Instahoglets Wednesday

By Cernig

Some humpday linky goodness.

- I want to play poker with Harry Reid. And our researcher Kat writes: "Wtf's wrong with these people? Never mind -- I don't care what's wrong with them. The right questions are, why the f**k are they doing this, and why the f**k are they still in control of Congress?"

- The head of MI5 warns on the national security implications of global recession, saying it could be a "watershed moment" which will shift the balance of power away from the West. (h/t Kat)

- The Air Force's counter-blog doctrine: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don't be surprised. They're just following the service's new "counter-blogging" flow chart...It's all part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force."

- Rightwing think tanks: people paid to think by the manufacturers of tanks (and missiles, and warplanes...).

- Joe the Plumber Biased War Correspondent.

- Negotiating with Iran: As President Obama takes office, he must decide whether we will make a change to our long-standing Iran policy, and on what timeline. The United States can continue treating Iran as a permanent enemy to be confronted and isolated, thereby perpetuating the policies of the past three administrations. Or it can begin treating the Islamic Republic as a potentially “normal” power—subject to the usual blandishments of carrots and sticks. This accepts that Tehran has the capacity not only to annoy us but perhaps also to help ease some of Washington’s worst dilemmas in the region.

- If Dennis "walks with neocons" Ross is really to be given the Iran brief, however, then any hope that Obama meant what he said and will negotiate in good faith goes up in probably all-too-real smoke. It'll be more of that Bush faux-diplomacy and a big helping of "faster please" all around.

- His crime was to be in a group where someone may have uttered the phrase “I know how to make a shoe bomb,” and for that he was imprisoned in Gitmo, shuttled around the world and tortured at out behest, and labeled the worst of the worst by Donald Rumsfeld. (h/t Kat)

- Benjamin Netanyahu Godwin's himself and seems unaware that the point of post-WW2 international laws of war is to prevent another Dresden or Hiroshima. To say nothing of the hypocrisy of comparing Hamas' militarily useless rockets to The Blitz while Israel is dropping major military ordinance on a city.

- Sarkozy says Israel accepts his Gaza ceasefire plan - Israel says it doesn't (and neither does Hamas). Opening the border crossings appears to be the big sticking point. Meanwhile, there's talk of using US troops as part of all this.

- As Russia and Ukraine blame each other for a mid-winter halt in gas supplies to Europe which has left millions in the cold, our friend Jérôme Guillet explains the behind the scenes battle of the oligarchs that's really to blame.

- Want a 2GB USB flash drive? All you have to do is just post at least once a week at the All Things Democrat Forums. How easy is that?