By Douglas V. Gibbs of PoliticalPistachio.com

Yes, seriously. Apparently the response to a dangerous addiction is keeping the addiction going on the taxpayer’s dime. Oh, but marijuana is still illegal. Make sense of that if you can.

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved Sunday a move to make permanent the country’s pioneering program to give addicts government-authorized heroin.  At the same time, voters rejected a proposal to decriminalize marijuana.

Sixty-eight percent of the 2,264,968 voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began in 1994.

Some 63.2 percent of voters voted against the marijuana initiative.

Via Outside the Beltway.

In his column for the New York Times, Democrat Thomas Friedman attempts to give Obama and Democrats credit for any success in Iraq.

In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq. There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.

That is the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world in a different direction.

I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.

If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national security credentials than that.

I said this is what would happen and now we’re seeing it in real time. The war in Iraq was a success and we’ve been drawing down troops for a while. Democrats won’t admit as much until Obama is in office, at which point he’ll be credited for the stability and progress. The media, ever willing to set a pro-Obama narrative, will go right along with it.

It won’t matter that Democrats, including Obama himself, fought the continuation of the war and the implementation of the surge at every step. It won’t matter that they voted to cut off funding to our troops. It won’t matter that their Senate Majority Leader declared the war “lost” long ago. It won’t matter that Democrats did everything possible to lose the war.

They’ll still claim that they deserve credit for the success.

Bob Owens writes:

How many times in the past two years have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their cohorts attempted to defund our troops and force them into defeat? Forty times? Fifty? Frankly, I lost count somewhere in the mid-forties.

Now Friedman and his fellow defeatists on the left who long derided those of us who wanted to secure victory as “28-percenters,” “warmongers” and “murderers” want to try to rewrite history. The Times and their fellow travelers long to rewrite their moral cowardice as a virtue, and give themselves a victory by declaration.

And who can forget the New York Times’ 61% discount for MoveOn.org’s full-page ad declaring General David Petraeus, the very leader of troops in Iraq at the time, a traitor?

Yeah, uh huh. Al Qaeda was responsible for the collapse of the housing market? You’ve got to give them credit for trying, though.

This crisis is one of … the series of American economic hemorrhages after the strikes of September 11… And these … will continue as long as the foolish American policy of wading in Muslim blood continues. The ones shouldering the burden are taxpayers, whose money was spent to rescue senior capitalists and to protect the fraudulent interest-based system from collapse.

That’s the claim by AQ’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Do take note that he expressed concerns about the American taxpayers. You know, the same ones he and his organization have and continue to murder at every possible opportunity.

Via Ace of Spades HQ, how pathetic is this? “The day the world changed forever”? “His confident smile and his kind eyes are an inspiration to us all”? Move on with your lives, people. He’s the President; Not the Messiah.

Obama commemorative plates. Good Lord.

It’s not only that. Iraq will cooperate, unlike Saudi Arabia, with any OPEC production cuts that are proposed. Hey, Iraq? You’re fucking welcome.

“A reasonable price for oil is 80 dollars a barrel,” said Shahristani on arrival in Cairo to attend a consultative meeting by the OPEC cartel to study slumping crude prices.

“We have to make sure that produced oil is used for consumption and not for storing.

“Iraq would support a decision by OPEC to cut output either here or in Algeria,” the Iraqi minister added.

Does this finally put to rest the ridiculous “war for oil” claims? The country we liberated and rebuilt with American dollars and blood now wants our economy to suffer even more during this difficult time.

I don’t regret the liberation considering how many Iraqis will no longer spend the rest of their lives under tyrannical rule, but come on.

Or, to be more specific, a bunch of psychopathic shoppers who quite literally took the doors off the hinges to buy cheap crap claim a life. Ah, the true meaning of Christmas.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”

…Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk’s life.

“They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. “People were still coming through.”

Only a few stopped.

“They’re savages,” said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. “It’s sad. It’s terrible.”

I hope those cheap TVs were worth this gentleman’s life. Anyone remember Jesus at all? Because the point of Christmas, last time I checked, is to celebrate his birth. It seems too few people remember that nowadays.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan was hit by a suicide car bomber this evening, the Associated Press reports. The bombing was apparenty aimed at westerners entering the embassy to take part in a Thanksgiving Day footrace.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomb exploded outside the main entrance to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Thursday in an attack against an American convoy, police said.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayub Salangi said one person was killed and six wounded in the attack, about 200 yards from the entrance.

The report notes that one person has been confirmed dead, but the BBC has a police chief claiming that more had been killed. Early reports are usually sketchy and this is no exception.

Via Gabriel Malor. As he says, this is yet another reminder that the threat of terrorism hasn’t suddenly disappeared. The war on terror must still go on.

DrewM. has full coverage just as he’s had all day. CNN-IBN reports that the terrorists have been removed from Cama Hospital, though there’s no indication as to how many casualties were sustained in the process. The Indian Army has requested that networks stop providing live feeds near the hostage areas and they’ve supposedly agreed.

This clearly wasn’t thrown together at the last minute. The well-armed, well-coordinated terrorists apparently arrived via boat and attacked at least 10 locations. Even now, many hours after the attack began, there’s at least 3 locations where hostage situations are going on. It smells like a major terror group’s doing.

What a country when difficult economic times mean buying the Butterball turkey instead of free-range. Kids in Darfur feel your pain, ma’am.

“Maybe you cut back on the (holiday) gifts a little bit, or maybe you don’t have as extravagant a Thanksgiving as you used to,” she said. “Maybe you don’t have a free-range bird as you’ve had in the past; maybe you go to a Butterball.”

Via Professor Reynolds who, as I did, thought Butterball counted as a premium turkey.