Same as the last time...Everything is better, but very fragile...Sure sounds like they want the 1oo year---McCain Plan to me.

Crocker: ...almost everything in Iraq is hard, but hard does not mean hopeless

He sounds like a basketball coach telling his team during a time out----that even though they are losing by thirty five points with 6 minutes left to go, they still have a chance to win,...Win, exactly?

NY Times: The general told senators that he was recommending a 45-day pause — which he defined as a period of “consolidation and evaluation” — before reviewing once again whether there should be further troop reductions.

Duncan notes:

A few minutes ago Candy Crowley told me that the presidential candidates need to appear "above the partisanship," or something like that, at the Senate hearings with Petraeus. I don't even know what that means, but to the extent that I do... uh, why?

I heard the same thing on NBC. How fast will McCain's camp product an ad with footage from the hearings? Will Crowley complain about it?

A man yelled : Bring them HOME!

General P. wouldn't give an estimate about troop levels at the end of the year. He admits the Basra assault. "It was not adequately planned."

Josh sums it up about right.
Josh Marshall:

If you aren't watching the Michael Brown senate hearings, you just missed a real treat. Sen. Norm Coleman (R), doofus senator from Minnesota, just managed to get his butt kicked by disgraced former FEMA Director Michael Brown. That's a singular accomplishment.

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"At the end, Coleman actually used the fact that he had run out of time to run away from the encounter with Brown. I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen before...read on

Bush was talking today about Alito and started a new talking point. He seems to think that all Senate hearings in the past weren't dignified. He repeated the "dignified" term ad nauseum. You better be nice to Sam no matter what he says during the hearings so he gets his up or down vote. Please tell us how dignified is Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay?

Atrios is correct in saying: "As for the "nuclear option," well, if the Republicans want to wrap themselves in the constitution as a pretense for cheating I say let them. It's long past time for the Democrats to stop playing the faux civility game in the Senate....read on"

Senate Hearings on Big Oil

Boston:The nation's biggest oil companies defended their combined quarterly profits of more than $30 billion on Wednesday at a Senate hearing where lawmakers demanded to know when prices would ease.

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Ted Stevens refused to have these guys swear in. As David says, "The Republicans will swear in baseball players but not oil execs." (Hat tip The Boston Progressive)