Happy Holidays to you all.

Alarm! Alarm! Someone called the town tree a "Holiday" tree. The liberals are trying to take the Christ out of Christmas! Alarm! Alarm!

It is as though the phrase Happy Holidays was invented this year by liberals and is some sort of anti-Christian plot. Oh come on. There is a conspiracy going on here. It is similar to the smoke and mirrors about homosexual marriage that was stirred up right before the last election in order to drum up support for the Republican side. This "Happy Holidays" controversy is designed to take up time on the evening TV newscasts, and on the editorial pages that then can't be used to cover :

1. the lack of purpose in the directionless war in Iraq,
2. the Libby/Rove/Cheney outing of a CIA operative (treason, grounds for impeachment),
3. the Abramoff investigation,
4. money laundering by the head congressional Republican--Tom Delay, in order to rig elections in Texas, which led to the Republican take over of their states congressional seats,
5. packing the Committee for Public Broadcasting with political appointees to try and turn National Public Radio and Television into another mouthpiece for the Republican Party,
6. the continuing scandal about FEMA's lack of cooperation with democratic local and state officials in the Katrina disaster, (last night a lucid, articulate 89-year- old black woman who is living in her car was on the local news saying that Fema is promising her a trailer in 6 to 9 months),
7. secret European prisons designed for torture of "enemy combatants,"
8. the mounting carnage in Iraq, the increasing anger in Iraq over our presence there,
9. the fact that oil production and energy and water availability for Iraqis has still not reached pre-war levels under our leadership.
10. and 100 other failed Bush administration policy stories, including more tax cuts for the rich at balanced by cuts in medicare, student loans, and disaster relief.

Bush sited all this progress this week in the cities of Najaf and Mosul as success stories in Iraq. Is he telling the truth? The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin says that it is doubtful.

Some American journalists intent on fact-checking President Bush's vision of Iraq are finding it too dangerous to inspect the areas Bush yesterday cited as models of success.

Which sort of tells you the story right there.

While conceding that American efforts to rebuild Iraq have been flawed at times, Bush nevertheless yesterday touted the effectiveness of reconstruction projects in Najaf and Mosul in particular as examples of the "quiet, steady progress" transforming the country.

So how are those projects really doing? Hard to say.

It's too dangerous to allow visitors to inspect them freely, Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington told James Glanz of the New York Times. "I bet if we could get around and see these places that they would not be the story that he's telling," Barton said.

Froomkin goes on to quote an article from Saad Sarhan and Robin Wright in the Washington Post that notes that Moqtada Sadr, militia leader and former enemy of the U.S., is running security in Najaf:

"Some Iraqis challenged Bush's assertions," they write. "In Najaf, Rafid Farhan, 33, said security is now controlled by Moqtada Sadr, a young cleric and militia leader, and not U.S. troops or the Iraqi government. . . .

"[M]ilitia fighters of the two rival religious parties that control the Shiite holy city recently clashed in street battles. A few days ago, former prime minister Ayad Allawi was attacked during a visit by an angry, rock-throwing mob that some Iraqis charge was backed by a militia -- and that Allawi called an assassination attempt."

Shiite militias battling it out in the streets and many cities too dangerous for Western journalists to visit...

...Sure sounds like "quiet, steady progress" to me.

The Abramoff investigation had another guilty plea this week indicating that bad news is ahead for Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed (Republican candidate for Liet. Governor in GA and former head of the "Christian Coalition."), Karl Rove and others.

These stories are having a hard time getting the light of day in the "liberal media" because of the current rush to cover the Happy Holidays controversy that is being called into every newspaper and TV station by Republican focus groups. Anything to take the heat off government failures.

Surely it is time for the country to ask this president and his entire administration to step down.