Joe Biden entered a world of his own over the Holiday, from the remarks that have been written about his interview. Fantasyland (economic recovery, popularity of HCR), denial (2010 outlook), wholesale remake of history (Iraq withdrawal)... its all there, and this:

Whether this election cycle reminds him of an earlier one: “The answer is ‘no.’ It started to remind me – in its worst sense, it reminded me initially of 1972, when I ran, when the Democratic Party was getting clobbered nationally. But we actually picked up seats in the Senate, and I won – in a year we weren’t supposed to win. … I know everyone tries to draw lessons – and I do, too – by going back and comparing it to different cycles. I’m always being kidded about quoting Irish poets. But [W.B.] Yeats had a great line. In a poem called ‘Easter, 1916,’ about the first Rising [Irish rebellion], he said, ‘All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.’ Things have so utterly changed in terms of the balance of power worldwide, in terms of economic indicia of what constitutes growth. Look, we cannot build an economy based on the old platforms, even if we restored them all. So there’s a lot of stuff going on here that makes it hard, in my view, to compare it to any other.”

He should have stopped with "no" because the rest is as incorherent as Sarah Palin without notes.

And just what is the obsession with beating Rand Paul all about? At least the guy has a couple of positives, his being against the War on Drugs and against the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; for the full audit of the Fed. If I granted a wish, and were to list out the top twenty seats that Democrats should take, within the current toss-ups, I'd certainly give Rand Paul a pass, in order to take out lock-stock and barrel Republicans wrong on every issue.

Christopher Lyden has an interview with Willy Dalrymple:

“The war has lost all semblance of shape or form,” he observes, at a moment when our puppet is trying to make peace with our enemy. “I’ll be amazed,” Dalrymple says, “if the Taliban aren’t in Kabul by the end of the year.”

He confirms on the ground the inescapable but conventionally unprintable judgment that the American “predator drones” have been the Taliban’s most effective weapon and own moral downfall. “All you read in the papers here is the successful ‘hits’ on militant hideouts. What you don’t get is what you get in Pakistani papers: ‘Five More Wedding Guests Killed in Party’ and ‘Petraeus Apologizes.’”

In Afghanistan this Spring, it struck Willy Dalrymple that “the whole thing is on its last legs, considerably worse than I expected or had been led to believe by reports I’d read. The Taliban are everywhere… The only answer now must be some way to bring the Taliban and the Pashtuns into government. But there’s no sense that Obama or Holbrooke are ready to break that to the American people. It’s blindingly obvious. The Brits and the Europeans and Karzai are all pushing for it. The Americans are the only ones not taking the view that the Taliban has to be brought in…”

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is wondering why President Obama is trying to roll back the proliferation of nuclear weapons globally. "It jeopardizes our missile defense system.... gives Russia a massive nuclear weapon advantage over the United States."  WTF Romney, it's 2010, not 1980.

A Obama vs Romney 2012 race will be like a giant sucking sound for an Independent alternative.

Back to Dalrymple:

The next day I go to the Jurga and I talked to the elders. Where we were sitting in Jalalabad was, by chance, beside the Jalalabad airfield, which is one of the major takeoff zones for the drones. And as we’re having this conversation, these sinister creatures, these pilotless craft were taking off and landing the whole time… And one of the elders told me about an interview he’d had with some American soldiers in a hotel in Jalalabad the previous week. And the American had asked: “Tell me, why do you hate us? We’ve come, we’re trying to help, we’re trying to bring democracy. We’ve built roads — why do you hate us?” And the man replied: “Because you come in our houses, you knock down our doors, you take our women by the hair, you kick our children, and we will not allow it. We will break your teeth like we broke the teeth of the British, and like the British, eventually you will leave.” And he said: “The Americans know that this war is lost. It is only their politicians who pretend they can win it.”

William Dalrymple in conversation with Chris Lydon in New York City, June 18, 2010.

Ian Welsh:

I recently wrote that Obama has chosen to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. I am baffled by many of the responses to that article. What do readers think would happen to the US economy if all that spending stopped and wasn’t replaced by anything?

On a related note, Dems pushed through a jobs bill last Thusday night.