DC Schools get bashed on the national stage and Joe Biden puts his foot in his mouth
again. The Senator on why Iowa schools are better than those in the district.
“There’s less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with,”
It’s kind of like watching a train wreck only more awkward.
—liamDarth Cheney sleeps his way through a cabinet meeting discussing the California wildfires. No, really.
Is it any wonder that America hates this man?
—andrew The police department just kicked off the yearly effort to stop drunk Halloween
morons from acting like drunk Halloween morons. At a press conference Assistant Chief Patrick Burke outlined the MPDC’s strategy which is basically free taxi rides, checkpoints and a public awareness campaign.
Some good some bad and I missed seeing the “simulated booking” but read more details, the usual under-informed analysis and some paternalistic warnings after the jump.
—liam 
The Bushies are instituting new sanctions against Iran. Sanctions against anyone doing business with the Revolutionary Guard, to be more specific. Which basically means sanctions against anyone doing any sort of business in Iran.
Because other countries will certainly approve of these sanctions and support them. And because cutting Iran off from the world is almost certainly the best way to inspire a diplomatic resolution to our disagreements and secure the long-term stability of Iran’s neighbors.
I think the only way this plan could be more flawed would be if it involved bombs. Oh, wait…
—andrew 
I’ve seen a number of bloggers link to this already in the last few hours, but if you read only one in-depth newspaper piece today, it really ought to be the discussion of Rudy Giuliani’s circle of foreign policy advisers in the Times.
[I]n developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.
Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as appropriately tough, while raising questions about how closely aligned Mr. Giuliani’s thinking is with theirs.
Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.
These people are terrifying. A Giuliani presidency could make Darth Cheney’s foreign policy look like one long cuddle session with an adorable puppy. Read the article.
—andrewFox’s popular dramatic action series 24, starring Keifer Sutherland, is shooting outside of California for the first time ever this week. According to Variety, the production team will be moving to Washington, D.C. for some upcoming scenes that are crucial to this season’s plot.
Scenes for eight different episodes will be shot over the course of the next two weekends. The show’s executive producer Howard Gordon stated, “The idea is to sell Washington in the first batch of episodes and, hopefully, people will have bought into the setting later on.” Gordon hopes to get a D.C. politician or two for a cameo.
Stay off the roads and/or prepare to be tortured!
—andrew-Watching Game 1 of the World Series last night, I couldn’t help but think Red Sox Nation is only 3 (4 if Colorado gets lucky) more games away from cementing its status as the Most Obnoxious Fan Base In The History Of American Sports. Right now Duke students and Yankees fans still make strong claims to the throne, but I can’t imagine the celebration of this victory for the next six months leaving any doubts in our collective minds. Oh yeah, and Josh Beckett is making a really strong claim for the title of best October pitcher of his generation.
-A curious attempt to address Obama’s problem.
-What a xenophobic bastard that Tancredo is.
-I have no freaking clue what this does to a presidential campaign.
-I still kinda think it’s a bluff.
—andrewTucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.
The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.
The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”
And, you guessed it, no one in the military is talking and no one outside the military can think of a target in Iraq or Afghanistan that would require this type of weapon. Whereas the home of a certain stylish Holocaust-denier just so happens to have underground nuclear facilities that would require just such a “bunker-buster”…
—andrewOkay, here’s some happy news for all!
-The Inn At Little “Washington was”* one of only 11 “restaurants around” the country to get 29 “out of 30″ in “the new” Zagat. And there’s a good chance that we might actually be getting a Michelin guide in the next few years.
-There’s some more building going on that will bring another Starbucks (which I think will be the 75th in the city (no really, I just counted)) and a new something or other from the Busboys and Poets crew.
-And good stuff for commuters of all stripes:
—-The revamping of the Gainesville interchange will start a whole three years early. So now you’ll only have to wait till 2014 for semi sane driving in one part of NOVA.
—-There’s a great opportunity to go yell at WMATA tonight about how horrible the
30 buses are before they start doing something to fix them.
—-And I don’t know how I missed the fact that we are ripping off Paris and should soon have a nice bike rental program.
*I have shamelessly stolen “this joke” which works better when spoken anyway.
—liam
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