Needlenose

From Reuters a week ago, via the New York Times: “President Bush in Lima, Peru, on Saturday for a meeting that is his last scheduled foreign trip.”

With my geriatric car costing me more each year, I thought I’d check out the SF Auto Show on Black Friday. What the hell, right? Man, what a waste of time! Only the Toyota & Honda hybrids could match even the 35mpg my old import got (in its heyday, anyway). WTF?!? My car is like 12 years old – and most of the gasoline sedans made today get worse mileage?

The most disappointing thing is that there were even fewer alternative fuel teaser vehicles out there than the last time I went, several years ago. In the token ‘green room’ Calcar.org was demonstrating a plug-in conversion kit for the Prius (sorry fubar, too damn expensive for something that voids your warranty!), a conversion kit for a Scion to make it run on vegetable oil and a conversion kit for a Taurus to make it run on CNG.

The manufacturers had a few concept cars in their booths. For example, Mitsubishi had an electric vehicle, the MiEV on display. Mini had a graphic display of an electric Mini Cooper. ‘Concept’ is apparently a code word in the automotive industry that means ‘something we’ll never sell you,’ or more succinctly ‘inconceivable’ that you’ll ever be able to buy it here in the U.S.

VW was displaying a diesel station wagonette that had okay mileage, and if you are fortunate enough to live near a biodiesel station, you could kind of rationalize that purchase.

The North Hall, featuring mostly Japanese imports was buzzing with activity. The South Hall, mostly ‘Big Three’ U.S. manufacturers along with expensive Euro imports was mostly buzzing with flies. You could almost smell the stench of carrion in the mostly silent hall.

The only real fun I had was by the Ford booth. Ford had some dorky fake robot giving their car pitch. I translated for the folks standing near me “Warning! Warning! Unless you give us $75 billion in bailouts we will destroy Washington D.C.!”

What a frigging waste of time. I want my plug-in hybrid!!!! And I want it now!!!

Like, perhaps, some holiday get-togethers, the Iraqi parliament’s long-awaited vote on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the U.S. turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic.  From Reuters:

Iraq’s parliament on Thursday approved a landmark security pact with the United States that paves the way for U.S. forces to withdraw by the end of 2011, taking the country a big step closer to full sovereignty.

The deal, which parliament linked to a series of promised political reforms and a public referendum next year, brings in sight an end to the U.S. military presence that began with the 2003 invasion.

. . . Lawmakers in Iraq’s 275 seat parliament passed the deal with 149 MPs out of 198 present voting.

. . . “The withdrawal, theoretically, is completed at the end of December 2011, but we are expectant and hopeful that we could achieve that earlier,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

In an article before the vote, Reuters noted what a victory this is for the Iraqi government:

. . . the deal gives Iraq formal authority over the U.S. presence for the first time, replacing a U.N. security council mandate. U.S. troops must quit Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year, then leave Iraq within three years.

That will greatly strengthen the hand of Maliki and his Shi’ite-led government, which will continue to enjoy the benefits of U.S. military backing whilst scoring nationalist points for being the ones who ushered it out.

Conversely, today’s vote seems to marginalize the Sadrists, who have staked their claim to popularity on opposing the occupation, but were left helplessly (if entertainingly at times) on the sidelines as Maliki negotiated its end.  And the Sunnis in the legislature weren’t left with much, either, as Reidar Visser relates:

The developments in the Iraqi parliament today very much went in the direction Maliki wanted them to go, even if the opposition managed to create at least a degree of friction . . . today’s package of legislation is sadly reminiscent of many of the deals that have been cut with the Maliki government since 2006: it bestows ample privileges on the Iraqi government in return for promises of reform that are both vague and without a clearly defined timeline.

Even the one tangible concession — that of a public referendum on the agreement sometime in mid-2009 — is less than meets the eye.  Spencer Ackerman did the math yesterday and explained that given the six-month lag time and the one-year notice required for cancelling the agreement, a withdrawal forced by the referendum failing would basically match the timeline proposed by Barack Obama (and endorsed by the Iraqi government).   So Maliki & Co. get what they want either way… as usual.

(P.S.  Via ThinkProgress, a PDF of an English translation of the agreement is here.)

Could you imagine King George the Compassionate Conservative doing this?

(Image via Suitably Flip.)

One of the tidbits of news that seeped out in the wake of the roundly criticized weekend bailout of Citigroup was this report from Justin Rood of ABC News:

AIG, Citibank and a number of other federally bailed-out financial institutions have no plans to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in sports team sponsorships, even as they take billions in taxpayer support, ABC News has found.

In boom times, the sponsorships were seen as a way to advertise the firms’ “brands” and appeal to potential customers.

I’d like to join the call from skippy the bush kangaroo and a pair of righty blogs that U.S. taxpayers deserve a share of the action here.  But rather than replacing the existing names, I think this should be treated as a co-branding opportunity — “Citi Taxpayers Field,” “Wachovia Taxpayers Center,” etc. — just to make sure everybody knows who owes us some payback.

As an alternative, I’d be willing to support simply naming every arena or stadium involved after Barack Obama, if only to see if it would make Grover Norquist‘s head explode.

Ann Coulter’s Jaw Wired Shut.  The real question is – how did she break her jaw?!?

In the post just below, I waxed atypically (if faintly) optimistic about politics taking precedence over violence in the Iraqi debate over the U.S. SOFA/troop withdrawal agreement.  I was also impressed by the Maliki government letting a Sadrist anti-SOFA protest take place — yes, such protests had been occurring regularly for the past few months, but I figured that those actually strengthened the government’s hand in negotiations with the Americans (“We’d love to make more concessions, but alas, we have to placate those noisy Sadrists!”).  With the agreement signed, I guessed Maliki would find dissent less useful.

But, as occasionally happens despite my best efforts, I may once again not have been cynical enough in my assessment.  At least, that’s what occurred to me on reading this Washington Post story over the weekend:

Iraq’s defense minister warned Saturday that the government would declare a state of emergency if there was no agreement to keep U.S. forces in the country past the end of the year.

The threat by Abdul Qadir Muhammed Jassim appeared aimed at pressuring parliament to approve a security accord allowing U.S. troops to stay three more years.

Jassim has been a strong supporter of the agreement, which would replace a United Nations mandate that expires Dec. 31. But his language Saturday was unusually stark. . . .

“There are armed groups that believe they are stronger than the security forces,” Jassim said. He noted bluntly that some political parties maintain armed wings and suggested that foreign intelligence services were trying to intervene in Iraq’s affairs.

. . . On Friday, thousands of supporters of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in central Baghdad against the agreement.

. . . The Sadr group, with 30 seats in the 275-strong parliament, has led opposition to the pact. Sadr has threatened to end a cease-fire he has imposed on his militia if the agreement passes.

Sad to say, threatening (even if it’s just a bluff) to unleash more sectarian violence via the Sadrists if the Sunnis don’t fall in line would be more in keeping with Maliki’s track record than making genuine political concessions.

CNN reports on today’s protest in Iraq against the SOFA agreement proposed by Prime Minister Maliki :

Iraqis outraged by a proposed security pact between Iraq and the United States staged an angry but peaceful protest against the deal Friday.

Thousands of people — most of whom are backers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — streamed into Baghdad’s Firdous Square waving Iraqi flags, hoisting posters with portraits of the cleric and carrying signs scorning the agreement.

Protesters at one point set fire to U.S. flags and an effigy of President Bush, but the rally was well-organized and peaceful with no evidence of fighting or arrests. People dispersed amicably after the 2½-hour event.

Think about that.  In a country ruled by violence both before and after the U.S. invasion, a political faction held a massive demonstration in the capital against a key policy of the government… and then everyone went home peacefully.  Of course, that situation is by no means guaranteed to last, as the New York Times hints today in its coverage of the legislative debate over the agreement:

When cornered on the stairways and balconies of the Iraqi Parliament building in the Green Zone, many of those who are threatening to vote against ratification openly admit that they approve of its terms.

“To be clear, it is not the treaty that is the problem,” said Aala Maki, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party that has suggested it might not vote for approval. “What will be built on the treaty, that is the problem.”

Other than the followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who reject any agreement in principle (and who continue to bang their hands on their desks in Parliament when it is being discussed), most lawmakers consider the pact at least satisfactory, if not ideal.

But the Sunnis, and others, are worried that the agreement will leave too much power to Mr. Maliki’s government, given that only two years ago elements of the government-run Iraqi police force were functionally little more than Shiite death squads.

The major Sunni parties, after several days of mixed messages, have largely come together and demanded a series of guarantees from the government and the Americans in return for their support. . . .

. . . Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said members of the Kurdish coalition were privately mulling whether to draw up their own list of demands.

“Everybody is afraid of Maliki,” Mr. Othman said. “Nobody is afraid of the agreement.”

Truth be told, this is the Sadrists’ real objection, too — since part of Maliki’s strongman ambitions is using the remaining U.S. presence to wear down their ability to oppose him (just as he’s done for the past year), even an orderly, gradual withdrawal is unsatisfactory to the Sadrists.  Thus they are forced to insist that a SOFA with a hard withdrawal deadline is in fact a puppet’s capitulation, that Obama is every bit the imperialist Bush/Cheney were, and so on.

For the moment, though, the debate is taking place in the political realm rather than on the streets, and that has to count as progress.  If Maliki has the sense and capacity to cut political deals with the Sunnis and Kurds to ensure broad support for the pact rather than steamroll it through by a narrow majority, that would be even more encouraging (though still transient).  We’ll know more on Monday, when the agreement is due to be voted on.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Update: Did I say Monday? Make that Wednesday or Thursday:

The speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud Mashhadani, said Saturday that he would call for a ratification vote as soon as the different blocs came to some kind of agreement, which he urged them to do by Wednesday or Thursday.

A press officer for Mr. Mashhadani said the speaker’s emphasis on arriving at an accord before the vote was directly related to recent statements by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, who has insisted that any agreement achieve national consensus.

Supporters of the pact, largely consisting of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite bloc, and their Kurdish allies, appear to have enough votes for a majority, but they have grown frustrated in their attempts to persuade others to support the agreement. They said they believed that the ayatollah’s approval of the pact, which is considered critical, is contingent on more than token Sunni support.

. . . Late on Friday, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, and Mr. Mashhadani invited members of Sunni parliamentary blocs to Mr. Talabani’s Baghdad home for discussions.

Some Sunni parliamentarians have asked that an appendix be added to the pact outlining their proposed guarantees. Since such an appendix is unlikely to be approved by the Americans, the Kurds countered with the idea of a treaty among Iraqi political blocs to ensure that the Sunnis’ demands are met after the pact is signed, said Abdul Khaliq Zangana, a Kurdish legislator who was at the meeting on Friday.

Will the Sunnis let themselves be fooled again persuaded to accept vague promises that Team Shiite has no intentions of keeping, or will they be able to pry some genuine concessions out of Maliki?  Stay tuned.

Via Think Progress, Jeff Bercovici of Portfolio.com reports on a conversation with perversely influential moron Bill Kristol (whose career arc has taken him from being the “brains behind Dan Quayle” to the impressive dual misadventure of helping bring America both the Iraq war and Sarah Palin):

I asked Kristol about the rumors that he might be leaving the New York Times op-ed page after his contract expires next month. Did he expect to have it renewed?

“I don’t think I’ve had that conversation yet,” he told me.

You don’t think you’ve “had that conversation yet”?  You’d think a lifelong neoconservative would be a more convincing liar.  Bercovici continues:

Okay — but would he like to have it renewed? “I’m ambivalent. It’s been fun. It’s a lot of work. I have a lot of things going on. But I haven’t really focused on it.”

Yep, he’s toast.  Assuming this firing non-renewal comes to pass, though, it would constitute an event so unlikely many observers considered it physically impossible — a conservative actually being held responsible for failure.