Blog-style blog!

In the interests of keeping all y'all readers on your toes, I decided to make this post in the classic blog style - second-hand news reporting, glib unsupported commentary, and the assumption that readers already agree with any point I might imagine myself to be making.

What's on Google News today?

U.S. air quality has improved in the past year. Guess Republican dominance hasn't ruined every aspect of our environment. They probably were too busy fighting against carbon limits to roll back clean air standards.

Iran has offered to allow certain kinds of nuclear inspections. This is the same game that Saddam tried to play - make limited concessions one week, then revoke them the next, providing Russia and China with just enough rhetorical ammo to block UN action, without actually giving up anything. The differences are that 1) this time the U.S. looks a lot weaker than in '02, but 2) unlike Saddam, Iran really is building WMDs and everybody knows it.

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, who was defeated in an election but refused to admit it, has now "resigned." Earth-to-Stupid: You can't resign from a job you just got fired from!

Mexico has acted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and cocaine. Good for them. But Mexico is a producer country of cocaine and marijuana, and the U.S. is the consumer country. Thus, it makes a lot more sense for the U.S. to implement this type of policy. Hopefully the muted reaction to the Mexico law changes means that a quiet revolution is in the works - the end of the "drug war."

U.S. economic growth continues to power ahead, even though the housing market is cooling off and the trade deficit is still rising. But one or two more percentage points of growth is cold comfort when deep down, we know we've burned the furniture to get that growth...in terms of giant budget and current-account deficits.

Al-Qaeda claims to have "broken the back" of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, through suicide bombing. Ha. Fat chance. All they've done is get the Sunnis and Shiites more concerned with killing each other than with driving out the U.S. Once again, Al-Qaeda's only accomplishment has been to get Muslims slaughtering other Muslims. "Mission Accomplished!" Of course, reports indicate that al-Qaeda is shifting from a terrorist network to a propaganda network...the Fox News of the Islamist movement.

And finally, Stephen Colbert, American hero and speaker of "truthiness" to power, has cemented his place as America's premier political humorist by pissing the hell out of George and Laura Bush. And he does it with such panache.

That's it for my blog-style blog! Back to more elaborate theories and run-on sentences next post...