Willow Bay talks about civility in the blogosphere over at HuffPo:

With a click of the "Post Comment" button, Netizens can quickly bring down the level of dialogue. Bloggers lob zingers, commenters trade barbs, and bullies target kids in the cyber schoolyard. Mudslinging–a time-honored political tradition–thrives on the Web. And trafficking in the bilious and the vituperative has become big business. In an era in which making noise is essential to standing out and breaking through the clutter, naughty will, by definition, win out over nice.

Although she later acknowledges that the whole Web isn't like this, that "For every foul-mouthed rant, there are thousands of message boards where collaboration is the order of the day." Arianna Huffington herself wrote that it's hard work to make the conversation civil.

The NY Post reports (I hate to be citing the NY Post, but h/t to HuffPo for it) that the little girl who greet Hillary Clinton during her 1996 trip to Bosnia is insulted at Clinton's claim that she had to evade sniper fire. The girl, now 20 year-old Emina Bicakcic, a doctoral student, even had time to read a poem to her, the first words of which were ironically "Peace has come."

What's on your mind around this time o'night?

I agree with Mike Lux's conclusion that James Carville is wrong to describe loyalty as a "cardinal virtue", but I would take Lux's argument one step further.  Carville's focus on loyalty first is misplaced and reminds me of what is wrong with the current presidential administration.

Carville claims that "[n]owhere in the world is loyalty so little revered and tittle-tattle so greatly venerated as in as in Washington."  Actually, loyalty has had a pretty good run for the last seven years in Washington, although the results have not been so good.

I just got email from the Noriega campaign:

Midnight marks the end of the quarter, and our opponents, the media and the pundits will be watching our fundraising numbers very closely. We're just a few thousand dollars short of our $35,000 online fundraising goal, and I need you to help us reach it.

This campaign is about new leadership for Texas, from the bottom-up, to fight the failed policies of Cornyn and the Bush Administration. I'm doing everything I can to make sure this year is Cornyn's last as a U.S. Senator — and with your help we will win this Senate seat in November.

There are a ton of great reasons to donate a couple bucks to Rick Noriega:

• He's a real progressive with a real shot in Texas
• He's running against John Cornyn - a Bush lap dog and chickenhawk Republican
• He's a decorated and well respected veteran who's served in Afghanistan - and he wants to leave Iraq
• He's got a powerful statement on FISA and he's dead set against retroactive immunity

Let's help put Noriega over the top this quarter. Please donate!

In Baghdad, the curfew has been partially lifted after al-Maliki's government came to an uneasy agreement with Muqtada al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi army.

al-Sadr has proclaimed

"We have decided to withdraw from the streets of Basra and all other provinces," al-Sadr said in a statement released on Sunday.

"We want the Iraqi people to stop this bloodshed and maintain Iraq's independence and stability."

al-Maliki responded in kind, calling al-Sadr's statement a "step in the right direction." Hopefully there's more negotiations within the country instead of the U.S.'s "shoot first, ask later" policy.

In Zimbabwe, the country is still tense after preliminary results show Mugabe's party and the opposition MDC are neck-in-neck. There have been some initial victory celebrations as the MDC claims it won the Presidential race, but it seems still too close to tell.

Treasury Secretary Paulson has unveiled an overhaul of financial regulation. However, although it's touted as the "broadest overhaul of Wall Street regulation since the Great Depression", the NYTimes reports

The administration’s proposal will do almost nothing to regulate the alphabet soup of sophisticated financial products that have fueled the current financial crisis. And it will not rein in practices that have been linked to the mortgage crisis, like packaging risky loans into securities carrying the highest ratings.

It also isn't going to become law anytime soon, but is just a proposal that may or may not be taken up some time this year. In the next Congress. Frickin' sweet.

The last of Bush's Texas cronies has left the Cabinet today, giving us a full BINGO on Jason's scoreboard.

Housing secretary Alphonso R. Jackson resigned today.

For those of you keeping score at home, Jackson's resignation marks the departure of the very last of the Bush loyalists George brought with him up from Texas to run his new administration in 2000:

After Karen Hughes resigned in October, Jackson was the only one of Bush's inner circle still working at the White House. The rest had left and had been steadily replaced by Washington insiders, capping Bush's transformation from aggressive Texas outsider to lame-duck President. And like the rest, Jackson resigned in disgrace:

In recent weeks, Mr. Jackson had faced mounting pressure to leave his post. The FBI has interviewed several of his employees, and two senior Democratic senators called on him to resign, saying the allegations of wrongdoing had undermined his leadership. Lawmakers have also raised concerns about accusations that Mr. Jackson had threatened to withdraw federal aid from the Philadelphia Housing Authority after its president refused to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer.

For me, this resignation marks the final end to Bush's sinking ship of a presidency. All the loyalists he brought up from Texas - from Karl Rove to Alberto Gonzales to Karen Hughes - have left Washington discredited. Bush's closest allies have fled his Presidency like rats, every last one of them.

I say good riddance.

Top headlines all over the world are proclaiming an end to fighting in Iraq, with the Mahdi army calling a truce of some sort. From the New York Times:

The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement, released Sunday afternoon, was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the past few days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

…

Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra have met with far more resistance than was expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

…

But Mr. Sadr also demanded concessions, including that the government grant a general amnesty for his followers, release all imprisoned members of the Sadrist movement who have not been convicted of crimes and bring back “the displaced people who have fled their homes as a result of military operations.”

It was not clear if the government was willing to meet those demands.

As I've been saying all along, there is no military solution to Iraq. The Iraqi Army, backed heavily by coalition forces, was not able to hand the Mahdi Army a decisive defeat, or really any defeat at all. Instead, a political solution is being discussed.

Offered without comment.

Have a good night, Internet.

Alex Thurston and I had a discussion last night about, among other things, our daily must-read bloggers. Here are a few of mine, with short snips of things they've written in the past few days. Obviously, The Seminal is a must read, so I'll exclude regular posters here.

Matt Yglesias:

Bush's worst moments have come when he's embraced an approach to foreign policy that McCain's been pushing for over ten years now.

Glenn Greenwald:

Michael Mukasey has conclusively proven himself to be an exact replica of Alberto Gonzales — slavishly loyal to every presidential whim and unbound by even the most minimal constraints of truth while serving those whims.

** jake remington is an american. his empathy for others can only be described as an elephant standing atop an ant hill. his face is like fools gold and his eyes are made of fly ash. he wants to get to know you better but he is a poor listener. he has a bad back which would explain the grimace. jake remington is just around the corner.

Zimbabweans voted yesterday in an election that I have been quite worried about. I am no oracle, and I can't immediately say it threatens to become a Kenya redux - but early warning signs are not encouraging.

As in the early stages of Kenya's conflict, the opposition is claiming victory based on partially available but unofficial results. Smart move? While they celebrate in the streets of Harare, Mugabe's camp is issuing some pretty ominous warnings:

George Charamba, Mugabe's spokesman, warned the MDC against an early victory claim.

"He announces results, declares himself and the MDC winner and then what? Declare himself president of Zimbabwe? It is called a coup d'etat and we all know how coups are handled," he told the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper.

Meanwhile, international observers have voiced ambivalent and contradictory opinions about whether the elections took place in a free and fair manner.

A report by Southern African observers says Zimbabwe's election was "peaceful and credible", two dissenting mission members said on Sunday.

South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance, which had two representatives on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission, said they had refused to sign the preliminary report.

The DA said the SADC report had concluded that "despite a number of concerns, the elections were a peaceful and credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe".

DA parliamentarian and mission member Diane Kohler Barnard said in a statement: "It is noteworthy that the words free and fair have not been used, which is the only standard with which to judge an election."

She added: "It is impossible for this deeply flawed electoral process to be viewed as a credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe."

Meanwhile, the longer it takes for the official results to appear, the worse the situation could get. With competing claims of victory circulating, and results most likely known behind the scenes already, any stalling increases the likelihood of violence. If Mugabe announces a victory, the opposition will cry fraud. Then all it takes is a spark to set off the powderkeg.

If a crisis does come, let me take advantage of this moment to warn you not to accept narratives about "tribal conflict." Pay attention to the urban-rural split (the opposition dominates the city, Mugabe the country) and pay attention to where the loyalties of security forces lie. Obviously, Mugabe won't be able to crack down without their support.