For the time being...*

Now I've let the blog languish for over a week! I'm afraid this will be typical for the next few weeks. It's the end of the semester, and I have just under 21 days to write four papers, 3 of which are due within a 3-day period. I suspect my internet news surfing will suffer during this time.

For now, just a few things.

Frank Rich is terrific this week, and links to several stories that were sitting on my "to blog" list last week.

George W. Bush is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to "the coalition of the willing." Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey, is so radioactive that he vanished into his bunker for weeks at a time during the storms Katrina and Scootergate.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Neither offered a plan for "victory." Instead, both impugned their critics' patriotism and retreated into the past to defend the origins of the war. In a seasonally appropriate impersonation of the misanthropic Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life," the vice president went so far as to label critics of the administration's prewar smoke screen both "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless." He sounded but one epithet away from a defibrillator.

The Washington line has it that the motivation for the Bush-Cheney rage is the need to push back against opponents who have bloodied the White House in the polls. But, Mr. Murtha notwithstanding, the Democrats are too feeble to merit that strong a response. There is more going on here than politics.

Much more...

Pass this column around.

You'll want to read the SF Chronicle's Jon Carroll, too, as he savors the approval ratings map that showed up on Daily Kos last week.

"I was just gonna say that." So, let's see. Joe Biden (don't get me started on this spineless weeny) gets all gutsy and introduces a cautious Iraq pull-out plan (after first publicly disavowing Murtha's call for a pullout and then seeing that Murtha was getting some mighty good press for his principled stand), which is, according to the White House, "remarkably similar" to the one Bush never had until now and was in fact slandering Democrats for suggesting. (See Newsweek's article on Bush's "tipping point.") (Update: I restored the hyperlinks in my puerile Biden rant above.)

Surely you've heard? Michael Brown is going into private sector business as a disaster consultant.

Randy Cunningham's resignation and guilty plea. The growing, growing Abramoff scandal. I'd have to agree with conservative Norman Ornstein:

"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote recently. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."

Here is a thoughtful interview with Christian Scharen, who writes this blog, on his upcoming book, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God.

Sister Joan Chittister's column last week was about "American narcissism;" it makes a great companion piece to the WaPo story on our xenophobic president:

For the president, it was a rare moment of fun on an otherwise dreary overseas trip. In five years in the presidency, Bush has proved a decidedly unadventurous traveler, an impression undispelled by the weeklong journey through Asia that wraps up Monday. As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people...The Bush spirit trickles down to many of his top advisers, who hardly go out of their way to sample the local offerings either. A number of the most senior White House officials on the trip, perhaps seeking the comforts of their Texas homes, chose to skip the kimchi in South Korea to go to dinner at Outback Steakhouse -- twice. (Admittedly, a few unadventurous journalists joined them.)

(*For some reason, I'm reminded that this is a line in WH Auden's For the time being - A Christmas Oratio. Maybe it was the stories of the festive tramplings at various Wal-Marts this past weekend.)