One of the last rats to abandon the sinking, burning ship, Tony Blair is set to announce 2,600 of the British troops in Iraq are coming home, leaving just 4,100 that MoD officials say should be mostly home later this year. MORE »

* Names and Faces: Wayne Gretsky celebrated New Years in DC, at Morton’s Steakhouse. $850 tip. [WP]
* Yeas and Nays: Ford press sec Ron Nessen says pardoning Nixon was an act of great courage… Lonesome John Edwards picked the wrong week/day/year to announce his candidacy for President… Cap Police sent out an alert last Friday reading, “At 6:30 p.m. this evening in the Upper Senate Park, cannons will be test fired. This will create a loud noise.” [Examiner]
* Page Six: Tony Blair will apparently move to Miami after he steps down, according to always-accurate British tabloids… Katie Couric did not make Condoleezza Rice cry. [NYP]

Europeans can’t get enough of stupid puppet shows or billboards portraying Bush and Blair as sex weirdos sodomizing each other with Queen Elizabeth’s bones, but an Italian opera company has finally shown some restraint. MORE »

Ho ho ho, so much for that “no news until next year” tradition. The world is coming apart at the seams and only copious amounts of Holiday Cheer(tm) will dull the pain. Welcome to the World Gone Wrong: MORE »

Bush, on the Iraq Study Group: “I appreciated the fact that they laid out a series of recommendations, and they’re worthy of serious study… We agree that victory in a Iraq is important.”

Oh shit, more polonium! DAMN YOU, MARIE CURIE.

Bush keeps babbling the same ol’ bullshit, you can tell CNN sooo wants to cut away to more radiation John LeCarre stuff.

Blair: “Thank you also for the clarity of… your vision.” He’s also got a very keen sense of smell, Mr. Prime Minister. We’re very proud of him.

Blair would very clearly much rather talk about Israel and Palestine.

Blair: “There are only two ways the middle east could go. The people could either be presented with the choice of a religious or secular dictatorship, or…” No, wait, there are three. Three ways the middle east could go!

These two could announce that they’re having a child together and it just wouldn’t matter to anyone.

More live-ish bloggin’ TK below.

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Carl Levin — incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — says we’re starting a “phased withdrawal” within six months. We’d have more details, but CNN decided not to show his press conference. Better to have a reporter pointlessly jabber over the video! MORE »

The State Department released a hee-larious list of gifts that foreign leaders have brought to Bush. The presents appear to be limited to three categories: MORE »

Each and every Friday, we invite local cartoon expert the Comics Curmudgeon to come and have a go at Today’s Cartoons. Why? Because we hate fun, yes, but also because these guys get Pulitzers for drawing the president with really big ears and a trucker hat with an American flag on it.

This week: Violence! Bombs and rocks and, uh, fishing. It’s all after the jump.

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• Ned Lamont not dissimilar from another famous Lamont, have more than just selling junk in common. [Hot Johnny]

• Congressman Ralph Hall “loves bush” wants to “pull down his britches” and show him how much. [Pink Dome]
• Blair and Bush: one is working hard, the other’s hardly working. [ThinkProgress]
• Americans go AWOL in culture war. [The Carpetbagger Report]
• Deserters to form own Army whose central tenet is unwavering belief in all internet conspiracy theories. [Shakespeare's Sister]
• A double barreled shotgun: when you absolutely must shoot every motherfucker in the room, in the face. [Andrew Sullivan]
• ExxonMobil uses loser who lives in his parent’s basement as cover for their An Inconvenient Truth parody. [The Raw Story]

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