with the country's banking, regulatory and health care systems.

Well, Mayor Quan, I guess the movement can give thanks that you've highlighted their cause with your own police overreaction. It worked to help publicize the movement when a cop pepper-sprayed some young women protesting in NYC, so this should do wonders. If Olsen dies, it's like Kent State May 4, 1970 revisited.

Let's see how you handle the return of the protest tonight.

Check, Please

President Barack Hussein Obama keeps another promise and ends the Iraq War for good. Yes, while it does feel a bit like Groundhog's Day (didn't we already announce we were pulling out...although still leaving 50,000 troops) it's still ending Dick Cheney, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld's war, nine years later.

He's actually keeping George Bush's promise but, sure enough, no Republican can let on that he's once again proving to be our most able Commander-in-Chief since George H.W. Bush (regardless of what you think of some of the wars he chose to fight, like Panama). Come to think of it, Bush the Senior left Iraq as well.

I'm sure President McCain would still have us there. For the next nine years.

How Dangerous is Stupid?

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in their words, not mine:

“He’s like Bush only without the brains,” cracked one former Republican governor who knows Perry, repeating a joke that has made the rounds.

Interesting that the intelligence question is making the rounds, from Politico to Fox News, the latter of which is happy to leave the question open as not particularly germane to the Presidency. After all, they are dedicated to removing President Obama from office, and everyone know he's smart. Or don't they:

On his program tonight, Sean Hannity tried to turn the tables on those who would question Perry, asking his panel whether the media were missing the point that President Obama was the stupid one.

Jackboot Hannity at it again. Somebody give that fascist a uniform.

The fact is that the last time America leaned towards on quote-unquote common sense over intelligence in electing a President, the winner was George W. Bush and the loser was the United States, with ruinous tax cuts, a collapsed economy and over $1.242 trillion in war costs, let alone potentially hundreds of billions in waste and fraud.

I hate to smear the entire rightwing in this country, but as they say on Fox News when confronted with the truth, "You're confusing our viewers."

Ignorance is death.

Libya Within Reach

It's looking like President Barack Obama is once again proving an excellent Commander-in-Chief, having chosen to help the Libyan rebel uprising in a smart, internationally coordinated, well-timed way. And it seems that raging asshole of so many decades, Qaddafi, is looking at short numbered days:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power dissolved with astonishing speed on Monday as rebels marched into the capital and arrested two of his sons, while residents raucously celebrated the prospective end of his four-decade-old rule.

In the city’s central Green Square, the site of many manufactured rallies in support of Colonel Qaddafi, jubilant Libyans tore down posters of him and stomped on them. The rebel leadership announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered and that their forces controlled many parts of the city, but not Colonel Qaddafi’s leadership compound.

I still hope he ends up on a meathook (for Lockerbee alone), but maybe he'll get some undeserved mercy.

However, with the GOP, their mouthpieces and their propaganda machines like Fox News give the President credit for foresight and decisiveness? Will they give him the partial credit he deserves for this victory?

Not looking promising.

BTW, unlike with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in Iraq, there's actual planning underway for after the revolution.

The War We Can Win?

Is Obama following that old dictum that a new(ish) President should pick a small war he can win? Even the rightly skeptical Andrew Sullivan is starting to admit that Obama (or Obama-Clinton-Powers-Rice) may have made the right choices regarding military intervention in Libya. The latest:

American and European bombs battered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most important bastion of support in his tribal homeland of Surt on Sunday night, as rebels seeking his ouster capitalized on the damage from the Western airstrikes to erase their recent losses and return to the city’s doorstep.

Their swift return, recapturing two important oil refineries and a strategic port within 20 hours, set the stage for a battle in Surt that both sides say could help decide the war for Libya.

There were unconfirmed reports early Monday that rebel forces had entered Surt and routed pro-Qaddafi defenders, but there was no corroboration. Even so, rebels in Benghazi, the birthplace of the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, reacted by running into the streets and firing weapons into the air to celebrate.

The difference between this and the Bush version of Middle East war is that we are very deliberately taking a supporting role (i.e. getting NATO to take command), while surely involved diplomatically behind the scenes.

And if we should be so fortunate that the Administration successfully unseats Qaddafi, I expect the rhetoric that ensues from Fox News and GOP meat puppets will be quite the spectacle.

Hilarious

I can't say that I'm 100% aboard the Libya action, but I'm willing to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt. However, for Republicans, even when he follows their prescription for creating the No-Fly Zone, they're never happy with him!

Thankfully, Salon has a useful flowchart of GOP response to our President.

The Mitt Romney dig may be the best.

The New War

So the U.N. okayed going after that ruthless megalomaniac klepto-fascist psychopath, Qaddafi, and that means the U.S. is entering it's third war at once (or second, if you think 50k troops in Iraq is strictly advisers, no longer war). The most interesting discussion of this has been on Andrew Sullivan's blog, with Andrew taking his mea culpa for supporting the Iraq sell-in to war while airing plenty of dissents, as he does so well and daily on his blog:

You should be applauding the way Barack Obama is handling the Libya situation. It is realpolitik in a most self-aware, calculating, interest-driven, human rights driven, cold-blooded form. It's something you claim to want in our foreign policy.

The US is not leading this, and probably won't, ever. That is why Barack Obama is not making a public drive for support. In fact, we were moved toward a no-fly zone by Arab countries largely, and Europe, decisively. When was the last time that happened? Ask yourself why Obama is acting this way.

Evidently both Clintons wanted this action, likening it more to that Administration's success in Bosnia, particularly getting NATO to take their part, than invading with mainly American troops. But Obama may have done the Clinton's one better:

But notice that unlike Clinton in the case of Bosnia, and unlike Bush in the case of Iraq II, Obama has managed to get something his predecessors could not: UN support for what could be a major multilateral intervention led by states other than the U.S. Doesn't this remind you in some ways of how he handled healthcare, and succeeded where his predecessors had failed, to do something of real significance through patience, reserve, and a commitment to process?

And then there is, interestingly enough, an important ally in Egypt:

Egypt has an open border with the rebel-controlled east of Libya, and just one brigade of the Egyptian army would be enough to stop Gaddafi’s ground forces in their tracks. The Egyptian air force could easily shoot down any of Gaddafi’s aircraft that dared to take off, especially if it had early warning from European or American AWACS aircraft. The Egyptian army would probably not need to go all the way to Tripoli, although it could easily do so if necessary. Just the fact of Egyptian military intervention would probably convince most of the Libyan troops still supporting Gaddafi that it is time to change sides.

This is the first war President Obama has chosen that wasn't a remnant of previous Presidents. To me it's where we'll see his true Commander-in-Chief character, as even Afghanistan, for all the talk of him now owning it, was essentially a mulligan from the Bush Administration's failure to capitalize on their initial success, due to their pathological and Oedipal focus on Iraq.

I don't know if Sullivan's fighting the last war (a common error) and I don't want the U.S. in another long slog either, but I really want to see Qaddafi at The Hague, if not hung by rope or meathook first. Bad is bad, and he's essentially paying a mercenary army to do his dirty work -- yours and my gasoline credit card purchases paying for the leveling of villages controlled by the rebels. So I like the idea of making Libya's neighbors do the policing.

With weapons they bought from us.

Hee-yah!

Post-WWI Masks

I started my very first Facebook discussion thread here, on Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), the mysterious and lethal disfigured WWI veteran taken in by Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) in the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. We don't see much to Harrow even when he's in a scene, due to his habit of hiding in the shadows and, mainly, behind the mask that shields the world from the true horror of his injured face. If you can handle it, here's how Harrow looks on the show without his mask. And here's with the cover-up (and Jimmy):



Thanks to the Facebook discussion, I've been connect to this fascinating article, "Faces of War" (by Caroline Alexander in Smithsonian magazine 2007) on the origin of these masks in two studios, one in England and one in France (the latter run by an American sculpter, Anna Coleman Ladd), which went to painstaking ends to help make these wounded soldiers as whole as possible. It was the new technologies of the war which gave rise to this need:

The large-caliber guns of artillery warfare with their power to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments and the mangling, deadly fallout of shrapnel had made clear, at the war's outset, that mankind's military technology wildly outpaced its medical: "Every fracture in this war is a huge open wound," one American doctor reported, "with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." The very nature of trench warfare, moreover, proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries: "[T]he...soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. "They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets."

The detail work of these studios were huge and actually took a lot longer than today's plastic surgery to achieve the desired results:

In Ladd's studio, which was credited with better artistic results, a single mask required a month of close attention. Once the patient was wholly healed from both the original injury and the restorative operations, plaster casts were taken of his face, in itself a suffocating ordeal, from which clay or plasticine squeezes were made. "The squeeze, as it stands, is a literal portrait of the patient, with his eyeless socket, his cheek partly gone, the bridge of the nose missing, and also with his good eye and a portion of his good cheek," wrote Ward Muir, a British journalist who had worked as an orderly with Wood. "The shut eye must be opened, so that the other eye, the eye-to-be, can be matched to it. With dexterous strokes the sculptor opens the eye. The squeeze, hitherto representing a face asleep, seems to awaken. The eye looks forth at the world with intelligence."

This plasticine likeness was the basis of all subsequent portraits. The mask itself would be fashioned of galvanized copper one thirty-second of an inch thick—or as a lady visitor to Ladd's studio remarked, "the thinness of a visiting card." Depending upon whether it covered the entire face, or as was often the case, only the upper or lower half, the mask weighed between four and nine ounces and was generally held on by spectacles. The greatest artistic challenge lay in painting the metallic surface the color of skin. After experiments with oil paint, which chipped, Ladd began using a hard enamel that was washable and had a dull, flesh-like finish. She painted the mask while the man himself was wearing it, so as to match as closely as possible his own coloring. "...Details such as eyebrows, eyelashes and mustaches were made from real hair, or, in Wood's studio, from slivered tinfoil, in the manner of ancient Greek statues.

Here's one of the before-and-after photos accompanying the article:



The success of these masks were huge, per this testimonial:

"Thanks to you, I will have a home," one soldier had written her. "...The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do."

Facial disfigurement is one of those topics that grows in the imagination. So much of how we communicated, how we recognize, how hold our self-image has to do with what's above the neck. Appearance seems to matter almost as much as functionality, as the loss of an eye may be hidden with a patch or prosthetic eyeball, but a severely disfigured face calls attention to itself, especially on first apprehension.

I wonder if this is one of those, "there but for the grace of God" type emotions it evokes. Dear Lord, please spare me in your mercy. In a certain way, aging disfigures us in slow motion. I recently looked at photos of myself from twenty-odd years ago, and wondered where that confident-looking young guy was when I was in my twenties.

As for the show, so far Richard Harrow has only killed someone who richly deserved it. We have yet to see him in actual rage, and perhaps he has none, just a technical approach to assassination. Perhaps the development of his character will lead to his disfigured face somehow becoming mirrored by a disfigured soul.

For now, Harrow is our angel, if an angel of death. We're in sympathy to him, and we like Jimmy more for bringing Harrow aboard, even if for self-serving purposes. Loyalty does count for something, after all.

I leave it to the creators of Boardwalk Empire to make the most of Harrow, and continue to surprise us.

Start Packing

As readers of Nettertainment know, I'm a big fan of our current President. However, I'm less and less a fan of the U.S. being in Afghanistan and hope he starts/sticks to exit plans. You've got that President Karzai trying to stop investigation into his corruption, you've got interpreters who don't know the language, and now you're starting to get the freaky, evil, Casualties of War-type rogue U.S. soldiers targeting civilians and collecting fingers for sport:

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them".

One soldier said he believed Gibbs was "feeling out the platoon".

An amazing story, if proven to be true, brutal. Read the rest, and I'm sure there's more coverage of it to come.

Bye-bye.

It's Over

Since America has long ago turned its attention away from our war of aggression against Iraq, which did not attack us on 9/11 no matter the lies of Dick Cheney, George Bush and their cabal, and since the Right will not give Obama credit for any of his great advances and repairs nor will the Left support him in the same organized fashion that Bush enjoyed even at his most damaging, I'm sure that Obama's achievement here will get scant acknowledgment or esteem.

I'm mainly talking to those of you out there who don't want to see the GOP take over the House or Senate and start yet another set of witchhunts, government paralysis, tax protection for the rich and gutting of both financial safeguards and the social safety net. For those of a more Conservative bent, I hope you aren't taking this opportunity to give George Bush some sort of credit for being the genius who trashed a country without provocation, created droves of refugees and sectarian warfare affecting every family in the country, and let the forces of chaos tear up the infrastructure in the days after we took Baghdad. And left Iran without a counterbalance. Dark days they were, indeed.

Yep, the neocons screwed it up. And it seems like only Rachel Maddow remembers:

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Gobama.

WikiLeaks: Afghanistan

I leave it up to Nettertainment's readers to determine for themselves whether this leaking of 90,000 military records regarding Afghanistan to the WikiLeaks site is tantamount to treason or a public service similar to the leaking of The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg back when the Vietnam War was being propped up with horrendous lies, but it seems like something of a bombshell being covered by major newspapers as well as throughout the blogosphere. One thing The New York Times focuses on in their lead story is how the documents reveal Pakistan aiding the Afghanistan insurgency:

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

England's The Guardian is digging deeply into these logs, and their coverage of this hour-by-hour account of the war is accompanied by an explanation of why WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange posted these logs:



Clearly the ability to keep governmental secrets is diminished, if not demolished, in our brave new Internet age. Is the answer greater fortresses of secrecy or, as I suspect will happen, markedly less guile in the future. This can cut both ways, with a country that commits to war doing without apology, damned the torpedoes.

And, of course, these documents are going to force consideration of the key question to it all:

Is it (well-past) time for our United States to get out of Afghanistan?

Why We Don't

So here's a good reason to get out of Afghanistan:

The Feb. 12 nighttime raid left three women — two of them pregnant — and a local police chief and prosecutor dead. It was one of the latest examples of Special Operations forces’ killing civilians during raids, deaths that have infuriated Afghan officials and generated support for the Taliban despite efforts by American and NATO commanders to reduce civilian casualties.

The joint American and Afghan assault team shot five Afghans — all family members — from the roofs of buildings in a large residential compound near Gardez, in southeastern Afghanistan, where members of an extended family lived in different homes, survivors said. The Americans did the killing, they said.

At first, the American-led military command in Kabul said that the two men who died were “insurgents” who had “engaged” — in other words, shot at — the forces at the scene. The initial account also said that the troops then stumbled onto the bodies of three women “tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room.

Military officials later suggested that the women — who among them had 16 children — had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have killed them.

But the military later said the men were innocent civilians shot after they went outside, armed, to investigate the presence of the forces conducting the raid. Then on Sunday night they admitted that the women were also killed during the raid.

...

In the interview, Mr. Yarmand said he did not know whether bullets had been dug out of the bodies. He said he would not dispute family members’ claims, but added, “We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies.”

Here's more:



Select frames here.

Can you say "war crime?"

Holiday in the Sun

Our President makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan, dropping in unexpectedly on President Hamid Karzai:

President Obama made an surprise stop in Afghanistan today, his first visit to the war zone since moving into the White House. The one-day visit, which lasted a total of about 6 hours, included talks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his government, which the U.S. sees as key to completing its mission in Afghanistan on on the timetable Obama outlined in December. While on the ground, Obama also addressed U.S. troops and met with American commanders.
...

In Afghanistan today, Obama met with Karzai one-on-one for about a half hour. The White House described the talks as "very productive" and "businesslike," and included discussions of about "governance, merit-based appointments of Afghan officials, and corruption," according to reports from the ground.

After the meeting, Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for the continued American efforts in Afghanistan. Obama said he was "encouraged by the progress that's been made" by Karzai's regime.

But it was clear from reports that one of the American goals on the trip was to push Karzai's government to do better. After Obama and Karzai met, the American delegation -- which also included U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eichenberry -- met with members of the Afghan cabinet to discuss the future, which Americans hope will include the scaling up of Afghan security forces and the scaling down of American involvement.

Jones told reporters on the ground in Afghanistan before the one-on-one meeting that Obama intended to take a hard line with Karzai and "make him understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since day one."

Speech to the troops:

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Gotta like the boss dropping in to shake up Karzai and his corrupt partners, hope it makes a difference but have to wonder. The important thing to do is to get out gracefully, but firmly.

Godspeed, Mr. President. Gets home before the gefilte fish.

Losers and Winner

The funniest line of the night might have been Steve Martin's about Meryl Streep's 16 nominations meaning she's actually a big loser. The biggest losers of the night were:

• Avatar, which I'd pegged for Most Picture, possibly due to the 10-nominee preferential voting system that made 2nd choices as powerful as 1st choices assuming none of the 10 received 50%+1 on the 1st choice round

• Up in the Air, which I was not alone in believing had a lock on the Best Adapted Screenplay statuette but lost to Precious, a surprising show of strength for the film and, I believe, rewarded the more gritty story -- which emerged as the theme of the night

• Inglourious Basterds, which was a sudden Best Picture spoiler due to winning the big ensemble prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and had a very good shot at Best Original Screenplay, but at least had a mortal lock on the Best Supporting Actor statuette

• Honorary Oscar winners who had to settle for giving their thanks at an awards dinner a month or so ago, losing out on the big platform

• Best Song nominees who didn't get to perform -- something of a blessing for the audience, since there's usually, at best, only one song by a major recording artist that anyone really wants to see performed live (Isaac Hayes, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, etc.)

• Oscar viewers expecting more comic genius from the pairing of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin -- their jokes seemed perfunctory, more inside than outside, very corporate in a sense that you didn't get from Jon Stewart, Chris Rock (who went too far the other way), even Whoopi Goldberg; and the material for the presenters seemed lamer than usual as well

While I did enjoy the use of actors who had worked previously with directors of the Best Pic nominees introducing the clips, and I was prepared to like the similar experience with the five for Best Actor and Best Actress intros, only a few of the stories were good (Michelle Pfeiffer on Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins on Morgan Freeman were standouts) and there was a level of embarrassment being out there for those who'd been nominated before but lost, particularly Julianne Moore, who didn't seem to have worked more than three days with Colin Firth and is far too overdue for a win (which I would have loved to have seen for Far from Heaven).

And there's no excuse for that dance number.

I have to admit it, I have a little problem with Barbara Streisand. While we're not very far off politically, did she have to make it all about a woman winning Best Director? After several months of Kathryn Bigelow saying she'd like to be treated as a filmmaker rather than a special case? It kind of took the wind out of the announcement of Bigelow's win for me, but maybe it plays well as an historic quote.

In any case, there was one clear winner of the night, that excellent movie that vacuumed up six awards, making it a bit weird to read of a "split night" in one place on the Web. The acting awards went every which way, and it was the acting nomination for Jeremy Renner that first made me suspect that The Hurt Locker could win the big prize, and then there's evidently 79 years of Academy Award history saying that you can't win Best Picture without an acting or writing nomination. Even if you are the highest-grossing movie of all time.

So of all the losers, Avatar lost the least. My wife asked, "How do you think James Cameron is feeling right now?" to which I could only respond, "Rich." Crying for Cameron losing the big prizes is like complaining that George Lucas was ripped off when Star Wars lost, or when E.T. didn't take home big prizes. Sometimes the work is its own reward. Especially when it turns out to be more lucrative than any movie that preceded it.

Congrats to Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal and Summit Entertainment et al for the victories tonight, especially Most Picture. The Hurt Locker stands a great chance now of being the defining War movie for the Iraq War, kind of the Platoon for our time. There's no The Deer Hunter for our time, of course, no big budget picture combining wartime grit with epic sweep for an artistic, poetic statement on our current national character.

Because our major motion picture studios don't finance films like that any more.

Credit Where Due

Credit to Meghan McCain (and not for the first time) for calling out her father's 2008 running mate for her lying hypocrisy.

Credit to Republican David Frum for his dissection of that same politicians evil speech to teabaggers.

And credit to the now late Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), former marine, for the stand he took against the Cheney/Bush Iraq War.

TV Reality

I'm not sticking my neck out by saying that the whole NBC Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien and, to be fair, Jeff Zucker mess is playing out as slow motion train wreck. This is worse than when Jay took The Tonight Show from heir apparent David Letterman -- and look who's having the last laugh on that one:



and for analysis:



What Dave's referring to regarding Conan's smarts is the statement today by O'Brien that he won't be going along with any plan by NBC to put Leno back at 11:35pm and push The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien back to 12:05pm, where it is only sure to suffer further in the ratings. For the best analysis of Conan's statement (and some pretty good user comments) I refer you to Time magazine TV writer and blogger James Poniewozik.

For what's happening in Conan's corner behind the scenes, per the acid-keyboard of Nikki Finke, they are getting ready to rumble:

I've learned about a meeting that began at 1:45 PM at NBC Universal about The Conan War: On one side of the room -- NBCU bigwigs Jeff Gaspin and Marc Graboff. On the other -- O'Brien's reps: manager Gavin Palone, WME agent and board member Rick Rosen, and the newest member of Team O'Brien, Hollywood litigator Patty Glaser, who was hired on Sunday and is WME's legal shark of choice. I wouldn't want to be Gaspin or Graboff right now: Gavin can be as mean as a rabid dog, Rick's agency reps 60% of the TV talent, and Glaser is a pitbull. This is bloodsport.

Remember, the head of the new William Morris Agency/Endeavor merged company is Ari Emanuel, the most powerful agent in Hollywood, the model for Jeremy Piven's character on Entourage and the brother of the White House Chief of Staff.

Slow motion train wreck?

Or demolition derby...

The Speech

Interesting that there's love for Obama's speech from left and right, but with more members of the left falling out than the right, and more members of the right once again over-simplifying that the President somehow justified Bush-Cheneyism in his speech.

He didn't -- no preemptive war in the Iraq sense. No real American Exceptionalism to justify everything we do -- rule of law necessary here to keep us on the moral highground.

Here's Glenn Greenwald on the oddities of the (mostly) bipartisan phenomenon:

Indeed, Obama insisted upon what he called the "right" to wage wars "unilaterally"; articulated a wide array of circumstances in which war is supposedly "just" far beyond being attacked or facing imminent attack by another country; explicitly rejected the non-violence espoused by King and Gandhi as too narrow and insufficiently pragmatic for a Commander-in-Chief like Obama to embrace; endowed us with the mission to use war as a means of combating "evil"; and hailed the U.S. for underwriting global security for the last six decades (without mentioning how our heroic efforts affected, say, the people of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Central America, or Gaza, and so many other places where "security" is not exactly what our wars "underwrote"). So it's not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.

The more difficult question to answer is why -- given what Drum described -- so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable? Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama: someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace? As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: "He got into their faces . . . I'm for getting into the Europeans' face." Is that what we needed more of?

The New York Times is one of the speech supporters:

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, President Obama gave the speech he needed to give, but we suspect not precisely the one the Nobel committee wanted to hear...

...In a speech that was both somber and soaring, he returned again and again to Afghanistan, arguing that the war was morally just and strategically necessary to defend the United States and others from more terrorist attacks.

In a moving passage, he invoked the memories of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that without Dr. King’s vision, leadership and sacrifice, he never would have been standing at that lectern in Oslo.

But he said he could not be guided by their examples alone. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.”

I keep asking all of my friends who think Obama shouldn't have ordered the 30,000 additional troops to Afghanstan if they believe withdrawal was the answer. Otherwise, Obama chose the best option. But if you truly believe there is nothing more to be gained there, no threat now or future that we can stem by changing our strategy from the Bush-Cheney one (whatever it was -- belligerent neglect?), then fine, it's up to Obama (or Osama, with another 9/11-type attack, God forbid) to prove you wrong.

I'll end with a less sanguine quote from Professor Juan Cole's post on the speech, a different kind of warning:

Obama has yet to decide whether he is a visionary or a technocrat. The prize committee hoped for the former. In this speech they got the latter.

One month from now will be one year in with Obama, and State of the Union time.

And with it come the first legitimate judgments.

How He Works

There's no more revealing or, I have to add, reassuring story about how our current President works his way through the toughest of decisions than this page-turner (page-clicker?) of a story from The New York Times entitled, "How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan."

This is the plan developed as "Max Leverage," and God bless our young President for doing what one cannot imagine ol' John McCain would have in his place:

Now as his top military adviser ran through a slide show of options, Mr. Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out, a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.

“I want this pushed to the left,” he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.

Good stuff includes the President and key staff members reading up on Vietnam so as to try and avoid those mistakes -- like not questioning the Domino Theory and avoiding open-ended engagement -- as well as massive consideration of Pakistan, which we should all be reminded has both Taliban and nuclear weapons, so far kept separate.

The depth of learning, questioning, openness to all opinions prior to decision-making, and the climax, where the President has revealed his decision to those working with him and goes around the room to ask if anyone disagrees, could not be more different from what we learned about the previous Administration.

However, it is interesting to note this key exchange on November 11th:

He turned to General Petraeus and asked him how long it took to get the so-called surge troops he commanded in Iraq in 2007. That was six months.

“What I’m looking for is a surge,” Mr. Obama said. “This has to be a surge.”

If one must fault El Presidente Bush for getting us into Iraq, I have to grudgingly credit him for the surge, which may become a staple of U.S. military policy against insurgencies going forward this century. The difference is that Bush's decision came in January 2007, over six years into his reign. That's a tragically long time for on-the-job learning.

Here's to our young President, moving quickly.

Godspeed.