the leftist gift that keeps on giving to the John McCain for president campaign:

One unhappy Republican: ….So there’s the dilemma, fellow Republicans. Do we buy the pap Miss Rice dispensed and ignore the incompetence that sees Michael Chertoff…. Or do we gag, say enough, and demand that President Bush and Miss Rice begin telling Americans bluntly that their country is in a heck of a fix in the Islamic world made much worse by the Iraq war…

Fortunately for America, the Reid-and-Dean-led Democrats are irrelevant to our decision. They are too busy describing U.S. soldiers as Nazis and keeping the shackles on their slave empire of one-issue groups long enough to lose the presidency in 2008.

–Michael Scheuer.
[A 22-year veteran with the CIA, Scheuer created and served as the chief of the agency’s Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He is also the author of “Imperial Hubris.”]

I don’t think Marek should have apologized for this comment; I thought it was excellent.
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Re: “A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation” now gone to archive.

See Hope for Hungry Children, Arriving in a Foil Packet
by Michael Wines from Maradi, Niger for the August 8 NYT:

….At this epicenter of Niger’s latest hunger crisis, Plumpy’nut is saving lives….Plumpy’nut, which comes in a silvery foil package the size of two grasping baby-size hands, is 500 calories of fortified peanut butter, a beige paste about as thick as mashed potatoes and stuffed with milk, vitamins and minerals. But that is akin to calling a 1945 Mouton Rothschild fortified grape juice.   Since the packets came into the hands of relief organizations during the Darfur crisis in Sudan, they have been revolutionizing emergency care for severely malnourished children who are old enough to take solid food, by taking care out of crowded field hospitals and straight into mothers’ homes.

“This product, it’s beyond opinion – it’s documented, it’s scientific fact,” Dr. Milton Tectonidis, a Paris-based nutrition specialist for Doctors Without Borders, said in an interview here. “We’ve seen it working. With this one product, we can treat three-quarters of children on an outpatient basis. Before, we had to hospitalize them all and give them fortified milk.”

P.S. Graham_72 might like the story, too; serendipity included. More excerpts (and beautiful photo,) after the jump.

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When an editor disagrees with, or would like to add to, something which a member has posted as a Diary entry or as a News Queue item or as a Comment….answer after the jump
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This excellent original piece was placed in News Queue and elevated to the front page. Question on it after the jump.
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On the old Agonist Bulletin Board, there was sort of an unwritten rule for a while that everyone went along with, because they wanted their news “straight up” and it went like this: For the News Board, use the headline from the source; any comments you have, put them after the article citation.

Take a look at this item in News Queue which was elevated to the Front Page and then answer after the jump.
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‘Bombers, racists, the law: they’re all out to get Muslims’
The Observer July 24 – …Almost one in four British Muslims sympathise with the motives of suicide bombers, according to a YouGov poll published in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. More than half say that, whether they sympathise or not, they understand why some people behave in the way they do.

The research also showed that nearly one in three thinks that Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to an end. Sixteen per cent of British Muslims told the survey that they do not feel loyal towards Britain and 6 per cent went as far as saying the London bombings were justified….

Strange thoughts on that: I believe that many of the 1/3 of American society that is conservative also believes that Western society is decadent and immoral, and that the world is going to hell on a handcart. (So do some of the more paranoid variety of liberals, who not coincidentally, think “old liberal” ways are best.) Conserve the old ways = fear of the future, fear of CHANGE….continued after jump
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Senator Arlen Specter | Washington | July 24

NYT Op-Ed – What to expect when the Senate meets Judge John Roberts.

Note: Specter, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will be in charge of the hearings.
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Matt Steinglass | July 24

NYT Magazine– The leading advocate for prostitutes in Cambodia has little patience for aid groups that seek to liberate them from their work.
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Zev Chafets | July 24

NYT Magazine – Yechiel Eckstein is an Orthodox rabbi and a registered Democrat, so why has he built an empire for Jewish causes on the contributions of Red State born-again Christians? The Christian Right’s favorite rabbi.
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Gary Shteyngart | July 24

NYT Sunday Book Review – In his memoir of his experience in Iraq, (War Reporting for Cowards, Atlantic Monthly Press,) Chris Ayres revives the tradition of comic war reporting.

Note that a link to the first chapter of the book is available.
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Richard A. Posner | July 31

NYT Sunday Book Review Essay – Consumers’ limited interest in the truth is the key to understanding why both left and right can plausibly denounce the same media for being biased in favor of the other.

Photo caption: HURTING AMERICA? Tucker Carlson, right, James Carville, left, and Paul Begala on CNN’s “Crossfire.”

No my date’s not wrong; Posner must have turned it in early so they put it up on the website even tho it’s for next week’s paper.

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more on the ivory-billed woodpecker sighting story.
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Now that many of us finally got that a href html code thingie down, after a year or so, I found this on Daily Kos’ instruction page:

1. Type a left bracket: [
2. Paste or type the text you want to use for the link.
3. Type one space.
4. Paste the url.
5. Type a right bracket: ]

Voila, Scoop’s auto format will make you one of them fancy text links like those hoity-toity editors and regulars do.
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Devlin Barrett | Washington | July 22

AP – Democrats need to reach out to voters who oppose abortion rights and promote candidates who share that view, the head of the party said Friday. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told a group of college Democrats that their party has to change its approach in the debate over abortion.

“I think we need to talk about this issue differently,” said Dean. “The Republicans have painted us as a pro-abortion party. I don’t know anybody in America who is pro-abortion.”  Dean’s approach echoed similar arguments advanced in recent months by former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

“We do have to have a big tent. I do think we need to welcome pro-life Democrats into this party,” said Dean.  Still, he added, “I think that we must be absolutely firm in being the party of individual freedom and personal freedom, which means that in the end the government doesn’t get to decide, we do.”

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