Instahoglets 17th Dec 06

This may well be the least snark-filled punchpost round-up of the year. I'd like to do them more often but don't always get the time. Anyone want to volunteer as a co-blogger to do an Instahoglets post twice a week? If so, leave details in comments or mail newshog [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

The Dems had me worried for a while. I thought they might weasel. But now I can breathe a huge sigh of relief - there will be investigations.

In Iran, elections are showing a resurgence of support for moderates and reformists. Former president Rafsanjani is half a million votes ahead of his nearest rival for the key Assembly of Experts posts. I can't wait to see how the uber-right square this with their rhetorical crap about Ahmadinejad being a dictator. Probably by ignoring it.

Meanwhile, a U.S. firm owned by Japanese giant Toshiba is to build nuclear reactors in China and the contract includes a deal for transfer of nuclear technology. In the UK, the boiling scandal of the halted Serious Fraud Squad investigation into bribes to Saudi notables in return for a big arms contract continues. Iran's real problem? America and Britain don't owe it enough money.

Hypocrisy central - neocons like Ed Morrissey have it as an article of faith that the UN is "debauched and corrupt" but when a report shows that a lot of the debauching and corrupting is US-led they boo-hoo about America being attacked for acting in its own interest. Prairie Weather puts them straight: "at least we know now that, when we're talking about reforming the UN, we first have to do something about reforming the US." Heh. Indeed.

Invictus at Blah3 explains why your mail arrives late, with pretty graphs too. While the number of postal workers has declined by 112,000 since Bush took office, the number of other federal employees has gone up by 62,000. Most of that gain is due to the Dept. of Fatherland Security, I suspect. But why does Bush hate the post office?

The Weakly Standard talks big about the neocons latest pitch for more war (and 50,000 more troops) in Iraq. Colonel W. Patrick Lang explains why their plan would turn into Stalingrad on the Tigris.

Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye is hosting a "blogging colloquium" entitled “Directions on Iraq", with some very prestigious names making guest-posts. Very worth a read.

And my good bloggy pal Kenneth Anderson has a great new post at OpEd News. "The Old American Century: Twenty Years of Realist Foreign Policy" takes apart the myth that those like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker and Jeane Kirkpatrick ever presided over a halcyon era of US foreign policy. Instead, what they did was inflict "right wing, dictators, conducting covert operations and illegal arms dealing, and fueling wars, insurgencies and counterinsurgencies" on Johnny Foreigner - all while keeping US forces out of harm's way. Nice people.

DefenseTech examines the new Army and Marine Counterinsurgency Manual and discovers that things in Iraq aren't exactly being done by the new book.

The U.S. government has failed its 10th consecutive audit. An estimated 53% of net assets and 27% of net costs couldn't be audited properly. The worst offenders, unsurprisingly, are Defense, State and Homeland Security. "The total government exposure was about $50 trillion at the end of fiscal 2006, up $4 trillion from the previous year and up $20 trillion since 2000." Conservatives stand for small government and fiscal responsibility? Yech...not so much.

Would an upstanding conservative moral figure like James Dobson bend scientific studies all out of shape to fit his own gay-bashing agenda? Do bears sh*t in the woods?

TPM Muckraker has an official chart that shows the rising number of attacks in Iraq, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The Pentagon refused to release the last three months figures - a period of increased violence, according to news reports. Because bad news should always be kept secret so that you, the voter, only see the good news about the Bush administration.

Worth a read for intellectual stimulation on a slow Sunday afternoon - PSoTD hosts a discussion about why agnosticism doesn't mean that you simply can't make your mind up.

And finally... The Dominatrix of Downing Street. What a great headline - and no, it isn't Cherie Blair.