Pelosi on Iraq Study Group report …

“The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has concluded that the President’s Iraq policy has failed and must be changed. As the November elections clearly demonstrated, that is an assessment shared by the American people.

“Months ago, House and Senate Democratic leaders suggested to the President that he implement one of the Study Group’s chief recommendations – to change the primary mission of U.S. troops in Iraq from combat to training and support, which would enable the redeployment of U.S. forces to begin. Now that the Study Group has endorsed this proposal, I hope that the President will recognize that he must take our policy in Iraq in a new direction.

“If the President is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible. We are committed to ensuring that the ideas of the Iraq Study Group, as well as the ideas of other thoughtful people inside and outside of government, are given full consideration in that process.”

More to come.

Ivo Daalder on the big fat asterisk in the Iraq Study Group report.

Sen. Reid (D-NV) on the Iraq Study Group report …

“The Iraq Study Group has done a tremendous and historic service to the American people and to the troops serving in harm’s way in Iraq. Their report underscores the message the American people sent one month ago: there must be change in Iraq, and there is no time to lose. It is time for the Iraqis to build and secure their nation, and it is time for American combat troops to be redeployed.

“Each day the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates said ‘we’re not winning.’ Today, the Iraq Study Group said Iraq is ‘grave and deteriorating.’ Like the Iraq Study Group, I urge the President to change course. He will find Congress ready and willing to work with him. The Senate will do its part next year and conduct strong oversight to ensure the President carries out an effective change in policy. Our troops in Iraq, including hundreds of Nevadans, have sacrificed so much. It is time for President Bush to reward their effort by bringing the country together around a new way forward.”

Okay, ISG report day mini-contest. I’ve always enjoyed one of the unwritten conventions of news photography, particularly online and on the TV shows. When the story is bad for the president you find a picture of him caught off guard, embarrassed, looking stupid, whatever. Frequently, the picture is totally unconnected to the story at hand. You just need one that shows the guy expressing the emotion the editors think he must be experiencing because of the story they’re publishing. Back during the days of Monica, I first noticed how on CNN, whenever they were reporting news that was bad for Clinton they had a stock ‘sad’ Clinton picture, with a sort of ‘man, am I bummin’ look on his face. I think the picture I first posted below was CNN’s best effort so far to communicate in a photograph what the editors maybe couldn’t say in the text.

But there must be better ones. Send in your best entry.

Hillary hosting private dinners with top Dems from key primary states.

And she tells a fellow New York pol that she can win a “bunch” more states than John Kerry.

Keeping the audience in mind?

Not having had a chance to read the thing yet, one thing that strikes me about the ISG report is that the thing’s actually pretty short. Don’t get me wrong: brevity is the great undiscovered country of commission reports. They should all be short and sweet. But my recollection is that these sorts of reports often run hundreds of pages. The PDF I have runs 160 pages. And after about a hundred pages it’s all maps and pictures and commissoner bios.

Late Update: MJ Rosenberg says three cheers for the report’s section on Israel-Palestine.

Congressional Black Caucus grumbles about muck double standard among Democrats.

Why would we expect anything different?

From the WSJ …

Like a retreating army, Republicans are tearing up railroad track and planting legislative land mines to make it harder for Democrats to govern when they take power in Congress next month.

Already, the Republican leadership has moved to saddle the new Democratic majority with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. And the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), has been demanding that the Democrat-crafted 2008 budget absorb most of the $13 billion in costs incurred from a decision now to protect physician reimbursements under Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly and disabled.

The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute “pay-as-you-go” budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing.

“I think we’re trying to get an accommodation,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) last evening. “You’re digging a hole now and filling up with money from ’08,” he said of Mr. Thomas’s demands. “He says he’s trying to move away from that.”

So doing with the nation’s finances on a small scale what they did on a large scale for the last six years.

Republican Vern Buchanan on Hannity & Colmes: Christine Jennings is “destroying democracy” by contesting the election in Florida’s 13th.

Doh!

Remember how the whole premise of Bush administration North Korea policy was that we shouldn’t be offering ‘pay-offs’ to the North Koreans in exchange for them giving up their nuclear program?

From today’s Times …

The United States has offered a detailed package of economic and energy assistance in exchange for North Korea’s giving up nuclear weapons and technology, American officials said Tuesday.

So after six long years of incompetence, arrogance, dithering and disaster, in which the president allowed the NKs to waltz into the nuclear club unimpeded, they’re now back to the same policy they insisted on ditching in the first place. Only now with a hand infinitely weaker than it was in 2000 since back then the NKs didn’t have the bomb.