You should see today's column (Thursday, Dec. 9) "Red Flags for the GOP's Political Bull Market"
The first 4/5ths of it are all donning the mask and cape of Captain Obvious and warning us hoi polloi that tax reform and reform of Social Security is going to be...(gasp) DIFFICULT! And that (horrors!) 2nd terms are different and in some ways harder than first terms!
But those first 4/5ths aren't even the half of it. Here are the last three paragraphs that make me throw concerns about bias out the window in favor of an intervention for Al over possible substance abuse problems. Pay special attention to the second paragraph:
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"He'll have even less (support) if Iraq continues to deteriorate. The official line that we're making progress and it'll get much better after the Jan. 30 elections has no credibility. This week the New York Times revealed a bleak picture painted by a classified cable from the CIA's Baghdad station chief. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, after a recent trip to Iraq, said some areas are actually more dangerous than a few months ago. The early line on training Iraqis to take over the security tasks is not encouraging.
"Peter Galbraith, a serious student of the Iraqis and Kurds, just returned from a 12-day stay in Iraq and is horrified at what's occurring: 'The optimistic scenario is that half of the country (controlled by the Shiites) will be turned over to the Iranians; the Kurds will resist that and the Sunni area is a violent mess.'"
"There's talk of stretching out the elections and little reason to believe violence, bloodshed or American casualties will decline. Years of thousands of young Americans dying in a foreign civil war will transform any second-term euphoria."
"If that sounds familiar, it is; think 40 years ago."
Aside from this strange, indecipherable quote from Peter Galbraith that apparently only he and Al understand, Al reminds me of someone talking on the phone at the office who partially overhears other conversations and finds alarming things in them.
Like maybe the guy in the next cube is talking about how Peyton Manning had fire in his eyes in the Kansas City game, and then Al puts down his phone and says "Fire? There's a fire? I heard from a serious student of firefighting that there's a fire!"