Alert. Alert. We’ve got another weak American looking to CUT AND RUN:

An insurgency is a very difficult thing to defeat in a finite period of time. It takes a lot of persistence — perseverance is the actual term that we like to use.

“Who knows how long this is going to actually last? But if we get the level of violence down to a point where the Iraqi security forces are more than capable of dealing with it, the insurgency’s days will eventually come to an end. And they will come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis, who, by definition, will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own.”

Who said it?

Army Col. Sean B. MacFarland, commander of 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division.

Go and get him Fox, er, I mean folks.

When you’re going to completely rip off the work of other designers and you think you’ll get away with it because while you know web 2.0 stuff, your clients and their customers don’t, here’s a tip. Always lean the bottle to the left, not the right. Otherwise it’s too obvious.

You’ve got a President whose biggest journalistic fan sees him as being in a State of Denial who has said of the Iraq experience, “I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me,” and who meanwhile has a midterm campaign strategy highlighted (and maybe only-lighted) by attacks on the scared opponents who just want to “cut and run.”

If that strategy works, I have a lot more doubts about our democracy than Iraq’s.

For a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places, this really is a friggin horrible world.

Hard to look at it any other way.

Be glad you have a computer and electricity and wifi and food and clean water and laws and that sort of thing. Real glad.

Come on, with the Muslims and the Pope fighting amongst themselves, it could be the first time in human history when the Jews aren’t being blamed. Let’s Crunk.

Among the surprises on the Forbes list of the richest Americans is the fact that Howard S Schultz of Starbucks has only just entered the list at the lowly level of number 354 (barely breaking the one billion mark).

Compare that with the combined worth of Larry and Sergey that clocks in around $28 billion. Even David Filo of Yahoo is worth more than twice as much as the brew master.

Who else is worth more? The owners of the clothing store chain Bebe. Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban’s sidekick at the ever popular and dominant Broadcast.com brand. Peter Buck of Subway.

Seems crazy, no? I mean, has there ever been a brand like Starbucks? It is the dominant brand selling the most popular drug in the world.

And Howard’s only worth a bill? Damn, I know bloggers who make that much in a week.

And I won’t even mention how far down the list Oprah is.