The elections municipales are coming soon, though : all hope is not lost.

Why not – the U.S. of 2008 is behaving not unlike the France of 1808.

It really was the most loathsome speech I’ve heard in a while, mainly because of the section you highlighted.

Secondly, didn’t he say that he “suspended his campaign”? If he did only “suspend” he then is not obliged to release his delegates to another candidate, right? Seems a bratty move but considering the parsing of his speech he sounded more like a guy lecturing his party’s base about what they weren’t going to get by not voting for him – his tone was more of a man feeling betrayed.
If my memory holds, “suspending the campaign” was a deliberate obstinate act since delegates are key at this time.

I will miss you Bishop Mittens.

We believe our nation has the right to defend itself—even if sometimes others disagree

Assuming this speech reflects anything like the real Mitt Romney(which itself assumes there is any such thing) as opposed to what he perceives that the knuckle draggers at CPAC want to hear, he lied and misrepresented himself.

But it’s just as likely that this is simply another case of his telling his audience what he thinks they want to hear.

Clearly, Americans wouldn’t know what to do with world class health care, five weeks paid vacation, a 34 hour work week and all the cheese and wine we can eat.

I met Reagan and heard him speak in, oh, about 1986. He was a powerful personal “presence”, to be sure, but he completely blew his speech (he mixed up the 3×5 index cards. Really). He pulled it off by ad-libbing his way through it, but he was starting to lose it even then. I felt sorry for the guy, but it made us wonder who was really running things in DC.

Yes, well, Saddam was widely unpopular as well. But popularity has obviously never been Al Queda’s goal in Iraq—lethal violence, fear and intimidation can be extremely effective alternatives to popularity. And I think it highly unlikely that the Sunnis in Anbar could have kicked out Al Queda on their own. But I agree that things have been going badly enough for Al Queda in Iraq that they may no longer be a viable threat by November. Which would be fine, since I’m not a McCain fan, and in most other respect would prefer Obama. Still, I would much rather see a residual U.S. presence to deter militias from being tempted to try to take down the Iraqi government by force.

And apologies for the brain cramp on the hostages.