That's what $12 billion gets you... maybe less if you don't buy the Congressional Budget Office figures. Petraeus says Americans should be "patient." Patient while the middle class implodes. Patient while "average Americans" become "untouchables" in a high-caste meritocracy. What better way than a poinless war to destory America's social net. Maybe if Ford gets a Bushco bailout they can develop a new gas guzzler and call it the Feisal... in the tradition of the Edsel. The legacy the House of Saud is who we're protecting, innit?

Barack Hussein Obama who grew up in Indonesia and did some "blow"... meet Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, who did some Zydeco down on Bourbon Street. I didn't say it. Chris Cillizza did. In today's Washington Post blog.

Blogger fatigue. Call it whatever. Waking up to a virtual town hall since 2002 has been a fun ride. Like some of the things that grew out of the so-called 1960s "cultural revolution" blogging has been- in the jargon of that era- coopted. For reasons known perhaps to some closer to the sun than I, the readership of this blog has declined about 75 percent over the past few weeks. I guess the rule of thumb is that old adige I used to hear at the dining hall... "speak when spoken to." It's a free country, behave accordingly