I was browsing through my favorite blogs at 1:30 in the morning, and when I came to the Daily Kos front page I saw a photo of the new DKos tee-shirt now being offered for sale at the Daily Kos Online Store. For those of you who missed it, it looks like this:

This really caught my eye. I like the color scheme; the DKos orange is nicely understated on the grey, and the white lettering is very eye-catching. It's attractive and it's only $18.50. (But supplies are limited.)

I have one question though: Why is the guy holding up a large bloody knife?

Yesterday I had a really great comment I tried to post. It was for Jerome ah Paree's diary, Dammit people: it's 'a Paris', not 'Paris'. Evidently he was not satisfied with his three hundred recs in his tip jar, because he posted a whole bunch of other tip jars, each of which raked in what for me would be a month's worth of mojo. (Damn, Monsieur a Paris, you could take the next six months off and still keep your Trusted User status. Mine goes away if I oversleep.) Other people added their own tip jars, albeit with somewhat less success.

So I had this great idea (this is just great!): I would put up a tip jar of my own, sort of. Since the comment-to-be is now gone with the wind, I'll have to show a photo of what it would have looked like, to wit:

Like everyone else, I've been scratching my head about what Israel hope to accomplish with the current campaign in Lebanon. Israel knows that air strikes won't work, that a ground offensive could hurt but not destroy Hezbollah, that the occupation of southern Lebanon would only lead to the drawn out misery of the first occupation of southern Lebanon (to say nothing about the West Bank and Gaza). Israel knows this. It knows this! Its military strategy makes no sense -- militarily.

But that is not Israel's objective. Israel, quite simply, wants to scare the shit out of everybody. Everybody. And not just scared, but scared shitless. The ultimate goal is nothing less than peace in the region - if not real peace, than at least secure borders.

Seen from that light, the campaign is working brilliantly.

I'll explain on the flip.

This is bad, folks. Very bad.

The AP is reporting that at least one US soldier has admitted that he and several of his comrades raped and murdered a young Iraqi woman and then killed the other three members of her family as well. They burned the rape victim's body, presumably to hide the evidence.

(Please forward to any fainthearted progressives and Joementum Democrats.)

And if that doesn't stiffen the spine sufficiently...

Sure, we don't know what Fitzgerald will come out with. Maybe nothing. Maybe he will indict only Democrats! Maybe this whole thing will amount to a whole hill of nothing. Maybe, instead of fireworks, we will just see tumbleweeds rolling past while the wind howls in the background.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Y'know what? That's all the more reason to celebrate now!

The Sunday LA Times reports that many senior military and civilian officials have stopped drinking the Kool-Aid begun to recognize that the idea of defeating the Iraqi insurgency by implanting democracy might not work:

Reality is beginning to set in. The collapse of the myth that democracy is the cure for insurgency could bring about the final fall of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy.

This morning's Washington Post has a front-page  article by staff writer Elizabeth Williamson on how foreign offers of aid for the Katrina disaster were not accepted for days if at all:

The article blames these delays on FEMA: