The Left Anchor

Joe Biden’s Promises To Keep details his life and his political career. Biden not only provides an excellent analysis of how he would deal with the problems facing this country, but also valuable insights into his internal motivations.

Promisestokeep For example, Biden starts the book by discussing a stuttering problem that hampered him greatly until high school. He worked hard to overcome the stutter, often standing in front of the mirror for hours repeating a single phrase until the stutter went away. Biden’s work ethic got him into a high school that his parents could afford; instead of settling for less, he spent the summer doing “work-study” — grounds crew/janitorial work — to make up the tuition difference.
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Robert Weitzel has a good piece up over at The Smirking Chimp highlighting the improper use of military personnel for religious proselytizing. Soliders have been handing out “witnessing coins” at checkpoints. One side of the coin is inscribed with a Bible verse, the other with the question, “Where will you spend eternity?” The fundamental stupidity of this should be obvious. It’s no different than George W. Bush’s unfortunate use of the term “crusade” shortly following the September 11th attacks.
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As promised, here is the first in our series of profiles on the possibilities for Barack Obama’s cabinet. Due to some illness in the family, I spent a good deal of yesterday traveling to and from Asheville, so this first profile lacks some of the bells and whistles I intend to include in subsequent profiles. In the future, we’ll look at the current administration’s policies as displayed by each of the active cabinet members, and the greatest challenges facing those roles. Also, I intended to include Bill Richardson here as well, but have not yet had time to write it. We’ll correct that by tomorrow.
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McCain pushes back against his idiotic hundred years comment by imagining how Iraq might look at the end of his first term. Sadly, imagining is all he does.

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.
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Via Think Progress. There’s something kinda sad about the fact that the most prescient view I’ll ever have in politics was my view that this war made no sense. How did we get into this mess a year-and-a-half after 9/11? Hadn’t we all had time to cool down by then?
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For some reason the media thinks we liberal bloggers are being unfair to McCain in describing his support for a hundred years of war in Iraq (for the record he’s gone as a high as a million years), and while they are correct in that McCain speaks of a long occupation as of the kind we have in on the Korean Peninsula or Kuwait, what they fail to recognize is that for McCain’s plan to work, we have to “win” in Iraq first. Otherwise, we can’t expect to be there without our soldiers being killed and maimed. So, regardless of how McCain intended the statement, implicit in it is the fact that we’ll have to remain in Iraq however long it takes to win the war. After which, he’s comfortable keeping us there for centuries more.
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From The Army Times:

“The U.S. is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago,” it concluded. “Lasting political development could take five to 10 years of full, unconditional U.S. commitment to Iraq.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we already given five years of unconditional support?