We, as a society, are failures.

Chuck has a post up about American Idol as an indicator of societal values.

He begins with
"So, I've had to sit through another episode of the odious Idol program that Carren likes. (I watch, I comment, she rolls her eyes, claims I love it, but fun ends for me after try outs.)

They did a retrospective where the 16-year-old David Archuletta returns home to Utidaho (either Utah or Idaho, I don't remember). He goes to his high school, his local mall, and a couple other local places where people come out of the woodwork to squeal his name and get frenzied up in the best post-modern-beatle-esque prepubescent panty twisting since the British invasion."

And gets worse from there. He does, however, sum it up nicely.

McMaster on Iran

I think he makes it clear.

Iran has been directing assassination operations in Iraq using trained snipers, in some cases killing Iraqi officials opposed to Iran, according to an officer who has recently served as a senior adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Army Col. H.R. McMaster, who has served multiple tours in Iraq, yesterday described Iran's activities as part of an unofficial talk on the evolution of the Iraq war he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute here. Although he emphasized that "Iraq's communities have largely stopped shooting at each other" and that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq "is on its way to defeat," he said Iraq remains a "weak state," and that Iranian involvement was intended to keep it so.

Iran's activities are "obvious to anyone who bothers to look into it," and should no longer be "alleged," he said in response to a question.