Viva Cuba libre! Viva el ron Habana Club!

Orishas are playing Bayfront Park on Oct. 6.

Morning

Send lawyers, guns, and money...

Oh well

For the Things Don't Change file: Charles Dickens describing the House of Representatives in American Notes:

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind;, and artful suppressions of all tis good influences; such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall.

(crosslisted with Humanizing The Vacuum)

He serves at the pleasure of his wallet

Remember when people served at the pleasure of the president? Not Tony Snow. He serves at the pleasure of the president until he can't make due with his $160,000 salary anymore.

"I've already made it clear I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons," Snow said on conservative radio program "The Hugh Hewitt Show."

"I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go."

You have to wonder how in the world this administration dares question anyone's patriotism.

While you were fighting AQI

Russia's getting back in the game.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he had ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers, news agencies reported, returning to a practice that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Speaking as Russian and Chinese forces held major war games exercises for the first time on Russian territory, Putin said a halt in long-range bombers' flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia's security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the United States.

More here.

Bend it like Beckham

The Red Bulls' Jozy Altidore has a great post over at the NYT's soccer blog on the subtle, underapreciated strengths of David Beckham's as well as his limitations in promoting the MLS.

He’s not a guy who’s going to break you down on the dribble with a bunch of moves like Ronaldinho. But he’s going to hit a good cross 9 out of 10 times. And if there’s a free kick near the area you better start biting your nails because he’s going to whip it in. He’s not really a flashy player, but when it’s his turn, he steps up and does the job.

I think it’s easy for people to underestimate him as a player. I think people want to see a flashy-type player who scores flashy-type goals and makes flashy-type moves. They are always the best and are very hard to find. But I think the guys who play it simple are best.

That's absolutely true. Beckham's not as entertaining to watch as Ronaldinho or Zidane, but he's a player that can turn a game around by mastering the basic skills. I totally agree with Altidore, the fact that he doesn't show off on the pitch and shows off a little too much off it, is the reason why he's often dismissed and underestimated as a player. Well, that and the fact that he can't do shit with his left leg, which Altidore doesn't mentioned. (But he makes up for it, and then some, with the right.)

Altidore is right again on the degree to which Beckham will help expand the MLS,

I think, for sure, he will put people in the seats, for sure. We’ve already seen it in every city he goes to, it’s sold out. In terms of really elevating the game, one player can’t elevate every team. He can elevate his team, but as for all the others, they are still the same. Maybe when they play against Los Angeles the stakes are a little higher, but really it’s all the same — one player can’t change the whole league. He can help it, but there’s 12 other teams and he can only do so much. But I think it’s great to have a name like that in the league. It gives us exposure, brings more money, it benefits nearly everybody in the process.

Beckham will help the MLS tremendously, but don't for a second think he's the Christ figure of American soccer. At one point, the novelty will wear off and people will grow weary of his dominance on the league. What the MLS needs is another marquis player, who's already had a stellar career in Europe, someone like a Zidane or a Ronaldo, for a juicy rivalry which will keep seats filled long enough to establish a growing fan base.

And now, I leave you with the artist at work.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

From Bloomberg:

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

And these people are running a war? Clemenceau must be turning in his grave.

Talk of the nation

It is a sad, self-fulfilling prophecy when two respected scholars from two of the country's top universities can't give talks on the book they've coauthored because it is "too controversial."

Happy birthday, AGI

A Grand Illusion, one of the oldest--though not most frequently updated--Miami blogs, turns three today. You can read my inaugural post here, a pissed off reaction to Chavez winning the 2004 referendum.

Today is a great day for Bolivarian movements. According to The New York Times, Chavez won the revocatory referendum. Chavez, in true Bolivarian fashion, gave a speech clad in ridiculous red—the representative color of his retrograde movement and a horrible color for a dress shirt—in which he cited the old Roman adage, “vox populi vox Dei.” If this is indeed true, God is some sort of asshole and he surely hates Venezuelans.

On other news, today, as searching for normalcy reminds us with a video, is the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death.

leave the car, take the beer

If you're ever trying to elude cops chasing you 'cause they suspect you're driving drunk, remember not to leave any evidence behind:

A man in Orange County suspected of driving drunk was captured Tuesday night after he jumped out of a vehicle and ran from officers still holding a beer in his hand, according to the sheriff's deputies.

Local 6 has more, including video.

Tuesday night

Hastert Planning to Retire at End of 2008

Looks like the rumors were right.

Bergman's best obituary

Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman:

I’ve said it before to people who have a romanticized view of the artist and hold creation sacred: In the end, your art doesn’t save you. No matter what sublime works you fabricate (and Bergman gave us a menu of amazing movie masterpieces) they don’t shield you from the fateful knocking at the door that interrupted the knight and his friends at the end of “The Seventh Seal.” And so, on a summer’s day in July, Bergman, the great cinematic poet of mortality, couldn’t prolong his own inevitable checkmate, and the finest filmmaker of my lifetime was gone.

I have joked about art being the intellectual’s Catholicism, that is, a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public is to live on in one’s apartment, is how I put it. And certainly Bergman’s movies will live on and will be viewed at museums and on TV and sold on DVDs, but knowing him, this was meager compensation, and I am sure he would have been only too glad to barter each one of his films for an additional year of life.

The NYT has more.

the face of Lincoln

A story moved by the AP late last night confirms what anyone who's ever seen a picture of Lincoln could already discern, there was something seriously wrong with his face.

CHICAGO - Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Nobody was more aware of this than Lincoln, who often poked fun at his own lack of physical beauty. One of these jokes is one of my favorite Lincoln anecdotes:

Abraham Lincoln was once accused of being two-faced. "If I were two-faced," he retorted, "would I be wearing this one?"

we have to wonder

What the fuck is wrong with Alabama?

You can keep'em

Andy and I have quarreled mildly over my dedicated contrarianism, but even he, a sincere liberal, must be devastated at the ease with which the Democrats have folded since their victory last November. Sure, they got the power to start investigations, but, as Alexander Cockburn remarks in this devastating critique, what good is this power when you vote to give the President the warrant-less wiretapping he sought by a comfortable margin? With the exception of Senator Russ Feingold, who's been pretty good in the last several months and a consistent critic of the Bush administration for years, it's been business as usual. No, worse:

The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she’d really wanted to. But she didn’t. The Democrats’ game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base about to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.

The row over the U.S. attorneys and the conduct of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has always been something of a typhoon in a teaspoon. The Democrats love it since they imagine it portrays them to the public as resolute guardians of the impartial administration of justice, a concept whose credibility most Americans sensibly deride. The Democrats now plan to track Gonzales’s firing of the US attorneys back to that comic opera villain of the Bush era, Karl Rove, another great provoker of dust storms.

Democrats I know are sanguine about their party's presidential prospects next year, but there's little to gloat about. When the prospects are not-a-liberal-bone-in-her-body Hillary Clinton, grotesque Reagan parody Mitt Romney, and a genial gay-loving, ferret-hating fascist like Rudy Giulani, they're mighty grim indeed. Is it any wonder that the genuinely weird Ron Paul -- a bizarre fusion of Arthur Vandenberg and Ross Perot -- has generated so much excitement? It's so simple that, of course, our elected representatives don't get it:

A war people hate, Gitmo, Bush’s police -state executive orders of July 17 -- the Democrats have signed the White House dance card on all of them, and guess what, their poll numbers are gong down. Bush’s, on the other hand, are going up by five points in Gullup from early July. People are beginning to think the surge is working, courtesy of The New York Times. So, are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress?

Speaking of the Gray Old Lady, there was no greater demonstration of the way in which our national press fawns over those in power than the wet, dreary obits written for the long, happy political life of Karl Rove. The tone of most of the coverage emitted a barely suppressed nostalgia for the days when Shitflower snapped his fingers and the Republican hordes threatened to hold the three branches of government forever (Rove, no fool, was even making William McKinley allusions). As usual, the Washington press understands just thing: who's in power and who's not. The Democrats mattered in 2006 because they won the Congressional elections and the GOP did not. Thus, the narrative required that the evil genius moniker that Rove wore rather better than his jackets be stripped from him.

I told a student, a potential MoveOn.org recruit, last week: "Harry Reid doesn't give a fuck about you." This was a couple of days before the House voted 227-183 to give the President the powers he sought. Cynicism is an ugly thing.

EDIT: Jane Dark is even more blunt.

Freedom's on the march

All that liberatin' has finally made its way to Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe just signed into law a new bill which would... well, why don't I let Voice of America tell the story:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.

Clearly, there is no modern precedent for this blanket intrusion into a population's civil liberties, and the developed nations of the world will surely issue a stern... oh wait.

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

Well, at least America's still an example to the rest of the world when it comes to something.

homeward bound

Live from the Padilla trial

Want to read a narrow, but relatively in-depth account of the Padilla trial? Jared Beck, who doesn't want you to forget he graduated from Harvard Law, has this insightful bit of legal journalism.

lest we forget

Meet Cecilia Sarkozy

Her name is Cecilia, she is smoking hot, and she's selective when it comes to the company she keeps:

PARIS (AFP) - Cecilia Sarkozy's decision to bow out of a picnic with the president of the United States this weekend is the latest proof of the French first lady's unpredictable, even rebellious take on her new role.

President Nicolas Sarkozy travelled alone to meet George W. Bush and his family at their Atlantic holiday home after Cecilia -- staying just an hour away at a US lakeside resort -- bowed out due to a throat ailment.

The US leader said he was "disappointed" but understanding after Cecilia called Laura Bush at the last minute to excuse herself, but the change of plan sounded a false note in what was billed as a rare personal get-together.

She was photographed later Sunday taking a stroll in town with two friends.

I think I'm in love.

Department of Sinking Ships

From AP:

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.

Sunday night

I'm on my way to sample the Cuban food in DC, even though a friend of mine who works in a Cuban-American congressman/woman's office was warned by the congressman/woman him/herself to avoid Cuban restaurants and dance clubs in the District because that's where all the Cuban spies hang out. We shall see; maybe I'll meet a smoking hot cubanita spy, and we'll play out our own tropical version of "The Spy Who Loved Me."

In the meantime, enjoy this brilliant collaboration between Ben Folds and Dr. Dre.

While you were fighting AQI

The administration keeps saying we are fighting Al Qaeda... in Iraq. No arguing with that logic, 'cept:

BAGHDAD - Iraq's most senior Sunni politician issued a desperate appeal Sunday for Arab nations to help stop what he called an "unprecedented genocide campaign" by Shiite militias armed, trained and controlled by Iran.

Nah, we're not policing a civil war.

Dick in '94: Going into Baghdad would create quagmire

expect the unexpected

Americans' life expectancy is now shorter than 41 countries'. At 77.9, Americans will live shorter lives than most Europeans, the Japanese, Jordanians and people from the Cayman Islands.

Our infant mortality rate is also very high. With 6.8 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births, we're ranked 40th in the world when it comes to infant mortality rate.

This brief AP story, moved today, goes into some of the reasons,

But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."

Among the other factors:

• Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

• Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

Interestingly, the story, unlike Michael Moore's awful movie, also mentions other causes aside from not having socialized health care. Our lack of a national health care system--there are 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance!--is undoubtedly the number one cause for our population being so unhealthy. But other factors, like the quality of our eating habits and lifestyles should not be ignored.

Most alarming are the numbers for Black Americans:

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.

• A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."

This is shameful; that we're allowing a discernible part of our population live by Third World standards.

The United States needs nothing short than a national health initiative. Nothing short of our national commitment to put a man on the moon in the '60s. We're seeing all the major candidates support a socialized health care, but that's not enough. And it's very easy now that most Americans favor it.

We need a candidate who will stare into a TV camera and tell us we need to reform our eating habits. We need to rethink our cities and curb suburban sprawl. We need to offer educational programs for our marginalized minorities, and an actual safety net. We need to rethink how we subsidize the price of oil. And then we need a candidate who will follow through on those promises. Anything short of that is just politics as usual.

You've got to watch this

I can't find the words to describe this video. Except to say that if you liked "An Inconvenient Truth", you're going to love this presentation. You've never seen data presented like this, nor will you think about the way countries interact with each other in the same way.

If Bill Clinton was the first black president...

could Giuliani be the first gay president?

Lunatic of the week: Stu Bykofsky

In a column in the Philadelphia Daily News yesterday, Bykofsky proposed that "another 9/11 would help America." Three thousand lives lost--not to mention countless others in ensuing wars--are a fair price to pay according to Bykofsky for a national circle jerk.

What bothers Bykofsky, it seems, is what he perceives as the lack of collective will to continue to fight the Iraq war:

Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?

Not because Americans are "anti-war."

Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don't have the patience for a long slog. We've been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century. In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years.

That's not the American way.

There's no real way to argue against a guy who claims to know what the "American way" is, except to say that if the American way is to prolong a war with no real objective, and a half-assed commitment from the party in power, then we need look no further than the Vietnam disaster. We stayed in that conflict long enough for 58,000 Americans to lose their lives, as well as hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. And if that weren't enough, we so destabilized the government in Cambodia that a genocide followed the end of the war.

Is that the American way?

What these raving, lunatic right-wingers want has nothing to do with unity, or bipartisanship, or winning the war in Iraq. What they want is to return to the dark years after 9/11, when the administration kept Americans in fear in order to advance a tyrannical domestic policy, and an irresponsible, war-mongering foreign policy. If Americans haven't learned their lesson, only another 9/11--combined with another sinister administration--can bring back that kind of national panic.

Is that the American way?

Adding insult to injury was this discussion about the column on Fox News. News Hounds has the video.

Write your own caption

It's true!

David Plotz is right. I too fucking hate August.

August is the Mississippi of the calendar. It's beastly hot and muggy. It has a dismal history. Nothing good ever happens in it. And the United States would be better off without it.

Not only that. Fidel Castro and Kathie Lee Gifford were born in August.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

W.:

But one of the things I found interesting in my questions was, there is revenue sharing -- in other words, a central-government revenue sharing -- to provincial governments. I -- it surprised me, frankly, because the impression you get from the people who are reporting out of Iraq is that it's like totally dysfunctional. That's what your -- I guess your kind of -- your friend or whoever you talked to is implying.

So, Iraq is not "like totally dysfunctional"? Mission accomplished.

Rock on, blogosphere, rock on

This dude is my hero

Jeremy Hernandez found himself in a tipping school bus with 50 children inside as the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed beneath him. "[H]e kicked open the back door and began helping them one by one to safety." For his heroism, Hernandez, who had to drop out of an automotive repair program because he could not afford the $15,000 tuition, was given a bunch of scholarships and private donations.

But if you don't think that's cool enough--you heartless bastard--here's the coupe de grâce for the doubters:

He spent the weekend fishing. When President Bush’s staff contacted him to request a photo opportunity, “He was just, like, ‘Nope,’ ” she said.

Mr. Hernandez, you are my hero.

Say it ain't so

We all know it's a slippery slope. First, the hallucinogenic mushrooms go, then the pot... Next thing you know you have a group of extreme, right-wing bloggers railing 'cause a reporter may or may not have solicited a prostitute for a blow job.

A matter of time

I can't even begin to conceive the mechanics to make this work, but it sounds like an interesting idea.

CHICAGO - Do bloggers need their own Norma Rae?

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

Some of the benefits sound great, but I don't know If I'm willing to pay the price. And I don't mean the cash needed to fund such a union. I mean losing the very diversity that attracted me to blogging in the first place. We can accomplish great things if we come together, but there's also the danger of losing our individual identity.

One word: awesome

From AP:

Roth, who split from the rock group in the mid-1980s in hopes of solo stardom, will reunite with co-founders Eddie Van Halen on guitar and brother Alex Van Halen on drums. Eddie's teenage son Wolfgang will sub for Michael Anthony on bass.

It's only appropriate...



I think I still have a T-shirt somewhere.

Love and piece

We find out today that Miami Herald reporter Oscar Corral was arrested on Friday on charges that he solicited prostitution.

A Miami Herald reporter was arrested late Friday on charges that he solicited a prostitute in Miami, police said.

Oscar Corral, 32, a veteran Metro reporter for the newspaper, was one of 13 people busted in a prostitution operation in the Flagami neighborhood shortly before midnight, Sgt. Albert Pacheco said.

Corral, who covers Miami's Cuban community, was arrested and issued a notice to appear in court. He was charged with soliciting to commit prostitution, a second-degree misdemeanor.

''I'm innocent,'' Corral said Monday. ``I look forward to having my name cleared in court.''

It's never a good sign when people in tough situations are so eager to clear their names. Usually, innocent people are pissed as shit, and "look forward" to suing the police department for wrongful arrest.

The extremist, right-wing Cuban-American bloggers, who despise Corral because he doesn't start every article with a fervent death wish for Castro, are having a field day. One particular blog, written by an especially submental, vulgarian fuckball, muses on the possibility that it may have been a male prostitute, as though that somehow makes matters worse.

Corral is in an indefensible situation, not because of the crime itself, but because he's got a family, and partly because we just don't know all the facts. Even his usual supporters--myself included--have offered no defense.

I don't know that this changes the way I feel about the guy. I still think he's a fine reporter. I wouldn't want to get arrested for all the dumb shit I've done. In a perfect world, critics of the guy would recognize that universal feeling and take it easy on him, but that's not going to happen.

Dodd spanks O'Reilly

Deep Thoughts: by George W. Bush

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." [On Kosovo, Houston Chronicle, April 9, 1999]

Goode grief

Sometimes I'm really inspired by the House of Representatives--the fiery debates, the populism, the sheer sense of democracy in action. Then people like Virgil Goode quickly snap me out of all that silliness.

And now a message about mental health

Do you have Asperger syndrome or are you just a geek? Here's an online test.

As it turns out, with a score of 21, I don't have Asperger syndrome, I'm just a dweeb. Shucks.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

And remember...

What a coincidence

Saudi Arabia is considering reopening their embassy in Iraq.

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said Wednesday that his country would consider reopening an embassy in Baghdad, a step long sought by the Bush administration to help legitimize the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

Hmmm... I wonder if that has anything to do with that huge arms deal we just gave them.

Black blogger can't Duncan?

I'm all for Fox News finally covering segments of society it systematically neglects and clearly doesn't understand, like the internets, and Black America. But, as it turns out, juggling the two can be tricky.

Via Jesus' General.

'night

Talking 'bout my generation

The Washington Post is hosting a very interesting feature about Cuba on its website. As part of it, they have a live chat with an expert on a specific Cuba issue each day. Yesterday's featured Manuel Roig-Franzia, the Post's Mexico City bureau chief who was in Havana at the time. You can read it here. One question caught my eye:

Venice, Fla.: Candidates from both parties appear to be lining up along the traditional lines of opposing changes in Cuba policy in order to protect their chances of winning votes from the Cuban exile community in Florida. Given that several polls in Miami of Cuban-Americans indicate a broad shift in public opinion toward favoring diplomatic relations and easing of travel restrictions, is it possible that some candidates boldly will offer new alternatives?

Manuel Roig-Franzia: That'll be interesting to watch. I've seen similar polls.

I'll never forget election night 2004, a night I spent in Miami's Little Havana. Outside the venerable restaurant, Versailles, hundreds of Bush supporters waved flags and chanted slogans. Across the street, where John Kerry had taken the confrontational step of placing his local headquarters, were hundreds of Kerry supporters.

On the Versailles side of the street, much of the talk was about confronting Fidel Castro and preserving the embargo. On the other side of the street hardly anyone was talking about Fidel--instead they were talking about the same things most American voters talk about: education, the economy, the war in Iraq.

The crowds on both sides of the street were Cuban-Americans, but the Kerry supporters were much younger. I know that night in Little Havana was a small, unscientific sampling, but it seems to be in line with the conclusions of pollsters and analysts who believe second-generation Cuban-Americans are much less fired up about the embargo and might be more likely to accept a loosening of that policy or ending it all together.

Maybe there is hope after all.

Tomorrow's "expert" is Mark Falcoff of the American Enterprise Institute. You should probably skip that one.

Who killed Pat Tillman?

Antiwar has a must-read, but lengthy post on the subject. And Wonkette has a much shorter, reader-friendly outline for the blog addict on the go.

old Dick, same tricks

Whaaaaaaaat?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged on Tuesday he was wrong in 2005 when he insisted the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes."

Maybe I'm still not fully awake because I think I just read that Cheney acknowledged being wrong about something. Let me read on.

"I firmly believe," Cheney said, "that the decisions we've made with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan have been absolutely the sound ones in terms of the overall strategy."

Now, that's more like the Dick we know.