Our friends the Russians

Russia has been busy trading in all the wrong ways. On top of years spent selling nuclear technology to Iran, Russia?s defense ministry has just announced it is going ahead with deliveries to Tehran of anti-aircraft missiles. At the UN, Russia continues to block any serious attempt to stop Iran?s nuclear bomb program. In Iraq, during the Saddam Hussein era, Russia was the top trader with Baghdad via the graft-ridden Oil-for-Food program, leaving a trail of damning documentary evidence leading right up to the Kremlin ? which Russian authorities have somehow neglected to investigate in any meangful way. With free speech basically dead in Russia, small surprise that on many fronts there is no end to the question marks and conspiracy theories. Who was behind the near-fatal poisoning in 2004 of the leader of Ukraine?s Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko? Who was behind the recent murder of outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya? ? whose shooting Litvinenko was investigating when he was poisoned. The murk is considerable, but one bottom-line is obvious. With an ally like Putin, don?t gaze into his eyes. Watch your back. And bring a food-taster.

As Instapundit would say,read the whole thing.

The wilderness isn't so bad after all...

Apparently, congressional Republicans are OK with their new minority status.

House Republicans Stick With Boehner, Blunt for 110th Congress

House Republicans voted Friday to keep their top leaders in place for the next two years, just ten days after a devastating loss at the polls cast them into the minority in the 110th Congress.

I guess Boehner, Blunt and Trent Lott are just fine with House and Senate Republicans. Look how smashingly they've done under this kind of leadership.

Oh well. Setting the legislative agenda and confirming Supreme Court and federal judges is overrated. Better to leave it to the other party who apparently at least wants to do it.

This is truly ominous

Definitely not a good sign for travellers. It's only a matter of time before in-flight cell phone use spreads to all airlines.

It's bad enough being trapped on a plane with little room, screaming children and conventionally inconsiderate fellow travellers. Can you imagine what it will be like in the typical 737 cabin with half of the people on the plane screaming into their cell phones?

Sheesh.

Was this a temper tantrum, too?

When reflecting on the tide that washed Democrats from office in 1994, the late Peter Jennings famously reflected the conventional wisdom by intoning that what happened amounted to nothing more than a temper tantrum on the part of voters who were acting like two-year-olds.

But I haven't heard anything like that in the wake of yesterday's successes by Democrats. No, if you listen to the usual suspects, the Republican losses were the result of voters who were sick of their corruption and incompetence. Funny, huh?

Unfortunately, the stakes are different

Wanted to recount the gist of a comment I'd posted here, to Christopher Hitchens' post mortem.

Last night, Republicans suffered a swing not unlike the one that hit Democrats in 1994. The distinction is that we live in a different world now.

It had taken Democrats 50+ years to so abuse their power that many of their traditional voters in the middle had had enough. Their time in power was that of the all-powerful major daily papers and three networks. Republicans, on the other hand, had the misfortune of taking over the House and Senate at the dawn of the Internet age when their constituents have unprecedented access to see them and what they do without distortion of MSM filtering. As a result, when they became every bit as imperious, out-of-touch and spend-thrift as the Dems, twelve years was all they were afforded.

In 1994, all that was at stake was simple power and the opportunity to reign in the more expansive aspirations of the Clintons' governing tendencies. Today, however, we're at war with an enemy who has struck us here at home once and wants nothing more than to do so again. It's unfortunate for the country that the party that was just thrown out appears to be the only one who recognizes that fact.

Oh, those poor dumb grunts...

...too stupid to know what a bad decision they've made.



Tx, Drudge