The United States has all the permission it needs to keep up appearance. Tony Blair gets the political cover he needs to keep his government together. France can claim a (very weak, very small) victory for having caused some delay. Russia will almost certainly be getting some cash under the table, from either the new Iraq government, or from the US. China still doesn’t have a dog in this fight, or at least not yet.

The easy part is over, but please don’t gloat.

We’re going to war soon, and not everyone we send will be coming home.

If you pray, then pray. If, like me, you don’t, then set aside a moment for a few quiet thoughts.

We’re going to war soon.

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Nobody manged to send me a screenshot of this site’s 500,000th unique visitor. So, no soup for anyone.

I’ll come up with a new contest either on Monday, or maybe over the weekend. Stay tuned, because we still have some fabulous prizes to give away.

NOTE: Does Melissa know I’m spending our Christmas gift money to whore for hits?

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Whatever it was I was babbling about a couple of posts down, Ruffini said it better.

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Like garlic? Like butter? You

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Dear Losers,

I don

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Oh, dear Whomever, I do so love the Blogosphere

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From MSNBC:

The United States and France came to a last-minute agreement Thursday on a tough U.N. resolution giving Iraq a last chance to disarm or face war, making a vote Friday fairly certain. It was still not clear whether Russia

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OK, so who has that screenshot?

NOTE: Whoever owns the IP address 209.223.61.###, and racked up 94 hits in just over 14 minutes, I have some bad news for you. We’re counting unique visits here, not total hits. The first one counted — the other 93 were a waste of your time and my bandwidth. No soup for you.

Same goes for whoever you are on Verizon, scoring 23 hits in 22 minutes.

I told you there would be no cheating. Heh.

UPDATE: No one has yet emailed to claim their fabulous prize. I’d love to show you in advance what’s behind curtain number one, but Melissa tells me that’s grounds for divorce here in Colorado.

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Our neighbors want to install one that destroys 500-watt DTS stereo amplifiers.

(“Cranking the Bass” would be an excellent name for a fishing show.)

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The Turn of Phrase of the Day Award (bet you didn’t know we had one of those) goes to Anna Bunny: “We need cheap gas because the supercharged lowrider of freedom is thirsty.”

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Meryl Yourish caught this shocker at CNN:

Islamic militant group al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bomb attack on a Bali nightclub in which more than 180 people died.

The group said it had targeted “nightclubs and whorehouses in Indonesia” in a Web site message which also boasted of its aim to hit inside Arab and Islamic countries which are part of a “Jewish-Crusader” alliance.

Remember, kids — all this barbarity will stop if we just stop defending ourselves.

Well, if we do that and stop breathing.

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Some damn funny mean-spiritedness from Orrin Judd.

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Michele has a contest going for the best pro-war song.

Scroll through the comments to read some very funny entries. Feel free to add your own, but feel even freer to ignore my feeble effort.

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Sometime this afternoon or this evening, VP should get its 500,000th hit. If you’re the one, snap a screenshot and send it my way — there could be fabulous prizes!

And no cheating.

NOTE: Thanks to Arthur and Chris for both alerting me.

UPDATE: Kids, can someone please teach Joe how to do a screenshot? (And, yes, we’re still shy of a half million, and, yes, there’s still no cheating allowed.)

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Since the Prof is off junketing in NYC today, it’s up to me to cover Slate for you.

First, we have Will Saletan on Dick Gephardt leaving his post to pursue the White House:

Let’s recap. The old, hamstrung Gephardt was forced to fight for a losing agenda of health care for all, world-class education, secure retirement, and a secure America. The new, authentic Gephardt will fight for an exciting agenda of health care for all, world-class education, secure retirement, and a secure America.

Failing upward was a popular career track in the late ’90s. A CEO could mismanage his company, tinker with the books, and move on to a new company before the mess was exposed. Those days are over in business. They’re over in politics, too.

It was craven of the CEOs, and it’s craven of Gephardt. I still think the Dems will select a relative unknown for ’04. It worked in ’92 against another man named Bush, although the political climate has obviously changed since then.

We also have Christopher Hitchens making the anti anti-war case:

Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences

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The barbarians are attacking freedom again today, reports Arthur Silber.

Oh, did I forget to mention this time they’re from the Department of Justice?

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I don’t know how else to say this, but Eric Alterman has gone screaming apeshit.

Click and scroll and grin and cringe, kids.

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Dan has some encouragement for Democrats, while Steve provides some helpful tips on how to avoid terrorists and State Department officials.

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Brink Lindsey says:

Let me make clear that I’m not wild about calling myself a libertarian. First, I have to clarify that I’m a “small-l” libertarian — i.e., I have no affiliation with the Libertarian Party, which I consider to be a cringe-inducing embarrassment. Second, I’m not a hard-core ideologue, as many self-described libertarians are. I think anarchism is absurd, and I don’t believe that the so-called “minimal state” is an intellectually tenable construct. I’m interested in expanding the frontiers of real-world liberty, not spinning utopias.

I wish I’d said it.

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She’s a cute little thing, but don’t tread on her.

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Lloyd Albano, a favorite reader and commenter here, forwards this George Neumayr article in The American Prowler:

California Republicans find themselves in the same position as Democrats outside of California: they either renew their fundamental principles or face further oblivion. The only good news for California Republicans is that a backlash will undoubtedly accompany four more years of one-party governance. Californians’ mood for dramatic change is going to intensify as the state’s debts and taxes rise.

Neumayr is right. Simon ran the kind of campaign in California that many Democrats ran in the rest of the nation. That’s not to say Davis ran a Republican 2k2-style effort; he didn’t. But people like to vote for something, and Simon gave them little to vote for. With Davis’ huge incumbent advantages, it was a losing effort from the start.

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Bush is speaking right now, and he’s made it official — the UN will vote tomorrow on the Iraq resolution.

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It’s not your browser — Blogspot is having issues again today, so all those nice blogger.com links may or may not be working.

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Down in Louisiana, Democrat Senatorial Candidate Mary Landrieu thinks she can win by running against the national party:

“Landrieu’s a micromanager who doesn’t listen much to advice, and she and her team

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On Fox, just saw a small private plane make a safe belly landing in Georgia.

Everybody walked away — and that’s a good landing.

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Jim Dunnigan explores the world of semi-official Chinese hackers in the Shadow War:

So far, none of the Chinese attacks, as far as anyone can tell, were much more than a nuisance. But year by year, the attackers have shown more skill. Now it is pretty certain that the Chinese are formally organizing some of these “patriotic hackers.” By maintaining the myth that these young Internet users are operating independently, the government can unleash these kids on any nation without being tagged as a warmonger. This deception won’t stand much scrutiny. American hackers have been able to back track some of the Chinese attacks to Chinese government computers. If the Chinese were on the ball and well organized, they would not have allowed hackers to use government computers. Or at the very least, they would have made sure the hackers knew how to cover their tracks.

The Pentagon is finally getting serious about computer security — but also about having a credible computer deterrent. We’re more vulnerable than China, because our military is a lot more wired than theirs.

But that’s changing, and I doubt Beijing wants to be on the receiving end of what our “kids” could do.

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Radley Balko finds libertarian themes abound in the new season of The Sopranos.

Great show — and a great piece by Radley.

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