The Rest Of The Week In Review

Yeah, it's a day late, so sue me. My schedule dictates that I'm simply not going to have a ton of time this upcoming week; in fact, on Friday I'm out to NYC for the Memorial Day weekend. So I'd like to promise there'll be more tomorrow, but, can't. Here's the rest from last week, though:

• The twin tragedies in China and Myanmar are so horrible I find it hard to write about them. The junta refused a UN ship from docking this weekend, and while international pressure is building they are still far from allowing enough aid in to stop a second wave of death and disease. And the death toll in China is so large the state may be concealing it. The rescue mission is spurring public activism in China, which is a sure step toward a more aware populace that will demand greater freedoms. It will be interesting to witness that change.

• Iraq is actually showing signs of improvement this week - if you read the New York Times articles about gains in Basra and the intra-Shiite truce holding in Sadr City. If you read elsewhere, you see that the Sadr City truce was marred by deadly clashes, and military personnel is continuing to drumbeat for war with Iran, and a nimrod in the Army was using a Koran as target practice. So like most things in Iraq, it's a mixed bag. (I do agree, however, that when you have hundreds of thousands of military personnel occupying a country, the odds are that some will act like idiots. The problem is that those idiots ruin months of counterinsurgency work, suggesting that large-scale military occupations aren't very good at COIN.)

• The fact that Barack Obama praised Ron Wyden's approach to health care reform - and seemed to intuit that it was too ambitious in taking away health care which people might currently like - shows that he has a fairly solid understanding of the issue. Ezra Klein talks about Wyden's Healthy Americans Act and the prospect for health care reform here.

• Keith Olbermann had a good special comment on President Bush's nutty "I gave up golf for the troops" comment. I actually think Olbermann's show is getting stale - too much horse race and never any oppositional guests makes it too much of a preaching to the choir production - but he does highlight uncovered issues, and he can bring the scorn like few others.

• Michelle Malkin is so off her rocker that John McCain won't let her on their blogger conference calls. Maybe he just doesn't want her to have any campaign phone numbers, for fear that she'd trace them to a location and start inspecting the place to see if there are granite countertops. (context)

• This is funny, in Colorado, Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer released his first ad, where he talks about proposing to his wife on Pike's Peak. There's a mountain in the background when he says this, only it was Mount McKinley, which is in Alaska.

• I kind of agree that Saturday Night Live was used by John W. McCain this weekend as a tool to make him appear hip and progressive, but if you actually listened to what he was saying he appeared pathetically old and focused on nonsense like eliminating popular projects like roads. The speech he read sounded like an oppo campaign against him. I do give him credit, however, for staying up that late at his age.

• Here are some veterans who have served this country and continue to do so through their actions. The Winter Soldiers are detailing for Congress life under occupation and the humiliations and viciousness endured by Iraqis at the hands of the US military. The soldiers themselves are not as responsible as those atop the chain of command, who practically demanded this. But I do commend Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, who refused to serve another tour in this illegal occupation. A soldier is supposed to refuse illegal orders.

• Jim Webb wants to be Vice President. Don't let him tell you any different. If this weekend's Parade Magazine story is a template for how he would support the campaign, I'd be all for it.

• The Senate is working to stuff Bush on his cuts to Medicaid.

• This is a nice sentiment from the Weekly Standard - essentially saying that Al Qaeda will recruit jihadists no matter what, so we ought to not do anything to actually fight them.

• When Obama wins, people will have more picnics in the park.

• And finally, people saw Bill O'Reilly's blowup on Inside Edition, but have they seen the other side of the story? More specifically, the other side of the studio, behind the camera?