Un-Superheroes

Bryan over at Hot Air notes a pathetic attempt by the United Nations to spread manure propaganda happy-group-think to American schoolchildren by teaming up with Marvel comics. This is beyond lame and Marvel should be ashamed.

This is a waste of a perfectly good fictitious super hero.

In a move reminiscent of storylines developed during the World War II, the U.N. is joining forces with Marvel Comics, creators of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, to create a comic book showing the international body working with superheroes to solve bloody conflicts and rid the world of disease.

The UN has to resort to fiction to bolster its image because a book about the UN doing any good would by definition have to be a work of fiction.

The comic, initially to be distributed free to 1 million U.S. schoolchildren, will be set in a war-torn fictional country and feature superheroes such as Spider-Man working with U.N. agencies such as Unicef and the “blue hats,” the U.N. peacekeepers.

Why not set the book in an actual war-torn country and highlight the heroic acts of real, actual US military men and women to help the people who live there? There is no shortage of those real heroes. We don’t need to credit their deeds to made-up comic book characters.

But for the UN to do that would be to admit that there are real heroes in the world that the UN has done all it can to oppose. So there goes that.

Would those be the "blue hats" that set up child sex rings and force women into prostitution? Or is it the "blue hats" who abandon civilians to genocide after getting them all into one place for the convenience of their murderers? Inquiring minds really would like to know which group of "blue hats" Spidy will have his name associated with. And which Marvel superhero will help out with the corruption in various UN programs? Will the Incredible Hulk be renamed the Incredible Bribe in the interests of truth in advertising?

Seriously, Marvel, you really should be ashamed about cooperating with this outfit to brainwash American children. Parents, you are on notice to be ready to raise holy hell with your local school boards if they allow this into your children's schools. And feel free to tell Marvel just how happy you are about the company they keep.

Gone To The Dogs

Sky News has a report on some rather odd spending habits that Americans have developed in recent years. It is spending increasing amounts of money on their pets - and on some things that just make me shake my head. Take plastic surgery for a certain "condition" that owners cause in the first place. That would be replacing the dog's missing testicles with artificial implants. No, really, I wish I was making this up.

Not many dogs would pester their owners for a pair of Neuticles.

These are prosthetic testicles which owners can have implanted in their pets' scrotum after they've been castrated so as to appear "anatomically intact".

Louis Schwartz is chief of staff at the Overland Veterinary Clinic in Los Angeles which performs the procedure. He says it's particularly popular with pet owners of a certain gender.

"What I find is the vast majority are men. I can only think of one woman who has come to me to have the procedure on her pet. She was an animal control officer whose husband, because of his religious beliefs, did not want the dog to be neutered," he said.

"One weekend while he was away she came to me with the dog and years later, this man has no idea."

Having the Neuticles "placed" costs $400 and is an extreme example of the wide range of medical and cosmetic procedures now available at vet clinics which now account for $20bn of consumer spending.

Maybe this is a silly question, but why not a vasectomy for dogs if appearance is that important? There are car-shaped dog beds, acupuncture for dogs and a host of other things people are spending money on. To the tune of $41 billion a year.

Good lord. We make sure the new puppy is fed properly and is loved. Well, except by the old cat. She'll come around and tolerate the puppy eventually. But for now, she's still miffed.

Analyzing The Angst

Daniel Henninger looks at the angst that grips American voters - particularly Republican voters - coming into this election cycle. Is their a Freud in the house?

They have seven candidates running for president–including a former big-city mayor who revived his city after 9/11, two former governors, an admired former senator from central casting, a senator of deep experience who is a certified war hero and a libertarian with a medical degree. Most of these men have been running for nearly a year and still the average GOP voter is telling pollsters: I'm not happy.

What do these voters want?

On the basis of talks with many voters the past year, it's evident that what a lot want is whichever candidate will crush the other side's candidate. The presidency itself? A second-level concern to be worked out after the more emotionally satisfying act of stomping the other party. Some pollster should ask: Basically, do you just want to win?

This is the Devil's Deal Option. It's not the most inspiring way to think about politics. It does not beget a good mood. One must wrestle with the guilty conscience that will arrive like a subpoena after the devil puts his candidate in the Oval Office.

But let's think higher. Perhaps our angst-ridden voters just want the "best man" for the job. This, too, is the road to neurosis. The Best Man is a mythical beast. Doesn't exist. Voters the length of our history have claimed they saw the best man, just over the horizon. Wrong.

Recalling Freud's original question, the best man never seems to show up. Fred Thompson was the "best man." Until he ran. The politicians themselves understand that the presidency has become a random walk. This is why Joe Biden and Chris Dodd are running against all odds. Why not me? It must kill them that Mike Huckabee is the one winning the why-not-me lottery this cycle. For doing what? At this point, both Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee were a wash in terms of presidential qualifications. Once across the White House threshold, Bill Clinton couldn't be dislodged for two terms.

Whatever they want, GOP voters at the moment don't seem able to get it. It's possible that Republicans, more prone than Democrats to cite the allure of principle, simply have high standards in the picking of presidents. A better bet, though, is that we have imposed on ourselves a very hard system for choosing presidents.

Is it because the media is focused more on the "game" of politics? Is it that we are in information overload? Henninger discusses both. All I know is that when the selection is made, all Republicans and conservatives need to remember what is really important.

The courts.

White (After) Christmas

Airlines in Denver are canceling flights due to the excessive snow. Up to 20 inches is expected in this next wave.

DENVER - United Airlines, still recovering from weekend storms in the Midwest, canceled dozens more flights Thursday as the second winter storm since Christmas threatened to pile 20 inches of new snow on Colorado.

Up to 8 inches of new snow was expected in Denver, which set a record for its snowiest Christmas with the nearly 8 inches that fell Tuesday.

United, the largest carrier at Denver International Airport, scrapped 66 flights — about 16 percent of its daily schedule at its second-largest hub — to help prevent planes passing through Denver from being stranded there, spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said.

It marked the fourth straight day that United had canceled flights. The Chicago-based carrier grounded fewer than 5 percent of its 3,300 flights worldwide Wednesday as it moved crews to deal with schedules disrupted days earlier when bad weather hit O'Hare International Airport.

Denver, in fact, set a Christmas Day snowfall record. Boston lacks one inch of setting their all time record for snowiest December. Salt Lake City is on track to obliterate their all-time December record of 35.2 inches with 27.2 inches already on the ground and heavy snow predicted right through the end of the year.

The fog just lifted where I live, but left calling cards everywhere. It does that when it is 10 degrees.

Al Gore left office in 2000 with an estimated $1 million in the bank. ABC News reports he is now worth $100 million - at least. He'll be able to afford to heat his home. Er, homes.

Still Life, With Fog

Another 10° F morning with fog coating everything in sight with a growing coating of ice.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated In Pakistan

This is very bad, indeed. Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated as she was trying to leave a rally in Pakistan. At least 14 of her supporters were also murdered in the suicide attack. CNN is running with a report that Bhutto appeared to have been shot, but take that with a grain of salt - suicide bombers are well known for packing their devices with ball bearings and other shrapnel - and a ball bearing wound looks just like a bullet wound.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in the wake of a suicide bombing that killed at least 14 of her supporters, doctors, a spokesman for her party and other officials said.

Bhutto suffered bullet wounds in the aftermath of the bomb attack, TV networks were reporting.

Police warned citizens to stay home as they expected rioting to break out in city streets as a shocked Pakistan absorbed the news of Bhutto's assassination.

Video of the scene just moments before the explosion showed Bhutto stepping into a heavily-guarded vehicle to leave the rally.

Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital — less than two miles from the bombing scene — where doctors pronounced her dead.

Pakistan has a real problem right now. This is going to get very ugly. I sincerely hope the US has contingency plans about securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - they may be needed.

UPDATE: Sky News reports that there was a shooting involved and that the suicide attacker shot Bhutto before blowing himself up.

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has died after a suicide attack at a political rally.

She was shot in the chest and neck shortly after her speech in Rawalpindi. Ms Bhutto was attacked as she got into her car and the gunman then blew himself up.

Welcome Back, My Friends, To The Farce That Never Ends

David Broder looks at the actual achievements of the Democrat's first year in control of Congress and judges them against the claims of those achievements being made by Nancy Pelosi. He finds more than a bit of illusion in the press releases. This will doubtless fill his email box with love letters from the far left, but he's quite right. The actual accomplishments were few and far between - unless you count the main achievement: actually getting lower in the polls than the Republican led Congress managed.

While surveys by The Post and other news organizations show that the public believes little or nothing of value has been accomplished in a year of bitter partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill, Pelosi claims that "the House has had a remarkable level of achievement over the first year, passing 130 key measures — with nearly 70 percent passing with significant bipartisan support."

That figure is achieved by setting the bar conveniently low — measuring as bipartisan any issue in which even 50 House Republicans broke ranks to vote with the Democrats. Thus, a party-line vote in which Democrats supported but most Republicans opposed criminal penalties for price-gouging on gasoline was converted, in Pelosi's accounting, into a "bipartisan" vote because it was backed by 56 Republicans.

There is more sleight of hand in her figures. Among the "key measures" counted in the news release are voice votes to protect infants from unsafe cribs and high chairs, and votes to require drain covers in pools and spas. Such wins bulk up the statistics. Many other "victories" credited to the House were later undone by the Senate, including all the restrictions on the deployment of troops in Iraq. And on 46 of the measures passed by the House, more than one-third of the total, the notation is added, "The president has threatened to veto," or has already vetoed, the bill.

One would think that this high level of institutional warfare would be of concern to the Democrats. But there is no suggestion in this recital that any adjustment to the nation's priorities may be required. If Pelosi is to be believed, the Democrats will keep challenging the Bush veto strategy for the remaining 12 months of his term — and leave it up to him to make any compromises.

Any bragging about passing a bill in the lower house that ultimately dies in the Senate or on the red-hot veto pen of the President is so disingenuous that it borders on outright hallucination. I've never thought that was a good idea, no matter what party indulges in it. Nor do I think it fools the voters although politicians keep trying it. The polls paint the picture of a failed Congress - and everyone but Nancy Pelosi appears to be able to detect that. Had Pelosi done what she promised, tried to work on real bipartisan solutions, she might have actually accomplished something. Coming into an election year, that will no longer be an option. Look for the second session to be even less productive than the first one. Broder also points out something I have said all along. The leading Democrats in the race for the nomination are serving in the Congress. Voters with a low opinion of that Congress may well be adverse to promoting a member of that dismal body to the Presidency.

Bill Collections, 2007

Victor Davis Hanson looks back at 2007 and at all the various bills that came due this year. It is an interesting look at the year and some of the high or low points, depending on your point of view.

2007 reminded us that our easy way of life comes at a price, and that there are consequences and tradeoffs in almost everything we do. Let's go down the list.

Illegal Immigration

President Bush's comprehensive immigration bill collapsed this summer, following public outrage from the middle and poorer classes of both parties. These Americans reminded their politicians that first they want their southern border closed to illegal immigration — and discussion of anything else second.

They are not racists, nativists or protectionists — much less "anti-immigrant." Instead, a substantial number of Americans — from all backgrounds — simply believe that once illegal immigration ceases, the problem becomes manageable.

Employers will have to hire our own poor and unemployed, and thus raise wages. Mexico will have to deal with its own problems rather than blaming the United States. Tribalists and ethnic provocateurs will have to relearn that integration and the melting pot are not going away. And immigrants crossing the southern border will have to wait in line like everyone else and come here legally.

He touches on more subjects, from housing markets to food prices to oil to Iraq and Iran. My personal favorite:

Anti-War and Over-the-Top

After Moveon.org ran its infamous "General Betray Us" ad — in The New York Times no less and originally at a reduced rate — the entire vocal anti-war movement never quite recovered. Before the ad, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink and Michael Moore were all seen as just vehemently anti-war. After the lunatic ad, all such critics were suspected, unfairly or not, of being anti-military and potentially undermining the thousands of Americans who serve in it.

I think he's right. The MoveOn ad was probably the watershed when the far left went that figurative bridge too far and crashed into reality. Do not miss his take on Hollywood, either. Absolutely perfect tagline to the entire column. All of these bills may have come due this past year, but we'll be paying for some of them in the future, as he points out. Read the whole thing.

“When You Come To A Fork In The Road, Take It.”

Toby Harnden starts his Telegraph column today with that quote from Yogi Berra. His subject is the odd forks in the road that both the Democratic and Republican primary battles have come to. His examination of what is going on in both parties right now is quite interesting. Because he is seeing it as being wide-open in both races, yet both mirror the same decision the voters have to make: Do we pick a cynic or a straightshooter?

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it," the baseball legend and political sage Yogi Berra once said.

A week today, and some 11 months after this extraordinary presidential campaign started in earnest, Americans will finally reach that fork when voting begins in the snows of Iowa.

It will be another 10 months before the general election, but already one fundamental choice is clear: both parties can choose either a prepackaged candidate of calculation and cynicism or one who speaks his own mind and would rather lose than do anything to win.

Among Democratic voters, there are increasing signs that most will opt for a new direction with Barack Obama rather than a Hillary Clinton route that would loop straight back to the bitter partisanship of the 1990s.

Obama is a candidate supremely at ease with himself. Despite his historic bid to become the first black man to become US president, racial appeals have been virtually absent from his campaign. Raised by his white mother and grandparents, he can relate to Americans of all hues.

Although he was brought up without religion, he found refuge in Christ long before it was politically expedient to do so.

His forebears on both sides were restless wanderers, but he put down roots in Chicago's South Side by marrying a black woman whose background was as stable and grounded as his was exotic and dysfunctional.

With the kind of chutzpah that only a Clinton could muster, the former First Lady is trumpeting her candidacy as a breakthrough for independent women, while simultaneously trying to ride the political coattails of a husband who repeatedly humiliated her.

She has appropriated the word "change" from Obama and clagged it on to her own slogan of "experience" to produce the type of ghastly justifications for her candidacy that could only have been designed by a political committee.

"It takes strength and experience to bring about change," is how she puts it in a current TV ad in Iowa. "I have a very clear record of 35 years fighting for children and families, fighting for working people, fighting for our future."

It is an interesting series of observations from an overseas perspective. (And how very odd the American political process must look to foreign observers.) Who is going to walk away with this? At this point, I couldn't even begin to predict, the crystal ball is on the fritz again. But Harnden makes one particularly astute observation at the end of his column:

It says something about the vibrancy and restlessness of American democracy that both party contests are still wide open - and that it is the candidates with the early money, big endorsements and array of attack ads who are quaking in their winter boots as they trudge towards the fork.

I think that's probably the most ironic thing of all. It is the so-called shoo-ins who are shaking from more than the brutal cold gripping the nation's early voting states.

Still More Fun With Racist “Diversity Training”

A while back, when the University of Delaware mind-control experiment - called “treatment” for students’ "incorrect attitudes and beliefs" by the University was - revealed, part of the noxiousness exposed was the blatantly racist teaching materials used. Turning over the rock at Delaware caused the University to back off from their totalitarian brainwashing. Now OpenMarket.org exposes still more racism - and incredibly stupid legal advice by "Diversity Experts" that are costing companies and governments millions of dollars in lawsuit losses. The problem is with the self-appointed experts in diversity and their advice.

Diversity training often imparts bad legal advice to managers and employers that can come back to haunt them in court. 

Gail Heriot, a law professor and member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, reports on the sexual harassment training she received at the University of San Diego, in a state (California) where such training is mandatory under state law.  She points out that the training by the New Media Learning firm sent the message that criticisms of affirmative action by white male employees are something that the employer should “nip in the bud” through investigations.

This is exceedingly dumb legal advice, since criticism of affirmative action is protected against retaliation by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1981, and other laws, even when the affirmative action program criticized turns out to have been perfectly legal.  Even the very court rulings that have upheld private-sector affirmative action programs, such as Sisco v. J.S. Alberici Const. Co. (8th Cir. 1981), have allowed employees to sue employers who retaliate against them for criticizing affirmative action.

In the public sector, the employer also faces a First Amendment lawsuit.  The California Department of Corrections attempted to fire John Wallace after he angrily denounced its affirmative action plan to the Hispanic female employee he perceived as benefiting from it.  The California Court of Appeal, however, found that his criticisms of the plan were protected by the First Amendment, and barred Wallace’s firing, in California Department of Corrections v. State Personnel Board, 59 Cal.App.4th 131 (1997).  

Employers are often quite gullible about the claims made by “diversity” trainers.  For example, they permit minority trainers to promote racial stereotypes that would provoke outrage if they were subsequently repeated by white managers or employees.  For example, Glenn Singleton, a wealthy “diversity” trainer, teaches that “white talk” is “impersonal, intellectual, verbal” and “task-oriented,” while “color commentary” is “emotional.” 

If a white person said this, it would rightly be regarded as a ridiculous, racist stereotype that relegates black people to inferior status.  But because Singleton himself is African-American, and he sugarcoats his racist stereotypes about black people by coupling them with ideologically trendy attacks on white people (whom he depicts as “impersonal” and “racist”), liberal school superintendents eat it up. 

If whites repeat what this "expert" teaches them, they are open for a lawsuit - and it has been happening more and more frequently. The lawsuits are a direct result of the material being presented by self-appointed experts. Now, since "Diversity Training" has been mandated as a result of lawsuits filed over the years and since new lawsuits are being generated by virtue of the mandated "Diversity Training," there are some obvious questions here: who is driving for more training? And who is getting rich off it?

Or is the answer really the same?

F-15 Groundings Strain Resources

The grounding of 450 F-15 fighter aircraft has placed a strain on American air defenses since the F-15s had been the backbone of homeland defense. The Air Force and the National Guard have responded by shuffling F-16s and new F-22s around to provide resources and asked Canada for assistance for one three week period in November.

The F-15 is the sole fighter at many of the 16 or so "alert" sites around the country, where planes and pilots stand ready to take off at a moment's notice to intercept hijacked airliners, Cessnas that wander into protected airspace, and other threats.

The Air Force grounded about 450 F-15s after one of the fighters began to break apart in the air and crashed Nov. 2 in Missouri. An Air Force investigation found "possible fleet-wide airworthiness problems" because of defects in the metal rails that hold the fuselage together. It is not clear when the F-15s will be allowed to fly again.

Compounding the problem created by the grounding, another fighter jet used for homeland defense, the F-16, is in high demand for Iraq operations. And the next-generation fighter, the F-22 Raptor, is only slowly replacing the aging F-15.

Military officials say they moved quickly to patch any holes in the homeland air-defense system, and they report an increase in air defense sorties in the past month, using replacement F-16s. But they acknowledge difficulties.

"When you're filling in, obviously it's going to cause some strain," said Mike Strickler, a spokesman with North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which is operated by the U.S. and Canada. "You're spreading resources a little thinner than we would like."

But air defenses have not been compromised, Strickler said. "We can be anywhere at any time," he said.

Only the F-15E variant, the "Strike Eagle" has been certified as airworthy. All the older ones are down until decisions are made on how to proceed with the situation. In the meantime, thanks to those units that are taking up the strain - and making sure the country remains safe.

Chavez Hitting The Eggnog Again

(T)Hugo Chavez has apparently been nipping at the eggnog a bit too much this Christmas. He's just announced that there is a plot to assassinate him afoot in Guatemala - which comes as a bit of a surprise to Guatemalan authorities, who said that not only did they have no information on a plot, but also that they had no information that Chavez was planning to drop by for a visit.

"I've received very recent information that worries us about Guatemala and puts at risk my attendance at the swearing-in of President (Alvaro) Colom," Chavez told a news conference in Venezuela's capital, Caracas.

Chavez, an outspoken critic of President Bush, has alleged similar plots in the past and accused Washington of backing the plan.

"The government of the United States, is always conspiring — not only to overthrow me (but), sometimes, even to kill me," Chavez said. "Hopefully there is a way to neutralize these plans."

U.S. officials have repeatedly dismissed Chavez's accusations of U.S.-backed plots as ridiculous. A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Caracas did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Juan Carlos Leal, director of Guatemala's SAAS security force which guards visiting dignitaries, denied having any knowledge of the purported plot, saying "we haven't heard anything about this."

Guatemala's government had not received information regarding Chavez's plans for the Jan. 14 inauguration, Leal said.

Chavez suggested that Luis Posada Carriles, a 79-year-old former CIA operative and fierce opponent of Fidel Castro living in the United States, was involved in the alleged conspiracy, but he did not elaborate.

Chavez is afraid of an 80-year old assassin coming at him? What's the plan called? Operation Lethal Walker?

Winter Storms Stalking US Again

Accuweather reports three troublesome areas of storms across the United States today. The Northeast, upper Midwest and Gulf Coasts are all under various advisories, but the most troublesome system of all is poised to hit the Northwest today - but will push eastwards in the next few days bring harsh winter into the Midwest, yet again.

Cold air west of the Cascades will allow snow to fall in Seattle and Portland, one day after snow brought a white Christmas to Seattle. The Severe Weather Center lists snow advisories that are in effect along the West Coast from southern Washington to northern California.

Strong winds will return to Southern California this afternoon as the storm pushes to the southeast . The winds tonight will shift direction from the northwest to northeast. The Santa Ana winds through Thursday morning will create hazardous conditions in the mountains, passes and canyons of Southern California…..

…..The storm over the western states on Thursday and Friday will become the next weather maker east of the Rockies. According to the Midwest Regional News story, significant snow will spread from the central Plains to the Great Lakes, while rain will fall along the southern edge of the system. By Friday night, the storm will bring rain to the Northeast.

Those Santa Ana winds they mention hit Southern California yesterday with wind velocities reaching 107mph. It does not appear that the US will catch a break on the weather this week.

Putin’s New Cold War

Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute writes an op-ed in today's Opinion Journal that attempts to dispel many of the myths surrounding what, exactly, Vladimir Putin is doing in regards to relations with the West in general and the United States in particular. The picture he produces is not at all a pretty one - nor is there a single thing the West or the US can do to change Putin's course.

Let's first discard simplistic clichés. The most common of them postulates that when the post-Soviet, proto-democratic, anti-communist, revolutionary Russia of the 1990s was poor, it was also meek and peaceable and willing to be a friend of the West. Now that the accursed "period of weakness" and "chaos" of the 1990s is behind it, the same explanation goes, Russia has "recovered," is "off its knees," and is "back." Back, that is, to spar and bicker with the West because . . . well, because this is what a prosperous and strong Russia does.

Nonsense. A country's behavior in the world, its choice of truculence or accommodation, is not decided by accountants who calculate what the country can or cannot afford. Rather it is determined by the regime's fears and hopes, and by the leaders' notions of what their countries should strive for.

As Germany and Japan recovered from the devastation of World War II and became many times richer than they were in 1945, they grew more, not less, peaceful. They also devoted puny shares of their national income to the military–and only after intense debate. Western Europe's equally spectacular economic resurgence has not brought back squabbling, jingoism and militarism–and neither did South Korea's, after communist aggression and decades of authoritarianism.

In the past seven years, the trajectory of Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin mirrored, and changed with, the domestic ideological and political order. It has morphed from the Gorbachev-Yeltsin search for the "path to the common European home" and integration into the world economy, to declaring that the end of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."

Soon the Kremlin's paid and unpaid propagandists were extolling "sovereign democracy"–a still rather "soft" authoritarianism, increasingly with nationalistic and isolationist overtones. Such exegeses, an independent Russian analyst noted, "would have been labeled as fascist, chauvinistic, anti-democratic or anti-Western during Yeltsin's term. Now such texts have become mainstream."

As the Kremlin's pronouncements grew darker and more fanciful–including warnings that foreign evildoers are plotting to break up Russia–Moscow's foreign policy, too, evolved: first to a cynical and omnivorous pragmatism, and then an assertive and pointedly anti-Western, especially anti-American, posture.

All of this actually has little to do with the West. It has to do with Putin's wanting to install himself as the real power in Russia - probably for life. As Aron points out, no amount of Western hand-wringing or appeasement of Russia will do anything to alter this, at least until Putin is installed as the permanent power driving Russia.

Until the succession crisis is resolved (meaning, until Mr. Putin's effective leadership of the country is renewed and secured) no amount of importuning, begging or kowtowing–or emergency trips by Condoleezza Rice to Moscow and heart-to-heart chats in Kennebunkport–are likely to produce an ounce of good.

Let us, therefore, refrain from the ritual, silly hand-wringing and accusations on the subject of "losing" Russia. Russia is not (and never has been) ours to lose.

In all of Russian history, its relations with the West have been uncomfortable. This is unlikely to change anytime soon, especially under Putin. Read the whole thing, it is very well done - but it does paint a rather bleak picture about what Putin is aiming for here. Putin's new Cold War may be around for quite some time.

Infighting?

Real Clear Politics has two stories this morning, placed right next to one another, that may indicate that there is a little bit of infighting going on inside the Hillary Clinton campaign. Both stories highlight an internal faction within the campaign made up of Hillary loyalists collectively called "Hillaryland" who suddenly appear to have the upper hand within the Clinton camp. First, from the New York Daily News comes an op-ed from Michael Tomasky describing why Hillary is suddenly trying to project a warm, fuzzy image:

With the warm, Oprah-fied Barack Obama rising in early state polls, the latest tactic in Hillary Clinton's increasingly nervous presidential campaign is a series of ads - and a Web site to match - called "The Hillary I Know," which seek to show the candidate's human side.

Everyone knows Hillary is brainy - always ready with a stunning range of facts on any issue you can imagine. But "the real Hillary" - the vulnerable and feeling package of flesh and blood - who is that person? The new push, with testimonials from her mother, childhood friends and others, tries to fill in the picture.

It's a fascinating development because Hillaryland, as her team is collectively called, has always been allergic to such efforts. When I covered her 2000 Senate race, I saw the discomfort up close.

Clinton was a very guarded politician in those days. And it was a time - not long after her humiliation by her husband in 1998 - when a lot of people were curious not about her views on power-plant emissions or farm-price supports, but about how she'd endured it all. But whenever she was asked about herself, her feelings or her personal life, her answers were short and superficial.

The logic was understandable: She wanted to be elected as a public servant, not a soap opera character.

Tomasky is not at all impressed with this and thinks it probably is not a good idea:

Will it work? In the short term, it may. To the extent that voters view her as calculating and obsessed by ambition, any humanizing information, however slickly packaged, will probably soften that perception with some portion of the electorate.

But presidential candidates tend to get elected because they have qualities that 1) are immediately apparent to most people and 2) are determined by the voters to suit what the country needs. Clinton's immediately apparent qualities are intelligence and competence. She's not going to be elected because voters suddenly decide she's warm and fuzzy.

In contrast, an article from the Wall Street Journal paints a profile of the de facto leader of "Hillaryland", Patti Solis Doyle. The portrait describes the way that Hillaryland pushed their warm, fuzzy agenda forward in the face of rumors that Doyle was about to be demoted:

Others on the call, including advertising adviser Mandy Grunwald, wanted to shift the focus of commercials and campaign stops to feature the warm and positive side of Sen. Clinton — a concept Mr. Penn once dismissed as "too Mary Tyler Moore."

Ms. Solis Doyle, in her pajamas, stopped putting on her makeup and cut in. "Hillary's character is being attacked," she said, according to people on the call. "Now's the time to put Hillary as a person front and center. Right?" Over the phone came the chorus from the advisers. "Right." The debate was over. A tactical shift to humanize the candidate and stress her likeability began immediately.

Looking close to invincible two months ago, Sen. Clinton finds herself in a tightening race for the Democratic presidential nomination. With eight days to go before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Ms. Solis Doyle, a 42-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants who never ran a presidential effort before, is trying to re-energize Mrs. Clinton's campaign.

For both, it's the fight of their careers. In the caucuses, Mrs. Clinton faces a strengthening Barack Obama and a consistently competitive John Edwards. The three are in a statistical dead heat. Although Mrs. Clinton retains a strong lead in national polls and her change in message is playing well, if she loses Iowa, she could be hobbled going into New Hampshire and other primaries. By this month, her problems here had stirred speculation about a campaign shake-up, including a demotion of Ms. Solis Doyle.

What emerges after reading these two pieces is what appears to be competing factions making sure that credit/blame gets targeted at the right faction, depending on what the outcome of the Iowa caucuses is, doesn't it? Leaks to sympathetic journalists is a hallmark of the Clinton campaign (and to some extent to all campaigns). These two look like the two factions made opposing leaks.