The Rake Magazine

I just wanted to point out what might be one of the best blog headlines ever over at clothesline blog.

"Gonzales may have resigned -- says he can't recall"

To say anything else would be gilding the lily.

My flag's prettier than your flag

We've been hearing a lot lately that Nuri al-Maliki, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq, is the main reason why our efforts to do whatever it is we're trying to do in Iraq this week aren't working.

Here are some of the specific criticisms:

He's made the governmental forces into an instrument to ensure his party's domination and oppress his political enemies.

He's arranged for his supporters to take in the lion's share of oil revenues.

His government promotes the sectarian division of his country along party and religious lines.

He promotes the politics of nationalism and aggression rather than unity and reconciliation.

He uses American forces for his own political purposes.

Yeah, we should have told the Iraqis that, when you have elections, it's a complete crap shoot. You never can tell when you're going to get someone just like Maliki running your country.

More interesting than the news of the bridge collapse itself is the immediate attacks going on in the blogosphere by liberals and conservatives blaming each other for blaming each other.

Here's how it's going so far, in case you have other things on your minds: liberals suggest that we should have raised taxes by now in order to pay for the well documented need to improve the country's infrastructure of roads and bridges; conservatives think it's too bad the bridge didn't fall on the liberals for suggesting that "no new taxes" is anything short of unimpeachable dogma.

Still, questions should be asked, in a non-partisan fashion. Here's a few I'm wondering about today.

Timmy P has ordered all bridges in the state to be inspected. What's the point if he won't go along with a five cent gas tax that would pay to fix them? Could we afford a one cent gas tax that would be enough to pay for signs that we could post at the entrance to ones like the 35W bridge (which got a 50 percent passing grade when inspected two years ago) that say, "There's a good chance that this bridge could fall down before we get around to fixing it. Cross at your own risk."?

What should we be willing to pay taxes for? Stadiums? (Yes) Keeping city libraries open? (No) Ethanol subsidies for agribusiness? (Yes) Roads on which to drive our subsidized gas guzzlers? (No) War in Iraq? (Yes) Health care for veterans? (No)