CONFESSIONS OF AN ALTOID ABUSER: In recent years I have become quite the mint-popper. Not coincidentally, in the past few years I have been ingesting more and more of the demon substances, coffee and tobacco. I am not sure if they're helping, actually. I am on the Altoids now (peppermint if necessary, cinnamon preferred) because my beloved Smints have lost their market penetration. Sometimes I can taste the taste in my mouth and it isn't pretty.

Let's pull a foreign policy Hubie Brown: "You're the Philippines. You've been invaded by America before. You've been taken over by America for cockamamie reasons around the turn of the previous century. You've been roped into sending five hundred troops to Iraq so the President of the United States can check off your name on his list of the coalition of the willing. Mind you, this Iraq thing is exactly like your situation a hundred years ago.

"Now a bunch of insurgents have captured one of your people. They're going to behead him if you don't pull your troops out. You know the President doesn't need your troops. It's an entirely cosmetic relationship. Your nation's defense is not tied up with American defense like the South Koreans. So what do you do? You pull out. You don't condemn one of your citizens to death for the sake of a principle with very little force behind it. It's a no-brainer."

I'm actually not sure if Hubie uses the word "cockamamie." Simmons is such the master at pulling a Hubie....

I went over to Ampersand, sure he'd have some really annoying defense of Amy Richards. And there's nothing about it, just a bunch of gay marriage stuff. I though abortion was Topic One in Ampland. Or maybe the Richards flap still hasn't passed out of the right-leaning part of blogland that cares about abortion into the rabid pro-choice part of blogland quite yet.

I really think you have to be Republican-leaning to an unreasonable degree to give much of a crap about the Berger thing.

More when my Will to Blog isn't quite so worn out.