All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important!

It's been a crazy week. Besides the wonderful things that have been happening nationally work's been just nuts and my ability to post has been cut considerably by the collapse of my home computer to the dreaded motherboardblowsup virus. It appears it won't be recovering. So here are a few random thoughts on various items I'd wanted to talk about this week but didn't get the chance--

The Virginia Senate seat - I was trying to figure out the math on the senate make up with Lieberman and what it would mean if Allen beat Webb. In that case the Senate would have stood at 48 Democrats and 50 Republicans with 2 independents. As I understand it (I could be wrong about this) the Vice President doesn't vote when it comes to determining Majority Leader, only on bills before the Senate that are tied. This would've really put Lieberman in the cat bird's seat. Webb's win then diffused some of Lieberman's bargaining power though I don't doubt he'll still leverage quite a bit out of Democrats.

Governor Schwarzenegger - I don't believe his moderate act but, truth be told, what really gets me down about his re-election is that it makes it unlikely this film will ever be made. I may not like Arnold the Governator but I enjoy Arnold the bad actor immensely.

Conservatives - My very cool brother gave me John Dean's "Conservatives Without Conscience" for my birthday and probably the best parts of that book are the beginning chapters in which Dean searches for the definition of "conservatism" itself by examining the statements of it's leaders. The long and the short of is that it that the only thing conservatives seem to have in common is an overwhelming belief that "liberals" are bad. It's really a movement more easily defined by what it isn't rather than what it is.

With that in mind I got a good chuckle out of people like Ann Coulter, George Will and Rush Limbaugh trying to spin this election as a victory for conservatives by concentrating on the moderate Dems just elected and claiming America was really voting against liberals again. Who did they vote for? Who did the rest of the Bush wingnut base vote for? Moderate Democrats or Republicans?

Face facts guys: this election was to movement conservatism the same thing that Ned Beatty's run in with a toothless hillbilly on a river rafting trip did- America saying "Squeal piggie!"

Investigations vs. Impeachment - A lot of progressives seem to be fretting because Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have said impeachment is off the table. First comes first, guys. Investigate and THEN impeach. ;-)

Rummy b' Gone - I spent yesterday morning looking for a quote from Rumsfeld which was something he said at his press conference with Bush to the effect that "if voters understoond what kind of war we're fighting the election would've been different." Bush made similar comments- owing the results to the inability of our simple minds to wrap around the complex strategy they've put in place to prosecute the GWOT.

Dear Rummy - You're no Sun Tzu. You aren't even a Sonny Bono. True military strategists adapt to the patterns of the enemy, not stumble blindly forward on the same path fighting the war you wish you were fighting. Small, rapid troop deployments combined with high-tech military equipment may be effective when fighting conventional armies but that's not what we're facing in Iraq, you worthless hack.

You've fooled them, haven't you Michael? Well, you haven't fooled me.

Peggy Noonan is one of the craziest conservative writers out there but this new column sinks to a heretofore unimagined low. She conflates dancing, political skills and sense of humor into some sort of mishmash of a call for more bullshit in politics.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has dance. In a debate the other night he accused challenger Phil Angelides of reflexively backing tax hikes. The Los Angeles Times: "At one point, smiling across the stage at his rival, the governor taunted: 'I can tell by the joy you see in your eyes when you talk about taxes, you just love to increase taxes. . . . Look out there right now and just say, 'I love increasing your taxes.' " That's a gift for the game.

I didn't watch that debate but the moment she describes reads as Arnold being more sadistic, that funny. But that's probably because I come from a strange worldview that realizes that nobody WANTS to raise taxes, they just have to once in while to balance the budget.

We're going to pump YOU up!

As someone who commutes quite a ways to work the subject of gas prices has been something very much on my mind. This weekend I paid about $6.00 more than the week before to fill up my tank. I think that's outrageous. I can't see how the consumer's pain at the pump won't translate into Republican's pain at the ballot box come November. But then I'm not a paid internet columnist like MSNBC's Elizabeth Wilner.

Having never been exposed to MSNBC's First Read I can't really speak to any bias on her part other than what I read in her piece on the politics of gas prices, but that seems to be more than enough to see that she has an axe to grind.

The gas war has begun

President Bush and members of Congress are still making their way back to Washington, but the war over who's to blame for skyrocketing gas prices is already simmering and is expected to reach full-boil status by tomorrow. There's little Bush can do about current high gas prices -- and if Democrats were running part of the government, they would find their hands similarly tied. But they're doing what they can to encourage voters to blame the majority party, and they are increasingly focusing their attacks on Bush's energy policy, the drafting of which, they remind everyone, energy companies were invited to participate in. Republican lawmakers are doing their best to deflect those efforts by taking up the cause of alleged price-gouging themselves and, now, by firing back at Democrats directly.

There is little Bush can do? Come again?

Why not tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and alleviate some of the pressure on supply?

Better yet- why doesn't Bush just get oil company executives on the phone and lay down the law threatening them with a justice department review of their business practices up to, and including, price gouging?

Why not open major diplomatic front on Iran instead of strutting and crowing to alleviate fears in the energy markets?

The questions are obviously rhetorical but the point is Bush's hands are hardly tied when it comes to gas prices.

Wilner then conveniently leaves out the accusations from actual Democrats in her piece about accusations from Democrats but does do a whole paragraph on the Republican response:

The Republican Senate campaign committee issued a detailed release accusing Democrats of trying to change the subject away from a strong US economy by focusing on gas prices. "These are the same Democrats who accomplished nothing in terms of an energy policy during eight years with President Clinton at the helm... These are also the same Democrats who obstructed a bi-partisan comprehensive energy bill for four years in Congress," the release snipes. A Senate GOP aide advises, "We expect Democrats to blame us as all summer... We expect there to be hearings, Democratic calls for 'windfall' taxes on oil company profits, tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, claims of price gouging by the oil companies, VP Cheney’s ties to the oil industry, and other nonsensical theories."

If the Democrats wanted to subscribe to sensical rather than nonsensical theories they'd join Republicans in blaming the oil crisis on the failure to dispossess Alaskan Caribou by drilling for oil that may or may not be there ten years from now.

The Republican Senators are employing an interesting strategy here: list out all the reasons they've failed in leadership on this issue then claim their opponents can't use those reasons because, well, they're Democrats and everybody knows how smelly and wrong THEY are.