Montana Diarist

Posted on by Daniel J. McKeown

Jessica and I have spent the last few days on a big trip in Yellowstone National Park. We’ve seen a handful of cool animals like bison, moose, eiders and seagulls. And on the way up to here for a night’s stay in Bozeman, Montana, before returning to the park, we saw a fierce herd of Montana bulls.

Dan and Jessica at Upper Falls, Yellowstone

Bison at Yellowstone National Park

The new Peets on Geary

Posted on by Daniel J. McKeown

peets_sanfrancisco_5-24-2007_daniejmckeown_pacificpelicandotus.JPGWe’re not CitySearch here by any stretch, but a new Peet’s Coffee and Tea has moved into the neighborhood at 16th Avenue and Geary Boulevard here in San Francisco and as a coffee-swilling former Starbucks fan it has been a good new option, largely replacing the Starbucks down the street that never quite made it for atmosphere as it is built into a Wells Fargo.

So the Peets is good. They have good cold drinks along with strong, somewhat bitter and totally delicious coffee.

I don’t want any trouble with the neighborhood, but that is the one drawback to this Peets. The neighborhood, that is. We seem to have found people who would never go to one of the other coffee shops on the street like Royal Grounds or Starbucks or Joe’s Ice Cream but they are drawn to the wood paneling and old-fashioned Dutch chocolate coffee additives. These low-profile locals, mostly older and in small groups, have generally not attacked anyone but can sometimes form into feral packs. Be warned.

But if you can grab a coffee ring and hurtle out quickly enough (that will depend on how the line-routing rope happens to be placed that day) you get a solid cup and it’s well worth the locals.

Is Bob Kerrey as fake a Democrat as Joe Lieberman?

Posted on by Daniel J. McKeown

Think Progress sends a well-deserved rebuke to Bob Kerrey (while not even mentioning the shameful spectacle Kerrey made of himself during 9/11 Commission hearings by justifying and affirming the Iraq invasion to Condi Rice):

‘In calling for regime change, Kerrey displayed an inability to comprehend the predictable chaos that would ensue. The intelligence community warned the Bush administration in January 2003 that regime change “would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.”

In December 2003, an undeterred Kerrey claimed that he had been vindicated and Iraq war critics would ultimately be proven wrong. “Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort,” he wrote.

Today, Bob Kerrey (D-NE), unrepentant over his failed Iraq war predictions, returns to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to blast “American liberals.” In making his argument that democracy can indeed be imposed by military force (apparently by overlooking the Iraq war), Kerrey writes:

American liberals need to face these truths … [A] unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

Perhaps he should have thought about that before advocating regime change as “the only way” to “safely reduce our military commitment to the region.” By staying in Iraq as an occupying force, the U.S. is helping inflame the terrorist movement. But Bob Kerrey has never understood that from the beginning, so why would he understand that now?’