Great to see the media all over the details of Neil Bush's divorce, with all the nasty details... Oh, you didn't notice anything?

So Neil, Asian-expert businessman, is in his hotel room in Bangkok, and when women knock at his door and have sex with him, he thinks they aren't prostitutes because they didn't ask him for money.

OK ....

Did it never occur to Neil "Innocent Abroad" Bush that, just maybe, someone else paid the bill? Like, one of his business associates?

Just like people pick up the tab for W, with Harken, the Rangers, TANG, and the rest?

And like we are going to pick up the bill for W's budget follies?

The gall of these guys. Wait till Andy gets hold of this one.

The BBC is reporting that one of Britain's most senior and distinguished judges -- oops, the BBC report only calls him "senior,' no discussion of "distinguished," but I'm sure that's only because they were so anxious to get this little poisen pen letter to the US up and out on the airwaves -- Lord Steyn (probably no relation to the genuinely distinguished Mark Styen), has condemned the US for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanomo Bay.

Lord Steyn said conditions at Camp Delta were of "utter lawlessness", in a speech seen by Channel 4 News.

The Law Lord said the US was guilty of a "monstrous failure of justice" and challenged UK ministers to condemn the decision to hold any prisoners there.

He said detainees were "beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of victors".

No discussion of Saddam's way of dealing with prisoners - torture, summary execution, or of Iraq as a country pockmarked with mass graves. Of course.

And let's take a look at the shaky grounds upon which this so-called legal beagle takes it upon himself to make a comment about American jurisprudence.

Lord Steyn said the nine British prisoners in Guantanamo Bay had been failed by the UK Government - even though a guarantee sparing them the death penalty had been reached.

He is reported to have said ministers must condemn the holding of all 660 prisoners at the base, not just those from the UK.

"The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce the prisoners to confess," he said.

Lord Steyn quoted officials as saying: "It's not quite torture but at close as you can get."

He said the quality of justice did not comply with international standards for fair trials.

"It may be appropriate to pose a question - ought our government to make plain publicly and unambiguously our condemnation of the utter lawlessness at Guantanamo Bay?"

Lord Steyn said that the blanket order issued by President Bush had deprived the detainees of "any rights whatsoever".

"As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice."

So it's President Bush who's the monster now. Not Saddam. Not Osama. Notice the Lordly Steyn says he was brought up to admire American democracy and justice, not that he admires it, or indeed, that he ever actually admired it. Some attitudes are beyond parody.

Nor will you learn from the BBC just how rare it is for a British judge to take a position on a contentious legal issue, neither will you hear about just how unheard of it is for a British judge to attack a foreign country. The report contents itself with a mere mention that the first is rare, the second, unheard of, obviously included to preclude criticism. Let's not forget what's genuinely rare and unheard of - the BBC bringing its massive influence to bear on the massive threat Saddam, Osama, and terrorism itself poses to civilization itself.

Okay, so the BBC doesn't get the post 9/11 ethos, doesn't get that Americans haven't become unconcerned about their fundamental rights under the constitution, or that the Bush administration is waging a war on terror precisely to protect that constitution from meeting the same fate as those majestic twin towers that are no more, from the horror that denuded lower Manhattan of its best and brightest claim to majesty. But aren't they supposed to be a news agency? Weren't we all brought up to admire the BBC as a puprveyer of the news, without bias, without deceit?

With that in mind, ask yourself just how newsworthy is it, really, that one Lordly clueless Brit decides to go off on President Bush, if a news organization isn't going to make the connection for its readers and watchers between this kind of Bush-hatred with the Bush-hatred of Saddam and Osama?

E.G., the President's visit to the front, or at least the back of the front.

Or, maybe not.

Julia of the shrugging Sisyphus has such a smart post up indicating even PR genuis, Rove's instinct for using the presidential in the Presidency is having diminishing returns. She did a check of Google's top ten entries responding to Bush's turkey trot, and summarizes the surprising results for us.

And don't miss this sure to become Julia classic on Mr. Not So Nice Guy Dana Rohrabacher, who got snookered by the even badder bad asses currently running the House of Representatives, often spoken of as the people's house, though not recently. Talk about your non-situational ethics, has there ever been a clearer case of wrong and wrong, which Julia skewers, and than nails to the wall

Mission accomplished!
Infiltration operation Turkey Dangle declared huge success.

[Photo left] [High altitude photographic reconnaissance/image intelligence leaked during sensitive personal meeting with highly placed senior operative provides valuable insight on the highly sensitive nature of OTD during its final operational phases.] President George W. Bush returns aboard Air Force One following covert Thanksgiving dinner mission in Iraq.

***
Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2003

Just as members of the Plymouth Colony feasted upon prime cut aged venison steaks, Lobster a la Nage, and bowls of hot buttered popcorn, our Commander in Chief George Winthrop Bush arrived in Baghdad to serve up hearty heapin' helpings of golden-brown roast turkey, choice grains, oyster stuffing, and mincemeat pie. For the benefit of those pilgrims helping further America's errand in the Iraqi wilderness, Commander W declared: "In ye name of God, having undertaken, for ye glorie of God, and advancement of ye faith, doe by these presents solemnly & mutually in ye presence of God, give thanks, and of one another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation, & furtherance of ye ends, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. Amen."

Commander Chief W "reaffirmed his country's commitment to build a new, democratic and prosperous Iraq," and on behalf of all freedom loving Iraqi people, proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national Iraqi holiday, whether they like it or not, and reassured every American serviceman and woman that they were defeating enemies of Thanksgiving in Iraq so that we don't have to confront the enemies of Thanksgiving at home. Commander W also reminded our men and women in Iraq that founding father Thomas Jefferson understood that low level radiation makes an excellent soil additive for acid loving plants such as blueberries. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived moments later with an entourage of dignitaries and a splendid array of scantily attired hookers from Atlantic City New Jersey who entertained American troops by performing a spectacular series of cheerleading dance routines on behalf of the New York Giants and heterosexual male fertility and free market values and service to our Western cultural heritage in general. 150 minutes later the entire visitation was a wrap and Commanding Angel in Chief W lifted back into the ancient evening and was gone.

All in all it was a victory for freedom and providence and Christianity and professional sports and consumers and the booming domestic holiday shopping economy which is the most booming economy since Louis the XIV broke ground for the palace of Versaille.

How do I know it's the most booming economy in three thousand years give or take a few months? Because Kathleen Mathews, the wife of Chris Mathews, said so right on TV. And she knows about these things because her husband's face appears on the side of many busses in Georgetown or Manhattan or someplace exciting like that. A bus, especially if your husband's picture is on it, is a key indicator of economic vitality at least on some level. A bus is also a public transportation vehicle designed to move throngs of greater unwashed subjects from one booming economic location to another including to and from New York Giant football games in the Meadowlands and casinos in Atlantic City. I myself have never been on a public transport bus because I am a blogger and am wealthy beyond any practical reason and live a simple hermetic life hidden away in a barronial gravy boat of a castle which was once owned by an international arms dealer and is perched high on the banks along the Hudson River. But never mind that. What really matters is that public transportation vehicles benefit everyone and the more people who ride on busses to and fro and the more often your picture appears on the side of a bus the stronger and more vitality-like the nations economy becomes.

Which just goes to show you that we all have something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. Even if you're riding around aimlessly on a bus with Chris Mathews staring at you and you have to think up something quick to be thankful for, at least you're thinking about something, and thats something to be thankful for in and of itself. Now isn't it?

So Happy Thanksgiving. It doesn't matter that Thanksgiving is over with because Thanksgiving is never really over with. It goes on and on. It's a forward looking statement. Just ask Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag. Then again, thinking back on it, maybe you shouldn't ask him. But just ask all those people in Iraq who live each day in harms way and survive one more day to tell about it and therefore draw one more day closer to the next Thanksgiving Day. That's something to be thankful for even if the birdbrain who has made mincemeat of honesty, democratic parley, and due process, is flying around the globe like a blind clog in a meat market. Scrub that unscrupulous chucklehead and his foul brood. He'll be packing his giblets back to Crawford aboard a bus by next Thanksgiving Day. Which is not only a forward looking statement but also an optimistic indicator of future economic vitality.

And thats something to give thanks for any day of the year.


"And there's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids on the death of their loved ones. Others hug, but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug, and that's me, and I know what it's like." - George W. Bush, television interview with Barbara Walters, December 2002.

Yeah, so they held back a few of the more rabid winger judges. Good for a C+ in a business-as-usual year.

They lose Medicare -- blindsided by the AARP! How the heck did that happen, Mr. Daschle? Wasn't it supposed to be different with you, Ms. Pelosi?

Meanwhile, the Republicans throw away 60 hours on a made-for-TV filibuster, complete with cots, while failing to pass the budget to fund 13 agencies, and the Dems don't say Boo, let alone the SCLM.

Telling incident: House rules demand a vote be completed in fifteen minutes, but the House Thugs kept the vote going for three hours, twisting arms. (Like when the leadership "stops the clock" in the Texas Lege, the level the House has now descended to.) Anyhow, this is the final straw for Barney Frank, who says this, not letting Democrats partiticipate at all (not to mention trying to arrrest them!), and the other continuing rules violations by the Thugs mean "the end of parliamentary democracy."

Right.

And does Frank do anything? Does the leadership? Nope. Meek as lambs. Why not pull out of the whole farce, set up some tables outside the Capitol, call the cameras, and start doing a little truth-telling?

Making an issue of Dean's deferment when Bush was aWol for over a year, even from the cush Texas Air National Guard duty his connections got him.

Circular firing squad, anyone? Unka Karl must be rubbing his chubby hands!

Unbelievable.

American military commanders did not impose curfews, halt looting or order Iraqis back to work after Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime fell because U.S. policymakers were reluctant to declare U.S. troops an occupying force, says an internal Army review examined by The Associated Press

As a result, the Bush administration's first steps at reconstruction in Iraq (news - web sites) were severely hampered, creating a power vacuum that others quickly moved to fill, and a growing mistrust on the part of ordinary Iraqis, the report said.

Since those first days, the U.S. effort in Iraq has been hampered by a growing insurgency with persistent and deadly attacks against U.S. forces.

And now for my personal favorite two paragraphs:

The review, a postwar self-evaluation by the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), said the political decision to call the U.S. forces that arrived in Baghdad "liberators" instead of "occupying forces" left the division's officers uncertain about their legal authority in postwar Baghdad and other cities. Under international law, the report says, the troops were indeed an occupation force and had both rights and responsibilities.

"Because of the refusal to acknowledge occupier status, commanders did not initially take measures available to occupying powers, such as imposing curfews, directing civilians to return to work, and controlling the local governments and populace. The failure to act after we displaced the regime created a power vacuum, which others immediately tried to fill," says the report.

Laugh, or cry? Your choice. Probably both.

Listen carefully and you'll probably be able to hear a soft whistling type sound off in the distance - that would be the RNC, the Laura Ingrahams, the Mona Charins, The Weekly Standard-ites, the Hannitynitas, and the whole vast area of rightwing frontline media troops beginning to spin like tops in order to blame this on the State Department and all those bloody Democratic internationalists whom the President was trying to please.

I guess by July, the pretense of non-occupier status had worn a bit thin. How else to explain this statement by Paul Bremer as reported by both the Asian Times and The Guardian:

"We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country."

Oh well, that was then. This is....now.

During his brief visit to Baghdad on Thursday, President Bush met with four members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. Bush said he reminded them that "it's up to them to seize the moment, to have a government that recognizes all rights, the rights of the majority and the rights of the minority, to speak to the aspirations and hopes of the Iraqi people."

According to three of the council members at the meeting, Bush indicated that he would be willing to accept revisions to the administration's transition plan, although he did not endorse the idea of elections.

One of the council members, Mowaffak Rubaie, said Bush told the group: "I will support any decision you make. I won't make decisions for you. I will help you in implementing your decisions." Two other members at the meeting, Ahmed Chalabi and Rajaa Habib Khuzai, concurred with Rubaie's account but added that Bush expressed a desire for the provisional government to be chosen through caucuses.

"He talked to us about getting the job done, about moving toward sovereignty," Chalabi said.

U.S. officials said Bush did not delve into specifics of the transition plan and merely indicated to the council members that the United States wanted to be helpful and supportive of the council. "He said, 'We're here to support you,' " an administration official said.

The impression one is left with from this excellent WaPo article is that of an administration desperate to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves in Iraq.

Less than two weeks after overhauling its plans for Iraq's political transition, the Bush administration is considering more major revisions that could include elections for a provisional government in an attempt to appease the country's most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric, senior U.S. officials said.

Holding elections would be a major reversal for the administration, which has long argued that the absence of an electoral law and accurate voter rolls would make a nationwide ballot time-consuming, disruptive and open to manipulation by religious extremists and loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein.

But the senior officials said the administration may be forced to organize elections to satisfy Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. A senior cleric who has strong support among Iraq's Shiite majority, Sistani appears to have rejected a plan devised earlier this month to select a provisional government through 18 regional caucuses. Two Shiite politicians said Sistani told them on Wednesday that he does not support the caucuses and instead wants the provisional government chosen through a general election.

How different this all would have been if the administration had bothered to listen to any of those voices that agreed with the dual goals of freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam's lethal grasp so that, at last, they could govern themselves. What the administration is finally doing now has been exactly what had been advised by European critics, the UN, Democrats and many non-partisan foreign policy experts for months now.

Or, if they had bothered to listen to Iraqis.

Even when they made their annoucement of this new policy two weeks ago, beneath the rhetoric of turning over sovereignty to the Iraqis, Brenner's plan was a top down approach, meaning important decisions would devolve from the...you should excuse the expression, occupiers, i.e., us, the US.

As soon as the new plan was announced Nov. 15 by leaders of the Governing Council, council members began pushing for changes. Contending that the plan was forced on them by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, they have sought to revise several key elements, including the planned dissolution of the council after the provisional government was formed.

Several Shiite members also have objected to the method of choosing participants in the caucuses. Under Bremer's plan, they must be approved by 11 of 15 people on an organizing committee, which would be selected by the Governing Council and U.S.-appointed councils at the city and province level. Shiite leaders worry that religious figures may be excluded by the organizing committees.

In fact, the most serious misreading of which this administration has been guilty has been their take on who the Iraqis are, how their society works, their view of their own history, and most of all, a crucial underestimation of their sense of national pride, and their ability to run their own society, by which I mean, to get their own schools open, to repair their own bridges, to run their own oil fields, to work with the international community to set up some form of tribunal that would be used to separate out those Baathist who have committed human rights crimes, and some form of recognition for the victims of those crimes, in short, to govern themselves.

Oh, I understand that self-government was not the primary goal for this administration, the right kind of government was, one that included adulation of the free market, some good stuff like the rights for minorities, but most of all, a government that was both American and Israeli-friendly. What Bush & co failed to take into account was the vitality of Iraqi soceity, and thus, its own countervailing impatience with an occupation that carried the exclusive face of America, by whatever name this administration chose to identify it.

"Elections are now a possibility," said a senior U.S. official close to Iraq's political transition. "We're scrambling to find a solution."

(edit)

A senior Shiite politician who met Sistani on Wednesday evening said the grand ayatollah made clear that he wanted members of a provisional government to be chosen through direct elections, not caucuses. The politician said Sistani would issue a religious edict in the coming days that would articulate his views.

Another Shiite political leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, said Wednesday that Sistani was concerned that the administration's transition plan did not give ordinary Iraqis enough of a say in shaping the provisional government. Hakim said Sistani also was worried that the plan lacked safeguards for what he called the country's "Islamic identity."

Oh, those crazy Iraqis. And, btw, despite what you may have heard, "Islamic identity" need not be incompatible with democratic governance.

Wasn't that the message of the President's surprise visit to the troops, during the first several hours after midnight, which made it technically A.M, and technically Thanksgiving? He received several standing ovations from the troops, which is as it should be, and his visit seemed to buoy their spirits.

That it had something of the quality of a PR stunt, that it was hardly a vindiction of this administration's policies for a President to have to sneak into a country we've liberated and now occupy for the most idealistic of purposes, we're told, and not be able to move beyond the confines of the airport, or be able to stay more than two hours, that, as always, the emphasis was on Bush, not as representative of the whole country, but as a President who is actually more important than the rest of the country, who personalizes every challenge, so that the trip was expressing his determination to stay the course, his fighting spirit, etc., that the trip was made under conditions of security unavailable to any of our troops on the ground, and finally that the media, as began yesterday, will have the planned for Rovian response, praising the President's boldness and courage, and not notice his happy acceptance of the most extravagant accolades without much thought, public and probably private, about the struggle of our troops to reach deep into themselves to find such courage, not for two hours, but every minute of every day of their tour of duty in Iraq, are all reasonable observations, and questions worthy of being raised. I hope the Democratic voices who are quoted, the professional Democrats, won't bother to raise them.

This is not a call to wuss out. It's a call for the Democratic Party to get smart. I think it's fairly clear that one of the goals of this trip was precisely to draw fire from Democrats. Why give Rove exactly what he wants?

The fact is that this is what Presidents are supposed to do, visit the troops who are under arms; even if he did it with his usual lack of grace, he was acting as the President, fullfilling the functions of an office that belongs to all of us.

Yes, the Republicans for eight years got away with heaping manure all over a Democratic President and the office itself. They did pay a price, though. Despite the national distaste for the details of what went on between Monica and Bill, an overwhelming majority of Americans were clear on who to blame for the fact that those details had been called to their attention. The Republicans still had to steal the next election. And don't tell me that Al Gore had everything going for him; nonsense. What the eight years of assaults on Bill Clinton personally and on his Presidency did succeed in doing was to create a wholly unearned sense of permanent scandal and sordid political chicanery around everyone who was part of it. Unfortunately, the sense of disgust about the tone in Washington fell more on Gore than on its true source, the Republican Party, and even so, they had to steal an election to win.

Americans are tired of the vitriol. They're tired of wedge issues, they're tired of being divided from one another. George W. Bush has failed to come through with a campaign promise he made again and again, one that I personally believe was the key to his success at enticing swing voters into the Republican column - he has been a divider, and not a uniter. That has certainly been one of Howard Dean's most effective themes, and Senator Edwards used it to great advantage for the Democrats in the last presidential debate. This trip is a perfect example. If the President had really wanted this country to show the world and our men and women serving in Iraq a united front, he might have considered the possibility of taking other high officials along, including a Democrat. It is almost unimaginable that this administration would ever consider doing such a thing.

All of this is becoming increasingly clear to a majority of Americans. The Democrats should let others, especially those of us at the grassroots level, raise issues about this visit, in the form of letters to the editor, emails to congress and to members of the media.

Here's Dana Milbank on yesterday's stunt..ed visit to the troops. (Sometimes it's hard to follow your own advice)

William Greider endorses Howard Dean.

The Nation, November 26, 2003.
Why I'm for Dean, by William Greider.

In the higher realms of politics, this is not done. But he is not one of them. And this is no longer the era for "triangulation" between the business-financial money patrons and the party's main constituencies. That new spirit, more than any single issue, is what has drawn together Dean's vibrant and growing base, buoying his candidacy with millions in small contributions. Dean is opening the possibility of transforming politics--shaking up the tired, timid old order, inviting plain-wrapper citizens back into an active role--and that's why so many people, myself included, are for him. Full disclosure: I am among the throngs who have been invited to contribute "forward-looking ideas" to his campaign (I was flattered to be asked and pleased to oblige, with no naive expectations).

also...related:

Via The Atlantic, News-o-mercials and boob-tube expediency.
See Politics (and Profits) on TV [scroll down page for item]

In the nation's top fifty media markets during the seven weeks immediately preceding the November 2002 midterm election, more than half of all local television broadcasts gave no coverage whatsoever to political campaigns. As a result, according to researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin at Madison who examined more than 10,000 half-hour local television news broadcasts, most of the political information gleaned by local-news viewers came from paid advertisements:

Bush/Iraq - Reagan/Guatemala, and the politics of "dirty war".

Highly reccomended reading dept. Iraq: Quicksand & Blood by Robert Parry, Consortium News

George W. Bush and his top advisers learned little from the Vietnam debacle of the 1960s, since most avoided service in the war. But many top Bush aides played key roles in the repression of leftist peasant uprisings in Central America in the 1980s, a set of lessons the Bush administration is now trying to apply to the violent resistance in Iraq.

The key counterinsurgency lesson from Central America was that the U.S. government can defeat guerrilla movements if it is willing to back a local power structure, no matter how repulsive, and if Washington is ready to tolerate gross human rights abuses. In Central America in the 1980s, those tactics included genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages in Guatemala's highlands and the torture, rape and murder of thousands of young political activists throughout the region. [More on this below]

The body dumps that have been unearthed across Central America are thus little different from the mass graves blamed on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, except in Central America they represented the dark side of U.S. foreign policy and received far less U.S. press scrutiny. Another lesson learned from the 1980s was the importance of shielding the American people from the ugly realities of a U.S.-backed "dirty war" by using P.R. techniques, which became known inside the Reagan administration as "perception management."

The temptation to recycle these counterinsurgency strategies from Central America to Iraq is explained by the number of Reagan-era officials now back in prominent roles in George W. Bush's administration.

[...]

'Perception Management'

To manage U.S. perceptions of the wars in Central America, Reagan also authorized a systematic program of distorting information and intimidating American journalists. Called "public diplomacy," the project was run by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who was assigned to the National Security Council staff. The project's key operatives developed propaganda "themes," selected "hot buttons" to excite the American people, cultivated pliable journalists who would cooperate and bullied reporters who wouldn't go along.

Much more to this article...it's a good one, so read it in full at Consortium News

WaPo:

In another win for Bush, there was an agreement to let him proceed with much of his plan to give private companies work now performed by some federal workers. In giving tasks to the private sector, the administration would have to just consider [italics mine] whether substantial savings would result but wouldn't be required to do so as lawmakers preferred.

Yeah, "consider"... That's the ticket, "consider" ... Where's that damn rubberstamp ...

What's that book again? The Great De-balling?

Anyone who isn't angry isn't paying attention.

Any presidential candidate who isn't angry doesn't have the temperament to be President.

Dionne, via (Leah, below).

The battle over a Medicare prescription drug benefit proves that Republicans are ruthless and determined and that Democrats are divided and hapless. Republicans have changed the rules in Washington, but some Democrats still pretend to be living in the good old days.

Haven't these guys read Krugman's book? The Thugs are a revolutionary power. The old rules don't apply anymore.

The book the Democrats should also read is one that hasn't been written yet: The Great Ungrovelling.

I'm not a vegetarian. I love poultry, both alive, and to eat , and I especially love Turkey.

So, please believe me, I'm not trying to be a "kill joy," nor am I out to spoil your Thanksgiving by suggesting you read a timely article about American eating habits.

It is possible to find small growers who raise their turkeys sensibly, healthily, humanely and wisely. Yes, such turkeys are somewhat more expensive. But the experience of eating animals you can be sure have had a decent life while they were alive, and weren't raised in conditions that would make it impossible for you to eat them if you ever had the bad luck to see what they were, and aren't manifestly unhealthy for you and your family, is so much more satisfying, the birds taste so much better, it's worth paying a bit more, and if necessary, eating various kinds of animal meat less often.

So forewarned, here's a friendly article that explains how to have a healthy, humane, wise and wonderful Thanksgiving.

When Bush wins big, the world loses even bigger.

That's the gist of this article from "Grist" by way of Working for Change.

It's about the hole in the ozone, and uses the example of a small Chilean city whose inhabitants have the bad luck to be situated so as to experience on a greater scale than the rest of us, the deadly effects of those infrared rays that leak through the hole.

This was in 2000, when the ozone hole was at its largest ever -- 11.5 million square miles, bigger than Canada and Russia combined.

(edit)

Despite the magnitude of the problem and the attendant health concerns, the people of Punta Arenas had reason for cautious optimism back in 2000. If they had the misfortune to be among those most directly afflicted by the depletion of the ozone layer, at least the global community was making a good-faith effort to resolve their predicament, thanks to the Montreal Protocol, often considered the most successful international environmental treaty ever negotiated.

That was then, in 2000. What's different now, in 2003? George W. Bush.

Read the rest to find out how the Bush administration earns, through its actions, proudly one imagines, Karen Schultz's epithet that provides the title of this post.

Then take brief notes in a handy form that you can whip out whenever necessary, to help you explain, with specifics, to anyone skeptical that Bush is really all that bad, why he is.

E.J Dionne on the Medicare debacle. He mainly gets it right.

His conclusion, not very illuminating. Republicans, tough, they fight. Democrats, don't.

What get's in the way of cohesive, coordinated legislative action is what we need to figure out. But what the hell, even a big-time media pundit deserves his moment of anger.

Jesse at Pandagon flays William Safire, after dubbing him, Safliar, The Redolent.

Ezra, Jessie's new Pandagon partner, talks about an Ann Coulter comeuppance at the hands of, of all people, Alan Colmes, aided by one of those Democratic strategist thingees. Ezra also does some damn fine flaying of his own on a sorry shambles of a column by Paul Jacobs.

Here's a link to the transcript of yesterdays Democratic Presidential debate. This is actually required reading, and yes, there will be a quiz. (I'm only half kidding; time to figure out what's going on here vis a vis the goal of defeating Bush and we need a conversation with more than one point of view to do that.)

Allen Brill has a heartening post about a lovely community Thanksgiving celebratioin in a quasi-rural area of the American heartland

And here's the always wonderful "skippy" on one aspect of the on-going culture clash about media bias.

Bush will get his Medicare bill. And it wasn't even all that hard. I know I often consel not to get angry...well, sometimes you just have to let the anger have its day.

In fact, I'm so angry, I can't yet write about what went down in the Senate yesterday.

Anger is a dish best consumed in the presence of friends, other angry friends. Let me suggest, for instance, Democratic Veteran, and Emma at the perfectly titled for the occasion, Notes On The Atrocities, both of whom have other interesting blog stuff up you should check out while you're there.

I'll have more to say on the topic when I stop choking on my own bile.

E.g., framing an issue on your terms. How's this strike you?

Why does George W. Bush hate the clean air you breath, the clear rivers you fish in, the American wilderness you love to visit, or at least love to imagine visiting?

Why does he hate the sun that warms this planet and is the source of all energy on earth so much that he refuses to take even a baby step toward the implementation of the idea of harnessing it, and other forms of renewable energy right now, so that we can become truly energy independent, in say, ten years, and create good jobs into the bargain, jobs that won't be easily exportable?

Okay, I don't actually think Bush hates the enviornment, anymore than I think anyone who criticizes his Iraq policy hates America. But surely there is something weird about the thoroughness with which his policies are trashing the bi-partisan enviornmental policies that have produced decades of progress. I think like so many other contructs, for Dubya, the environment stays an idea, a rather abstract idea.

As for instance, when, on the British comedy, "Yes, Minister," a developer of a huge office complex in a neighborhood near the Thames is asked by the interior minister, "what about the enviornment?", and the developer replies, "What about it? Surely there'll be one. There's always an enviornment."

The enviornment is just one of those things that's there, and will always be there.

RFK, Jr. has a go at Bush and the enviornment in the LATimes, and doesn't mince words.

I'm not sure if his approach is what is meant by "framing," but his indictment is clear, vivid, and undeniable. It's the most passionate enumeration of campaign talking points I've ever read.

The article is free for now, but registration is required, and if I can put in a plug for my hometown rag, these days the LATimes is worth it.

Could Shrub actually be today's "Cat In A Hat?"

Seems our prez and his guys, ("goons") were pretty tough on the Queen's Buckingham Palace gardens, and she's upset about it.

I'm still trying to get over those five chefs he took with him.

Billmon has the story, and the visual

And while you're there, don't miss his discussion of Bush's "neo-Peronist spending policies."

Bremer's firing teachers now. Twenty-eight thousand of them. For having been Baathists.

This, courtesy of the great Oliver Willis. Here's the original UPI story . And who might be behind this move? By implication, Chalabi, who, as the man who would follow Saddam, was certified this weekend by Sally Quinn, as not merely an acceptable dinnerparty guest, but as a highly desirable one.

A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high."

He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total.

The Central Command spokesman attributed the firings to "tough, new anti-Baath Party measures" recently passed by the U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of administration hawks in the White House and Pentagon.

So, 28,000 members of 28,000 Iraqi families will no longer be employed in a country where the unemployment rate is hovering between 70 and 60 %. Iraqis have large, extended families, that are closer and see each other more often than many of our nuclear families. So multiply that 28,000 X oh, let's say on average 6 1/2 other Iraqis.

Brilliant.

"It's a piece of real stupidity on the part of the neocons to try and equate the Baath Party with the Nazis," said former CIA official Larry Johnson. "You have to make a choice: Either you are going to deal with Iraqis who are capable of rebuilding and running the country or you're going to turn Iraq over to those who can't."

(edit)

"It's an incredible error," said former senior CIA official and Middle East expert Graham Fuller. "In Germany, after World War II, the de-nazification program was applied with almost surgical precision in order not to antagonize German public opinion. In the case of Iraq, ideologues don't seem to grasp the seriousness of their acts."

Isn't this the same mistake they made with the Iraqi army? And again, with Iraqi civilians who'd been running important slices of what kept civil society going in Iraq before we invaded? What, is this administration preternaturally unable to learn from their own mistakes? Of course, in order to learn from one, you have to be able to admit you made one.

And in January, Iraqis can look forward to the UN Food program being discontinued. Or have they come to their senses on this one? If so, I haven't heard about it.

You know, I'm starting to get really, really, angry.

Try and imagine if you were an Iraqi, trying to hold together a life for you and your family?

Yes, Arthur's a libertarian, and even an admirer of the authoress of The Fountainhead, but he's also a damn good writer, and a thinker of uncommon clarity.

The bus strike in LA destroyed his ability to blog, for reasons he explained at the time of his hiatus. Happily, readers responded with some monetary appreciation for the work Arthur makes available to all of us.

The strike now over, Arthur has returned to his blog, with a real scorcher of a post, let me add. It's long, complicated, about Iraq, and an invaluable contribution to the argument going on about what we're doing there, and what the limitations are on our "success."

He also has this very smart take on David Brooks' take on marriage, gay, and otherwise.

Hard to keep track of them, ain't it?

Fred Kaplan is one of the few good things about Slate; here he gives you the low, and we do mean low...down on one of this administration's genuine dosies, low-yield nuclear weapons, which are impractical, expensive, and will require testing, thus undemining four decades of progress made on behalf of non-proliferation of nukes, at exactly the time we're complaining that the world isn't backing our position on Iran's non-military nuclear program, even though Iran has agreed to international inspections. A triple threat (and we do mean threat) weapons program, these bunker busters, that don't even do that efficiently.

These guys won't be content until they've started another international nuclear arms race. And why not? Wasn't that how we - uh, Ronald Reagan beat the Soviets?

The LATimes, reporting on Nov 19th, seems to think that for now, the thrust in Congress to get those new FCC rules Michael Powell foisted on America may be over. Not the fault of those in the House and Senate who want to stop more media mergers. Bush has threatened a veto. The Times suggest that probably the issue will be dealt with in what has now become SOP for this White House.

It appears most likely that a compromise will be hammered out behind closed doors by a handful of top lawmakers and White House officials, and then inserted into a giant omnibus spending bill. It remains unclear whether the final agreement will be subject to amendment by lawmakers unhappy with the result.

On the other hand, Eric Boehlert, writing in Salon on Nov 21st presents a much brighter picture.

What's clear from both reports, the issues surrounding those FCC rules changes as well as the changes themselves are not going away at the end of this congressional session, and that is definitely good news. (Boehlert's article requires subscription; his reporting and commentary is one of the chief reasons Salon is worth supporting). Check at Common Good, where you can sometimes find the best of Salon to be had for a click of your mouse.

When it comes to expressing just what's at stake here, does anyone do it better than Bill Moyers?

What would happen, however, if the contending giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public’s need for news second to free-market economics? That’s exactly what’s happening now under the ideological banner of “deregulation.” Giant megamedia conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state.

Consider where we are today.

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know. When the journalist-historian Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” When journalism throws in with power that’s the first news marched by censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.

Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy.

(edit)

So the issues bringing us here tonight are bigger and far more critical than simply “media reform.” That’s why, before I go on, I want to ask you to look around you. I’m serious: Look to your left and now to your right. You are looking at your allies in one of the great ongoing struggles of the American experience – the struggle for the soul of democracy, for government “of, by, and for the people.”

It’s a battle we can win only if we work together.

Read the whole speech, if you haven't yet; you'll find out a lot about how richly informed were American citizens in the early days of this Republic, discover a rather astonishing credo set out by Joseph Pulitzer, and more.

And there's this passionate credo, written by the great English pamphleteer, William Cobbett, in the 1790s, still as fresh and new as tomorrow.

Professions of impartiality I shall make none. They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense, when used by a newsmonger; for, he that does not relate news as he finds it, is something worse than partial; and . . . he that does not exercise his own judgment, either in admitting or rejecting what is sent him, is a poor passive tool, and not an editor.

The word: McJobs:

McDonald's chairman Jim Cantalupo publicly lost his patience this month with the way ["McJobs"] is being used to describe dead-end work, particularly for young people.

Mr. Cantalupo wrote a letter denouncing Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for using McJob in its new edition, where the word is defined as "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement."

Yeah? So what's your point?

And it's only 678 pages long!

"Just sign here. Trust me—you don't need to read it!"

("Trust me" being Thug-speak for "Fuck you!")

Want to do something about it? See Leah (down).

AP:

Iraqi teenagers dragged the bloody bodies of two American soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans.

Why not help them?

I'll make this one short. More or less.

Sens. Kennedy and Kerry have committed publically to a fillibuster. That's more or less what is going on today, yes, in a Sunday session.

Tomorrow, Monday, Frist is going to call for cloture.

Kennedy appears to have said that he probably doesn't have the votes to defend against a cloture motion. To get cloture, a 2/3rds majority is required.

I'm frankly stunned that Democrats can't hold on to forty Democratic Senators to vote against cloture. Who knows, Kennedy's statement might be tactical. Daschle's on board, Harry Reid is, he's still Senate whip I believe. I've seen Harkin speak against the bill, both California Senators, Dorgan, Graham of Florida, Dick Durbin, Schumer and Clinton, can't remember all the Democrats.

Aside from Breaux and Baucus, who the hell could want to vote for this bill? It stinks, most seniors seem to know it, Sen. Frist standing in front of the cameras, trying to tell the country that the Democrats oppose this bill says that Democrats don't care about helping seniors rings so hollow, who could be afraid of that?

Anyone who needs prescription drugs knows what the problem is; competition between American drug producers actually raises prices, as each of them vie to bring out different versions of the same drug, or new, repackaged versions of their own drugs. A majority of Americans don't buy the line that Americans have to pay 600 times what is paid in Canada for the same drug in order to have drug companies continue to come up with new drugs. This bill assures that there will be no pressure on drug companies to lower prices.

This bill is an attack on the very idea of market competition, even while it tries to hand over to HMO's a wedge by which to ultimately privitize Medicare, despite the fact that HMOs are trying to get out of the business of insuring seniors. Of course, with some government subsidies, and the ability to cherry pick the healthiest, richest seniors, they might be more interested.

There is no downside to voting against this bill, and a huge downside to voting for it.

Aside from the intrinsic dumbness of the bill itself, there is also the outrageous process by which it was reported out of the conference committee.

Bush and the Republican approach here has been exactly the same they took to the issue of Iraq. Top down, unilateral decision making.

And what's the hurry? There's plenty of time to get a Medicare bill out and voted on with genuine particpation by Democrats who represent voters currently being ignored. Winner takes all, is how Bush behaves again and again, even though he hasn't really won anything.

ANYONE WHO THINKS THAT IT WOULDN'T HAVE AN IMPACT TOMORROW ON KENNEDY/KERRY'S ABILITY TO LINE UP VOTES AGAINST CLOTURE IF THERE WERE FIVE THOUSAND EMAILS AND FAXES AND PHONE MESSAGES WAITING FOR THEM, AND OTHER DEMOCRATS JUST DOESN'T KNOW HOW LINING UP VOTES WORKS ON CAPITAL HILL.

It's a lonely task, I know, taking the time and trouble to send a communication to your or another Senator. But it needn't be. Send one, then call five friends, and ask each of them to call five of their friends or relatives, ones you haven't called and ask them to send an email.

My advice - send emails to Kerry, Kennedy, Daschle, and Reid, as well as Edwards and Lieberman, since their running for the presidential nomination.

Here's the Senate website; it provides a place to select a state, and the a click takes you to their webpage where you can usually leave an email. Make the subject VOTE NO ON MEDICARE.

Just to make it really easy:

Here's Sen. Kennedy's email address: senator@kennedy.senate.gov; you can use that to write an email straight from your own email program.

Here's Sen. Kerry's online site for sending him an email.

Here's where you can send Sen. Daschle an email.

Here's where you can leave an email for Sen. Harry Reid.

Here's Leiberman's; he has a select a topic form; but Medicare's there.

Here's the contact info for Sen. Dodd, while you're at it.

Probably best to concentrate on few Senators, and get other people to do the same.

Listen to the debate if you can; you can hear or watch it on the web. You'll be proud to be a Democrat, or proud to consider voting for one, if you're independent.

As you cruise the web today, leave comments suggesting other commentators might like to join you in letting our representatives know how we feel.

Make the message short but potent: We don't want this bill. I'm a senior, or I know seniors, they don't want this bill. Don't give Bush this win without going to the wall to stop him. Best of all, stop him, and then invite him to work with Democrats to get a bill they can support.

One more point; remember the howls of rage, that one still hears, about Hillary Clinton's secretive process for working out her health care proposal. First of all, it wasn't that secret, not as secret as this process has been. And it was a proposal, presented as the beginning of a long debate. This pig in a poke was presented forty-eight hours ago, and is being rammed down the throats of Democrats, which means the throats of all the voters who voted for them..

I'm sure you can find some shorter way than I seem able to to phrase all of this.

It's your democracy, go use it.

Here.

Sigh... I voted to keep them out in the 'burbs—but then so did they.

So Dear Leader takes 5 (count 'em, five) personal chefs to meet the Queen of England who, as I understand, has chefs of her own, here (via Atrios).

Remember when the SCLM was all over Clinton about holding up a plane to get a haircut—and the story wasn't even true?

Forget outrage... But where's the ridicule?

What next, Bush impersonators?

Three more dead to reelect Bush.

To answer your question, Yes, the Thugs are utterly without shame in politicizing the war. Disgusting. Incidentally, if you think the Jessica Lynch story was a propaganda stunt, you can register your disgust at military.com.

The only mission to be accomplished here is reelecting Bush.

Why don't we ever hear that from Bush, as we heard it from FDR?

Say, could it be that Bush wants us to be afraid, since it's useful to him and his backers?

And could it be... That Bush himself is afraid?

Personally, I think the state has no business supporting any kind of marriage relation, since marriage is encumbered with religious notions, and religion isn't something the state should be establishing. So I don't support laws about "gay marriage" because I don't support laws about any marriage.

On the other hand, I do think civil unions for the people who want them is the way to go. Isn't it obvious that one member of a couple should be able to visit the other in a hospital, or make a will in their favor, or do the usual things that couples do to make it through? As if there could be too much love in the world!

So I think Vermont, and Dean, got it exactly right. Further, Democrats shouldn't be afraid to say so. Let the Thugs touch this third rail and marginalize themselves.

As a parting shot: I love hearing the wingers make the argument from biology— that "marriage" is "natural" in the animal kingdom. There weren't any dog priests last I looked (well, maybe in Rick Santorum's mind). And whales rape. So rape is natural, therefore good? Overheated foolishness...

Delivered from the Oval Office the evening of June 11 th, 1963:

Good evening my fellow citizens:

This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro.

That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.

I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Viet-Nam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.

It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

(edit)

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

He could be talking about gay Americans, couldn't he?

Only hours after this speech was broadcast, Medger Evers was shot in the abdomen as he got out of his car in the driveway of his home by a white man hiding across the street, waiting for him.

The edited remarks that follow were delivered as part of a commencement address at American University, June 10th, 1993: Kennedy took the opportunity to announce his intention to seek a Treaty with the Soviet Union to end the testing of nuclear weapons in the earth's atmosphere.

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities--and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions--on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems

So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can--if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

Forty years later, Theodore Sorenson gave this year's commencement speech at American University, and took the opportunity to compare Kennedy's approach to the world with that of the current Bush administration.

At the risk of becoming known as "Lili One Note," (an actual nickname among my close friends; well, getting organized means never having to apologize for being anal-retentively obsessed), here's an update on the two worst bills of the twentieth and the twenty-first century, which Republicans are still determined to ram through Congress.

On Energy - secret meetings are going on; the bill will be back. Let's be ready. Spend half a day getting in touch with friends, relatives (who will listen) to alert them and give them information about who to call the moment we know the energy bill is be rescheduled for debate. In the meantime, not a bad idea to send approving emails to those of your Senators who voted "nay" on the cloture vote, and disapproving ones who didn't. It always means more to a Senator when the contact is from a constituent.

Here's where to find out who voted which way on the bill. Remember, the right vote was "nay." Senator Specter is a good target if you're from Penn; he knows better; he won't like hearing his vote was unpopular.

One spooky fact you'll find on the senate site, Frist voted "nay." What's that about? He seemed outraged that cloture didn't pass and promised the bill would be back. Was the leadership worried that if they won by one vote for cloture it would look bad, so Frist tipped the balance to make sure cloture wasn't invoked, giving Bush time to get back, and more backroom deals to be made? Any thoughts on what Frist's vote was all about?

Neither Kerry or Edwards was in Washington for the vote. Not good. Let them know; not only do we need their votes on both energy and Medicare, we need their voices in that debate. What the hell do they think they're going to be able to campaign on if Bush gets these two big legislative victories, and they weren't even around to vote against them?

Medicare: I watched C-Span covering the house debate and vote late into the night; after staring at a long shot of the well of the house overwhich were superimposed the results of the vote - the bill lost by two points - without benefit of Mr. Lamb's impeccable taste in classical music of the baroque period, I gave up. What was happening was a three hour delay in certifying the vote, during which time Bush twisted some arms by phone. His message, as reported on MSNBC this morning, don't damage me by voting against this bill.

Debate is going on right now in the Senate; my awful cable co doesn't provide coverage of C-Span 2 on the weekends so I can't tell you too much; saw some of the debate at the house of a friend. Daschle's on board for this one. Watch the debate if you can; listen to it on the radio; mine doesn't pick up that station, or I can't find it. The vote will probably be on Monday. It would be great if a whole mess of emails or faxes were waiting for every moderate Republican and any Democrats who look shakey, letting them know that they don't have to give Bush this huge win, and why it's such a lousy bill.

Josh Marshall has come up with a wonderful adjective to describe this Medicare boonswagle - "scamliness," which he claims to have already copyrighted. Since I'm

Contact information and more on both bills is available below here and here.

Blogroll Updates and Blogging Notes:

Tom Daschle needs a good swift kick in the ass. Via: Trish Wilson

Peter at Kick the Leftist provides a link to a TNR post on the Congressional Budget Office's latest scam.

Shystee has The Counter Propaganda Brigade and a retro Avalon Ballroom stylie Matt Gonzalez poster including info on a new blog-ring for all West Coast SF mayor's race watchers.
See for yourself.

Long Live The Family Dog!

Ran into Atrios there, and we talked a little substitute gym teacher shop....

Anyhow, I'm sure he can write the policy up better than I can, so I will tell a story instead.

I was sitting in a pizza joint near my apartment in Philly about six months ago and two white-haired guys were talking to each other about the war in Iraq.

And as I ate my (delicious) pizza, and drank my (fountain) coke, I listened in on their conversation, and got more and more enraged. Bush had done something, I don't know, something of the kind we're all so used to now it isn't even news, and finally I heard one of them ask "What about the 3000 we lost?"

At which point—beyond my endurance point since even then the Bush lie on AQ/Iraq connections as a justification for the war had been thoroughly exposed—I lost it and started yelling.

I remember I yelled "Iraq doesn't have anything to do with Bin Laden!" and a whole lot else, and when the old guy could get a word in edgewise, finally, he asked me "Will you calm down?" And when I agreed, he said "I'm against the war!"

So I saw the same guy at Krugman's lecture...

Krugman says it's going to be a rough ride for the next few years. But maybe there's some hope....

To any of you who made a call, sent a fax, or an email yesterday, thank-you.

The first vote on closing off debate in the Senate on the energy bill took place this morning, and by three votes, the supporters of the bill lost the cloture vote, Six Republicans voted with 43 Democrats and Sen Jeffords against cloture. That means six Democrats voted for the bill. Among the Republicans who joined the Democrats were McCain, Sununu and Greg, both of New Hampshire, Sens Snowe and Collins, I believe. I think Specter, who had been on the fence, voted for cloture.

That doesn't end things, this is a big one for the administration, and for its corporate benefactors. Debate will continue, and if those forty votes can't be kept in line the bill will pass on a simple majority vote.

The longer the debate goes on, the more likely it is that some "yes" votes for cloture might be turned; the debate thus far has been devastatingly one sided. There are no good arguments for this bill. Editorial comment around the country is almost universally negative. The NYTimes and the WSJournal agree on this one. The more the debate goes on, the more embarrassing it will be for "moderate" Republicans like Specter to continue to support it. Had the vote gone their way this morning, the bill would have passed by this afternoon, and the voting public would've had little chance to take note of what its government is doing to it.

BTW, none of the Senators, as yet, have a full copy of the bill on their desk; it was released on the web only 48 hours before debate began. Sen. McCain has suggested, not without design.

Keep the pressure up. Email or call Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who voted for cloture and try and shame them into changing their vote. This site, which you should bookmark for the future, sometimes referred to as "Juan's," makes it easy to find out which Senators and Representatives represent which states, and with a few clicks provides you with contact information, and the webpage for every member of congress.

On to Medicare.

Did you ever think you'd look back on Newt Gringrich with fond appreciation for his subtlety and nuance? Newt, you may recall, was content to let Medicare wither on the vine. The introduction of medical savings accounts and private HMO's would prove the vast superiority of private markets to government programs when it came to fostering good health care at affordable prices. Two decades of experience with HMO's has taught us Newt was wrong. Not that there's anything wrong with the concept of HMOs. But increasingly, they are having difficulty providing both affordable health insurance and good care.

So Bush and the current Republican congress said to themselves, "86 the withering, Medicare will have to be hacked to death, if the way is to be cleared for privitizing the program. Their "term" for this process is "modernizing" Medicare, bringing it into the twenty-first century.

That is what underlies their willingness to engage on the subject of controlling subscription medicine costs, and adding a prescription benefit to Medicare. In the Spring, the Democrats, led by Ted Kennedy agreed to a compromise on the issue of the prescription benefit, as long as the nature of Medicare was preserved. The Senate bill Democrats approved wasn't a good one from their perspective, but as Kennedy said, the party could not in good conscience refuse the needed benefit, but Democrats made clear that if the conference went too far in the direction of the House version of the bill, that would cost their support.

No surprise, Republicans paid no attention. The operating assumption of the Bush/Rove policy here has been to produce a bill that can be sold as the long awaited prescription benefit for seniors, but that does much more, all of it bad, all of it in the direction of privitization, so that Democrats would have the noxious choice of voting yes, and giving Bush a huge win, exhibit A for his compassionate conservatism, or voting no, and being accused of playing politics.

The privitization in this bill isn't what Gingrich was talking about. This is worse. This is subsidized privitization, protected by shackling government's ability to regulate, or in this case, negotiate prices with drug companies.

Democrats are pretty firm in their opposition. My suggestion, call your own Senators and tell them to vote "no" to cloture and to the bill. Tell them it's too lousy of a bill to give Bush that big a win. And tell them their constituents see through the bill.

Biggest talking point from my perspective - Bush's inability to work with anyone who doesn't already agree with him. Bush, the uniter, not the divider, has allowed his party to exclude Democrats from any genuine input in the conference that hammered out the final bill. This is unprecendented. And don't let anyone tell you Democrats behaved the same way when they were the majority party. Tell your Senator that they cannot vote for a bill that disenfrachised you by treating your vote for a Democratic Senator as if it meant nothing. The Democrats compromised; Bush said, you patsies. As in his foreign policy, Bush seems to think that there is something wrong, read weak, in working with people who aren't already in complete agreement with you. He feels contempt for the very notion of compromise. Fine. The price for that is no bill. It's Bush's price. Not the Democrats. He can still have a bill. If he's willing to lead his party to the table where Democrats are already sitting, ready to find a genuine compromise.

One more thought; Leiberman is on the fence on the Medicare bill; he says he wants to study it. If you have the time, let him know there's nothing to be had, especially by a potential Presidential candidate, in folding on this one.

BTW, those AARP commercials that say Seniors can't wait, the first year of the benefit is 2006. So there's plenty of time before the next election to get a decent bill, and not a senior will be deprived of a single penny's worth of help with not a single prescription bill.

Sigh....

They wouldn't be sabotaging the government deliberately, of course—it just turns out that way.

And they fell for it! Rubes.

Mark Brzezinski and Mario Nicolini write in the Herald Trib:

Before and after the war, high-level meetings between top U.S. and Central European officials indicated a level of engagement that many Central European leaders presumed would carry over into the postwar reconstruction phase. Central European officials state categorically that real expectations were created.

In early March, the State Department invited representatives of more than 30 countries to discuss postwar reconstruction of Iraq.

That was the bait.

The Czech foreign minister, Cyril Svoboda, said he had conveyed to Secretary of State Colin Powell on that occasion his country's interest in participating in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. On April 15, the spokesman for the Slovak president stated that Commerce Secretary Don Evans had given the Slovak minister of economy a list of sectors pertaining to Iraqi reconstruction in which Slovak companies could participate. The expectations of Central European leaders were clear.

Central European states' longtime links with Iraq have given them knowledge that could contribute to the country's reconstruction. During the cold war, much of Iraq's infrastructure, including power plants, airports and bridges, was built with the help of engineers from Poland, Hungary and Ukraine. But since the end of the war, not a single reconstruction contract has been awarded to a company from Central Europe, while the large American corporations Bechtel and Halliburton have been awarded contracts amounting to more than $3 billion.

That was the switch!

Another triumph for Bush diplomacy!

Why?

To reduce waste, fraud, and corruption? Don't make me laugh, it hurts (especially after the lid got lifted the latest cesspit in mutual funds).

Because corporations are run like democracies? Ever sit through a PowerPoint presentation by top management?

The idea that government should be like a business is pushed by politicized executives. Under Bush, it's become clear what they want: loot, and lots of it.

The idea that government should be run like business—with customers, not citizens—is not just undemocratic, it's anti-democratic.

Don't fall for it.

WaPo:

Only 18 percent of AARP members agreed with the organization's endorsement.

Of course, the fact that the feckless, gutless Beltway Dems allowed the AARP to endorse yet another Thug bait and switch operation is yet another massive indictment of their "leadership." What on earth do they do up there on the Hill? Have they gone sleepy-bye?

As always, Leah shows what to do to make a difference.

During Bush's visit to Buckingham Palace:

The orchestra played "King Cotton," a Sousa march, and "My Heart Will Go On," the theme song from the movie "Titanic".

Gosh, those Brits can sure do that subtle irony thing....

A reference to the slave society that lost the last Civil War, and a ship that sank with the loss of thousands because its Captain went to ramming speed through a field of ice bergs...

Wonder if Bush noticed?

  YABL Threat Alert!             
5 Alarm LIE!!!!!

Courtesy of our resident genuis, the farmer, we have this color coded system for alerting you to recent or upcoming Bush administration lies, dubbed YABL, (see Lexicon) because of their ceaseless nature.

This is the first time we have used this highest level of alert. What lie, or lies do we mean?

Every word spoken in the Senate in support of both the energy and the Medicare Bill.
They will come mainly from Republicans, but doubtless a few Democrats will be peeled off.

This is one of the most important moments there will be for those of you who want to defeat Bush. Passage of these bills, without efforts by Democrats to go to the wall to defeat them, will be a huge win for Bush, and will make it close to impossible for Democrats in next year's presidential and congressional elections to attack Bush and the Republicans on two of their biggest weaknesses.

A solid effort by the majority of Democrats to defeat them, and explain why they are such truly awful bills in the extended debate possible in the Senate, even if unsuccessful, will preserve their ability to make it a campaign issue.

The point of this post is to urge every single person who reads these words, to take the time today, tonight, and even tomorrow, to contact, by phone, email or fax, preferable by all three, those Senators who will be crucial to a solid, unified, Democratic effort to defeat both bills, and to contact at least five other people you know, friends, relatives, work mates, to do the same. Details of how to do this, at the least expense of your valuable time, will follow a discussion, with links, of the policy issues and suggested talking points to be used in your Senate contacts.

These bills are defeatable. Let's take the energy bill first, since that is the one currently being debated in the Senate. This morning, Frist is probably going to call for a cloture vote; he probably won't get it, too many key moderate Republicans, and even a few non-moderates, are appalled by the bill to let him get away with it. But action needs to be taken today to be the most effective.

A recent Zogby poll tells us that a majority of Americans are aware of the main outlines of this bill and that they do not support it. Most of you probably know what's so terrible about it. The best compact discussion I've seen can be found at the new Center For American Progress, which has some real shockers I hadn't heard about, like a RollCall report of specific instances of the Republican crafters of the bill being wined, dined, by industry lobbyists, and taking trips paid for by those interests whose ideasdominate the shape of the final bill. Here's another summary from Act For Change. And another summary of specifics from CAP.

Here are some bullet points:

This energy bill:

Has a huge price tag, which means our tax dollars:

Go to pay for huge tax breaks that go directly to gas, oil, and coal industries.

Go to all kinds of subsidies paid directly to large corportions; for instance, for construction of new nuclear plants; why subsidies? because nuclear power plants are not cost effective, aside from their other problems, which include no safe way to get rid of the nuclear waste.

Are financing the first major rollback in anti-pollution measures ever. Perhaps most outrageous example - makers of MTBE, an anti-smog additive that turns out to pollute ground water, are to be protected from liability, which means no community adversely affected can sue, and the provision is being made retroactive, so states like California and NY, with pending lawsuits, will have no way to recoup the costs of cleanup. In addition, 2 billion dollars of our tax money goes to a subsidy for these companies, to ease them through a transition period from while they find some other pollutant to manufacture. Meanwhile, no one is even talking about extending unemployment for American workers who've been out of work more than six months.

The bill was put together in secret, without input from Democrats or from citizens, or from any environmental groups, but with the active participation in the writing of the bill itself of K Street lobbyists for the energy industry.

The bill will not achieve energy independence, though energy companies will be allowed to exploit resources on federal lands.

The bill is backward looking, by several decades. No real conservation efforts, no greater energy efficiencies, and the provisions for renewable resource developement are a joke. Note, development of such resources means new jobs that cannot be exported elsewhere.

The bill makes us less secure - and could encourage nuclear proliferation by reversing a decades old policy and allowing the re-processing of spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants.

The bill will adversely affect the health of most Americans, which means ever more children with severe asthma, just to mention a single example.

The bill is larded with pork, put there cynically, to entice just enough support from Senators who might have opposed it to squeak it through the Senate.

It's a cesspool of a bill.

Okay, who do you need to call? First and foremost, Senator Daschle. He's on the fence. Those ethanol subsides mean a lot to the farmers, many of them small farmers, in his state. Don't get angry about that. Get smart.

Call Daschle's office and register your intense desire that the Senator lead the Democratic opposition to this bill. Stress how crucial you feel it is. Be polite. Don't talk long, his office will mainly be counting the number of calls. They will register intensity if you stay focused and polite. It's okay to say that you might have to reconsider voting Democratic next November if Daschle fails this test of leadership. And surely, if Olympia Snowe can stand up to the administration and the Republican leadership, Senator Daschle can. Or don't say that. Emphasize you expect no less from Daschle, if that suits you better.

You don't need to pay for the call if you use the Toll-free Congressional Line:800- 839-5276; ask for Daschle's office and you'll be connected. The line can sometimes be busy.
If you can afford it, you can call his office direct at 1-800-424-9094, not sure if that's genuinely non-toll or not, this one definitely isn't - 202-224-2321.

Follow this up with a fax or email to give additional points. Not too many. Be polite. My suggestion is to emphasize that this is one instance in which doing the public good is synonymous with what is politically essential for the Democratic party. Mention the Zogby poll; supply a clickable link, perhaps to the CAP Progress Report mentioned above. Touch on how backward looking the bill is. Use bold type for emphasis, use spaces between lines and points so that it's easy to see the essence of your message at a glance.

Daschle's email: http://daschle.senate.gov/webform.html: this takes you to a webpage where you can leave an email. If you want to send it straight from your email: daschle.senate.gov should do it. Daschle's fax #: 202-224-6603.

If this isn't a day when you can take that much time, Working For Change has made it easy for you to contact Daschle on both the energy and the Medicare bill here. They provide you background information, and a pre-written message, though they encourage you, as would I, to write your own.

Next up. Sens. Dorgan and Conrad are supporting the energy bill. It's the ethanol subsidy, stupid. Again, don't get angry, get smart. Call, fax, or email the two Senators and ask them not to get in the way of a fillibuster, and not to vote for cloture until they feel that they have to, for all the reasons you used for Daschle. You can find all their contact information here.

If you have any more energy left, email the two California Senators, Sens. Schumer and Clinton from NY Sen. Durbin of Ill. Sen. Reid of Nevada, and anyone else you can think of, and ask them to lead a fillibuster of the energy bill; remind them that if the Democrats don't put up a concerted, public effort to defeat this bill, they will not be able to attack Bush or the Republicans on a major weakness. They don't have to win, though that would be nice. But if their opposition doesn't register with the voters, how can they talk about Bush having the worst energy policy next year?

Here's a site that allows you to click on a state to find out all the contact information on the Senators from that state.

Blogs are doing great and important work. But that work won't mean much if we the people, bloggers included, don't get ourselves organized to register our power when and where it matters. How long did it take the right to get CBS to dump "The Reagans?" Any bloggers who happen by, feel free to lift any part of the info here and get your readers to make some calls or send some emails and/or faxes.

WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE DO IT, WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE STAND UP TO BE COUNTED, IT MAKES A REAL DIFFERENCE. IT TELLS OUR REPRESENTATIVES WHAT THEY NEED TO DO TO REPRESENT US. THEY HAVE EVER REASON TO LISTEN, AND THEY WILL.

Include Medicare in your communiques if you want, for efficiency. Or come back later for some thoughts on how to effectively counter that horror.

UPDATE: For inspiration, here's Molly Ivins latest on this subject.

I meant to link to this excellent suggestion by Atrios, that the ethanol subsidy need not be a stumbling block, since there enough Republican Senators from corn-producing states to make a separate subsidy bill possible. Also, if the bill doesn't pass, or goes down because it can't pass cloture, that only means that Bush and the Republicans have to come back to the table. If they refuse to, the onus is on them.

For those of you with extra energy, it might not be a bad idea to contact the offices of Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards and ask them to show real leadership where it counts.

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually this was unaccountably excluded by Blogger from the first update.

To inspire you, I'd like to dedicate this post to Lisa English of Ruminate This, who has been such a tireless, eloquent, and good humored, (she's funny, too) advocate of grassroots politcal involvement. Her blog is one-stop central for citizen participation. Recently, her son's struggle with diabetes has been her number one concern; thankfully, Lisa has great confidence in her son's doctors. In other circumstances, I would probably be linking to a post by her, urging you to get involved and take action, and telling you how. You can let Lisa know at her blog that we're thinking of her, and doing something concrete to make the future of all of our sons and daughters a better one.

Good god.

The benefit doesn't kick in until after the 2004 election. Can't the hapless, feckless Beltway Dems smell the bait and switch coming?

And we don't have the money to pay for it, long-term (ie, after 2004) anyhow, because Bush gutted the tax system.

And what there is a giveaway to Big Pharma. A serious program would go single payer, since that way purchasers would have market power, not sellers. (Why do people think that the drugs are cheaper in Canada? Because they're metric? No, it's single payer!)

And best of all... The top of the top... The Republicans say they want to introduce competition... So what's the first thing they do? Subsidize the corporations that are going into the new market. So we're going to subsidize the insurance companies to cherrypick the well, leave Medicare with the sick, and in a couple of years claim the system is broken because unit costs have gone up... Anyone ask George if he knows what a Trojan Horse is?

I tell you, the only turkey this Thanksgiving isn't on my table. If we had an opposition party and a free press in this country, a "reform" like this would be a non-starter.

Yesterday, I mean, and a grand day because of the decision by the Supreme Court Of Massachusetts that gay human beings are just that, full human beings whose inalienable rights include the right to form lasting unions with one another that are recognized by the state. Okay, okay, let's call it by the name we use when speaking of heterosexuals - marriage.

I don't have time today to talk fully about the implications of the decision, but I wanted corrente, and I know I speak for my three compatriots, to go on record as welcoming the decision. This is a step forward in the long, slow, march of humanity to bestow on all of itself, individual liberty, dignity, respect, and equality.

The decision will pose special problems for liberals, progressives, and God help them, Democrats. The attacks, the rubbing of hands in glee, have already started, thwarted a bit today, at least on cable news, by the ascendant importance the media ascribes to the issue of a warrant for Michael Jackson's arrest in a case that will now be handled exclusively by the legal system, and about which there is really nothing intelligible to be said, until the facts and counter facts begin to be revealed during a trial, which is the only time such facts and counter facts should be revealed. But that is clearly too much to ask of our SCLM. (I guess they decided not to heed Atrios' heartfelt letter.) Irony of ironies, Jackson is taking tube time away from the rightwing Kubuki drama of roiling sound and fury one might have expected to have been let loose on the airways today. Something of a small mercy, a very small mercy.

The increasingly invaluable Allen Brill has all kinds of helpful material on the court's decision already posted; do follow his links to Ralph Luker and Hart Roussel. I especially liked Allen's run-down on the new leadership of the Christian right, complete with photos. One of those leaders is Roberta Combs, the new President of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Let me leave you with a tidbit from a short interview with Mrs. Combs that appeared in The NYTimes Magazine; many blogs already spotlighted it for her innocently hypocritical admission that she works out of the home becaues she likes to, but something else about it struck me.

After establishing that Combs has been taking the group more toward the center than was Robertson's habit, and Mrs. Combs agrees that if one is to make progress one has to work with Democrats, too, and the interviewer notes that Combs had proven that in her willingness to work with Senator Schumer on anti-spam legislation, Mrs. Combs replies:

Actually, when Senator Schumer called me, I was a little surprised. He turned out to be a nice man.

And you stunned some of your colleagues by agreeing to meet with Senator Hillary Clinton.

Yes. We talked about prescription drugs and the elderly. I can't judge her. I would like to think there is good in everyone. Tell me, whom did you vote for in the last presidential election?

Gore.

Well, just because you voted for Al Gore doesn't mean that you and I can't talk! I wouldn't hold that against you. That's my personality. I'm just hopeful you will vote for Bush next time.

My first reaction was a little start of surprised pleasure, what Mrs. Combs probably felt when Senator Schumer called her. And then I found myself thinking, well, of course he's a very nice man, what did you think he'd be? And look at that "agreeing to meet with Senator Hillary Clinton." We're talking about a woman who is now a U.S. Senator, and was the first lady of the United States of America, and after agreeing to meet with her, Mrs. Combs can only " not judge her," and hope that Hillary doesn't disprove Mrs. Combs belief that there is good in everyone. For Heaven's sake, the differences between these two women are political; they have a moral dimension, but people can split on moral issues without either one being an embodiment of badness. And we're supposed to be grateful that just because we, the majority of voters in the last Presidential election, voted for Al Gore, Mrs. Combs is not about to call for our being shunned? Small mercies, indeed.

In my book, any candidate who isn't angry about what Bush is doing isn't paying attention, and doesn't have the temperament to be President.

Now Dick Cheney's daughter and Dick Gephardts' daughter can get spliced.

Good news for the country, yes?

Part 1

I'd like to speak to all of you about an alarming developing trend that has been bothering me for some time. Namely the contagion of kitty cat pornography coursing its way through the circulatory system of our nation's cultural body politic.

First of all let me just say that I have nothing against kitty cats. I like kitty cats too. I too struggle with a bakers dozen, at least, of fond and giddy memories of cherished kitty cat cavorts and cuddly capers. I myself subscribed to Kitty Cat Figurine magazine for nearly twenty five years. I am a survivor myself. Whats more, one of my own favorite kitty cats, beloved and doted on as only a favorite kitty cat can be, recently croaked...I mean passed beyond!...earlier this Spring. It was very sad, perhaps even tragic depending on how much you'd had to drink.

Anyway, I buried her beneath a carpet of flowering forget-me-nots aside a shady woodlot while a small volunteer unit of the local Order of Hibernians played a sad fiddle keen and Saint Anthony himself hovered above a Forsythia bush singing Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.

She was a fine specimen and lived to the ripe old age of 19 or 37, I believe. At least it seemed like 37. Anyhow, she was intelligent too, you betcha, the smartest kitty cat I've ever known. And highly agile. She could leap in an instant from a otherwise motionless stance and deposit herself squarley, razor honed nippers flexed, upon the waiting breastbone of her chosen affection. Which could be a fairly jarring experience, to say the least, especially if one were unprepared for such displays of demonstrative grace. Respected she was.

Respected also for her ability to master complex phonetic relationships and patiently perform intricate outdoor autopsies on an ungodly number of small woodland creatures on an almost daily basis. That's how smart she was. She was like some kind of Spartan feline lamia coroner running around with a hatchet and a seclusion 3-D flea collar. Its was, to be honest for the most part, fairly unmerciful business, and some naysayers claimed she was little more than an attentive furbelow while others insisted she was nothing but a despotic hairy homicidal lunatic who shit in a box of sand and terrorized the pastural meadows and secretive forest floors of her own local critterdom. Kind of like ..well, never mind. In any event, I reject either assertion and suggest she was merely a fearless survivor with an unusual grasp of polysyllabic sounds. Kind of like...well, never mind. And lets face it, even your basic hedgerow or backyard birdhouse is a cacaphony of high pitched shrieks and trills and unholy blood curdling squeals. A seething Tartarus of brutality, genocidal horrors and naked sex crazed depravities. Such are the ways of the forest floor.

But thats not what concerns me here today. What concerns me today is what I like to refer to as nothing short of: The Pussification of Western Maleficence! Thats right. The slow torturous destruction of harmful malefic mischievous western cultural bad-ass evil through the constant repetitious exposure to an unsparing assortment of cloying saccaharine photogenic drivel known as "kitty porn!"

Due to the length and offensive nature of this post I have spilled it over onto my overflow page.

Please continue reading here if you don't know whats good for you.

Well, this is the best good news I've heard in a long time.

Clergy Group to Counter Conservatives

In an effort to counter the influence of conservative Christian organizations, a coalition of moderate and liberal religious leaders is starting a political advocacy organization to mobilize voters in opposition to Bush administration policies.

The nonprofit organization, the Clergy Leadership Network, plans to formally announce its formation on Friday and will operate from an expressly religious, expressly partisan point of view. The group cannot, under Internal Revenue Service guidelines, endorse political candidates, and it will have no official ties to the Democratic Party.

But the driving purpose of the organization, according to its mission statement, is to bring about "sweeping changes — changes in our nation's political leadership and changes in failing public policies."

The Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker, of Lexington, Ky., chief executive officer for the organization and the chairman of its national committee, said: "The Christian Right has been very articulate, but they have been exclusive and very judgmental of anyone who doesn't agree with them. People may want to label us the Christian Left. But what we really are about is mainstream issues and truth, and if that makes us left then that shines even more light on the need for a shift in our society."

The organization seeks to counter groups like the Christian Coalition of America and newly influential groups like the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition.

There are other liberal religious-based advocacy groups in Washington, like the Interfaith Alliance, a nonprofit group that lobbies Congress on policy issues. But the Clergy Leadership Council will be the first national liberal religious group, its organizers say, whose primary focus is electoral politics and partisan political organizing

Read the whole article, there's much more, including a quote from the President of the Family Research Council questioning the wisdom of this mix of religion and politics," as if the Family Research Council wasn't just such a mix.

Especially welcome, the good news that The Clergy Leadership Network will have representatives in the south and the mid-west, where, as the group's spokesperson takes note, "moderate and progressive Christians have been losing their "political voice" to Christian conservatives." I'll say.

Though the group is interdominational, most of the participating clergy thus far are Christian Protestants, hence the title of this post. (I'm Jewish, but I've always found something beguiling about the notion of bringing even strangers good news.) Although the group doesn't plan to focus on divisive issues like abortion or gay rights, its participants will be taking on the Christian right's attack on issues that pertain to church/state, and the separation thereof.

Recently, we, on the more-or-less secular left, have found ourselves implored by our faith-based brethren not to push them away, not to turn our backs on the millions of believing Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, many of whom are not rightwing, but feel beset by an onslaught of secularism that the left has been too ready to validate, too ready to identify with, and thus lose the voices and the votes of people who should be our natural allies. We and the Democratid Party are being warned that we need to engage with believers, if we are to win the White House, and indeed, to revive the liberal/progressive tradition in this country.

Since I am personally sympathetic to this desire on the part of religious progressives to start a dialogue with progressives who don't consider themselves to be practioners of any particular religion, let me be clear that I'm not sympathetic to a statement like this one in Nicholas Kristof's much discussed warning to the left:

The most striking cleavage is the God Gulf, and it should terrify the Democrats. Put simply, liberals are becoming more secular at a time when America is becoming increasingly religious, the consequence of a new Great Awakening. Americans, for example, are significantly more likely now than in 1987 to say they "completely agree" that "prayer is an important part of my daily life" and that "we all will be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for our sins."

What on earth does that mean? How are Democrats becoming "more secular?" More non-believers are being drawn to the party? How on earth does Kristof even know if liberals are becoming "more" secular? Democrats should be "terrified" because they're on the wrong side of the "God Gulf?" Who says? Tom DeLay, that God-fearing Christian, that bagman extraordinaire for the Republican Party, who recently came up with yet another clever way to raise money for the party by turning fund raisers during the Republican convention into "charity" galas, thus getting around campaign finance laws, and making contributions tax deductible, all for the small price of giving some of the proceeds to a charity for poor children, or crippled children, or some other form of appropriately pitiable children?

It's stuff like this that makes so-called "secular" liberals like myself go grumpy when it comes to public protestations of religiosity. Which is not at all the same thing as a genuine dialogue about the role of religion in political life, and visa versa.

So imagine my delight to discover that Allan Brill of The Right Christians decided to take on Kristof's whole notion of yet another Great Awakening, in a three parter which you can find here, here, and here. Allan's findings are fascinating; if you missed Atrios's link to it, don't pass up this one; and read the comments section, particularly of the first one.

It's one of Allen's specific goals to engage fellow progressives in that genuine dialogue about how religious and political values intersect, as it is also Melanie's, late of Daily Kos, now the proprietress of her very own blog, Just A Bump In The Beltway, and well worth a visit.

There is a religious war going on in this country, and it's been declared by the right against liberals and progressives, both religious and secular, in the name of "traditional values" and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Well, you can see the problem right there. Who wants to be on the wrong side of the traditional values gulf, or worse still, the Judeo-Christian tradition gulf? Of course what's being advocated by the forces of the American right, Christian, Jewish, Neo-con, Federalist, you name it, they probably got it, is something quite different than just values and just traditions. And it's the left's task to unravel that reality in such a way that Americans in the middle, busy living increasingly difficult lives, can understand that such an analysis is not an attack on the idea of religion itself. To do that, progressives and liberals of every stripe, every religion, every irreligion, need to stand and to work together. So I think it's not a second too soon for us to start really talking to one another. Consider this to be only the first in a series of attempts to further the dialogue.

From The Slactivist, whose religion and politics are a seamless whole, this fascinating connection to The Equal Justice Initiative Of Alabama, shared, not quite by coincidence, by Atrios, self-proclaimed non-believer. It's a complicated story I'll let Fred tell it, which if you want to read in forward chronological order you can here, here, and here.
You'll see, it doesn't have to be that hard, when there's genuine good will towards all of us.

Seriously, David Brooks' New York Times columns should come with some kind of warning against reading them before operating heavy equipment, or if already taking a prescribed heavy sedative. Today he collects a paycheck for sharing his Deep Thoughts on the truly searing issue of the day, women's magazines, and one in particular, Lucky. Those who manage to slog to the end of this soporific treacle will be rewarded with this pensee:

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a rather important book on how, in America, the democratic personality supplants the aristocratic personality. The democrat smashes hierarchies. The democrat is interested in everyday happiness, not lofty excellence. The democrat simply does not acknowledge the existence of social class. Nobody is above me and nobody is below me. We are all equal, and we are all Lucky.

Brooks thinks he's redeemed wasting his readers' time with this high-brow fluourish, but he's just faking, as his pathetic attempt at arch, dare I say aristocratic? drollery ("a rather important book") unintentionally reveals. His President employs a similar gambit whenever asked to demonstrate basic competence on an issue he's expected to know about, and indeed is a standard trope of slacker college students the world over to suggest familiarity with subject matter encountered solely through Ciff Notes, or to pad out a term paper.

Tocqueville's Democracy in America is indeed "rather important." Let's see what it really has to say about a society that produces Lucky magazine, not to mention slacker Presidents and pundits:

In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we examine it very closely, it will be perceived that religion itself holds sway there much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.

...In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all....

If the absolute power of a majority were to be substituted by democratic nations for all the different powers that checked or retarded overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would only have changed character. Men would not have found the means of independent life; they would simply have discovered (no easy task) a new physiognomy of servitude. There is, and I cannot repeat it too often, there is here matter for profound reflection to those who look on freedom of thought as a holy thing and who hate not only the despot, but despotism. For myself, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million men. (emphasis added) (Book I, Chapter 1)

When... the distinctions of ranks are obliterated and privileges are destroyed, when hereditary property is subdivided and education and freedom are widely diffused, the desire of acquiring the comforts of the world haunts the imagination of the poor, and the dread of losing them that of the rich.... They are therefore always straining to pursue or to retain gratifications so delightful, so imperfect, so fugitive....

I never met in America any citizen so poor as not to cast a glance of hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich or whose imagination did not possess itself by anticipation of those good things that fate still obstinately withheld from him. (Book II, Chapter X)

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords, it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.

... It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare, and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it.

A native of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications....

At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The spectacle itself, however, is as old as the world; the novelty is to see a whole people furnish an exemplification of it. (Book II, Chapter 13)

Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Nor ought these facts to surprise us. ...

The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains are taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amid the enjoyments of sense. If ever the faculties of the great majority of mankind were exclusively bent upon the pursuit of material objects, it might be anticipated that an amazing reaction would take place in the souls of some men. They would drift at large in the world of spirits, for fear of remaining shackled by the close bondage of the body....

If their social condition, their present circumstances, and their laws did not confine the minds of the Americans so closely to the pursuit of worldly welfare, it is probable that they would display more reserve and more experience whenever their attention is turned to things immaterial, and that they would check themselves without difficulty. But they feel imprisoned within bounds, which they will apparently never be allowed to pass. As soon as they have passed these bounds, their minds do not know where to fix themselves and they often rush unrestrained beyond the range of common sense.(Book II, Chapter 12)

I'm sure that's what Brooks meant.

Donald Rumsfeld is in South Korea, Secretary Powell is in Europe, the President will soon be in London, and Marco Calamai is probably still in Iraq. But not for long.

Mr. Calamai is an Italian official, who, until his resignation yesterday, had been serving with the American- led coalition in charge of Iraq, as a special counselor to the authority in the province of Dhi Qar. He did not resign because of the tragic bombing of the Italian barracks. He resigned because he has become convinced that the provisional authority of Viceroy Bremer "simply doesn't work."

Though Bremer, apparently, is reluctantly beginning to agree, Calamai's explanation of the whys and wherefores is so direct, spare, and compelling, it's worth repeating.

Calamai said only an interim authority headed by the United Nations could turn things around.

He said the American-led administration, headed by L. Paul Bremer, doesn't understand Iraqi society and has muddled reconstruction projects by delaying financing. He said its policies were in part to blame for last week's attack on the Italian Carabinieri barracks that killed 19 Italians, as well as 14 others.

The U.S.-led authority has created "delusion, social discontent and anger" among Iraqis and allowed terrorism to "easily take root," Corriere quoted Calamai as telling Italian journalists Sunday in Nasiriyah.

The attack on the barracks "is the consequence of a mistaken policy and an underevaluation of the complexity of the social structure of Iraq," he said. "There needs to be a radical change with respect to the policies taken so far by the USA."

Notice Tinkerbell's light getting fainter and fainter? Calamai probably doesn't realize that critical discussion of any Bush policy means the terrorists win; how many performances of Peter Pan is an Italian likely to have seen?

Calamai also mentions that Bremer et al are "out of touch with Iraqis and only fueling their anger." And the Iraqis aren't the only ones being left out of the process.

In an interview with the leftist daily L'Unita a day before, Calamai complained that the British and Americans had marginalized the Italians. "They don't consult us, they don't involve us, even though their security depends on us."

And as for all those dollars the congress just appropriated for Iraq, the previous appropriation has not resulted in expeditious funding of promised reconstruction projects.

Hmm, generous promises, followed by silence and inaction. Sound familiar?

Secretary Rumsfeld is in South Korea today. The South Koreans are being asked to send troops to Iraq. Why should they, the Secretary was asked. And I'm sure glad he was. And so is Rumsfeld apparently. Because it gave him an opportunity to put forward another definitive explanation of why we are in Iraq. And this one just might be the best one yet.

"It's a fair question, and I said: 'I suppose for the exact same reasons that the American people sent their young men and women to Korea 50 years ago,"' he told U.S. troops at this air base south of Seoul at the end of a week-long trip to Asia.

The 1950-53 Korean War, in which the United States lost 33,000 troops fighting Chinese and North Korean forces, "was not easy and the enemy did not collapse within days," he said.

"But it was the right thing to do," he said, pointing to South Korea's growth into a robust and prosperous democracy.

"And at the end of the day, when the institutions of a new democracy have taken root and when Iraq becomes a constructive player in the Middle East and not a threat to its neighbors and not a threat to its own people ... let there be no doubt, the rightness of our efforts there will be clear as well," he said.

I'm unable to comment further, I'm too choked up.

Rush is back, and Gallup's got him.

I'm not sure if this is the first time a national polling outfit has bothered to take a poll to find out how Americans view Mr. Limbaugh; there's no reference to it in the summarizing article. But as of now, 34 % of Americans hold a positive view of Limbaugh, while 51 % hold a negative view of him.

Among political conservatives, 51 % hold a favorable impressions of him, but 35 % are unfavorably impressed at the moment. Among political liberals, his favorabilities, as I believe they call them, are about 10 %, which strikes me as unfathomably high. If you're a liberal, what's to like? Maybe one of their pollsters in Georgia happened to call the Miller household.

While they were at it, Gallup decided to ask about other "political commentators," and found that Ann Coulter, Al Franken, and Dennis Miller are sufficiently unknown so as to preclude meaningful favorable vs unfavorable numbers. Actually, Miller does better than Al or Ann, and has a surprisingly high favorable rating; according to Gallup, that might be because Miller is an equal opportunity political basher. One can't help but wonder if this wholly incorrect assumption was communicated to those who were being polled. The poll's take on Franken was somewhat disappointing, and I'm not sure quite to make of it, though one poll is only one poll.

The poll's final finding is actually quite depressing; Orah and Dr. Phill, who were chosen as comparison public figures because they are controversial on occasion, nonetheless are markedly better known and liked than any of the politially minded commentators.

Why is that depressing, aside from Dr. Phill's remarkable creepiness? Because nowhere do we see the debasing influence of the rightwing on our political culture than the revulsion too many Americans feel toward politics. Politics are divisive, politics are just so much hot air, politics are a competition between sets of lies, politics are contemptible.

Problem is, politics are at the very heart of how a democratic society works. (To be continued)

Question: Would the Bush administration even consider "declaring victory" (i.e., cutting and running) in Iraq by installing an interim constitution and a governing cabal strong enough to survive through, oh, November 12 2004 if that kept the Presidency in Republican hands?

Answer: There's a question here?

This is why all the Inside Baseball stuff about whether the Democrats have constructive alternatives, or whether "you broke it, you bought it" is the right way to think about the Iraqi problem is so meaningless.

Anyone who has dealings with the Bush administration knows that they are utterly untrustworthy. They just lie all the time, shamelessly. Getting them out of the White House is job one, and anything else is just tinkering round the edges.

Witness the thuggish suppression of Marine Girl's blog (via Atrios).

For any of you who might have missed Tresy's brilliant analysis of the "hallmark of Bushism", don't. You'll find the post, "Chickenhawks Come Home To Roost" by clicking here.

Doubtless you are aware of the DOD letter/memo summarizing links/contacts between Iraq and Al Queda that was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at their request, and then leaked, by an unknown someone, to Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard, which then became the top story on Fox News through-out the weekend. And you probably know that within hours of the online publication of Hayes' analysis of the memo/letter, a posting on the DOD website denied that the leaked information therein (tho referred to as "the annex") was meant to be proof of a Saddam/binLaden connection. It was instead a list of fairly raw intelligence. Not that the DOD post is a thorough debunk; but it clearly says that the leaked document is not all that Hayes & co are cracking it up to be.

Doubtless you make regular visits to Quiddity's uniquely wonderful blog, Uggabugga, but in case not of late, by any and all means do. Not only will you find there a series of wonderful cartoons, (just scrowl down), and a map/chart of the connections between the countries in the Western Hemisphere, (part of Quiddity's project to diagram everything in the world,) as of yesterday, you will also find a posting of that rarest of all things, an actual transcript of something broadcast on Fox News, in this case, of a fevered exchange between Fred Barnes, frothing at the mouth with ferocious certitude that Hayes' Weekly Standard bombshell now establishes beyond all doubts, once and forever, that Saddam and binLaden were evil ones sharing their evil, and that everything the Bush administration has ever said about both must now be considered beyond argument, and Juan Williams, trying to introduce some journalistic perspective and skepticism into the discussion. Read it for yourself, and enjoy Quiddity's swift kick in the pants to bullyboy Barnes; it all has to do with the difference between details and facts.

Josh Marshall, in a brief on-the-run comment on the Hayes bruhaha, (also linked to by Quiddity) throws cold water all over the content of the Weeky Standard story, congratulates Stephen Hayes on his "great scoop," and professes his admiration for Hayes work. Josh Marshall has been doing such outstanding work lately, that I'm not about to begrude him his collegial feelings towards other so-called journalists.

So, it's left to blogs like this one to state clearly that we do not admire Hayes' overall work, though there is never a problem in having more information than one did the day before. I'm not sorry about the "leak," because we're not afraid to submit our current beliefs to new information that might arrive tomorrow. But look at the very title of this piece. "Case Closed" Not according to the DOD, where the author of the memo does reside, let us not forget. We start out with a lie, right in the title. No one reading this list of bullet points who is honest would say "case closed." At best one might say, "case advanced."

And here's the opening of Hayes' article as reported at Fox News.

Usama bin Laden (search) and Saddam Hussein (search) had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, Al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for Al Qaeda - perhaps even for Mohamed Atta - according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.

I don't doubt for a moment that Saddam and Usama had an "operational relationship" on some days during that period of time, operational in the sense that they knew how to contact one another, both had operatives who might have done some free-lance maneuvering, and especially on Saddam's side, kept in some kind of dialogue to make sure that bin Laden kept his sights everywhere else but on Iraq. Especially on Saudi Arabia and the US. Remember, Saddam was universally loathed through-out the Arab and pretty much the Muslim world. He'd always run a secular state. He started a brutal war with Iran, an Islamic Republic. It would hardly be surprising to find that he had contacts with Al Queda to make sure that they did not regard him as an enemy.

Hayes gets around the paucity of the links by suggesting that there is much more to come, and that the memo is equivalent to "cliff notes" of the final fully drawn picture. How convient.

The notion that Saddam would ever have given WMD to a terrorist organization run by someone else is absurd on its face. What would stop them from using them against Saddam, if it proved convenient. To believe that goes against everything we know about Saddam's modus operandi, which was to trust no one and to build institutional layers of distrust, one on top of t'other.

On the basis of such unearned certainty, Hayes assaults critics of the administration for insisting that any Saddam/Usama connection was pure fantasy, which no critic has ever maintained, and then goes on to trash Carl Levin, a member of the committee, who is treated as if he had claimed such a connection is pure fantasy, when what he is quoted as asking is, what is the basis for the claim, a question that is treated as a lie by Hayes, because, after all, Levin had access to this "case closed" memo. Doubtless you are familiar with this kind of rightwing circular logic.

Mr. Hayes' most pointed ire is aimed at Al Gore and his August speech critical of Bush's conduct of the "war on terror," and questioning of the Iraq war. Hayes takes great pleasure in pointing out how much of this proof of connections between the two evil doers comes from the Clinton era. But wasn't it the Clinton administration that ignored bin Laden, ignored the threat? How could there be anything worth considering in Clinton era intelligence?

In fact, Hayes gives a perfectly cogent precis of what lead up to the 1998 four day bombing campaign that resulted from Saddam's final refusal to cooperate with UN inspectors, showing correctly that the timing of Operation Desert Fox was forced on Clinton after a prior deal six weeks before, brokered by Kofi Anan within an hour of missiles being launched, broke down for the same reason. The timing was preordained by the prior agreement, which was time limited. I don't remember any such cogent analysis carried on by anyone associated with The Weeky Standard when President Clinton was being accused of wagging the tails of yet more dogs.

What is it with these guys? Do they fool themselves into not seeing the holes in their own arguments? Are they just cynical? Who knows. What I'm sure of is that they know they can get away with this kind of propogandistic so-called journalism, and that nothing they write about has to be "true," to be effective. Fox has continued to run with this story. So will Hayes, so will The Corner, so will National Review. It will become a truth, for a limited number of Americans, no matter the good arguments arrayed against it. But those listeners to Rush and Sean and Dennis and Mancow have friends and relatives they influence. And it will added to the numerous websites, still maintained and kept "up-to-date," that chronicle the Clintons' criminality and the unAmericanism of the Democratic Party.

I don't mean to sound defeatest. There is lots we of the liberal/progressive/Democratic left can do about this kind of thing. And we've taken important steps in figuring out what and how to do it. But beyond all the good work being done by blogs, and by Alterman, and Conason and Molly and Buzzflash and all the others, too often, we're still not fast enough on our feet to get a grass roots response going that could shape the debate.

For instance, wouldn't it be more likely that this story will be covered not merely on whether the content was true, and how true, but also on the circumstances of the leak, the connection to Fox, and the way that Hayes framed his story if we on the liberal/left could get ourselves organized to start writing emails and letters right now to the usual suspects, politely asking the questions that people like Howard Kurtz and Howard Fineman, and hey, how about Fareed Zakarias, should be asking?

Just asking.

Just asking.


Boy, is this ever fun, as long as you don't get obssessive about the impact of all these failures to do what you say you're going to do on actual people. Help us keep track of his failed promises with your own embarrasing question for President Bush. We can be reached by email and Comments.

Just asking.

Republicans will say it's all that fevered Bush-hating that's keeping us divided.

We need to build a case against that claim, a case that Americans in the middle will recognize instantly as the truth, that George W. Bush is the most divisive President in modern American history.

And when Republicans come back with the retort that Lincoln was a pretty divisive President, too, we will remind the rest of America that Lincoln fought a war to unite the country into one again, and that what most of Bush's Judicial nominees seem to want to do is open up the old wounds of division by rolling back the very notion of Judicial review, not to mention that of a strong central government.



As you can see, I was so entranced by Lambert's formula for asking embarrassing questions, for George Bush and friends, I couldn't wait to join the party.

Just asking.

Gosh, it's tiring keeping track. Really, the point isn't that Bush flat out lies all the time; it's that keep track of it all takes so much energy there's no time for anything else. Let's just assume he's lying and save time...

Just asking.

Just asking.

Or the program?

Just asking.

Just asking.

Turns out there will be two: the interim one and later, the real one. Having the interim one will, of course, allow the Republicans to claim that any problems can be fixed by, say, 2005 .... AP:

The United States will help write an interim Iraqi constitution that embodies American values and will lead to the creation of a new government, America's chief postwar administrator in Iraq said Sunday.

"We will write into that constitution exactly the kinds of guarantees that were not in Saddam's constitution.," L. Paul Bremer told ABC's "This Week" from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

"We'll have a bill of rights. We'll recognize equality for all citizens. We'll recognize an independent judiciary. We'll talk about a federal government.

"All of these things will be in the interim constitution which will also provide in a limited time, probably two years, for a permanent constitution to be written that also embodies those American values."

Wonder how that "American values" riff is playing in the mosques ....

WaPo sets the record straight:

Lynching historically refers to a 50-year span of racial violence starting in 1882, during which 2,500 black men, women and children were kidnapped, beaten, burned, hanged and otherwise killed, according to E.M. Beck, a University of Georgia professor who co-wrote a book on the period titled, "A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930."

Although African Americans were the main target of mob violence, Latinos, Native Americans, Jews, Italians and some white people were also lynched. In some documents from the period, local officials said the executions were justified not only for assault, stealing and murder but also if a person "voted for the wrong party," "argued with a white man," "demanded respect," "lived with a white woman," "tried to vote" and "sued a white man."

Not that liberals and Democrats are traitors, or anything.

Funny, isn't it, that WaPo doesn't make the link between the historic reality of lynching and current Republican eliminationist rhetoric. Must be that new quest for civility I keep hearing so much about...

"Bush hating." It's making the mainstream, too, as evidenced by this article in today's Inky. The VRWC mighty Wurtlitzer sure is effective...

Anyhow:

Better Bush-hating than Bushitting!

Headline from the Times Week in Review today:

George Soros Gives, and Republicans React with Fury

A very easy headline to write; you can do it yourself. Here is the template:

________________, and Republicans React with Fury

For example:

View of Reagan not seen as hagiography, and Republicans React with Fury

Wealth not seen as mark of moral excellence, and Republicans React with Fury

Democrats exist, and Republicans React with Fury

And so on....

Bark Bark Woof Woof

Mustang Bobby has a blog....no, not a dog, a blog. Although he may have a dog too. And a cat. And a fish named Rhonda. Thats certainly a possibility.

Slacktivist nicely fillets some recent cloistered ditherings from Daniel Gross.

GROSS: We've all seen the symptoms. A table of four raging over Bush's Iraq policy while sampling the $58 tasting menu at Virot, an expensive new bistro on the Upper West Side. A middle-aged man clucking over the deficit while fondling home furnishings at Restoration Hardware. The thirtysomething lawyer seething over the neutering of the Environment Protection Agency with one side of her brain, while weighing that classic conundrum -- Cape Cod or Tuscany next summer? -- with the other side.

Read it all here

I'd like to stick around for a while but I must be off. I'm busy polishing my English Regency tea service and thinking of replacing the Egyptian motiffs in my grand dining hall with something more rococo-revival.

we have no bananas today, or tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the day after the next day....

Atrios points to a dumb post, possibly the "Dumbest. Post. Ever."

Which reminded me of this:

Bananas are a Dying Breed
Thanks to selective breeding, our favorite fruit can neither reproduce nor defend itself from disease

The banana is about to disappear from store shelves around the globe. Experts say the world's favourite fruit will pass into oblivion within a decade. No more fresh bananas. No more banana bread. No more banana muffins or banana cream pie.

Why? Because the banana is the victim of centuries of genetic tampering. Scientists say they will be unable to prevent the extirpation of the banana as an edible commercial crop. And its demise may be one more powerful argument in the hands of those who are concerned about genetic modification of foods.

The banana's main problem is that it has become sterile and seedless as a result of 10,000 years of selective breeding. It has, over time, become a plant with unvarying genetic sameness. The genetic diversity needed to cope with environmental stresses, such as diseases and crop pests, has long ago been bred out of the banana. Consequently, the banana plantations of the world are completely vulnerable to devastating environmental pressures. ~ continue reading here

by Robert Alison
Globe and Mail
July 19, 2003

The Rise and Fall of the House of Banana...(continued)

First edible bananas date back 10,000 years to South-East Asia. Half a billion people in Africa and Asia depend on them as a staple food. [...] The Cavendish banana now being eaten across the globe lacks genetic diversity, he argues in an article in New Scientist magazine, and its survival is threatened by:

- Panama disease, caused by a soil fungus, which wiped out the Gros Michel variety in the 1950s

- Black sigatoka, another fungal disease which has reached global epidemic proportions

- Pests invading plantations and farms in central America, Africa and Asia alike.

Bananas could split for good
Thursday, 16 January, 2003
BBC News

From The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland via Juan Cole:

An overwhelming 87% said that, before the war, the Bush administration portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat...

Though the all-powerful Clenis can't be ruled out either. Beyond that, I'm stumped.

Yep, the deal under which Bush has agreed to show the 9/11 commission the Presidential Daily Briefings.

First, the terms of the deal won't be made public.

Second, what we do know of the deal says that Bush gets to edit the papers before showing them to the commission. 17 minute gap, anyone? Needless to say, the families know this is fucked, and are saying so.

What I want to know is, why are Democrats even participating in this farce?

Josh Marshall has a trenchant post up about the corner we've backed ourselves into in Iraq. He points out that in many ways this winter is a replay of last, with an isolated U.S. trying to persuade a skeptical world to share the burden of its imperial adventure, only this time the need is real, not theoretical. Unfortunately, we pretty much burned all our diplomatic bridges in between, and not just over Iraq: South Korea's reluctance to get involved is in no small measure the result of our high-handedness towards North Korea/South Korean rapprochement, for example. The Bushies, Marshall notes pungently, mistook "preeminence as omnipotence"; now we're all paying the price.

I'd like to add one more thread to Marshall's. First, the obvious: from the beginning, the hallmark of Bushism in all its forms has been a contempt for institutions, an impatience with process, a disregard for dissent. At one level, of course, it's because they are radicals, and show a radical's hostility to the system that they seek to destroy.

But even radicals can be competent; such radicals would recognize that the art of statecraft is one that applies to all governments, just like the law of gravity applies to all planets. The Bushies, it's been clear since at least 1990, disdained any such recognition that the world is a complicated place, and that the interlocking set of relationships that define world politics, however amoral and expedient, form an ecology that we tinker with, let alone break, at our peril.

This attitude is hardly surprising. These were, after all, people who, almost without exception, avoided any direct contact with the consequences of their own ideas, a character flaw most notoriously symbolized by their eagerness to have other people fight wars they supported, but also in their subsidized, think-tank backgrounds, and paradoxically anti-intellectual, ideologically driven outlooks.

Clinton, an intellectual, recognized the complexities of governance, and governed accordingly, to the frustration of even his supporters; so, too, did veteran and ex-CIA bureaucrat, George HW Bush. So while Shirk's future brain trust silently fumed under the latter, and openly loathed the former, they were held in check by the very institutions they despised.

In Shirk, however, the chickenhawks found their own useful idiot. Shirk not only lacked any appreciation of nuance in diplomacy, he was uninterested in acquiring it. Marinated in privilege, his class prejudices and intellectual sloth reinforced by the simplistic moral nostrums of philistine right-wing evangelism, Shirk's success in business and politics derived instead solely from his ability to keep his sponsors happy and get everybody out before the roof caved in (a talent the Bush family in general seem preternaturally blessed with). Self-reflection and humility are not marketable commodities among hucksters. In this, his cheerleading past was a pretty good prologue.

Shirk's deficiencies were abundantly clear to anyone who paid attention during Campaign 2000, yet, as Bob Somerby and Gene Lyons and a few others have pointed out, Shirk's very liabilities were transmuted by a puerile press corps into something approaching virtues. Drunk with utopian fantasies about the business cycle, enslaved to the cult of celebrity, and deranged by years of sexual McCarthyism and pseudo-scandal politics generally, the Fifth Estate pretty much decided that the Most Powerful Office on Earth could be run on autopilot--indeed would run better on autopilot, or at least in a manner congenial to the thumbs-up/thumbs-down, nuance-free media culture. Thus, what mattered in the new millennium was finding the right cheerleader to occupy this now largely ceremonial post. That the cerebral, technocratic Al Gore still managed to actually get 600,000 more votes than the cheerleader probably only confirmed his backers in their contempt for the popular intelligence.

Now, a year away from a referendum on this experiment in slash-and-burn governance, we are staring a bottomless fiscal hole, a steady stream of "transport tubes," near-complete international isolation, a bureaucratic revolt at CIA and State, deteroriating infrastructure, and the first net loss of jobs since Hoover, all amid a steady worsening of the conditions that preceded 9/11.

If this is success, I don't how much more of it we can stand.

A grassroots documentary filmmaking proposal from Emma.

"I envision American Consensus to be a discussion with Americans. I’d like to hear from people across the country and from all different backgrounds. Initially, I thought about going out and doing the documentary myself, but this has a number of downsides. The biggest is that I wouldn’t have the time or money to interview a truly broad range of Americans. But I also don’t have access to many Americans. So then I wondered: why not see if I could get filmmakers from around the country to interview people in their communities?"




"So, while I'm away, I'll leave this question with you. Are you interested?"

---

Much more insight, information and logistical support via: Notes on the Atrocities

It's a good idea. Anything to coax NTodd away from taking any more pictures of those gawd-damned cats is a good idea.

Go see for yourself.

Big Daddy Coonrod's boy Tuck won't be crossing no line into none-a-that seamy advo-cacy bidness. No seh. It's all just straight-shootin' re-portin' and honest tucket.

Robert Coonrod, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said he had been concerned that some of Moyers' work had crossed the line between reporting and advocacy and had expressed that to Pat Mitchell, PBS president. The CPB is one of the PBS system's chief funders, providing $22.5 million to the system for programming.

"I think we should have more perspectives on public television than we have now," Coonrod said. "We have to put it into the context of good programming."

Coonrod said the CPB is likely to provide seed money to help start Carlson's show. The organization does not fund "Now with Bill Moyers."

[...]

Carlson, the bowtied commentator who will keep his job on CNN's "Crossfire," said he's aiming for something more compelling than the "eat your peas" television of most public affairs shows.

He'd also like to get beyond the few dozen Washington officials that are regulars on political talk shows, he said.

"The standards are going to be pretty clear -- tell me something I don't know and no lying," he said. "They're simple, but you rarely see that on TV, so it's harder than it sounds."

A pilot for Mr. Carlson's show featured 10 guests, including Ann Coulter, a political conservative, a lawyer and an author of best sellers "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" and "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right." - via: TVWeek

---

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it! It's yours.'" ~ Ann Coulter, FoxNews/Hannity & Colmes, June 20, 2001

---

Thank you for your contributions and support for new standards in public broadcasting. I can't wait for the first episode of the AnnSpeak Roadshow or maybe something like Morning Sedition with Rush Limbaugh! What's Neal Boortz up to? Think of it, the Nooze Hour with Neal Boortz. Think of the graphic image marketing possibilities. "Nooze, Spoortz and Boortz!". "Good programming" ideas are hard to come by these days. Now shut up and eat your peas.

Trish Wilson has a searing commentary about that "military AWOL mother" of seven kids, who had been ordered by a judge to not report for duty in Iraq, (since the military dad had already been ordered to Iraq), and then was threatened by her commander with a court marshall if she didn't.

I caught a piece of the story on O'Reilly, who interviewed the mother's attorney, there was some discussion that some of the children were the father's from a previous marriage so that the military mom was actually a military step-mom, and some passing reference to a prior custody battle, but no discussion of the children's birth mom. Turns out two of the children have a birth mom who had been caring for them until a custody battle gave them to the father and his new wife, and it was the judge in the custody case who insisted the mother could not deploy or lose those two children.

Trish pieces together the story for you, and the half-assed way the media has covered it. She doesn't forget to notice how all this is affecting the seven kids in the home. And she raises all the right questions about why no one seems interested in why the birth mom has been excluded from being part of the solution for at least two of these kids to the very real problem of two military parents who are fighting a war in Iraq.

Trish also has an interesting post that uses McDonald's attempt to keep "McJob" out of the new Merriam-Webster's dictionary, to describe the increasing use of appeals to public sentiment by opponents of progressive extensions of human rights.

And as long as you're there, don't miss this post about "metrosexuality," , or this one about "EBay antics," and whatever you do, don't miss this killer response to Monsieur du Toit, DuToitglodytes and Other Irritants.

So now that the country is becoming ungovernable amid escalating terrorist attacks, the plan is to declare victory and get out of Iraq as soon as possible, with guns ablazing.

Interesting. I seem to recall thunderous denunciations being made in the wake of 9/11, of any policy that appeared to address terrorist goals, as unspeakably evil appeasement. Now we're tripping over ourselves to give said terrorists more or less exactly what they're after, lest they spoil Shirk's prom night next September.

"Objectively pro-terrorist," anyone?

I guess Clinton's mistake in Somalia was in not handing over the keys to the Presidential palace to the street vendor selling Kitfo Helper on his way out.

Great moments in slutty ingratiatory PR gibberish. And they wonder why people call em' media whores. Some guy named Jeff Bieber insults the intelligence of everyone who ever lived in Baltimore and pretty much anyone, almost anywhere else, even remotely functionally literate, alive or dead.

"We were looking for a fresh, different voice that we could build a franchise around," says executive producer Jeff Bieber, 50, comparing Carlson to legendary social critic and humorist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).

[...]

Carlson's father, Richard, was head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the early '90s. The younger Carlson has never given money to PBS, but says its acclaimed documentary series Frontline made him a true believer.

Nov. 12, 2003
For PBS, Tucker Carlson the right guy for new series
By Gail Shister, Philadelphia Inquirer

***
Axis of the Golden Spurs ~ and other highlights from the Harpers Index:
(heads up via: TalkLeft)

October 2003

Percentage of Americans who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of this year's tax cut: 88

Average amount these Americans will save: $4

Year in which House Republicans thrice rejected an amendment to upgrade the U.S. electrical grid: 2001

Number of Virginia Republican Party officials fined this year for eavesdropping on Democratic Party conference calls: 3

Years after the Watergate break-in that deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder admitted hearing President Nixon order it: 30

Year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs: 1983

Sept 2003

Price of the oil-field supplies sold to Iraq by two Halliburton subsidiaries during Cheney's tenure: $73,000,000

Amount Pat Robertson has invested in Liberian gold mining: $8,000,000

Estimated number of soccer balls the U.S. government sent Iraq this summer to help "bring life back to normal": 60,000

Amount New Zealand's Fire Service spent this year on a TV campaign against cooking while drunk: $201,300

Maximum number of miles that Ford's most fuel-efficient 2003 car can drive on a gallon of gas: 36

Maximum number its 1912 Model T could: 35

Percentage of the bombs dropped on Iraq this year that were not precision-guided: 32

Average age at which an American believes that adulthood begins: 26

***
Huh?

Using that Biblical method of determining adultery by coitus consequently means determining marriage by coitus. By pointing out the biological impossibility of coitus for homosexuals together, the decision unwittingly indicated that "same sex marriages" are equally impossible.

It also (unwittingly) shows that polygamy is very possible, indeed. History's first recorded "adultery" word and adultery-determined-by-coitus commandment were written by Moses, who married two wives!

Yeah, I know what ya mean. I knew a guy named Coitus. He was from New Jersey. Always telling everyone else what to do. But I don't think he spelled his name like that.

As you've no doubt heard, the Republicans have scheduled thirty hours of debate on the only four of Bush's nominees to the Federal Judiciary Democrats have opposed. The thirty hours, which begins tonight, is a response to the Democrats' threat to fillibuster the four nominees, which the Republicans are labelling as somehow scandalous, because it's a tactic rarely if ever used in the past. Their own machinations that successfully denied approval to over fifty of President Clinton's nominees are somehow not scandalous because Republicans did not rely on the fillibuster. Of course, they were the majority party, the Democrats are the minority. The fillibuster means that approval of the nominations can only be had by a two-thirds 'yea' vote.

MoveOn thinks we ought to let the Senate Democrats know we're with them and is suggesting we keep them company through the long hours ahead via this petition that is a MoveOn/DNC joint effort.

Go , sign the petition. It only takes a moment.

Yes, I know, Plato's forms, or archetypes, or universals, or ideas aren't meant to exist in the everyday world, Plato not being a big booster of "the word made flesh" type of proposition, but you tell me if this NYDaily News column by Stanley Crouch isn't a form of clueless perfection.

For years, Crouch has cultivated a maverick reputation, a man too independent, too free of cant, too original to be pegged with left/right labels. Personally, I've usually found him entirely too pegable, but this little poisened pen letter to "the press," taking "it" to task for its "coverage of casualities in Iraq" reaches new depths, even for Crouch.

Contemplating that coverage, he's glad this press corps wasn't around 150 years ago, when two years into the Civil War, Lincoln, faced with "unprecedented" casuality lists, needed time to find a new General who could win the war, i.e., Grant, because, golly gee, with them being all negative and harping on casualities like they do today, well....Crouch never says, "damn, if the Union might not have been defeated," but you're meant to fill in the blanks.

Crouch allows that Bush et al have made some mistakes.

In our moment, President Bush puffed out his chest too soon, and now too much is expected in too short a time. Plus, the stated goal, the purpose, of the war in Iraq changes shape too often for the President to get an understandable message through to the nation.

And what's Crouch's problem with the rest of the media noticing the above? Actually, so clueless is his explanation, I'm not sure, although perhaps what we have here is nothing more nor less than the obligatory careerist reference to "Bill Clinton" as an icon of the unsavory.

This is all grist for a press corps that has had nothing messy to talk about in high places since Bill Clinton was literally caught with his pants down in the Oval Office. That was scandalous, but it didn't have the dramatic power of Watergate or the uprising against the war in Vietnam or the Pentagon Papers.

The media have been itching for big trouble at the top, and so now the efforts of a small group of determined terrorists is being described as creating a quagmire.

Of course what was unsavory was less what the President did or did not do with Monica Lewinsky in the oval office than what Ken Starr and his merry band of men and elves did in their search for "the whole truth," one more reminiscent of Savanorola than of Jefferson, Adams, or Madison, i.e., ascertain and then publish the minutest details of private sexual behavior between two consenting adults that turned out to have no relevance to anyone beside the principals themselves and those who knew and cared about them. [see the first ten pages of "The Human Stain."] So, in that same spirit, let me point out that we still can't be sure whether the President's pants were actually "down," or whether they were "up" and only his fly was open.

As it happens, Crouch's history lesson is as clueless as his commentary. During those first two years of losing major battles to the south, the press attacks on Lincoln and his war policies were brutal and unstinting. A cursory glance at any issue of Harper's Weekly for those years makes hash of Crouch's basic supposition. Nor is discussion of press attacks on Lincoln missing from any decent book on the Civil War.

The press today, bad press, bad press, is faulted for not putting the number of casualities in perspective, showing that they're remarkably low, compared, I guess, with Civil War casualities, when, remember, to be wounded was pretty much a death warrant.

But what brought my epiphany that what was before me, shimmering in the light of my computer monitor, was an actual Platonic form were these words:

Our greatest American skill has almost always been improvising, discovering the solution in motion, looking away from the music paper and following the dictates of our ears when we heard something in our heads that sounded better than what we were looking at on the paper.

That is where we are in Iraq, and the Bush administration would do well to make that clear to the public.

Improvise? This President? Change policies, "in motion," to meet the demands of an ever-changing situation on the ground? Our "bold" "bring 'em on" leader, steadfast, unmovable, who never acknowledges a change of policy even on those rare occasions that there is one, which is actually okay, because it turns out it isn't a change at all, only a shift in how we're meant to percieve the policy? That President Bush? Should make clear to us that we need to give him room to "riff?"

Mr. Crouch, sir, Bush's whole Iraq policy is just one long riff, and he is as likely to be able to riff on his riff, as a shark is to improvise a new way to attack. Both creatures are designed to move only forwards; neither is capable of looking back, or sideways, or at themselves.

Okay, maybe I'm over the top, with all this talk of Platonic forms.

Maybe I should just have called what Crouch has to say "hooey." But give me this, if it is just an example of hooey, it's hooey of a very high order.

Who says history doesn't repeat itself. Lets play a fill in the blanks game. My own entries appear below in bold type. Each entry is preceded by a number, *1-*15. The original words as they appeared before I replaced them with my own 15 twenty first century entries are listed at the bottom of the post. Compare this twentieth century editorial below with our current twenty first century state of political affairs.

That *1 - George W. Bush has *2 - distorted, obfuscated and lied must be plain to everyone. All the great reforms in government that were to follow his elevation to the purple have failed to show themselves, and he has been *3 - succored by Congress in a manner almost pathetic. His appointments, with few exceptions, have been atrocious, and he is still surrounded in the White House by the same political buzzards who rounded up delegates for him in *4 - 2000 and brought about his nomination. His tolerance of such gentry seems to be almost unlimited: he apparently lacks all sense of smell. No President was ever put into office by a sorrier gang, and none ever revealed a more unashamed gratitude afterward.

In his statecraft no plausible principles are visible. He remains silent about most of the questions that engage the country, and from his acts one can deduce nothing save the fact that he is eager to be renominated and reelected in *5 - 2004, and willing to do anything to bring the business about. No one, at this writing, knows what he actually thinks of *6 - insert your own issue here. He has spoken of it idiotically as a *7 - insert your own list of buzz phrases and platitudes here, and that is about all. Does he believe that it can ever be enforced? He doesn't say. Does he believe that it is intrinsically just, wise and tolerable? No one knows. All that is plain is that he believes the *8 - American Enterprise Institute, NRA, TVNews-o-mercial make believe-land, etc... and the *9 - Religious Right are still strong enough to give him help year after next, and that he is ready to play with them so long as he believes it. To that end he is apparently willing to sacrifice anything, including even the integrity of the judiciary.

During the campaign of *10 - 2000 much was made of the hon. gentleman's political innocence, and it was represented that he had nothing to do with the whooping up of religious bigotry that went on; indeed, he himself let it be known that he was "instinctively" opposed to it. But now the exultant babblings of *11 - Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Judge Roy Moore, Rush Limbaugh, etc... and company make it obvious that he was well aware of everything that was done, and that he made no honest effort to stop it. In other words, he profited knowingly and willingly by the dreadful performance of such fanatics as *12 - insert your favorite monomaniacal right wing wagtail here. A plain word from him might have shut them off: he'd probably have been elected anyhow. But he preferred the disgrace of their support to the honor of a frank man. And since he has been in office he has done nothing whatever to put them down, and is manifestly ready to do business with them again, and on precisely the same terms that prevailed *13 - three years ago, in *14 - 2000.

It is very hard to understand such a man. By what standard of values does he judge himself? What is his honest verdict when he looks into his shaving-glass of a morning? The Presidency is in his hands, and there is nothing higher for him to look for in this world. One would naturally expect a man in that situation to give some thought to the essential decencies - to devote himself to making sure, not of his immediate benefit, but of his ultimate reputation. But *15 - George W. Bush seems either unwilling or unable to take that view. He prefers to go on as he came in - playing shabby politics, consorting with creatures from the abyss, contributing his miserable mite to the destruction of free government among us.

It is a picture so depressing that it seems somehow fantastic. It is difficult to imagine any man of sound sense throwing himself (and democracy) away so tragically.

The above editorial is a bastardization of the original written by HL Mencken, August 1930 / "Gotterdammerung", The American Mercury. A critical excoriation of the Herbert Hoover administration. Mencken's original words, those sequentially replaced above, are listed below.

1- Dr. Hoover
2- blown up
3- kicked about
4- 1928
5- 1932
6- Prohibition
7- Noble Experiment
8- Anti-Saloon League
9- Methodist bishops
10- 1928
11- Deets Pickett
12- Bishop Cannon
13- two
14 1932
15- Dr. Hoover

Thank-you.

We all know that the icon of the spat-upon returning Vietnam vet is one of those myths that just won't die. The real abuse of those who served in Vietnam came from their own government, who exposed them to powerful chemicals without telling them, who provided only the most truncated GI bill benefits, and who ferried them in and out of this country with as little fanfare as possible.

Still, I was pleased to hear someone like Tim Robbins, a fervent questioner of the Bush administration's war policies, when asked by a questioiner after a speech given at the Washington Press Club, what he would say to the men and women serving in Iraq, and to those who were then clearly at that point of a full-scale invasion of that country, Tim replied that he'd say something like, thank-you for serving your country, because there is always honor to be had in such service, even when the military action is wrong, or foolish, or self-defeating. Tim's argument, he was clear on, was not with the men and women who were about to carry out the Bush doctrine, but with the administration who had formulated it.

My approval for the Armed Services in a previous post was understandably questioned by readers like "khr," as well as others. So let me clarify. I'm not naieve about what is probably going on "on the ground," as they say, in Iraq. The "we're here to help you, we're here to fight you as we see necessary, so we can control you so we can help you" logic of this occupation is a deadly one. For the occupiers as much as for the occupied.

As for what responsibilities, and at one levels of command, the individual soldier is responsible for his actions, you won't find a better discussion than this statement by Christian Bauman Atrios recently pusblished at Eschaton.

For a sense of what it's really like for the actual Americans charged with making this occupation work, I urge everyone to read this five part series published in the AsianTimes Online.

The reporter, Nir Rosen, follows the day to day "slog," of 1000 soldiers who make up "the 1st Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), based in Fort Carson of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and currently stationed in al-Qaim, at the western edge of Anbar province, bordering on Syria." Rosen talks to the soldiers, watches what they do, talks to Iraqis and watches how they react, and pays attention to all the details. He finds anger, misunderstandings, ambivalence, reasons to be pessimistic, reasons to hope. Some soldiers succumb to understandable anger, others succeed in attaining a remarkable empathy. I think the series illustrates what I was trying to say about my own sense of pride in the representative nature of our Armed Services, and their level of decency and professionalism.

Today, Veterans' Day is meant to be one of commemoration; what better way to do that than to get to know what thousands of young Americans are experiencing in Iraq?

And what better way to do it than to take advantage of this Washington Post feature, "Faces Of The Fallen," a highly useable data base of pictures and information about the Americans who have died in Iraq. I spent the morning with these heartbreaking snaptshots and brief bios. It won't make you feel better about this war, but there is still something healing about it.

Ask advice on buying a printer cartridge, get tortured as a terrorist suspect.

Lori Piestewa was the first American servicewoman to die in Iraq.

She was twenty-three and the mother of a three year old daughter, Carla, and a five year old son, Brandon, when her Army maintenance unit was ambused near Nasiriya. Her body was found several days later, in a shallow grave. Lori was a Hopi, and after her divorce, lived with her parents on the Hopi reservation in Arizona. She joined the army to better herself.

My compatriot, the Farmer, pointed me to this moving story about an multi-nation commerative service to honor Lori Piestewa, held on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation last Friday.

Florida's Seminole community closed a protective circle around one of its own Thursday, honoring Lori Piestewa, the first American servicewoman killed in the Iraq war.

(edit)

On a cord around her neck, Percy Piestewa, Lori's mother, wears a talisman, a laminated snapshot of the two smiling young women.

The photo was taken in February, when their company shipped out for Iraq. A month later Piestewa was dead, and Lynch was taken prisoner by Iraqi troops.

(edit)

Sonny Nequaya, a Comanche, traveled with several family members from Apache, Okla., to chant, drum and dance at the ceremony. Dressed in feathered hats, beaded garments and moccasins, the Comanches' voices echoed through a large open-air auditorium on the reservation where several hundred Seminoles, Comanche, Navaho and other Native American tribe members fanned themselves in the still heat.

Read the rest. Native-Americans understand that ceremony matters.

Atrios has an interesting post on his reaction of the Lynch affair, somewhere. Sorry, I can't seem to find the link.

Billmon at Whiskey Bar has a much longer one on the subject, as always, an original and fascinating addition to the discussion.

And Jeanne at Body And Soul, picks up on a new attitutde toward the waifish war hero over at Fox News.

My own thoughts in the post below were a provisional attempt to wrest the little blonde from West Virginia from the fickle clutches of Drudge, Fox and talk radio, and to view her, the person of Pfc. Lynch, from some other perspective than a propogandist's.

The weekend has brought new confusions to the story of exactly what happened to her in Iraq. Reports about TIME's selections from the Bragg book tell of her battling with Iraqi surgeons getting ready to amputate her leg, yelling at them not to. Apparently, the book claims that the amputation was considered necessary before she was airlifted to another hospital or to Baghdad; there is also a suggestion that she was being readied for a role in a propoganda film. None of this comes from Jessica herself, who doesn't remember anything from the time of her capture, until she woke up on the hospital from which she was rescued.

The doctors at this latter hospital are already denying the story told in the book. As to the matter of rape, the book makes some such claim based on "medical records," although which records isn't made clear. It sounds like the records might be from the initial hospitilization in Germany. No actual medical rape investigation was done, but injuries suggest, according to this version of what happened, she was anally penetrated. There are quotes from family members verifying their belief, based on what they've been told about those medical records, that this did happen.

I think it is these reports that caused the always excellent "Pansypoo," to question, in a comment to my post, Lynch's believability. I would caution all of us to wait to see what Jessica has to say for herself, and to remember that both she and her family are often only reporting what others say happened. What still stands out to me, is her refusal to be fit into other people's narratives. I should also have pointed out that Jessica has called Lori Piestewa, with whom she was best friends, the real hero, and that Jessica has also fully supported Shoshonna Johnson in her attempts to get the kind of disability benefits awarded to Jessica.

So in the same month that the United States, amid much self-congratulation, added 126,000 jobs, Canada, at 1/10 the size, added roughly half that many. I'm no economist, but to me that figures out to five times the jump on a population-adjusted basis, and without budget-destroying tax cuts or shredding of the social safety net.

Maybe Bushonomics works better, the farther away from it you are?

Through-out the nineties, the right carried on a curious campaign of hostile criticism against the US armed forces. It was a major component of that decade's share of the never ending rightwing declarations that the culture wars, which for the right have always been politics by other means, are still going on. The wedge issue was expanded roles for women in the military. The targets of rightwing ire, who else but "radical feminists," (as if there were any other kind in the rightwing world view), and their pandering puppets in the Clinton administration, of which the most important was the "Pander-in-Chief," Bill Clinton.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, another one of those right-wing front groups, was the pointwoman for most of the attacks, but the likes of Kate O"Beirne and Laura Ingraham got in their licks, too, often attacking the top ranks of the military for being afraid of the feminist lobby, and BTW, without ever being accused of being unAmerican, or rooting for our enemies.

The right has never acknowledged the reality that in an all volunteer armed forces, women doing jobs that take them to the edge, if not right into combat zones, is inescapable. It has nothing to do with feminists or whose in the Presidency, it has always had been a case of military necessity. That's why the Bush administration has done nothing to restore the rules on how women are allowed to serve back to the pre-Clinton days.

One of the most effective of the right's attacks on the notion that women in the military should do no more than hover at the edges of the action was the question they loved to ask, about how America would feel when women soldiers became POWs, when women soldiers started coming home in body bags. The implication was that Americans would fall apart and demand, if not a return to the days of the WACs and the WAVEs, but at the very least, to a military use of women that vindicated the gender views of the right, and further isolated from the mainstream, the feminist left.

Well, now we have the answer to that question. In Iraq, three women became POWs, and one of them, Pfc. Lori Piestewa, tragically, returned in a body bag, but the Rockies didn't tumble, Gibralter didn't crumble, and the American public took it all in stride. In the case of Pfc Lynch, they fairly grooved on her story, at first, anyway, and no place more than on Fox News.

Pfc Lynch presented a real problem to Donnelly and most other rightwing commentators. Here's Jane Chastain in an April 10th column typical of the way many on the right struggled with how to respond to Jessica's story.

Private Lynch survived the ambush in Iraq of the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, but can she survive the ambush of the feminine forces of political correctness that placed her in harm's way.

These people want to use her to promote their theory that men and women soldiers are the same.

(edit)

The feminists found willing accomplices in Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter – who viewed war as unnecessary – and Bill Clinton, who wasn't above hiding behind the skirts he was unable to lift.

(edit)

Unfortunately, all these changes in law and regulations were made with little fanfare, little mention in the press. Also, a myth was perpetrated that once combat positions were open to women, they simply would be allowed to decide if they wished to accept these dangerous assignments.

That myth was shattered on March 23, 2003, when the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company was ambushed after being lost, resulting in the capture of Pfc. Lynch, who is one of the more fortunate members of her unit.

(edit)

No one doubts the bravery of the women of the 507th. Let's just hope that Pfc. Lynch is as brave in confronting the feminists, when it comes time to address these truths, as she was in standing up to the paramilitary in Iraq.

Will she become a soldier of truth – or remain a prisoner of political correctness?

Of course it's nonsense to say that feminists tried to use Lynch; for the most part, we were wise enough not to to hype the clear reality that Americans were willing to accept that when women become soldiers, some of them are going to get captured, and some are going to get killed.

Here's Elaine Donnelly in a story posted at Free Republic, dated in June, asking some hard questions of the Pentagon about what happened to the women taken capture in Iraq. I suspect that many on the left would applaud some of the questions. But in Donnelly's case they betray a gnawing anxiety that the Bush administration is playing the story all wrong. In the comments thread that follows, there is mainly angry support for Donnelly's take on why Lynch's story supports everything Donnelly's ever thought or said about women in the military, but there are some surprises there, too.

When at the end of this week, ABC began to leak some of what Lynch says in her interview with "Diane," the Freeper mood and hearts began hardening toward Jessica, but even here, they're are a few surprises.

Of course women soldiers are still dying in Iraq. And they're still working side by side with their male compatriots, asking for no quarter, giving none. My take on what I've seen in the film from Iraq is that this is an armed forces that truly represents America today, men and women of all races, from red and blue states, working together as comrades, with the utmost professionalism. I'm not talking about what they're being asked to do. They don't have control over that. And please, no comments that they're war criminals for not refusing to serve. Anyone who believes that simply hasn't read enough of the testimonies of those who've been the victims of war crimes.

In their obsession with the ruination of all American instutitions, especially the American military, by the forces of so-called "political correctness," it just might finally be the rightwing that is falling out of step with the mainstream.

From the beginning of this saga of the rescued Jessica Lynch, I was impressed by the quiet dignity with which her family and community conducted themselves. For them, it was always about caring for this gravely injured young woman, and one another. In Germany, when her parents discovered from her doctors that Jessica had suffered neither knife nor gun wounds, they told us. There were a few on camera interviews with neighbors and friends, but not many, and the question of Jessica's herosim was never a cause that either her family or friends took as their own. The controversies swirled around them, without ever distracting them from the central task of healing Jessica, whose intrinsic bravery was not an issue for those who knew and loved her. Yes, the Pentagon asked them to be quiet. But I had the feeling such a request wasn't necessary. In their unemphatic way, this family from Palestine, West Virginia, insulated by the strong bonds of a rural community, managed not to be used by either the media or the government. They might owe the American public what information they had about their daughter, because we all seemed to care so much, but that was all they owed us. (If you haven't had an opportunity to read the Farmer's musings on liberals and their perennial failure to formulate a rural election strategy, you can and should find it here, check out the comments, too, and here.)

While arguments raged about what the true story of her rescue was, and whether or not the Pentagon and/or the press had used her to advance a story line of brave, good American soldiers versus bad, brutal Iraqis, save one, her family and her community kept to themselves and out of the limelight, seeming to understand just how distorting a lens it can be. The long stay in the hospital in Germany before she could come home to continue treatment here spoke to the gravity of her injuries. While she struggled through what had to be an arduous rehab, her parents, friends, and fiance shielded her from the press and from us.

When she was finally ready to come home to West Virginia, pundits said we'd be inundated with little Jessica, the waif/soldier, and speculated on the huge killing she was about to make off the media synergies that would package and repackage her story, her image, pieces of her image, her meaning, Jessica as icon was going to be irrisistible, to her as much as to us. Remember the network letter to her, CBS wasn't it, explaining all the multiple ways she could market herself and her story?

It never seemed to occur to any of these chroniclers of celebrity, often media stars in their own right, that there might be something, even several somethings more important to Pvt Lynch and those who mattered to her than fifteen minutes of stardom. In fact, except for a brief view of her during her public homecoming, and a brief speech, we saw and heard little from her or her parents or her community.

Yes, eventually she signed a book deal, and a TV movie deal. But that was all. And Rick Bragg insured a certain level of quality for the book, while wisely, she had nothing to do with the TV movie. No one should begrudge Pvt. Lynch the money she will make. She could have made more, she could have given multiple interviews, with Barbara WaWa as well as with Diane I'll empathize till you barf Sawyer. She could have posed for covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen. She could have allowed herself to be feted on Broadway, in Hollywood. She could've have been seen gleefully proclaiming she was going to DisneyWorld.

I might be wrong, but I'm betting she won't. And for that, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to that little town in West Virginia for nurturing a family like the Lynchs, and the real Pvt. Lynch, whose strong sense of who she is, and was, coupled with her concerns for the many soldiers whose suffering will not be chronicled, guided her not to make "the most" of her temporary fame. With any kind of luck, we won't weary of Jessica Lynch before we have an opportunity to appreciate and learn anew, how extraordinary "ordinary" people turn out to be, as we're beginning to, now that she's getting her first opportunities to set the record straight.

Well, according to our old friend, Rick Berke, quite a lot. Sorta....Depending...

In an article with the almost Zen title, "What You Can Say Can't Hurt You Until It Can," Berke takes a whack at the Howard Dean Confederate flag flap and discovers that no one should have been surprised because Dean's been making that point about needing to appeal to Southern whites, including those stars and bars references, all year. So, what was different this time? Context, says Berke. "Context is all," he tells us, which will come as a shock to those of you who've read Berke's concertedly out of context coverage of Al Gore and Bill Clinton.

The context now - Dean's the front runner among eight other Presidential wannabes gunning for Dean; Confederate flags on the back of pickup trucks being an irresistible target, all of them were bound to take shots at it.

Berke's point? If any reader can tell me, please avail yourself of the Comments to do so.

To make Dean look like an amateur? To make the other contenders look like cynical grandstanders? To make Times' readers loath politics and politicians even more than they do already by fixating on the most meaningless details of the political process in an analysis that does nothing more than plug in the already well-known, mainly meaningless, and certainly too oft-repeated cliches of what passes currently for political reporting. Whatever his intentions, Berke handily accomplishes all three.

Let's take a look at how a real journalist discuses the politics of the prior week. Sidney Blumenthal writing in Salon finds a connection between Dean & Da Duking Dems, and last week's triumph of Republican outrage, the disappearing CBS miniseries about The Reagans, uniting them under a title drawn from the lyrics of Dixie, "Old Times There Are Not Forgotten."

Blumenthal also points out that Dean as early as last March had expressed his belief that the Democratic party shouldn't and couldn't give up on getting the votes of white Southeners and any other whites who've been split off by a successful Republican policy of dividing Americans from one another over wedge issues. Unlike Berke, Blumenthal takes the time to give us what Dean actually said then:

"I think the Republicans, ever since 1968, with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, have divided us on race issues. Look, when I go to the South, I talk about race deliberately ... If we're going to have elections about race, we might as well talk about it openly. I want white males, particularly in the South, to come back to the Democratic Party. And the case that FDR made was, look, when was the last time you all got a raise? When was the last time your kids got decent health insurance? What kind of schools do your kids go to if you can't afford a private academy?"

For Blumenthal, Dean's mistake last week was his shorthanding of the issue, which left out the context of Nixon and FDR and his own committment to an honest discussion about race. Blumenthal doesn't make the mistake of shorthanding why the Confederate flag is still such a potent wedge, and unlike the rest of the pundit class, who last week seemed to have developed partial amnesia about that symbol's continued potency to stir defensive anger in the hearts of white Southerners, said pundits proclaiming that Dean had alienated both blacks and especially Southern whites, who don't care to see themselves in pickup trucks flying tiny Confederate flags. Maybe not, but an awful lot of them don't care to give up the regular sized version of that flag, especially when flown over state capitals.

Blumenthal is just as good on what happened to make "The Reagans," disappear from the CBS lineup, and finds the connection between that story and the flag flap in Reagan's role as the Republican President who consolidated Nixon's southern strategy, firmly placing the GOP in the position of being the bulwark against any further advances on majority rights by the civil rights movement.

Have I mentioned what a pleasure it is to read a journalist who can actually write well.

Ronald Reagan and the Confederate flag, after all, have long been for the Southern Republican Party the equivalent of apple pie and motherhood.

(edit)

Once a Republican mole filched a copy of the script, the Republican Party chairman, Ed Gillespie (former chief lobbyist for Enron), assumed the disinterested pose of historian. The owl of Minerva perched on his shoulder, he called on CBS to yank the series or put a warning on the screen that would flash every 10 minutes that it was make-believe.

(edit)

Leslie Moonves, the CBS president, abased himself with ritual abject apologies. In the battle for control of imagery, CBS was no match for the RNC. The Republicans know far better than a network the ruthless business of going negative.

Blumenthal reminds us of "certain crucial events" having to do with Reagan's actual words and positions on civil rights whose absence from "The Reagans," didn't bother Gillespie.

Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (calling it "humiliating to the South"), and ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to wipe the Fair Housing Act off the books. "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house," Reagan said, "he has a right to do so."

Neither the words or positions changed that much during Reagan's presidency.

I recommend you read the whole article. Which brings us to the problem of linking to Salon articles that require one to be a subsriber. At the risk of seeming to be a shill for David Talbot, let me suggest that non-subscribers reconsider. Salon has some of the best left of center reporting and commentary anywhere. You can get Salon Premium with ads for only $22.50 a year. And you can get a month pass/ subscription for $6. All past articles are archived and available.

Yes, Talbot has published Paglia, Sullivan and Horowitz. That's okay with me; in a context like Salon's their bent reasoning and sodden prose shows up ever more clearly by contrast with any article by a Sid Blumenthal.

Update:
The National Conference on Media Reform
Nov 7, 2003 / Madison Wisconsin.

We're webcasting live from the Opening Remarks - We're set up here at the Union Great Hall with a live webfeed, courtesy of the fine folks at CAN-TV in Chicago who graciously allowed us to take an output off their audio board.

Listen in here:
Live Audio Webfeed

and/or here:
Streaming Audio - mp3 and Real

Also: Be the Media blogging live from the Conference: (blog comment threads available)
See: Be the Media Blog

additional Conference Information

The anthrax guy.

Again.

OBL, Saddam, the felon in the Plame Affair ... His ass with both hands....

He sure is good at finding other people's money and losing it for them, though. Why is that?

AP:

About 10 percent of mutual fund employees supposedly knew their customers were illegally trading. ... The Securities and Exchange Commission got tipped off but took no action. "It's beginning to appear that the entire crate is rotten," [New Yoirk Attorney General Eliot Spitzer] said. "The problems are structural, they are systemic."

No shit, Sherlock... And we would be trying to privatize Social Security why, again? Why, to transfer money from your pocket to corporations in the form of commissions, of course! Yet Another Republican Con ...

After lying, looting is what Republicans do best!

The winger line on the Philly election—already showing up in the Letters section of our own Inky—is that it showed how Philly is divided by race, and (whether in code or stated outright) that blacks will only vote for blacks, which is why the (black, Democrat) Street won. (This, of course, is part of the larger Republican Big Lie that the Democratic party is not the party of minorities, but the party of only minorities. And I wish the Democrats wouldn't play into this.)

Not so: the numbers tell the tale.

Street stomped (Republican-lite) Katz, 60% to 40%. That means that a significant number of whites voted for Street, since Philadelphia is evenly divided by race. And while the race was close until the end, Street pulled away when the cover of a clumsy FBI bugging operation in Street's office was blown. When it turned out that Street was not a target of the operation, Katz was toast.

Philadelphians in large numbers voted the straight Democratic ticket, which had the additional benefit of electing some Democratic judges. So the story is not black/white division. The story is that the Philadelphia mayoral election was, for some Democrats, a referendum on Bush and his department of justice, and that Bush did badly.

So there's good news for Democrats here: nationalizing local elections can work for them too; the yellow dog Democrat is alive and well; and that Bush is vulnerable among swing Democrats.

One of the nice things about using a library terminal is that you can read library books. Here is the definition of confidence tricks from Sharon Beder's Power Play:

A confidence trick has three elements. First, it involves deception (the trick); second, it involves gaining the trust or confidence of the victim; and third, if successful, it results in the transfer of assets or property from the victim to the con artist.

Of course, the Iraqi War is a good example: the trick was all the lies about WMDs; the trust was winning over the public and the vote for war (the "blank check"); the transfer is to Halliburton, Brown and Root, military and reconstruction contractors generally, and the coffers of the Republican regime. (Not to mention the oil...)

We can also see the same "TTT" pattern at work in the Republican efforts to "reform" Medicare ("reform" is generally a euphemism for the transfer phase of the con) and Social Security.

In general, the goal of the think-tank and MW components of the VWRC is to provide an arsenal of tricks that the Republicans can use in the trust phase. That is why one-liners like Dean's "The Republicans can't handle money" are not only true, but important strategically: they innoculate citizens against trick memes when the con artists try to move to the trust phrase, thus preventing more bad ideas from infecting the body politic.

Since the wingnuts branded Krugman an antisemite for discussing the semiotics of Mahathir's antisemitic rhetoric, I'm sure they will brand him a racist for weighing in on the semiotics of Republican race rhetoric. See also the Pee-Wee Herman Defense.

Meanwhile, he has typically sensible things to say about Dean and the confederate flag pseudo-controversy.

Memo to dipshit Democrats: Forming a circular firing squad isn't making me more likely to vote for you.

The National Conference on Media Reform
November 7-9, 2003
Madison, Wisconsin
Conference Information

Americans recognize that their media are experiencing digital Wal-Martization. Like the chain that earns billions but cannot be bothered to pay employee health benefits, major media concerns in the United States brag about their profits to Wall Street but still cry poor when it comes to covering the news that matters to Main Street.

[...]

There is real work to be done. For a media reform movement that is sustainable enough, broad-based enough and powerful enough to forge real changes in media ownership patterns, and in the character of American media, it is essential to build upon the passionate base of activists who did so much to make media an issue in 2003. We have to make media policy part of the 2004 presidential debate and all the campaigns that will follow it. And we have to make it a part of the kitchen-table debates where the real course of America can, and should, be plotted. To do that, the media reform movement that captured the imagination of antiwar activists and others in 2003 must burrow just as deeply into labor, church, farm and community groups, which are only beginning to recognize how their ideals and ambitions are being damaged. If the initial challenge was one of perception?making media an issue?the next challenge is one of organization. "Media reform has become an issue for millions of Americans," says Bernie Sanders. "Now, we've got to make media reform more than an issue. We have to make it a reality for all Americans." ~ Up in Flames By Robert McChesney (Free Press Founder) and John Nichols

Conference Schedule
Panelists/speakers
Live Coverage

Be the Media has organized a weblog which will feature observations, reports and other commentary from several people throughout the conference, including organizers and attendees. To view the blog, please click here.

Keynote Speaker: Bill Moyers
US Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
US Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
US Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
US Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI)
US Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
US Congressman Bernie Sanders (I- VT)
US Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Ralph Nader
Al Franken
Naomi Klein, author of No Logo
Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW!
John Nichols
Robert McChesney
Charles Lewis, Center for Public Integrity
Juan Gonzalez, National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Linda Foley, President, Newspaper Guild
Musician Billy Bragg
[and more...see links provided.]

Be the Media weblog: http://www.bethemediablog.net/ or click HERE

FREE PRESS/media reform home page

Never had it? It's delicious. Especially with a heaping serving of that spicy Tex-Mex salsa de toro. Of course, what isn't delicious, deep fried? Just don't pay attention to that slightly acrid aftertaste. Instead, reach for a glass of cold Tex-Mex beer, and it'll all go down, real smooth like.

I'm about to talk about Bush environmental policy, so go put at least a case of Dos Equis on ice.

Recently, the Bush administration announced the first retrenchment in the Clean Air Act since it's passage - a new set of rules that will allow the companies that operate the oldest, most polluting plants through-out the country to make major investments in upgrades, without, at the same time, having to meet current standards of pollution control.

The old rules were already a sop to the utilities companies, allowing them to continue to pollute and stay in business and make operational repairs, meanwhile the companies could decide when they were ready to upgrade the operation of these old plants, at which point, the plants would have to meet the same pollution standards as new plants. It's been a long enough time now, that these old plants require upgrades big time, for the sake of the bottom line, but cost-effectiveness doesn't include the health care money spent on a kid's asthma, for instance. No, you and I pay for that.

The new rules turn this original compromise inside out. After years of making money off these old polluting stinkpots, the utilities industry will now be able to operate them as shiny new polluting stinkpots.

And just in case you spent a single second thinking that maybe, just maybe, this Bush decision wasn't only about servicing campaign contributors and might make some environmental sense, check out this brazen annoucement that came down from the EPA yesterday.

A change in enforcement policy will lead the Environmental Protection Agency to drop investigations into 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act, lawyers at the agency who were briefed on the decision this week said.

The lawyers said in interviews on Wednesday that the decision meant the cases would be judged under new, less stringent rules set to take effect next month, rather than the stricter rules in effect at the time the investigations began.

The lawyers said the new rules include exemptions that would make it almost impossible to sustain the investigations into the plants, which are scattered around the country and owned by 10 utilities.

The lawyers said the change grew out of a recommendation by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which urged the government two years ago to study industry complaints about its enforcement actions. The Bush administration has said its goal is to ensure cost-effective improvements to air quality.

Makes sense to me, now that I remember what President Reagan tried to teach us; trees pollute, too. At the time, I'd scoffed at his ignorance, but after being inundated all week long with endless tales of his greatness, especially on MSNBC, which as much as Fox became the "all-Reagan-all-the-time" network, I have to reconsider if I'm the one who might be wrong.

Nah. It's coal plants that pollute.

The greed as well as the gall of this administration and the money patrons who put it in office is unquenchable.

That master debunker of liberal cant, Greg Easterbrook, has come in for quite a lot of debunking himself recently, about such self-selected subjects as men vs women's understanding of the word "no," as in "no, I don't want to have intercourse with you," or words to that effect, an openess to spirituality, (his) vs. the souless secularism of your average theoretical physicist, and the theory of "intelligent design" vs. modern biological evolutionary theory. Notice the structure of Easterbrook's argument seems always to require an other, whose arguments are made in bad faith, or carelessly, at the very least.

It was less than a month ago, (Oct. 14) that Easterbrook wrote a Time editorial, also published in the LATimes, (now disappeared behind the green door of pay-for archives,) that cruelly berated environmentalists and Democrats for beating up on Bush for his environmental policies. Here's as much as I can present to you from the Time abstract:

As President George W. Bush stood in a Michigan power plant last week defending his record on air pollution, critics cranked up the amperage. Bush is " gutting" clean-air protection, Senator James Jeffords pronounced. Environmental lobbyists asserted that air pollution is rising at runaway levels. Things are so far gone, asserted Senator and presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, that Bush has " the worst environmental record in history." Worse than Genghis Khan! Yet nothing you hear about worsening air pollution is true. Air pollution is declining under Bush, just as it declined under...

Clinton is the next word, followed by a list of Presidents; you get the picture. Something Easterbrook doesn't tell you, that Michigan plant Bush spoke at turned out to be one of those old stinkpots that was then under investigation for Clean Air Act violations. But that was before the Bush Clear Skies policy. Easterbrook doesn't discuss that policy in any sort of detail. Nor, please note, does he offer any quote wherein any specific person claims that "air pollution is rising at runaway levels." But the sneering complaints about environmentalists is the core of the piece. Bad faith, he implies, again and again.

Here's a bracing answer to Easterbrook's assertions, (which Alternet is still making available free of charge), by Amanda Griscom of "Grist," an environmental, humor magazine.

"Deep-Fried Baloney" is how she characterizes Easterbrook's environmentalism, quite appropriately, on the evidence she provides. From Ms. Griscom we learn, for instance, that the arguments in Easterbrook's op ed...

...come from "Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record Is Wrong," a report he wrote for the Brookings Institution and the right-wing American Enterprise Institute's Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. The crux of both the op-ed and the report is that the environment, and in particular air quality, has been getting dramatically better over the years -- so what's the harm in weakening a few regulations?

When are we going to stop referring to the Brookings Institution as a "liberal think-tank?" I'll even settle for "the SCLTT," or perhaps "the SCL think-tank."

Griscom questions Easterbrook's air pollution numbers, but she puts her finger on the more important structural dishonesty in his argument, one that occurs again and again.

More intolerable, however, is the way he ignores the primary reason these improvements came about in the first place: the very "command and control" regulations that President Bush is trying to eliminate, and that Easterbrook claims are unnecessary.

The op-ed has too many transparently preposterous statements to eviscerate them all here (take "logging is one of the few endlessly sustainable industries," for example). But the ones that deserve perhaps the most scrutiny are those that applaud Bush for his supposed environmental accomplishments.

Turns out the two "accomplishments" he credits to Bush were actually the work of Carol Browner and the rest of the Clinton EPA, and one of them was "reviewed" by the Bush EPA, doubtless with an eye to non-enforcement. The third accomplishment is a proposal, not yet acted upon.

Read the whole thing. Then check out "Grist" the Magazine. Griscom is terrific.

When it comes to Easterbrook, chronicler of the success of the environmental movement vs. the several generations of actual environmentalists who are responsible for that success, it's always an issue of bad faith.

On whose part, judge for yourselves, in light of yesterday's EPA annoucement.

Yech.

Yep, the Tiffany network backed off a Reagan miniseries because the wingers gave them orders not to.

What next? CBS tries to cover the dubious legacy of the McKinley administration, and Karl Rove picks up the phone and tells them not to?

CBS Executive: "Yes sir, Mr. Rove! A little more tongue?"

Street didn't just beat Katz (the one who didn't put the word "Republican" on his red, white, and blue signs). He stomped him—sixty to forty.

Satisfying.

And now it would be nice if Philly could move from doing 95% of what it takes to be the world class city it should be, to 98%. Starting with my neighborhood, of course!

Great headline: "Dog shoots Frenchman".

Wonder if the Frenchman had a Confederate decal on his back window...

Not you, Rush!
AP:

The Associated Press surveyed comparable U.S. and Canadian prices for 10 popular drugs and found the Canadian prices were 33 percent to 80 percent cheaper.

Could it be... That the Canadian single payer system gives the consumer some leverage against the giant drug monopolies? Naahh...

Conduct yourself accordingly.
Please, have a seat in the anteroom, your fath'eh will be with you momentarily.

"I'll admit that there are some crazy and wild things that go on in our family.

"Nancy, for example, believes that before you visit you should call and make an appointment, as if you were going to the dentist or the doctor.

"It's crazy, but that's what she does. That's the way she is. Do I think it's nuts? Sure. But it's nothing to get all riled up about. I still see my dad. I just have to do it by appointment. So what?"

- Michael Reagan (Ronald Reagan's son) describing the House of Gipper's old timey conservative family value visitation protocol.... Via: thescotsman.co.uk

Atrios draws attention to the craven, unrecorded vote on the $87B for Iraq, which, we will recall, is opposed by roughly 2/3 of the public. Of Democrats, who mostly shared Republican strategy of abdicating responsibility, Harold Meyerson observes:

[I]t's not hard to understand why. The administration's handling of both the war and occupation has been so deeply flawed that it has created a situation to which not only its own policy but all the existing alternatives are clearly inadequate. Bush and his neos have given us a kind of Gothic horror version of Goldilocks, in which the policy alternatives are either too big or too small, while their own is just wrong.

This is the talent for failure that the Bush Family in general, and Shirk in particular, have raised to an art form. Not only do you and your cronies make the public bear the financial costs of your own incompetence and greed, you make your enemies bear the political costs of the fallout as well. (As did Clinton, the next Democratic President will again face the thankless task of fixing our looted fiscal and public infrastructure.)

Of course this wouldn't work if the press would stop pretending that any policy statement too nuanced for a brain-damaged bonobo to grasp is evidence of waffling or shiftiness (ask Wesley Clark). Instead, Democrats can now expect to be pilloried no matter that they do.

Funny:
Homer Simpson [having bankrupted the family by buying a pony for Lisa over Marge's objections]: Jeesh Marge! First you didn't want me to get the pony, now you want me to take it back. Make up your mind!"

Not funny:
SEELYE: Right after [Clark’s] health care speech, the general introduced some new confusion into his stance on the administration's request for $87 billion in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that he opposes the request, and he repeated that position on Tuesday. But he told one woman who asked him what he would do about Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we’re going to pay for them."

We'd like to add our congratulations to the "Kos" family, and a welcome to the world to their truly beautiful new baby boy. Mother "Kos" produced this little treasure after a heroic twenty-odd hours in labor; talk about labor-intensive. Don't miss the pictures - this is one gorgeous baby. (Sorry, can't provide a link that seems to work; go to Daily Kos, scroll down, click to go to next 13 posts.)

You've no doubt heard that Linda Tripp, the well-known audiologist, has settled for a cool half a mil, give or take a hundred thou, in her suit against the Federal government, for having violated her privacy. Yes, you heard that right. Here's CNN's verklempt version of the story that gets every fact wrong. Not a surprise.

Everything you will hear about this settlement, what provoked the lawsuit, and what the issues were is going to be wrong or a deliberate lie. I know because having happened to hear the actual story explained in an NPR interview with Jane Mayer, who wrote the New Yorker story that started the whole thing, I then spent the last years of the twentieth century listening to winger propogandist after winger propogandist repeat a mangled version of the story based, quite simply on lies, which our old friend, the SCLM, parroted with religious devotion.

Appropriately, the man who introduced us to the SCLM, Eric Alterman, sets the record straight, based on his own personal reporting. That he took the time and the trouble is what makes Eric so terrific. Don't miss it. And don't forget the facts, and everytime you hear those same lies trotted out by friends or family who don't know better, let them in on the truth.

One other lie, completely accepted by the SCLM, that Tripp herself, and her supporters, like Lucianne, trotted out continually - that Linda only started her historical recordings at the point that she was being pressured by Monica, on behalf on the President, to commit perjury - deserves a thorough debunking.

Here's the problem with that version of events. Tripp started recording those phone conversations in October, which was a full six weeks before Tripp contacted the lawyers for Paula Jones to clue them into who Monica was, the fact of Tripp's recordings, and to make arrangements, to which they immediately agreed, for them to subpeona her, and to pretend that she was an unwilling witness. How do I know? It's all there on the recordings of her phone conversations. When the recordings were released in August of 1998 and C-Span broadcast them all, I thought I'd take a listen for maybe half an hour, and then couldn't stop listening for all twenty hours or so.

Only hearing the actual recordings Tripp herself made can give you a true idea of Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky, and of President Clinton, and of many others in the Clinton administration who had treated Tripp with extraordinary decency, even kindness.
Neither Monica nor President Clinton could have known there was any issue about which to commit perjury in October; Monica had no idea that she would be called as a witness by the Jones legal team, the President had no idea that Linda Tripp had become Monica's confidante.

Hatred is a transformative emotion, and though I'm sure that to those who know her, friends and family, Linda Tripp has her delightful qualities, what her consumming hatred of the Clintons turned her into is surely a cautionary tale.

UPDATE: So sorry, listed wrong MoveOn link; here's the correct one, I hope. Also just corrected it in the body of the post. Again, my apologies, especially to any of you that were interested; you could still be one of the first 10,000.

You've probably heard about a new documentary, Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War, by Robert Greenwald, whom I can assure you, is a genuine Hollywood heavyweight, at one time the king of quality TV movies and mini-series, in fact the kind of mini-series that The Reagans probably was, before its recent demise as a CBS offering.

The documentary sets out to show how "the Bush administration distorted evidence and lied to the American public to make the case for military action." Joe Wilson, Rand Beers, John Dean and David Albright are among the interviewed. The documentary has it's own website.

What does this have to do with MoveOn? Though they don't generally sponsor documentary films, this is their kind of movie To quote Eli Pariser:

True to the MoveOn ethic, director Robert Greenwald lets the facts speak for themselves. And the results are pretty shocking.

Therefore, MoveOn is offering a free copy of Uncovered for the first 10,000 people who donate $30 or more to their $10 million MoveOn.org Voter Fund ad campaign by midnight. Not sure whether that's midnight today or tomorrow.

To get a copy of the documentary and help the cause; just click here.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

In followup to the post below, here's Maher Arar's account of his treatment at the hands of the US INS and Syrian intelligence. I can't tell if he's being sarcastic when he writes, "Of course I thank all of the journalists for covering my story."

Then again, Arar comes from a country with a functioning press, so maybe it's not gallows humor after all.

Headline spied this morning in a news roundup from NYTimes.

Ex-chief of HealthSouth Scrushy Indicted on 85 Counts of Fraud

CEO Scrushy; tell me that's not straight out of the Simpsons. Maybe Krusty's more successful cousin? Except it's all too real. Thank-God that private enterprise finally entered into the health care field to save us from creeping socialism, the logical outcome of the triumph of the New Deal, as I've only recently learned, as a result of the nomination of Justice Janice Brown by President Bush. Thank-God for President Bush. And President Reagan. Remember Humana Inc, anybody? Of course Humana is no longer with us, while Medicare is, which only shows you how corrupted we've all been by that early triumph of socialism, Social Security.

Here are a few prize moments from the AP story.

Former HealthSouth Corp. head Richard Scrushy was indicted on 85 counts, accused of juggling the corporate books in a huge federal fraud case in which 15 former executives of the rehabilitation services giant already have pleaded guilty.

The indictment, dated Oct. 29 and released Tuesday at the federal courthouse, accuses Scrushy of a range of criminal violations including securities fraud and false certification of corporate statements.

Scrushy attorney Donald Watkins said the HealthSouth co-founder and former chief executive officer will plead innocent. (edit)

Watkins declined to comment on the 85-count indictment except to say, ``There's a whole group of lawyers studying it.''

I'll bet there are. Add to that discussion of the "framing" of issues being carried on by Digby and others, how we on the left have managed to let the right vilify trial and defense lawyers, who are the only ones who occasionally represent people like you and me, while the overwhelming percentage of legal resources in this country are used up by corporate law firms.

On the brighter side, what a hard working Justice Dept. we have, that they can catch a Scrushy and still have the time to go after Martha Stewart for a questionable, ill-defined charge of insider trading. I guess a certain amount of time is being freed up by not having to bother with so many tiresome requests for wire taps, and being able to hold bad people without actually indicting them.

Who exactly is HealthSouth?

"Birmingham-based HealthSouth, founded by Scrushy in 1984, is the largest U.S. provider of outpatient surgery, diagnostic imaging and rehabilitation services. The company has some 50,000 employees and about 1,700 sites in all 50 states and overseas.

And George W. Bush has the gaul to continually speak of the need to "modernize" Medicare. But most Americans won't feel the outlandishness of that claim, because of yet another example of brilliant rightwing, Republican "framing." Medicare has problems with rising health costs, let's modernize. He'd get a very different reaction if he said privatize, but that's what he's talking about.

We've had twenty-five years now of experience with the failures of corporatized private health care, and it's clear as clear can be that market forces do not have a major impact on rising health costs. The amount of fraud that's been uncovered over the years commited by these giant "health" conglomerates is actually quite astonishing, but it shouldn't be surprising. Corporations are legally bound to put the good of their stockholders above all else, including their customers. Marketeers will tell us customers are protected by the laws of the market; if a corporation doesn't produce what the customer wants, the customer goes elsewhere, according to the sacred law of competition. Sorry, guys, ain't working in health care.

It's interesting to look back at the arguments used against the Clinton health plan in 93. Every one of the projected horror stories perpetrated by Sen Graham et al about what the Clinton plan would do if it were allowed to see the light of day has come true - health care is being rationed, patients no longer choose their own doctors, the sacred relationship between patient and physician is constantly compromised by the intrusion of bureaucrats, even the insured have to worry about cutbacks in benefits, the uninsured have increased - but none of this has happened at the hands of government, all of it is the work of these giant "health" conglomerates. And how are the Republicans and the President going to lead us out of this untenable wilderness of contradictions, you should be asking yourself. Why, by giving the very people who have brought you the current health care crises a bigger piece of the action, i.e., exactly more of the same snake-oil that has gotten us here.

And yet in every discussion of national health care, what is brought up again and again as an example of disastrous health care policy? Yeah, that's right, the Clinton health care initiative. This is, in part, because the Clintons tried to find a middle course between rampant, unchecked corporatism and a single payer system and managed to satisfy no one. But people talk about it as if it had become policy. It may have been a political disaster for the Clinton administration, but the real disaster for health policy was the failure of congress and we, the people, to address the very real problems that the Clintons, at least, were trying to.

I understand why both Clintons continue to apologize for having had the temerity to try and do something about a failing health care system; they were beaten to a bloody pulp for it, and not only by rightwingers, but I sure wish they could find a way to stop their standard, sheepish, good-humored, "wow, were we ever wrong" response whenever the issue of health care is brought up.

In fact, they were right. Without governmental intervention, the American system of health care provided primarily through employment by private health plans was bound to prove untenable within the next decade, which is where we are today. We no longer have a failing health care system, we have one on the verge of collapse. Funding is lacking for the few emergency rooms that are left. Those without the means to buy either health insurance or medical care wait until a crises and then seek care in emergency rooms, the most expensive and least effective way to provide health care. And don't think the care is free; it is not uncommon for hospitalized patients at public hospitals without insurance to find themselves with severly garnished wages, and even to end up jobless and homeless. Ever increasing costs are forcing large industry-wide health care plans to continually cut back benefits, while raising co-payments. Large, private HMO's are increasingly finding they can't make money and provide the same level of benefits most Americans take for granted any health plan should include. Smaller employers are increasingly unable to provide any kind of benefits to their workers. Cost of prescription drugs is through the roof and spiraling up into the stratosphere. The ranks of the unsured continues to swell.

And the President wants to "modernize" Medicare by making it as similar to what the rest of our health care system looked like in the early nineties. A person could start to develop a cold; a bad, bad cold. A person could start to get angry, really angry. Let's not do either. Let's start to get smart. Starting with the Medicare bill that is coming out of conference and probably to be voted on soon, and which is totally unworthy of Democratic support.

As this is a complicated subject, and this post is longer than it should be, but what's the point of having a blog if you can't rant, I'll address the issue of what we need to do to help Democrats defeat the Medicare bill in another post later today.

Maher Arar, Canadian citizen, was released October 5 from 10 months in a Syrian jail where he was tortured by Syrian intelligence. Today he spoke out for the first time. The story he told of confinement should make the hardest heart shudder:

Speaking publicly Tuesday for the first time about his experiences, Mr. Arar described a nightmarish series of beatings, threats and said that he had spent more than 10 months in a cell the size of "a grave."

"The past year has been a nightmare," he said. "What I went through is beyond human imagination."...

He said that he was beaten on every part of his body with a frayed electrical cable and repeatedly threatened with electric-shock torture. "At the end of the [first] day, they told me tomorrow would be worse."

Ready to invade Syria yet? Not so fast.

Turns out the U.S. put Arar there.

Maher Arar, a successful businessman, was one of two Canadian citizens arrested in the U.S. during flight layovers in the wake of 9/11. Syrian by birth, he was interrogated by U.S. officials and then deported. Procedures in effect up to that time called for deporation to the last stopover, which would have been Zurich. Instead, he was deported to Syria, from which he had fled to avoid military service as a teenager, where he was accused of involvement with al-Queda and subjected to the tender mercies of the Syrian police.

If this recap doesn't jog your memory, don't feel bad. Although Googling "Maher Arar" turns up 5,500+ hits, with entire sites devoted to his cause and ample controversy at the time of his arrest in the blogosphere and international human rights groups, you will get exactly one hit on CNN, one hit on Fox (which no longer works), zero hits on MSNBC, and zero hits on The New York Times. WaPo had a whopping two stories, one of them only in the last month. In the other article, from this June, Anne Applebaum of Slate sneered:

In Canada, meanwhile, a great fuss was raised when a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was deported by U.S. immigration officials to Syria. News reports said the man had been "disappeared" -- as if the United States were a Latin American dictatorship. It then turned out that the Canadian Mounties had been investigating the man for a year and had quietly asked the U.S. government to pick him up.

As we can see, such a characterization is absurd on its face. He wasn't "disappeared" at all; we knew exactly where he was at all times. And no one cared. As for Canadian complicity:

John Harvard, a member of Parliament, asked [Solicitor General Wayne] Easter: "Aren't you as mad as a wet hen over the behavior of the Americans? They took a Canadian citizen . . . and they sent him to a Syrian gulag." He called on the Canadian government to lodge an official protest with U.S. officials.

Easter, who apologized for Arar's ordeal, said the police assured him they were not involved in the decision to deport him. He said the United States "indicated that had happened on the United States' soil and it was their decision."

Recall the intellectual climate in the wake of 9/11, when pundits in High Places placidly contemplated the benefits of outsourcing interrogation of suspected terrorists to countries like Egypt, Malaysia, and other countries where the fine points of human rights were not always punctiliously observed. Such lamentable decisions would be justified, we were told, in pursuit of the great good.

While these cretins forgot all about their enthusiasm for U.S.-sanctioned torture, Osama Bin Laden spent the last 10 months living in cave, and this man spent them living in a box.

Yet another success story in the War on Terror.

[Update: With thanks to alert reader pablodiablo, I corrected the date of Arar's release.]

A. Bullied by the VWRC. Synonyms: wussy, winger-whipped.

Example: CBS brought a new level of civility to American political discourse by cancelling a mini-series on Reagan that wingers deemed insufficiently hagiographical.

Yep, CBS caved on the Reagan miniseries.

SCLM ...

OY.

Via David Lindroff writing at Salon, we are told that the Bush administration has quietly begun a campaign to bring the community draft boards back to life by filling the 16 % of vacancies on them.

I don't know about you, but I had no idea such boards still existed, and to the extant they do, would have thought the vacancy rate to be more like 90%. Shows you how much it's possible not to know about your own damn country, even when you're trying to pay attention.

Lindroff gets a lot of his information off an "obscure" governmental, (actually, DoD) website DefendAmerica, "the U.S. Department Of Defense News About The War On Terrorism." that features a prominently placed call "To Serve Your Community And The Nation," by becoming a local Selective Service Board member. Placed unobstrusively within the annoucement of how to apply is this unexploded bomb:

If a military draft becomes necessary, approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on Federal guidelines.

Lindroff includes the "not to worry" comments by the administration.

Not since the early days of the Reagan administration in 1981 has the Defense Department made a push to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots. Recognizing that even the mention of a draft in the months before an election might be politically explosive, the Pentagon last week was adamant that the drive to staff up the draft boards is not a portent of things to come. There is "no contingency plan" to ask Congress to reinstate the draft, John Winkler, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for reserve affairs, told Salon last week.

Rep. Rangel isn't so sure. Experts quoted come down on both sides, not gonna happen, and the logic of the current policy points in the direction of a draft. Here's Ned Lebow, a military manpower expert and professor of government at Dartmouth College:

The government is in a bit of a box," Lebow says. "They can hold reservists on active duty longer, and risk antagonizing that whole section of America that has family members who join the Reserves. They can try to pay soldiers more, but it's not clear that works -- and besides, there's already an enormous budget deficit. They can try to bribe other countries to contribute more troops, which they're trying to do now, but not with much success. Or they can try Iraqization of the war -- though we saw what happened to Vietnamization, and Afghanization of the war in Afghanistan isn't working, so Iraqization doesn't seem likely to work either.

"So," Lebow concludes, "that leaves the draft."

Lindroff points to the roadblocks in instituting another draft, starting with congress, where authorizing legislation would have to be passed. I rather think it won't happen, for all kinds of reasons, although I'm waiting for those columns by Tom Friedman and Richard Cohen praising the Bush administration for providing for the possibility, despite the political liability.

What this secretative preparation actually illustrates is the total lack of transparency in everything this administration does; in a crises, the draft can be instituted, without prior discussion, without input from congress, and most certainly without input from the American citizenery, but with plenty of bluster and fear-mongering and cries of un-American for anyone who dares to question, how did it come to this?

The other, broader issue it raises is the on-going assumption of this administration, mirrored in Secretary Rumsfeld's much discussed and carefully choreographed leaked memo, that the locus for all aspects of our response to terrorism, and in particular that eminating from the Islamic world, should, quite naturally, be centered in the Department of Defense, an astonishing assumption on the basis of the record so far.

National Review Online chucklehead Clifford D. May's recent scurryings in The Corner offered up the following sound-bite of stretched historical musings. For a fuller context (and link) see Leah's earlier post here. And as I write this, Digby's take here. (I especially enjoyed the part about "Joan Crawford in a coat hanger factory.")

Otherwise, consider the following tid-bit of fanciful prattle from Clifford D.

That includes you, Ms. Doumani. You too, represent the hated Judeo-Christian West and it won't help for you to say you never eat at McDonald's and that you think George W. Bush is a unilateralist and uncultured cowboy. The fact is you're working for the Red Cross and people who remember the Crusades and the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols remember what that cross used to stand for. - Cliford D. May

"Huh?" you might be askin' yourself "did I read that right?" Well, you read right.
Does Cliff think that medieval European Crusaders in the role of International Red Cross workers were passing out leeches in Baghdad in 1258? Ok, forget the Red Cross. Does Cliff May perhaps believe that European Christian Crusaders were vacationing in Baghdad in 1258? Maybe taking calligraphy classes from Al-Mustasim Billah?

Does Clifford think that the international emblem of the Red Cross is derived from the St. George's cross? The same English St. George recalled by legend for his assistance of the Christian Crusaders at Antioch? The same St. George popularized in Edmund Spencer's allegorical tales The Faerie Queen and The Legend of the Red Cross Knight? I'll bet he does. It is not. The Red Cross symbol is an inversion of the modern Swiss federal flag. And its no more a Christian symbol than our own modern day Santa Claus is a Chrsitian symbol. (*more on this later) By the way Cliff, that story about St. George and the dragon....you know, the big dragon in the pond and the pretty girl and all that... thats a poem Cliff. Its not a like a Bible story or anything. Its an allegorical poem that was written in the late 1500's. In case you were wondering.

And whats with the "fact is" time travel thing? Golly Cliff, as if perhaps there are still people wandering around out there today, alive, working for the International Red Cross, who are old enough to personally "remember" the Crusades and the sack of Baghdad by Hulagu's Mongol army? What in the name of gurgling baby-blue Jesus are you talking about Cliff-erd?

I mean really, is this the kind of sophomoric twaddle that passes for journalism over at NRO these days? Wasn't the National Review at one time, say 30 or 40 years ago, at least considered a mildly serious publication? Well maybe not, but in any event, see what all that inbreeding will buy ya. And to think that Clifford gets paid actual real money to scratch that kind of bull-doodle in a corner. Gosh, they'll let anyone into that NRO place these days.

And whats with the "hated Judeo-Christian West" reference as it relates to the Crusades and Ms Doumani? Uh, Cliff....do you have any idea what those happy Crusader doods, swimming in visions and voices of angels, contributed to the legacy of "Judeo-Christian" hatreds. And long before anyone erected a golden archway to fast forage injection mold hamburgerland. Lets revisit the first Crusade (1095-1099) to get a little better feel for the erstwhile era. [italic emphasis below are mine]

After spending six months in refreshing and reorganizing their weakened forces, they led their armies toward Jerusalem. At last, on June 7, 1099, after a campaign of three years, the Crusaders, reduced to 12,000 combatants, stood in exaltation and fatigue before the walls of Jerusalem. [...] On July 15 Godfrey and Tancred led their followers over the walls, and the Crusaders knew the ecstasy of a high purpose accomplished after heroic suffering. Then, reports the priestly eyewitness Raymond of Angiles, "wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded...others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers; others were tortured for several days and then burned in flames. In the streets were seen piles of heads and hands and feet. One rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses."

Other contemporaries contribute details: women were stabbed to death, suckling babes were snatched by the leg from their mothers' breasts and flung over the walls, or had their necks broken by being dashed against posts; and 70,000 Moslems remaining in the city were slaughtered. The surviving Jews were herded into a synagogue and burned alive. The victors flocked to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, whose grotto, they believed, had once held the crucified Christ. There, embracing one another, they wept with joy and release, and thanked the God of Mercies for their victory. ~1~

Can't you just feel the "Judeo-Christian" Crusader love - Clifford? What do you suppose those 11th century Red Cross workers thought of that holy smokin' cakewalk?

Due to the length of this post, and to save space, I've posted the remainder at the following overflow page: CONTINUE HERE if you want to.

Weep Xs 16; Xs20.

This article was written before the shoot down of that Chinook, but read it with these new losses in mind.

It's a fine, honest piece of reporting, and writing.

In the last two weeks, 22 American soldiers have given their lives to the occupation of Iraq, a platoon of 21 men and 1 woman cut down to a stack of photographs by accidents, illness and the rising insurgency.

There is Lt. David Bernstein, a soldier's soldier who was killed two weeks ago and buried on Friday at the United States Military Academy here. As his mother sat with a folded flag in her lap and his father accepted a Bronze Star, even the Green Berets cried.

And there is Sgt. Aubrey Bell, the 280-pound Alabama National Guardsman, who drove a forklift and ate mayonnaise sandwiches, and who was shot to death in front of a police station.

And Pvt. Rachel Bosveld, the 19-year-old military policewoman who loved to draw forest scenes and was silenced by mortars.

And Sgt. Paul J. Johnson, a paratrooper who could imagine no fate better than leaping into the night sky, who died after being burned by a bomb.

And Pvt. Jamie L. Huggins, Pvt. Jason Ward, Pfc. John Hart, Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring and 14 others.

The details of the impact of these deaths on the people left here at home are devastating, even just to read about.

Read it anyway. Not to sharpen your anger about what's going on in Iraq, though. The magnitude of the painful loses described here demand to be felt on their own, for their own sake. I would hope that one thing left and right, supporters and critics of our Iraqi policy could agree upon is the sacred nature of the sacrifice of life and limb in service to one's country.

Honest reporting, it presents a mixed reality.

Sergeant Huggins, a 26-year-old paratrooper, was killed during a patrol in Baghdad on Oct. 26, after his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb, the insurgency's weapon of choice.

Danielle Huggins had just heard from her husband the day before. She said she asked him: "Why are you still needing to be there? You should be at home."

His answer, she remembered, was, "We are doing good, Danielle; we are doing good."

Fort Hood, Tex.

Andrea Brassfield's husband painted a different picture.

"He told me: `They don't want us here. They throw rocks at us. They shoot at us. I don't know what we're doing here,' " she said.

Specialist Artimus D. Brassfield, 22, a tank driver for the 66th Armored Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, was killed in a mortar attack in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Oct. 24. His death has not changed his wife's opinion of the war. Ms. Brassfield was against it when it began. She is against it now.

Read the whole article. Those American families doing the actual sacrificing deserve our undivided attention.

I'm speaking of Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who according to the St. Petersburg Times isn't sure to run again for his senate seat.

Apparently, he hasn't yet decided not to; he's pondering, options. It's not about getting out to make a "killing" financially.

He says he might teach or write a civics textbook. He would also like to spend more time with his 10 grandchildren and "continue the wonderful romance with my wife."

Well, you can read the article yourselves.

My point is that we still need people like Sen. Graham, now more than ever. So, why not let him know. Doesn't matter whether you're in his state or not, though if you know any Floridians, by all means, email them to let them know it's time to put their two cents in.

It's not just a question of keeping his seat a Democratic one, although that's a real problem if he decides not to run. Sen. Graham has stood for all the right things for a long time now, including having appointed most of the Justices on the Florida Supreme Court. We've never needed voices like his more than at the present moment.

Here's his Senate webpage; you can read some of what he has to say there, to remind yourself how good he can be.

His Washington office telephone number is 202-224-3041; his fax # is 202-224-2237.
The address is 524 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Call and let him know he's still needed; you can reference the stptimes story. Tell the receptionist why you're calling and ask to talk to a staff member. Or leave the message with whomever answers the phone. Follow up with a Fax. And then write a letter.

This Senator is worth it.

Gillian Welch Tour Dates: 2003
more information



November 2003
Nov 2, Sun. - Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis, MN
Nov 3, Mon. - Barrymore Theater, Madison, WI
Nov 6, Thu. - The Tralf, Buffalo, NY
Nov 7, Fri. - State Theater, Ithaca, NY
Nov 8, Sat. - Avalon Ballroom, Boston, MA
Nov 10, Mon. - Pearl Street, Northampton, MA
Nov 11, Tue. - The Egg, Albany, NY
Nov 13, Thu. - Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
Nov 14, Fri. - Town Hall, New York, NY
Nov 16, Sun. - Recher Theatre, Towson, MD
Nov 17, Mon. - Theater of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Nov 18, Tue. - 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
Nov 19, Wed. - Charlottesville Performing Arts Cntr, Charlottesville, VA
Nov 20, Thu. - Lyric Theatre, Blacksburg, VA