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172 Norfolk, the haunted house of Richard Price’s Lush Life, hosted LiRon last night…

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Sam Ronson is DJing an event at 172 Norfolk tonight. With Mark Ronson’s girlfriend admitting Lohan’s lesbianism the same week the tabloids are calling a spade a spade, could tonight be the first public outing for lesbian couple LiRon?

Nice. Here’s a young actress—gorgeous, almost dead last summer, busted with coke—somehow achieving one the greatest PR coups in history. From the beginning of her party days, everyone predicted the Decline and Fall of Lohan—but the fall was avoided. After the coke bust she laid low. But a few months ago she posed nude for New York Magazine. It shut down the magazine’s website. In the aftermath, she took one indie role and began an amorphous relationship with DJ Sam Ronson. A boy-ish looking rap and rock specialist, Ronson (the sister of Mark, Amy Winehouse’s producer) is like a lesbian Joel Madden. After the NY Mag shoot, some said Lohnan had gone too far. That looks to be untrue, as she is now semi-bullet proof, hater wise.

What can you say? Bad girl, you cleaned up, took up with a woman publicly even though Hollywood has a stigma against gays, refused to appear on your mom’s show “Mom-ager,” and didn’t buy into dad’s weird church? Impressive for a 22-year-old…it’s hard to say anything too negative. Much like Obama, who “did a little blow,” Lohan’s post-blow decisions seem sound. 

So, Inshallah, Lohan will be at this Ronson gig tonight on the Lower East Side. 

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Here’s the video: (sorry it’s not embeddable)
http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=264251

UPDATE 1:23PM: Through her publicist, Ms Lewis has released this statement, “You know, when you find that one thing in life you really care about — cemetery vandalization, in my case — everything else just kind of falls into place.”

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Obama raised $52 million in June, mostly from big donors, for the second highest total of his campaign. The total is unexpectedly high, given that May was his slowest month yet, with only $21 million raised. Quite simply, John McCain cannot keep up. He raised a mere $22 million in June. But don’t let the $ fool you. Hillary was out raised 2-1 but still wound up getting 500,000 more votes than Obama from March onward.

A story in the Times today about Iraqi opinion of Obama and his withdrawal plan has the week’s money quote:

“In no way do I favor the occupation of my country,” said Abu Ibrahim, a Western-educated businessman in Baghdad, “but there is a moral obligation on the Americans at this point.”

We’ve ignored the moral questions of withdrawal and the Iraqis who’d be affected for too long. Obama must inject a just war rationale, as defined by your Michael Walzer-types, which states a minimal ethical benchmark for foreign armies conducting regime change and occupation  as providing a functioning state that can secure itself.

Ryan Lizza’s long “Obama in Chicago” story in the terror-jab issue of the New Yorker lacks the depth and first person accounts of David Mendell’s book “Obama: Promis to Power.” Still, Lizza’s offers new insight on how Obama’s 2002 Iraq speech came to be. Mendell stated that Obama, with an eye on a Senate run, used the speech to win over Axelrod and the Chicago liberal establishment. Lizza says that claim is “dubious.” The piece ends strongly, however:

Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. When he was a community organizer, he channelled his work through Chicago’s churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them.Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.

Finally, Obama hit the gym three times yesterday, for a total of 188-minutes of activity, showing up W’s hour per diem of mountain biking and Conde’s bench press/treadmill-ing.

While Obama spent 91 minutes at a campaign event yesterday, the Illinois Senator spent a total of 188 minutes in the gym yesterday –making three separate stops to Chicago gyms over the course of one day.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KelU01IJnWg

Yesterday I mentioned that children should be causing trouble in the woods not rolling around on Heelys and listening to Wilco.  Judging by the graphics from  newly launched New Jersey based comapny Totally Skateboards, they agree.

.

I see muscle cars, fire, butterfly knives and chains. All things of these objects seldom lead to anything productive but they are fun as hell. In fact if you put them all together, marinate them in yellow beer and drop them in New Jersey you have a good fucking time in the making…unless you’re a girl I guess.

Jersey boys Dave Wasnak, Pat Guidotti, and Anthony Anastasio were united in the desire to create a skateboarding first company with quality products using top notch wood and simple, functional shapes.

Peep the promo to see new and old blood rip and get ready to be wiped out TOTALLY! (If you’re a surfboard dude of course….AYE!)

Totally Skateboards

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The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage.

He goes on to cite the Tyndall Report, which notes that, in June, the three primetime newscasts devoted 48 minutes of coverage to McCain and 114 on Obama. He leads with the fact that there’s a huge contingent of domestic and international reporters accompanying Obama on his swing through Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and Obama’s been on more magazine covers. It’s a fair point that Obama’s gotten more coverage than McCain has, and there are obvious reasons why the media is giving Obama more airtime, some of which are spelled out in the article. But the real imbalance has more to do with how they’ve been covered so far. For example, the media helped to drive the rumors that Obama might — just might — be a secret Muslim and may have attended a madrassa. There were stories about Michelle Obama’s militancy, how the Obamas attended a black separatist church, how Obama flip-flopped on public financing (fair game) without noting that McCain opted in to the program to secure a loan during the primaries and then backed out, something that only the FCC can grant. That is, he’s breaking the law. But there wasn’t much about that. There are plenty of these types of examples, and the folks at Media Matters have them chronicled, including this excellent piece. 

McCain may get less airtime than Obama, but he ridiculously more positive coverage. 

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Avi Ohayon — Associated Press; Reuters

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Best All Star Week Ever? ASG in Review

On Monday night I sat in Yankee Stadium’s right field lower deck, two rows back from the foul pole, just barely in fair territory. Great seats for a Home Run Derby. And a perfect vantage for watching Josh Hamilton’s dingers fly during his record breaking first round. By home run number 12, all 55,000 Bronx fans chanted “Hamilton, Hamilton!” Corny as it sounds, the chills were a-goose-bumpin. When he railed like 13 straight with 7 outs, most to the upper deck or deep into the bleachers, my awe-factor reached boner status. Ending with a dead center shot, Hamilton’s 28 homers broke Bobby Abreu’s record of 24 and earned him a long standing ovation and place in Yankee lore (barf).

It was my fourth or fifth time at the Toilet this year. On previous visits, as much as I tried to get nostalgic for The House That a Bad Trade Built, it never hit me—until Hamilton. Seeing an entire stadium—the biggest in the majors—packed with baseball nuts on their feet cheering for some guy who spent his early 20s smoking crack was beautiful. I’m hardly a mystical, metaphoric baseball fan (it’s just a game), but I love communal energy focused on pure athletic power and talent.

This was my second Derby. Back in 99, I was at the Home Run Derby in Boston. Then, Mark McGuire hit 13 homers in the first round, a record, some of which flew above the old Green Monster Coke bottles to heights still unmatched in Fenway history. Like Hamilton, McGuire lost the Derby (to Ken Griffey Jr). Like Hamilton, McGuire’s performance legitimized the Derby, making it more than just a dunk contest or some dumb spectacle. When a guy like an Ortiz or Abreu goes on a Derby tear, it becomes a once-in-a-lifetime oppurtunity to see the hardest feat in sports at the highest level.

Yesterday I went up the All Star parade on 6th Ave in Midtown. Arriving late, and finding it sparsely attended, I missed A Rod and Jeter, but caught JD Drew and Captain Tek sitting together in the back of a Chevy truck (official MLB sponsor). The fifty people on the corner of 57th barely booed, but boo they did. Mo Rivera drove by wearing the worst brown-on-brown biz casual/Latin yuppie outfit.

Then Josh Hamilton came by and was given the best non-Yankee response. Doing his best Tom Brady, Hamilton, in a white shirt tucked into chinos, was all humble smiles. The “Josh” chants, overwhelming cheers, and so many happy onlookers (”That’s him!” screamed a girl in a sundress to another, who responded, “The cokehead who hit all those home runs last night! He’s hot!”) made me realize this guy’s about to score some big time endorsement deals. You don’t come to New York and steal the spotlight without Madison Ave noticing. Look for a Hamilton NIKE deal by week’s end.

When the most hated man in NYC, Jon Papelbon, rolled by in a grey suit and tie, he flicked off the crowd with a World Series ring. (Love it.) Boos and “faggot” chants came in response. Pap’s comments the day prior to reporters, saying him not Mo Rivera should close the ASG, were plastered with a “Papelbum” headline on the back of the day’s Daily News. He later blamed the News for blowing up a non-story, “My wife was really upset. We got threats, everything. I wish I hadn’t taken her.”

I don’t know why, but before every All Star Game people always say, “I only care about the first two innings. These game’s usually suck.” Except they don’t. And last night was maybe the greatest ASG ever. 15 innings. 7 Red Sox. 4 Yankees. 34 strikeouts. 3-3 tie for seven innings. An amazing 11th inning . JD Drew hit a 7th inning game tieing two-run shot and the whole Stadium cheered—for a Red Sox! Obviously, The Rivalry was the true star (Jeter-A Rod/Pedroia-Youk starting infield, the Papelbon-Mo closer beef, Terry managing at the Stadium) even if ESPN and the Steinbrenners want you to believe the Stadium was.

On ESPN Derek Jeter said New York has the “Most intelligent fans in all of sports. They pay attention to detail here.” Incorrect. Boston has more knowledgeable fans. I’ve been to The Stadium enough to know that Yankee fans don’t pay attention to nearly as much Sox fans do. In Boston, the Red Sox are all people have. New Yorkers actually have lives outside baseball.

I’m not too familiar with New York Mag’s new sportswriter, Will Leitch, but he totally misses the beauty of last night’s game by focusing on the scene at the Stadium:

It is a unique quality of baseball that an event can hold such magnitude that the best tickets are running nearly $10,000 … and then, just four hours later, those same people are leaving before they know who wins. Yankee Stadium looked pretty last night, but it wasn’t an epic sendoff of the old bird. In fact, people couldn’t wait to leave. Considering the sorry lot of the Yankees this year, it’s more than likely this will be the stadium’s last night in the national spotlight. Fox’s last shot? The box seats, nearly empty. “This time it counts.” Obviously, no, it doesn’t.

First off, the assholes paying $10k for tickets are just that—assholes. All Star Games aren’t filled with average baseball fans. They draw show-offs and rich guys trying to impress chicks, especially in the expensive seats.

But really, all the baseball fans I know (mostly AL East maniacs) were texting about this game right up until 2am. No one said, “Please end this.” Rather, I read “Best game,” “Holy shit,” “Am I rooting for or against Mo here,” etc. Some fans I know even went out to celebrate post-game. That’s right folks, an impromptu party for an All Star Game AL win was held at a downtown sleaze den.

To the players and real fans, last night’s game counted. If you think Terry Francona, whose team is in first place, doesn’t want home field advantage for the World Series, you’re high. The game features all the best players in the league, and no one wants to get showed up, especially the young guys from small market teams making a national appearances for the first time—in New York of all places! There were thirty f–king four strikeouts against the best hitters in baseball! These guys weren’t playing an exhibition game (certainly had no meatball tossing like to Cal Ripken back in 01). These guys were playing to win, playing like it counted, because it did.

And finally, what of A Rod, the most amazing human ever? The guy didn’t do much at the game, but he did throw a funny, weird sounding party at 40/40: 

Instead, his mommy, Lourdes, and his new best friends, Guy Oseary and Ingrid Casares, were by his side in a corner booth as he threw back shots. And Casares was then spotted leaving A-Rod’s Park Avenue pad yesterday afternoon.

Reps from Berk Communications, who’d slapped Madonna’s name on their tip sheet for the event, kept insisting she was on her way, but she never showed. Instead, A-Rod was entertained by big-busted hotties who shimmied to Material Girl tunes and desperately tried to make eye contact with him.

Overall, the ASG NYC energized the city and made me happy to live in a baseball-mad town even if I hate both teams that play here. The Derby was record breaking. The gossip and shit talking unprecedented. And the game was the best ever. Now, bring on the second half!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fciD_II7NI

Aww how cute Ms. Feist was on Sesame Street to share her death chant with all the earth’s annoying little children. The Pixar loving little shits that ruin my brunch by spazzing around and throwing shit while their passive aggro parents have a defeated look on their faces and just sigh. Said parents might even mumble and inaudible “Don’t do that Belle” or “Sebastian please sit down” but the indie-babies / children don’t give a fuck, from the moment they dawned a Motorhead onesie they knew they had the upperhand.

I don’t like children, specifically your children. The ones that crash into me while I’m on a mission to buy alcohol, records or clothes. The ones wizzing by with a cocky smirk spinning the wheels of their fucking Heelys. The one’s who have parents that just pretend you aren’t there rather than reprimanding their children or apologizing for them.

If you have a child and make me interact with it I’ll be polite. I might even enjoy it in small does but if I am trying to go about my adult or semi-adult life and have to be around throngs of children after I’ve tried so hard to hide from them (I can count the minutes I’ve spent in Park Slope BKLYN) I am going to start taking action. The cute stories and pictures you share with me about your child are actually amusing, I like cute things but they have a shelf life. My cell phone is actually a digital tribute to the wacky hi-jinx my cat Raleigh gets into. He sleeps on top of the oven, he poses for pictures, has a piercing meow which is captured on video and he’s cute. The difference is that since he’s a cat it’s all he’ll ever do. When he does something remotely smart it’s always entertaining because he’s a fucking cat, he’s stupid as shit, he’s not going to grow up, learn how to talk and become a politician. I don’t need to see every shitty thing your sucky kid does because at some point you’ll hate that kid and not want to show me shit about them. You aren’t going to show me a picture of the bong in their dorm or the chick they had Bud Light Sex with but I will never tire of my cat, he’s a perpetual kitten. He’ll be talking to me in Siamese when you’re bailing Britt out of jail for possession.

Your children are cute and funny but they don’t need to be little versions of you. They don’t need to wear Ramones shirts, your babies and little adults don’t even like the fucking Ramones. If they are such Ramones fans can they even name the members, hint they are on the fucking shirt…whoops they can’t read. They are reacting to noise, they would do the fucking baby dance (see video then continue) to Skrewdriver, GG Allin or Raffi and they should be doing it to Raffi.

Children shouldn’t be cool. The only tattooed arms pushing strollers should be owned by Bikers not Graphic Designers. They should be breaking shit in the woods not in a hipster park where dudes have hangovers or just shot Ron. They should be named after Michael Jordan not Conor Oberst, they should be wearing Sponge Bob the Builder gear not Baby BAPE and BABY/DC shirts. If you try to make your children cool you have a big surprise coming. These kids are used to not being scolded, not respecting anything and having semi-business hippie post-hipster green parents. Bingo dipshit, picture American Psycho crossed with Alex P Keaton on the best cocaine money can buy and that is who is going to push you around in a carriage, I mean wheelchair long after your Wilco CDRs have stopped spinning.

Lastly, if you’re going to bring your child to a musical event cover his or her fucking ears. There are ear plugs made specifically for your shitty kid. It sucks watching your kid baby mosh to music but at least ensure they won’t have hearing loss before they can tie their shoes. Maybe these kids don’t listen because your dumb ass made them deaf with a steady diet of Arcade Fire while you changed their shitty diapers and loud free outdoor concerts. If you are somewhere that the baby mosh/dance is happening you have to access the situation quickly and react.

Are you in the wrong place or is the baby in the wrong place?

Example  - Baby spotted dancing at My Morning Jacket show while you and your bud pull out a device used for smoking marijuana.

Verdict : What did you expect you fucking indie hippie? Go somewhere away from the baby get high and shame on you for being at the concert in the first place you deserve to be there. Your second option is to leave the venue and leave that life behind, in this case you are getting your head right and I owe you a beer.

Example - Baby doing the baby mosh in a club to High on Fire with Nigel Hipster Parents.

Verdict : You are legally* allowed to put a cigarette out on the father’s forehead and douse the wound out with PBR. You should get security and have the baby taken into child custody. High on Fire are boring and not good anymore but you did nothing wrong other than liking Sleep and trying to pretend HOF are “pretty damn good!”.

*This is only legal by my rules which the United States doesn’t recognize as actual law.

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John McCain Supports Sending At Least Three Additional Brigades To Afghanistan. Our commanders on the ground say they need these troops, and thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them.

Now, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said only a couple of weeks ago that he didn’t have the troops to send into Afghanistan.

I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.

So, it seems that the only way that McCain would be able to follow through on his pledge would be to pull three brigades from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. Of course, as soon as his speech was over, McCain told reporters that what he really meant was that the three brigades would be comprised of NATO and US troops, not just US troops, as he had just said in his speech. This is just another example of the kind of “straight talk” we can expect if McCain wins the presidency.

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Bush has long resisted any direct high-level contact between the US and Iran, preferring to try to browbeat the Iranians into giving up their nuclear drive, and McCain’s taken an even harder line on Iran. Obama, of course, has said that we should negotiate with Iran from a position of strength, including meeting with Iran’s leader, in order to help our situation in Iraq. Now, Bush has pivoted in his last few months in office towards Obama’s approach. Wow. McCain has to be fuming, and I bet John Bolton’s crapping himself right now.

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Breaking the law at Beatrice

Did you know you can only legally dance at 181 places in New York City? Yup, the lamest and most violated law ever (besides pot’s illegal status) may finally end. Mayor Bloomberg’s office is moving to reverse the 1926 Cabaret Law that requires any venue with “more than three people dancing” to have a permit, called a cabaret license, of which there are less than 200.

In a city with 10,000 bars and 8 million insane horn-dogs, dancing’s illegality always made zero sense. Let’s all get drunk at 3am and…stand around staring at each other or talking about nothing. Drunken convos are so overrated. Of course, it was only after Rudy G’s “Quality of Life” campaign that the Cabaret Law started being enforced.

Cheers to Bloomberg! The end of the Cabaret Law would offer many more DJ gigs and cut down your pointless drunk conversations by at least 60%. Soon, I may never have to hear about the company or magazine or “eco-friendly sustainable co-op” you’re (not) starting—I’ll be able to just dance away.

Via NYDN:

“We either want to eliminate the license or establish a different license so that it would be less onerous for people to engage in dancing,” said a source close to the mayor.

The 82-year-old license “as it exists doesn’t offer a reasonable opportunity for New Yorkers to dance at clubs,” the City Hall source said.

As the 1926 law stands, three or more people can’t dance unless a bar or restaurant has a cabaret license - even if music and liquor are allowed.

There are 181 licensed cabarets in New York, according to Consumer Affairs, and most are limited to techno-thumping clubs in Manhattan.

But dancers have long complained the license process squeezes out small venues that might offer swing and salsa and even sued the city last year to reverse its Prohibition-era ban on social dancing.

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Today: Jamaat-i-Islami protest US “War on Muslims” in Lahore, Pakistan—note the “Stop Bombardment on Muslims” posters

Breaking: Western Ignorance and Idiocy in Pasthuland

Hot off the wires:

DVCM) 09:58 DJ Pakistan Tribesmen Say NATO Forces Massing On Afghan Border

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP)–Tribal elders on Tuesday raised the alarm over a buildup of hundreds of NATO-led troops on the Afghanistan side of the border, but Pakistan’s military downplayed fears of any intrusion.

“We have heard there is a buildup of foreign troops,” said Malik Mohammad Afzal Khan Darpakhel, a local tribal leader in North Waziristan who isn’t affiliated with the Taliban.

“We want to warn them that 3 million tribesmen will rise against them if they try to move in,” Darpakhel told a news conference held by five elders in Miranshah, the main town in the region. Intelligence sources said some 300 NATO soldiers equipped with tanks, armored vehicles and heavy weaponry have been moved very close to Lwara Mundi, a border village in North Waziristan.

Meanwhile, the Times gets the story on what happened at the American base where nine troops were killed Sunday, when 200 Taliban launched a surprise attack. In short, the insurgents were likely retaliating for civilian deaths caused by an airstrike on July 4, which killed 47 mostly women and children. The base was less than a kilometer from the bomb site. (I noted here that the entire UK press was covering that story as the US media ignored it.) “Insurgents have been present in the area for months, including Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that was originally formed to fight in Kashmir,” the Times reports.

I’ve long been calling for a regional, US-brokered Kashmir summit. The respective Jihads in Afghanistan and Kashmir against the US and India are one in the same, ie ISI and MMA supported.

Hassna Chop writes…

[Sunday's attack on the US base] may or may not be true that it was a response to the air strikes. Militants have been hitting these small NATO outposts more regularly in the last few months. These outposts are small and usually only house a couple of dozen soldiers, and they’re in brutal terrain that gives the militants an edge, since they know the area better and have plenty of cover.

I wasn’t surprised to read that they were able to get inside the walls of the NATO outpost, especially since there were about 200 of them.

My guess is that this story about NATO building up troops along the border has more to do with having a larger force around to help protect these outposts and respond more quickly to attacks than invading Waziristan…because that would be suicidal.

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Last night former first round draft pick Josh Hamilton hit a record 28 home runs in the first round of the MLB All Star Game Home Run Derby breaking Bobby Abreu’s record. Hamilton had a break out season last year with the CIncinnati Reds hitting .292 and swatting 19 home runs before being traded in the off season to the Texas Rangers.

Hamilton’s well documented battle with drug and alcohol addiction lead to eight trips to rehab and a temporary ban from the major leagues. Since being drafted by Tampa Bay right out of high school he’s fought his was back and was rewarded with his first All Star appearance at age 27. Despite actually losing the contest to the Twins’ Justin Morneau he’s become and amazing story about battling addiction but there is an inaccuracy in every article stating that he’s a former heroin addict.

I too thought Hamilton was once addicted to Heroin as I texted back and forth during the contest : “Damn,  a dude who was on Ron Ron is killing it” and “Hamilton has an ill her-ron flow! R U watching this?”. (Yes I text like a 14 year old girl, I watch Gossip Girl too)

Something didn’t make sense to me though. I had a tough time believing that Josh was a heroin junkie. All the former junkies I knew did three things :

1. Talk about how long they’ve been clean before going into some sexy tale of addiction with a 10 carat twinkle in their eye.

2. Make the worst music of their career, usually country or folk influenced with songs about children.

3. The most productive and noble and path least traveled, help other addicts recover. This one is tough because you’re forced to be around what almost destroyed you, help people who probably don’t want help and everyone who kicks heroin smokes like a thousand cigarettes so you’re probably going to die from second hand smoke.

I looked around for pictures of Josh Hamilton with his shirt off to see if he had that leathery Iggy Pop/Anthony Kiedis thing going down but no dice, in fact in all my searching I only found him talking about his former addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine. That’s right  like Tyrone Biggums, Josh smoked rocks but didn’t boot Ronzo.

Now it all makes sense. I could see Josh and his flame tattoos roasting a rock, getting aggro and smashing shit with a bat but I couldn’t picture his goatee junked out on a couch with the lock groove of a record skipping while he stared at the ceiling. So people, get that fucking shit right! My man over came an addition to the white stuff, that cooked crack, not heroin. It’s still and amazing story, I’m still stoked for him, and the performance brought a tear to my eye.

Applaud Josh Hamilton getting his shit together for himself and his family and breaking a record held by a guy who looks like he’s always getting an allergic reaction but don’t call him a junkie.

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Sketchy dead Taliban

Unprecedented Violence Makes Afghanistan Deadliest Front Yet in War on Terror

Damn, nine soldiers were killed in a Taliban assault Sunday. Besides the downing of a chopper in 2005, this is the single deadliest attack on American troops of the war. It comes a week after the war’s Kabul biggest Kabul bombing, on the Indian Embassy, which killed 40 and injured 200. A few weeks earlier, the Taliban staged a crazy-bold prison break which freed 400 fighters. Last month 46 US soldiers died in Afghanistan, by far the highest tally of the war. Exhale…

How bad is it? Well, applied to Iraq, where there’s more than four times as many troops, last month’s Afghanistan death total would have topped 170. By comparison, the worst month in Iraq, November 2004, saw 141 killed. Therefore, Afghanistan right now the most violent front per capita of the War on Terror.

To think, seven years in, things are worse than ever—maybe worse than ever imagined. That quagmire Johnny Apple q-headed back in 2002 is fully upon us, even though he was ridiculed for writing it at the time.

Today, the NYT shows why it’s the most important news organization in the world (by a factor of like five), featuring both an intrepid cover story from Pakistan’s tribal areas and an oped by Barack Obama on the War on Terror. The two Times’ stringers were detained for three days in the Tribal Areas after reporting on a Taliban-held marble quarry. And Barry O says he would send two combat brigades, about 10,000 more troops, to Afghanistan.

Here’s some copy about yesterday’s battle the AP report:

Militants with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked the remote base in the village of Wanat in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, with insurgents firing from homes and a mosque.

An unknown number of militants got inside the outpost, the reason the fighters were able to inflict such high casualties…

Ok, so the US Army, the most sophisticated and heavily armed fighting force in world history, somehow had a base breached by a bunch of illiterate AK-47-toting kids? I’m shocked. I’m angry and depressed.

There’s no question that this Taliban 2.0 is more powerful, organized, and well-funded than the one that took Afghanistan in the late 90s. That’s right folks, we invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban only for a stronger Taliban to emerge. “Regime change” actually helped the Taliban mobilize popular support. And years of battling the US have forced the Talib to become smarter, better fighters.

Is there a solution? The Taliban are hardly moderates, but as rulers they were isolationists. Unfortunately, the Taliban are Pushtu and follow a super-duper strict code of hospitality—one so deep that they’d never consider turning on their Al Qaeda guests. The world could live with the Taliban were Al Qaeda not living on their land. No negotiated settlement would erase Al Qaeda’s dedication to global jihad. Sadly, there is no near-term solution. Still, the occupation is failing…

Here’s Juan Cole on Obama’s Afghan plan:

I don’t know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first…

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics…

Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.

We who admire him don’t want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama.

Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

Beware.

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The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

According to the article, at least one and possibly as many as 3 brigages out of 15 could come home for a while (emphasis mine).

The most optimistic course of events would still leave 120,000 to 130,000 American troops in Iraq, down from the peak of 170,000 late last year after Mr. Bush ordered what became known as the “surge” of additional forces. Any troop reductions announced in the heat of the presidential election could blur the sharp differences between the candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, over how long to stay in Iraq. But the political benefit might go more to Mr. McCain than Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain is an avid supporter of the current strategy in Iraq. Any reduction would indicate that that strategy has worked and could defuse antiwar sentiment among voters.

What?! First of all, this isn’t a “reduction” at all. Troop levels in Iraq in January 2007, when the surge was announced, were about 130,000. The surge brigades, all five of them, were supposed to pull out of Iraq this summer, so this is not news at all. Secondly, this supposed “reduction” does nothing to indicate that the “strategy” has worked! Could it be possible that the military is just reducing the surge brigades on schedule like it said it would? Journalist Steven Lee Myers states that:

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

How? How would this be a striking reversal of a policy that the President said would be reversed in the summer of 2008? The 5 surge brigades were supposed to be in Iraq for one year. Now, they are coming back, as scheduled. There is no reduction!

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The scourge of illegal drugs is a vital source of funding for the Taliban warlords who seek violence against Afghan, British and Nato forces. Our mission in Afghanistan is one of absolute importance, and by seizing these drugs we have dealt a significant blow to the illegal trade.

It’s a good catch by the Royal Navy, but I’m not sure “significant” is the right word. Try miniscule, maybe.

According to the 2008 U.N. World Drug Report, Afghanistan last year produced 8,200 metric tonnes of opium alone, accouting for 92% of the world’s supply of the drug. So, if the Navy’s haul was mostly opium, that’s 0.28% of what Afghanistan produced last year. According to the same U.N. report, drug busts in 2006 resulted in the seizure of nearly 384 tonnes of raw and prepared opium, which is about 4.7% of today’s total opium production in Afghanistan. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the U.N.’s Office of Drug Crime, estimated that the Taliban earned $100 million from the drug trade in 2007. The number jumped to between $200 million to $400 million if other drug-related activities are included. That’s a lot of money, certainly enough to finance an insurgency and to recruit. Can we get Monsanto in there to give Afghani farmers some genetically modified seeds?

Rahmat Gul/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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On FISA, let’s just call it what it is: Democratic capitulation, seemingly because of fear that the issue would make Democrats look weak on security, Obama’s supposed soft spot, in November. Since the President agreed to follow the new law (are things this bad that Democrats consider getting the President to agree to follow the law a legistlative victory?), the Democrats gave the telecoms immunity, as long as the the telecoms could show that the Attorney General or the President had assured them that turning over Americans’ phone and web records without a warrant was perfectly legal. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course the story is that the President broke the law by conducting domestic surveillance without a warrant, and thanks to the new bill, no one will ever have to hear about how the White House used the telecoms to obtain Americans’ information without a warrant. So, there wasn’t much of a compromise here. This is pretty much the same story as last August, when the 6-month “updated” FISA bill, aka the Protect America Act, was passed. Patrick Radden Keefe explained in Slate why that was also Democratic capitulation.

On War Funding: It’s true that the President agreed to the passage of the G.I. bill, which he opposed all along, and extended unemployment benefits to secure $162 in funding for the war operations, but in this case, he had no choice. He faced a veto-proof majority in Congress. Republicans, already worried about their prosepects in November, sided with Democrats on economics and support for the soldiers, both of which are big issues. When you don’t have a choice, it’s not much of a compromise.

On the G8 meeting: Yes, the President committed to halving US carbon emmissions by 2050, but he didn’t say how he would do it, and anyway the treaty won’t be negotiated until the end of 2009, so this is an easy decision for him. He can sign it knowing that he doesn’t have to do anything between now and the end of his term to set the country on this goal, or even get the country to agree on this goal. He has to do nothing, and he gets to take credit for trying to be green. Where’s the compromise in that?

The President has not compromised at all.

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