WILL THEY OR WON'T THEY?

Read this and then tell me whether the American or Israeli governments will be able to put aside their ideologies and their years of suspicion and hatred and take Hamas up on what appears to be an offer.

Clinton would. These guys, I doubt it. Yet maybe there is here the seed of the end of all this conflict. At the least, it proves (if taken at its word) that Hamas is not Islamist, just fighting for its constituents. Democrats should insist that it be followed up, but not by Condoleeza Rice - the diplomacy here, if there is any, should be outsourced to someone or some body which understands the nature of diplomacy. Rice could only fuck it up. Why not Bush 41?

OCTOBER SURPRISE

The problem with what Kerry said (whether he meant it or not) is 1) there is some truth to it, and 2) it definitely represents the attitude of the liberal elite towards soldiers, no matter how much they express admiration for them, and no matter how grateful they are (they should be, but may not be) to them for shouldering the burden of front-line defense.

It echoes the feelings of the anti-Vietnam War movement, and so it can be easily depicted as Kerry's attitude, and Kerry's attitude can be attributed to all the liberal millionaires.

Bloggers are trying to make light of it - but this is Karl Rove's October Surprise. How ironic that it was handed to him by a bad Democratic pol.

Why didn't somebody's staffers get him to correct himself?

Democrats had better disown him immediately.

THE MATH

Rumsfeld says in order to improve security in Iraq we need 40,000 more Iraqi security men.

Right. We now have 325,000 of them who can't get anything done. 40,000 more worthless personnel is the obvious fix.

Let me put the math plainly: 325,000 + 40,000 = 0.

When are these people going to stop dicking around?

GOOD ON HIM

The US is all upset because Iraqi premier al Maliki kowtowed to al Sadr and ordered US troops to pull back from checkpoints around Sadr City.

But the point is being missed here. This is good news! The Iraqi government actually did something! It acted like a government!

A few more moves like that, and we can leave Iraq.

MY BAD

The Democrats need to put a man on John Kerry whose sole job is to stop him from talking.

Kerry botches a joke so it turns out he is demeaning the troops in Iraq. (Okay, that's Kerry. "I voted for the appropriation before I voted against it.")

My first reaction was that Kerry should go out and hit his attackers back, telling them he won't be criticized by people who have never served. That's what he did. Then I remembered: Swiftboating. And that's what you're going to get for every word Kerry utters.

Kerry screwed up the 2004 election. Who would have believed he'd get a chance to screw up this one too? And the whole thing was gratuitous; there was no need for any of it.

Allow Kerry to say one thing: "Sorry. My bad." Then send him anywhere they have no microphones.

At least this should put an end to any Kerry talk for 2008.

FINALLY

It's about fucking time.

Now where are the Muslim equivalents?

OK. Here's a start on that.

DELAYED

One more reason to love La France.

Although, when you think of it, the same thing is going on here. Only the method of payment is different, and delayed.

HEY, NANCY ...

The following three actions should be a part of Nancy Pelosi's first 100 hours program:

1. Reinstate the fairness doctrine
2. Reinstate net neutrality rules
3. Reformulate rules for media agglomeration and force large companies to divest themselves of what they own beyond new, reasonable limits

There is nothing more important than these three things.

NOT NEWARK

From ABC News:

In a test of airport screening abilities, the Newark Star-Ledger reports 20 out of 22 weapons got past screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport checkpoints.

OK. We don't want to fly out of Newark. But I'll bet they got every damn concealed tube of toothpaste.

HILTON FOR PRESIDENT

From the Huffpo:

Circulation at the nation's largest newspapers plunged over the last six months, according to figures released today. The decline, one of the steepest on record, adds to the woes of a mature industry beset by layoffs and the possible sale of some of its flagships.

Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent.

Amazing. All the stuff going on that Americans don't want to know. By the way, the NY Post and NY Daily News had increased circulation, while the Times lost readers.

Paris Hilton for President!

MATTHEWS WINS

I just watched the Florida governor's debate, broadcast nationally and moderated by Chris Matthews.

The Democrat, Jim Davis, thought well on his feet and was passionate. Max Linn, the independent (who had to get a last-minute court order to get on the program) was direct and clear. Charlie Crist, the Republican, gave pre-prepared answers, was insincerely sincere and didn't seem all that bright.

But the best thing bar none about this debate was Chris Matthews.

I wasn't going to watch this debate. I've already voted. But it was Matthews who got me to sit down in front of the TV. He was incredibly well-prepared, asked fair but pointed questions and directly challenged non-responsive answers. I have never seen another moderator come close to his performance.

I vote Chris Matthews moderates the 2008 presidential debates.

I DON'T GET IT

Comedy Central is requiring YouTube to purge postings of parts of Jon Stewart and Colbert broadcasts on copyright infringement grounds.

I don't get it. Both of these shows are time-specific. There is no market for used Stewart shows outside of iTunes, and YouTube postings can't really be cutting into that market for two reasons: 1) there isn't much of a market there, and 2) downloading from YouTube is so complicated that if you want Stewart stuff on your iPod it's just easier to pay for it.

On the other hand, the availability of those clips on YouTube, from which they have been copied to endless blogs, is phenomenal advertisement to those shows' exact target audience, driving people to watch what Comedy Central wants watched - the shows at the time they are originally aired.

Like I said, I don't get it. But okay, if they want to lose their audience ...

COUNTERBALANCE

Since I'm leaning Marxist today, let me counterbalance with another thought:

When Republicans say this is a time of equal opportunity, and that the path to megariches is open to everyone, they are absolutely right. That is one of the great parallels of this time to the era of the robber barons - you just have to remember that those barons came from nothing. Now we have hiphoppers, sports stars, movie stars, medical people, computer people and other entrepreneurs leaping into the stratosphere at warp speed. Two guys figure out YouTube and are worth $1.6 billion in less than two years. Anyone with brains, balls and moxie can join the ruling class. This is a great egalitarian time.

It's only those of us who are missing one - or all - of those qualities who are bitching about widening income disparities. We're stuck with the Marxist memory of being kept at least minimally comfortable without having to put much effort into it. Like all those Russians who were terrified when the Berlin Wall came down because they were going to have to show what they could actually do.

The worst - or best - thing about times like these is that you find out what you're made of. And whether you're going to live pink with the flush of success or green with envy.

A GOOD WAR

I think what's bothering me most these days is that the wealthy and the wannabe wealthy (I don't mean just Republicans)'s vice grip on power is so bareass naked.

Take Iraq, for instance. Bad for America? Nah. Rich kids aren't dying in Iraq. We're spending billions needlessly? Nah! The rich are profiting from it (obviously if we're spending the money, somebody is getting it.) Tax cuts have forced the middle class to pay for the war? Well, yeah, but the money will trickle back down some day. If it doesn't all trickle to China and India. International terrorism is strengthening? Well, that isn't good if I can't sail my yacht into Santorini safely - but the US Navy will protect my boat, and I can hire a border patrol to keep the Caymans safe.

12,000 Dow? It's been a good war so far. When it ends, we'll make another one.

Are we worried if the Democrats win the election? Nah. We can buy them cheaper than Republicans. Matter of fact, we already have.

BORING

A newspaper's endorsements of national-level candidates are of value only to people who don't read the paper. Because if you do read the paper, and know its politics, you don't need them to tell you who they support. It's obvious.

On the local level, however, these endorsements carry clout - because most people don't know the local candidates very well, or where they stand on issues; and, recognizing that, newspapers will usually spell out reasons for their support which provide information useful to making a decision.

Yeah, okay, this is boring. But since I thought of it ..

SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN

If conservative Democrats are elected in western states (or elsewhere), it will be a return to the state of the party before abortion took over as its defining issue. This is only good.

Practically speaking, the fate of the nation has been held hostage to the abortion issue. It - and gay rights - are two hammers with which Republicans have been beating Democrats, resulting in the dangerous state of our democracy. Abortion and gay rights should never have become significant political matters. That they have been indicates that the Republicans have used the obsessions of two advocacy groups to seal the Democrats' fate.

Neither issue should be abandoned. They are legitimate parts of the panoply of freedoms and matters of mutual respect which define the Democrats, as is stem-cell research. But they are not the be-all and end-all. These issues need to be dealt with at a much lower level of heat and anger - significantly lower on the radar screen. They are not what Democrats need to be speaking on. They are matters to be fought for sub rosa.

Fortunately, in the present campaign, Democrats have not made much of either issue - it's the Republicans which keep pushing them. This has been wise, and should continue if Democrats attain power in either house. We have much more important things to deal with - like corruption, pre-emptive war, a defunct foreign policy and the undercutting at every level of democratic processes.

So if the abortion and gay lobbies start flexing muscles after the 7th, the Democrats need to tell them to shut up and sit down. If they don't, a new majority may become functionally useless - because a lot of newly elected Democrats are going to be voting with the Republicans.

On the other hand, that may not be bad - as long as Democrats stick together on what really matters to all of us.

THE SERIOUS PART

So it begins.

SORRY

The big 3 US auto makers are in trouble.

It's not quality. It's not styling - they've actually put out some pretty hot looking vehicles. Their problem is their marques are so devalued by putting years of boring garbage that people have a hard time taking them seriously. I look at the Chrysler Crossfire and I think "pretty neat." Then I think "shit, it's a Chrysler" and that's the end of that.

There's only one answer for them. They have to behave like the US computer industry. They have to put out products with new, highly advanced technology. I don't mean a car that will parallel park, or a bigger DVD screen, or better GPS. I mean a car who's central technology is revolutionary. The next generation of motor vehicles. Something that will define the future of cars. Like this, for example.

They could certainly do it, if engineers were running them. And if they weren't beholden to the oil industry. But they're sclerotic. The mindset is antiquated. They don't know how to innovate.

We'll be sorry to see them go.

BABBLING BROOK

The amount of worthwhile info on the blogs seem to be tailing off, winding down. I'm sure there will be more firestorms, but progressives seem to be shifting into a GOTV mindset.

This may be a good time for a bit of rumination.

Blog coverage of state by state polling seems at this point to be focusing on places where Democrats are unexpectedly doing well. Like tied or slightly behind. It would be foolish to conclude that more than a very few, if any, of these races are winnable. But they prove - as in fact the vote in both the Kerry and Gore elections proved, and as we quickly forgot - that there are no blue or red states. Howard Dean remembered, fortunately.

I would bet that the convention of red and blue states was invented by Republicans to construct the concept that there were certain states Democrats shouldn't even bother with. That was a brilliant idea, and it worked, for a while. Democrats and progressives certainly were suckered by it.

Democrats have been forced, by Republican attacks (both political and legislative), to remember that politics is philosophical, not geographic. That's why so many progressives are angry with Hillary Clinton. But we should be kissing Howard Dean's feet. His 50 state strategy woke everyone out of a nightmare. What's been done is just the beginning; work must continue daily, because the only satisfactory outcome of all this is that anti-democratic voices must be pushed so far into the background that all you hear is the murmur of a babbling brook.

NON-NEWS

So they're going to announce the Saddam verdict two days before our election.

Obviously, a political move. But so what? The die is already cast.

This becomes an election factor only if Saddam is found innocent, or escapes death. If so, Democrats should keep quiet; voters will draw their own conclusion that Bush can't even make the Iraqis take care of simple details.

But none of that will happen. It's non-news.

STILL DO

In a much earlier post, I said Democrats needed to hate Republicans in order to beat them, as long as Republicans continued to hate Democrats.

Well, they still do.

But that's okay. We can handle it.

HMM

Very interesting.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

And you thought all we were going to lose this year was habeas corpus?

From Signs of the Times:

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

And it was Democrats who facilitated this, with their post-Katrina howling about "where was the National Guard?"! Sometimes, in a democracy, you have to think two steps ahead.

A perfect example of "Be careful what you wish for."

HOW MANY HONEST AMERICANS ARE THERE?

A large part of the current Republican ad blitz carries charges of various sorts of sexual behavior. Who are these ads intending to influence?

Most of the population is not opposed to sex - or why would so many American women all over the country be sporting fake tits, botox, etc.? Republicans seem to feel there is a large voter bloc out there which is sexually repressed. Now, some elements of the religious right may hate sex which does not fit within their doctrines - but I am not aware that the main line is anything other than positively obsessed with sex, just like Washington. They love it, they want it, they buy it, they read it.

This Republican pitch is either to people whose moral code is atypical, or people who don't actually adhere to their professed moral code. Constipated people, or people who lie to themselves. It's the same pitch Islamic fundamentalists push on their people. Republicans are trying to work the American Taliban.

I don't think it will accomplish anything. I think Republicans have finally become trapped in their own conceptions and their own contempt for the people who vote for them.

If the Democrats had run on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, 90% of honest Americans would vote for them. Problem is, we don't know how many honest Americans there are.

So - glad they didn't.

MARK HALPERIN

Bad Jew.

MINE

Okay! Here's a state-specific "stay the course" ad.

Should I take the credit? I suggested this here, and on DailyKos. Nobody else has.

MCCARTHY LIVES!

Jeez, this is the first I've heard that a TV station won't accept an ad because it disparages a politician by telling the truth.

Let's see - NBC, parent of MSNBC (on which Olbermann regularly calls Bush out as a liar) won't run an ad which "disparages the President." Or - to put it another way - NBC blacklists an ad for a movie about blacklisting.

Don't speak to me about ethics. Ethics is dead. I hear Noah's building a boat in a parking lot in Oak Park, Illinois.

WHO THEY ARE

Republican propaganda has lately become so shrill, repetitive and transparently false that it doesn't take an educated mind - just common sense - to see through it.

I therefore conclude that anyone who still believes it would not be helped by education. They have a personality or mindset that links them to this trash. It's a gut reaction triggered by built-in poisons.

I.e., the problem with voters who buy into recent Republican pitches is not lack of knowledge. It's who they are.

SOME CLARIFICATION

Every once in a while in the clutter of op-ed pieces someone makes a significant point. Here's one which explains why Iraq was better off under Saddam.

DAMAGED GOODS

The thinking - if you can call it that - of "values" conservatives has much in common with the thinking of Germans in the 1930's. The fear and hatred of gays is identical to the fear and hatred of Jews in the Nazi era.

Same-sex marriage has no real effect on straights. It does not devalue any straight marriage. But there is a great, unreasoning fear among values voters that gays are conspiring to impose their lifestyles on everyone. Just as there was great fear that Jews would dominate everyone else.

That's why I consider the stokers of that fear - Ann Coulter, Falwell, Dobson, etc. - to be the actual equivalent of Nazis.

I can't understand how any gay can allow himself to participate in the demonization of his or her own. And I can't understand how any Jew can participate in the neocon agenda which has depended on this Christian mentality to succeed in elections. Jews are protected from mass hysterical hatred only by the fact that these Christians must support Israel in order for the preconditions for the Apocalypse to be put in place. Otherwise, when the same age-old fear and hatred of "the other" which motivated anti-Semitic outrages since the birth of the Christianity rises again, as it is now, Jews are the natural targets. There is no love for the Jew out there. Jews are just lucky right now. First it was liberals demonized. Now it's gays. The process and thinking is the same as in the Hitler era.

It still seems to me that every organized belief system ultimately demonizes - and then slaughters - people who are feared irrationally, on the basis of the tenets of the system. It's enough to make you an anarchist - except ultimately that's just another organized belief system.

Damn, there's no way around it. Some humans are just damaged goods. And we keep making more of them.

WHY ARE AMERICANS SO AFRAID?

The Republicans have used fear for five years to eliminate common sense from the electorate. They're doing it right now.

But I have seen no analysis of the question: why are Americans so fearful?

The British, bombed near to extinction in World War II, might have been afraid of the next incoming bomb but were not paralyzed by a general fear. Why is America, in the face of one terrorist attack, so terrified? I know that's what Republicans have purposely tried to accomplish - but that doesn't answer the question.

Was is it about Americans that makes them so easy to terrorize?

This is a very big question which someone big needs to address.

YOO = EICHMANN

After listening to John Yoo's flat-affect defense of the destruction of democracy on "On Point," I can say that Yoo is an example of the worst kind of lawyer - one who gets lost in the legalisms, completely losing sight of values and moral underpinnings. John Yoo is the Eichmann of the Bush Administration.

VERY SAD

Very sad that we have reached the point where when you know what organization (think tank, for example) a person belongs to, you know what they're going to say before they say it.

Obviously there is no analytical "scientific" thinking going on in these clubs. All thought is devoted to accomplishing the ideological goal - that is, all thought is tactical. There is no questioning of underlying assumptions.

We're no longer more worthy or capable than the Soviet Union was - or Uganda under Idi Amin, for that matter.

FINAL WEEK

It used to be that Republican lies had at least an odor of truth about them. They were stretches, but there were kernals of veracity. Now, though, in the final days before the midterm, Republican lies have become transparently hysterical and pathological. It's as if we were back in radio days, when the oratory of the hot medium could carry any message home. But TV is a cool medium, and these ads and lies are not cool. You look at them and you think: how could we have allowed these pathetic people so much power?

This is the message I recommend for the final week of the campaign.

NOT HILLARY

If you want to know if you're sitting next to a whacko, turn around and ask him/her: what do you think of Hillary?

I'm not saying that anyone who opposes Hillary is a whacko. I don't like her for president, myself. But you can tell by the form and substance of the comments whether your neighbor is a whacko, because Hillary is a trigger, just as her husband was. Pull it and a slugful of mania shoots out.

To determine whether Hillary is electable, you first have to know how many of those whackos are out there voting. Then you have to identify those who can speak reasonably about her, but who clearly hate her anyway. Then you have to eliminate those who don't like her for good reasons. Then you have to write off those who find her tolerable but prefer McCain. Then write off those perfectly honorable folks whose gut is telling them she's not the one.

That's a lot of people. Which is why I believe that nominating Hillary would be Democratic suicide. You don't want to pick someone who starts out two strikes down. She's plenty tough, but that cuts two ways, and there's a good chance she'll do something to alienate some independents.

Show me numbers that say otherwise, and I'm open to revision.

WHERE YOU REALLY ARE

Will you people stop fussing about Rush Lumbago and Bill O'Really(?)? They and 30 million other Americans live in the world behind the mirror, a parallel universe where up is down, wrong is right and the rule is: there are no rules, except when there are.

If you let them into your world, or worse, step into theirs, you'll go insane so quickly you'll never know what hit you.

They can't hurt you unless you stare into the mirror.

The ones you have to worry about are the ones who've gotten out from behind the mirror. They're the ones who have crazied up the world.

Of course, they think that you're behind the mirror.

So you need to remember where you really are.

SHITSTORM COMING

Fair warning about the release on Friday of a movie depicting the assassination of George Bush. I mentioned this weeks ago. It is going to be a hammer on Democrats - who should have been using their Hollywood clout to beg whoever's releasing it not to do so before the election, and failing that should be prepared with withering criticism right now.

No, the Republicans have not forgotten about it. They don't make mistakes like that.

SWEET

It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if Democratic victories in the West and Middle West began the process of pushing the Republicans into a Southern pocket, where they can be isolated and marginalized.

We are fighting the Civil War in reverse - political reverse. But a Northern victory would still be sweet.

DUMB IN CHARGE

Let's face it:

The US does not have the troops to send to Iraq to defeat the insurgency or intervene in the sectarian warfare.

Iraqi troops will never fill that gap.

The Iraqi government cannot and will not make any significant moves while American forces are in the country. After they leave, the government will fall.

Any chance at "democratizing" or "winning the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people was lost before the invasion occurred - not by poor planning, but by the intentional decision not to put any money or significant effort behind those alleged goals.

What's left to do in Iraq? Parcel out the oil, the territory and the political power. We can't do that. The Iraqis will. How many people die in those struggles is up to them.

The only function Americans troops can possibly serve in Iraq is to cut down the number of casualties IraQis inflict on each other. Why that's a goal worth American lives escapes me entirely.

The US interest in the country is oil. It is possible that US troops could be used on behalf of one or more Iraqi factions to protect American policy and interests - that is, if there were an American policy to protect. Unfortunately, a President whose pronouncements have shown no comprehension of even the fact that there are different factions in Iraq is not likely to develop the sophistication to figure out who, for the sake of American interests, we should be supporting.

The proof of that is this: this government has handed the entire question of what it should be doing over to the allegedly bipartisan, non-governmental Baker group. Has there ever been a government before which has announced its complete incapacity to perform as a government by privatizing American foreign policy?

These guys are beyond incompetent. They do not understand what governing is, because they never intended to govern. They intended to dismantle our government, and in those areas where they haven't done that yet, they have done nothing at all.

The whole thing is dumb, it has been dumb and it will continue to be dumb as long as the dumb are in charge of the show.

MEMORY?

Speaking at the American Magazine Conference, Barack Obama said: "This is the most ideologically driven administration in my memory..."

What memory? The guy's twelve years old!

WELL? IS IT?

"Is is too much to ask for voting machines that work as well as, I don't know, a fucking toaster?"

YOU SURE?

From the HuffPo:

Men who are heavy users of mobile phones have significantly lower sperm counts than usual and may be at risk of infertility, according to a new study released at a medial conference in New Orleans in the U.S. this week.

The researchers found that men who use mobiles for over four hours a day have 25 percent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile, and there is a 30 percent drop in sperm motility or movement and viability compared with those who did not.

You ladies sure you want to call your husbands ten times a day?

WHAT YOU NEED

People who need God are those who are afraid they can't control themselves. If those who control themselves through their belief in God ever figured out that it was their belief, not God, which kept them under control, they might take the next step and realize that they were controlling themselves - and maybe the step after that, doing without religion.

As for people who need God to tell them what is right and wrong, they'd better just stay with God. If you don't have a personal sense of right and wrong, you better find one somewhere.

VOICE MAIL

Sometimes I get the feeling that when you call Jesus you get a recorded message which says: "Get into politics."

WHERE THE DUMB GO

It used to be that people who weren't smart enough for real college went to teaching school. Apparently, they now go to journalism school.

YEAH, RIGHT

New York Times:

America’s top military and civilian officials in Iraq said today that the Baghdad government has agreed to a timetable for a series of milestones to be pursued in the coming year, including cracking down on Shiite militias, completing a “national compact” between competing political groups, persuading Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and settling contentious issues like the division of oil revenues.

And, as we used to say, the check's in the mail and I won't come in your mouth.

BARACK TALKS TO JESUS

I don't care if Barack Obama talks to Jesus. What I care about is what Jesus is telling him.

DUMB

Okay, I'm dumb. I thought Republicans were manipulating the stock market to influence the election. But there's a much simpler explanation.

All the money from real estate is going into the market.

The simple question I didn't ask was: where's the money going to go now that real estate is busting?

If I live five more years, I might learn to understand money.

GOOD JEWS

By my definition.

NO WAY

"Studio 60" is too subtle, too intelligent to survive on NBC. It may have a life on HBO. Otherwise it will die.

Someone at the network doesn't get the situation. The three networks are like Oldsmobile - once well-respected, but their marques have been devalued to the point that no one looking for quality expects to find it with them. Not that I argue with their choices - the audience for quality programming is tiny. But there's no way NBC is going to win them back.

NEVER AGAIN

Whether or not the Democrats win anything in two weeks, I assume progressives have learned their lesson:

We must never again let any public office, from dogcatcher up, fall into the hands of political sociopaths.

That will require organization and vigilance. Since I don't believe any old-line organization has the will or the stamina any more, and since the press can't be trusted, it is obvious that it will fall to internet-based societies to do that duty.

The willingness of these societies to perform this function is clear. What is not clear is exactly how they intend to influence the public at large, which is not aware of what's happening on the political internet. I am talking about both low-level struggles and issue-based struggles, neither of which will relate to a high-level election, and thus will be short of funding.

We will see whether, in the face of another Democratic loss (if any), these organizations can continue to motivate people to act.

THE BRAD PITT OF POLITICS

Barack Obama makes himself available for president in 2008. I'm not impressed. What has the guy done?

So far Obama is just another part of the sick celebrity culture - the Brad Pitt of politics, or maybe the George Clooney. Except Clooney and Pitt have actually accomplished what they set out to do - which was to make movies, not just be a celeb.

If the Democrats take the Senate, he'll have two years to prove he's actually worth a damn. Then I'll take another look.

In the meantime, read this.

BUSH'S BRAIN?

Okay. So it appears Rove's intended October Surprise was a change in direction in Iraq. That's what "we've never been stay the course" was about.

It looks like they're turning over intellectual control on Iraq to the military. They say they will do whatever the generals tell them to. Of course, it's their usual tactic - if whatever they try doesn't work, it will be the generals' fault, not Bush's. As I've said here before, as between Bush and the military, the military thinks clearer. But the military can't control the overall approach - can't, for example, negotiate with Syria and Iran. Or can they? If Bush turns American foreign policy over to the generals, Condoleeza Rice becomes nothing but an asswipe.

The thing is is (I love it when people say that!) the reason the military might be more effective than the Bushies is that they are not (theoretically) thinking ideologically. To succeed in the military, you have to be a pragmatist (except for the part where you have to be an asskisser too). Pragmatism is impossible for the Republicans - their ideology does not permit them to see things the way they are.

That is why, I suspect, we are seeing the administration throw up its hands on this one. Rove couldn't pull this one off because he's faced with the real world, which does not reverse itself in response to propaganda and lies. They can't pull out of Iraq, they can't change direction. The fact that the Baker panel exists independent of the administration is a good indication that the administration cannot think.

So we have seen semi-frank admissions by the administration of its own incompetence. This needs to be pointed out - but the answer is not to hand this to the generals; it's to replace the civilian leadership with one which operates with the brain evolution has given humans.

BIG SENTENCE

Skilling gets 24 years. How many did Lay get? Six? (Something like that.)

I figure after the Lay judge wiped out Lay's conviction, the Skilling judge added Lay's sentence onto Skilling's. Or was it the same judge? (I don't think so.)

Skilling should have kept Kenny Boy alive.

THE LAST THING

This will make me feel better, at least.

What started me writing this blog was Kerry's defeat. I started it because from that point on I - insignificant, yet a great political thinker - wanted to be on the record somewhere.

I bring this up because during the Kerry campaign I emailed the DNC or someone and suggested that the essence of the Kerry campaign should be "Bush = liar, liar, liar!"

Now I am suggesting that one of the Dem national committees should fund the following commercial nationwide:

Start with Bush=Stephanopoulos "never said stay the course." Follow with Bush saying "stay the course" 3-4 times. Then each state campaign adds their opponent saying "stay the course." Tag line: something like Bush lies and so-and-so follows blindly behind him.

That should be the last thing you have to say in this campaign.

STOP ME!

Isn't it sad that the only people who seem to know how to run a civilian government are in the military?

Who would have guessed that the armed forces would become the one repository of sanity in the present government?

Almost makes you wish they ran things, doesn't it.

OH GOD! STOP ME BEFORE I THINK LIKE THAT AGAIN!

STAGGERING

Senior Bush administration officials wanted North Korea to test a nuclear weapon because it would prove their point that the regime must be overthrown.

This is simply staggering.

PRESIDENT ROVE

Okay, so it isn't just Bush that's a sociopath. It has to be someone higher up. It has to be President Rove who decided that they can convince the public that they never said what they've been saying for over a year.

FUN

George Bush joins the pathological liar's club. As I just said about Cheney, Bush actually believes the incredible things he says. Because no calculating liar could deny years of his statements, all on tape and documented, and expect the lie to resonate. That would just be stupid. Bush isn't stupid - he's insane.

I know the Nazis used the Big Lie - but they didn't change their positions and have to defend the change. They picked a lie and stuck with it. Bush, I guess, can't do that.

Or maybe he gets bored with the old lie and makes a new one for fun.

NUTS

Cheney still says there were ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda - or at least Zarqawi - despite the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee — chaired by Bush-ally Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) — concluded that there was absolutely no relationship between them.

Who is Cheney directing these allegations toward? He must know - mustn't he? - that Americans don't believe him, as long as they have any capacity to think for themselves. He could be directing this toward his base - but why bother? They already believe the nutty things he says.

I think Cheney says things like this because he believes them. I think he has lost all touch with reality. Meaning, I think he is insane. The other possibility is that evangelicals are right, there is a Devil and/or an Antichrist and Cheney is one or the other.

IMPEACHMENT?

I do not think Democrats should enter control of either House with a plan to impeach Bush. Notwithstanding that I believe Bush has committed a number of impeachable offenses probably equal to the number of his days in office - some of them clear treason. But although I think Democrats should investigate all of these offenses, I think it will be necessary for Democrats to approach office with an eye toward the future, not the past. But the Democrats should announce immediately on their accession that any future impeachable offense will be acted upon.

That being said, Dick Cheney must be impeached first - and after him, down the line of succession until we reach someone who will not be more dangerous than Bush. Rumsfeld and Rice should be impeached. (Wolfowitz and Feith should be tried for war crimes.) It would not be the worst thing to deprive Bush of the people whose brains he has relied on, and let him try to govern for the next two years alone.

MINIMUM

Florida has a law prohibiting political activity within 100 feet of a voting site. I wasn't aware of it, but the law also prohibits exit polling within that area.

The theory is that the measure saves voters from harassment. The problem for exit polling is that before that 100 ft barrier voters disperse; if exit pollers have to chase voters to get their data, that could be more of a harassment that a simple question close to the polls. It makes exit polling very difficult.

But these days exit polling is critical. With so many examples of Republican tactics heading towards election fraud, and with so many questions about the validity of vote totals combined by computer voting machines, exit polls, and their comparison with reported vote totals and patterns, may be the only way we get to know whether something fishy is going on.

Was the banning of exit polling the real motivation behind this law? Considering Florida's history under Republicans, that would not be an unreasonable conclusion. It seems this measure is another way of disinforming the public, of hiding information, drawing a veil over the political process. Republicans have done that in many ways. My guess is that this is just one more of them.

Apparently, a Federal judge is prepared to overturn the law as it applies to exit polls. You can expect to see another Florida run to the Supreme Court. One more of those, and another result like the last one, and you can expect questions about the state of our democracy to be asked. At a minimum.

LIEBERMAN REPUBLICUS

Look -

Lieberman is a Republican. He's where he belongs. If Lamont can't beat him, that makes Connecticut a pretty weird place in the current political environment. But New Englanders are pretty weird all the time. They have loyalties and attachments that cannot be explained through logic.

And if the Democrats take the Senate by a one or two vote margin, Lieberman is like an Israeli religious party (actually he is exactly that already.) He can charge a lot for the way he votes. That means good pork for Connecticut, whichever way he goes. Some CT voters may be thinking about that.

I would really love to see some serious interviewing of Democrats who plan to vote for Lieberman - just to find out why they say they are going to do that. I wonder if Lamont has that information.

NICE, BUT ...

You show me a poll that says 55% of Americans want the Democrats to take control of Congress, and I ask you: where are those people? Do they make up a majority in enough districts to guarantee the election of enough Democrats? Or are they all in five or six states?

The poll results are nice, but they don't necessarily mean anything.

COUNTERFEIT

Dems want to counter the new GOP ad using footage of bin Laden and Zawahiri?

Use the same footage, sequenced and cut the same way. Duplicate as much of the commercial's visuals as possible. But change the copy. Use the usual arguments - the threat is still out there because they have caught bin Laden and because they were distracted by Iraq.

Make a game out of it. Make people wonder whose commercial they're seeing. The power of the images will die away.

LAST CHANCE

From the Baltimore Sun -

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

Grave security threats? The point is entirely missed here - certainly by Diebold, which claims the code was stolen and is proprietary (although how computer code which determines who governs the U.S. can be considered anything but public property is beyond me)and obviously by politicians.

The person who sent the code to Kagan said she got it "because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy."

I.e., what this person wants is for someone to look deeply into this code - presumably because that person will discover how elections were (or can be) stolen. This mailing is the opening of the political DaVinci Code which could prove what has been done to democracy.

Diebold is insisting on getting the codes back. A Johns Hopkins computer specialist has already looked at them, for the purpose of determining that they were genuine. For God's sake, don't give them back until we know what's in them!

This may be our last chance.

SHORT OF

Here's a prediction:

The Republican base is not going to stay home this election. They are not going to vote for Democrats, any more than I would vote for Republicans if I didn't like - and I don't - what Democrats had done in the prior session. There are some independents who have not yet made up their minds - and there may be a few Republicans disaffected by their party's recent actions. If they all vote Democratic, there may be a small "wave." If they don't, this election is going to be very close again.

The current wave of Republican attacks ads will not - and is probably not intended to - change minds. It is intended to energize the base for the get-out-the-vote effort to come.

Short of some major development in the next few weeks, I think this election is already decided. We just don't know who won.

But that's a pretty big "short of" ....

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE?

I've been reading "It Can't Happen Here," Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel about the taking over of America by native-born fascists. Not everything in it is directly applicable, but it is astounding how much of the current American situation is paralleled in that book - including a Rove figure, a presidential candidate described as "vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic", the involvement of the religious right, etc. The major difference is that Lewis' candidate - as a smokescreen - advocates what could be described as essentially socialistic views. That's what it would have taken to pull off the coup in the America of those days. These days, it's okay to be a rampant capitalist, for reasons I have outlined in one of my recent posts. And we have just begun to see what Lewis' candidate proposes for the fate of the Congress in the American fuhrer state.

Those of you who still doubt the fascist nature of what we are facing might educate yourselves a bit by reading this book.

THIS IS HOW

This is how you counter a smear attack. If you don't do this, people - even your supporters - are going to suspect that the smear is true.

I've been watching Florida Democratic candidates get smeared, and I haven't seen any of them respond in any way.

They may not deserve what they're going to get, but they'll get it anyway.

AMERICA'S SICKNESS?

This story is not about what's wrong with Republicans. It's about what's wrong with America.

Somebody in California sent a letter to 14,000 Democratic voters in Orange County which read, in part: “You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time.”

This, of course, is a lie, and a vicious attempt to scare people away from the polls. There is nothing subtle about it. It defines amoral.

County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh said Republican candidate Tan Nguyen, who is running against Loretta Sanchez for a House seat, had direct knowledge of the “obnoxious and reprehensible” letter, and the party’s executive committee has voted unanimously to urge Nguyen to drop out of the race.

Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press but said he fired a campaign staffer who may have been responsible for it. But Baugh found out different by calling the company that did the mailing, which told him Nguyen had personally urged the company to get it out right away.

It doesn't just bother me that a politician will put out a lie and then lie about putting it out. What really bothers me is that it was obvious that with the slightest effort someone would get at the truth - and that didn't stop this man from lying about it!

This means a lot more than that lying is routine. There are three possible explanations for this behavior: 1) Nguyen thought everyone else was too stupid to figure it out; 2) Nguyen is pathological; or 3) it didn't matter whether anyone found out - Nguyen was sure the damage would be done anyway. I suspect all three are true.

This behavior is not localized to Nguyen. Many Republicans are guilty of it, Joe Lieberman is guilty of it, and I don't doubt there are Democrats who do the same (except probably not when they're so likely to get caught, meaning they may be liars but they are not pathological.)

And if the Republicans are not turned out of office soon, it will be reasonable to conclude that America is pathological. After all this disgusting behavior has been aired, it can no longer be argued that Americans aren't paying attention. This is the Republican sickness, the Enron sickness, the corporate sickness, the religious sickness. And we'll soon see if it's America's sickness.

MORE BAD JEWS

Read this to catch an inkling of how much you don't know about how the world really works - and of how far Israel has gone from its origins. And why I have no respect for a country I ought to love. And why I don't think Jews need Israel, since if the anti-Semitic shit came down hard I still wouldn't migrate there.

GOOD NEWS

It seems to me there is a bit of good news out there that we have all been ignoring.

The polling numbers - all of them - show that the influence of people like Coulter, Limbaugh and Fox News is really minimal. The large majority of Americans do not make decisions based on anything they say. Maybe that influence was always minimal - maybe we just made so much of it because we found it so offensive, and didn't have enough faith in American sanity.

Well, faith in American sanity awaits the result of November 7th. But I think we don't ever need to think about Coulter, Limbaugh or Fox again. Which should greatly improve our quality of life.

BAD NEGROES

A whole lot of them, in one place!

TOO BAD

Geez, I guess I'll never see the Badlands again, because I ain't ever going back to South Dakota.

MORE BAD JEWS

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/10/16/172111/85

GIVE US A BREAK, FOR CHRISSAKE

Tom Friedman says that the current spike in killing in Iraq is the "jihadist's" Tet Offensive.

That is about as likely as it is that a chimp wrote his column. But ... on second thought ...

How is it possible that this man, recognized as a deep thinker and a Middle East expert, does not know that what's going on Iraq has very little to do with jihad, and everything to do with the coming division of power and wealth in Iraq?

How is it possible that he thinks death squads are slaughtering in sectarian warfare for the specific purpose of influencing the U.S. election? Is he suggesting that the Shia and Sunni have gotten together to plan this move, or that they arrived at the same intention by coincidence?

How is it possible that America views such simplistic thinking as revelatory? From the guy who figured out two weeks ago that Iraq was a mistake?

Please. We've already got lots of stupid. We don't need any more.

DISGUSTING

This is just disgusting.

THE BIG QUESTION

I return to the big question:

If Diebold steals this election - proving that participation in the political process can no longer engender change - will there be a civil war? And if so, what form will it take?

HOW WE GOT HERE

Here's a primer on how we got where we are. These are the big, but almost unnoticed and mostly unremembered, events that led to the destruction of American democracy:

1) Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers union. This signalled corporate intent to dominate, and the ridiculously weak response of other unions signalled the weakness of the union movement - which was the most significant political educator of worker voters and the only tool they had to counter corporate political money and power. The beginning of the end.

2) Reagan's elimination of the fairness doctrine - making propaganda like Limbaugh and Fox TV possible. Put under the guiding hand of such as Roger Ailes, conservatives put in the study and the work necessary to frame and dominate the political debate. The first consequence? "Liberal" is a curse word.

3) Establishment of neocon think tanks - giving conservatives the intellectual "legitimacy" they could not (then) get from universities, permitting them to appear in the media as credentialed "experts."

4) Republicans making tax cuts the cornerstone of their appeal - because who won't support someone who says he's going to let you keep your money? Even if he never does.

5) The institution of national lotteries - the first opportunity for the average Joe to make his life's goal becoming a millionaire. Followed by gambling casinos, quiz shows, celebrity adoration, instruction in the rich life (Martha Stewart and HGTV.) Internet trading and real estate "investment." Followed by total self-absorption and constant competitiveness with an end-justifies-the-means approach. Now that the public believes that any of them can become mega-rich, they identify with the rich, not with people in the financial position they expect to escape from. That makes them all Republicans, at least on economic issues. Massive weslth-shifting and financial inequalities which should provoke something like class warfare don't provoke anything, because those at the bottom don't expect to stay there very long.

6) The glorification of the family - leading to the loss of the sense of wider societal obligation (i.e., to the "family of man," a concept which is never mentioned anymore.) Creation of mega-suburbs allows for a restricted social spectrum and the ability to avoid contact with any person or class you want to avoid. You gather with people just like you - culturally and economically - and have no idea what any other people are about. There is one positive consequence of this - race is no longer a factor in the forming of social circles. That is, race itself, not class prejudices disguised as racial prejudices. Black, yellow, whatever - as long as they live like you and think like you, you welcome them in. And block out everyone else.

7) "He said/she said" journalism - which denies the existence of actual truths.

These are the preconditions for the pre-fascist state. I omit issues of religion only because I'm sick of talking about them.

9/11 was the catalyst.

WHAT WE'VE GOT

Lot of bitching out there about Republicans using 9/11 attack footage in political ads. Just too scary.

Here's the ad I want to see:

Plane flies into WTC
CUT TO: Bush reading "My Pet Goat"
CUT TO: Close up on Bush's face

Copy: "This is what we've got. We need to send X to Washington to keep an eye on him."

JOHN SOLOMON

Solomon. Hmmm. Could he be ... another bad Jew?

WHO'S GONNA DO IT?

If Jim Baker's Iraq Study Project recommends - as seems likely - that we talk to Iran and Syria about Iraq, who's going to do the talking?

Bush? Rice? Neither of them have shown the slightest capability of conducting normal foreign relations.

Reputedly, Bush negotiated well with Democrats when he was governor of Texas. Since Texas is undoubtedly the weirdest place on earth, maybe it will turn out that he has the knack when talking to cowboys like Kim and Ahmedinijad. However, if his Christian principles are what he says they are, he's not capable of talking to "evil." Anyway, I doubt he could string two concepts together in negotiations without cue cards.

Rice is capable only of making pronouncements. She is a cipher as Secretary of State. Of course, lying is something that's helpful in negotiating, but she's the worst liar I've ever seen. You just look at her and you know. It's obvious she's got a rotting soul; the only question is, did she catch it from Cheney and Rove or was she what she is now when she ran Stanford? Somebody ought to do some forensic psychiatry on her.

So who? Baker? How about Jimmy Carter? How about Bill Clinton? Whoever it is, it's going to have to be someone who has a history that goes back before 2000, when the American capacity for international relations fell into a rat hole and never came out.

NAH

What do you think?

If it turns out that Diebold steals the election for the Republicans, do you think the revolution we talked about in 1968 will finally happen? Rebellion in the streets?

I don't think so. Who needs free elections if we're making good money?

WHO'S GETTING IT?

Some bloggers are suggesting that the reason Bush insists on "staying the course" is that as long as American troops are there, his friends can steal Iraq's oil.

And, come to think of it, I have not seen a single piece on exactly what is happening with Iraq's oil these days.

Why is that? Doesn't anyone care?

OVER THERE

There's one thing about Iraq we are forgetting in the morass over what we should do next.

Iraq may look like a civilized nation, but it's civilization is a very thin veneer - getting thinner daily as the civilized among them flee for their lives.

Judging from the hatreds, the manner of killings, the tribalism etc., what will be left in Iraq is not just a failed state but a failed, non-evolved polity, a barbarian enclave.

It is a bad joke to try to impose democracy on a country whose population is barely out of the Stone Age. Democracy could not possibly work in Iraq; it would be defenseless against the local Huns. Saddam understood that, as the Sauds understand the barbarity of Saudi Arabia. That's why they ran (run) those countries for their own benefit. And they might as well, because the alternative is worth.

And you would think Bush would understand it, too - since the constituency he serves has no more sophistication than the average Iraqi peasant. I mean that seriously. I credit Arabs in general - and Bush's constituency - with a certain cleverness regarding money - in trading, merchantry, bribery. But that cleverness is not a part of civilized behavior. I believe civilization requires some other-directedness which does not have to do with self-aggrandizement. That's what missing in Iraq now, and missing in the Republican party.

So, since Republicans want to win in Iraq, why don't we just ship them all over there and let them compete on their own level? Or, to turn their own phrase on them: "America - love it or leave it." They're really not completely comfortable here. They would be over there.

MAYBE

How strange is it that the two people most talked about for the Demoocratic nomination in 2008 are a woman and an African-American?

This is not to take anything away from either of them. Both are probably well qualified for the office. But have we really reached the point where either is electable?

Women have clearly succeeded in both parties, in high executive positions, the Senate, the House. That is far less true of blacks, though the Republicans have made a concerted effort to run them and put them at or near the top of executive departments. I just have a lingering suspicion that a majority of Americans is not quite ready for either as president.

A detailed analysis of the voting patterns in the coming election might shed some light on the question. But I seriously doubt polling will, since these are the kinds of questions responders are not likely to answer honestly.

Anyway, the election is two years away. I could be completely wrong. But doesn't it sort of puzzle you that there is no white male out there who looks both presidential and electable?

Do you think maybe women have become electable because 1) political women are not perceived as pussies (as Kerry and Gore were), probably because they can't be pussies and succeed in the electoral world; or 2) that no woman in Congress is tied into the Abramoff mess, or charged with any scandal, sexual or otherwise?

They keep saying it's time for that kind of change. Maybe it is.

BRIBES?

Bloggers are pointing out the Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has sought out affluent donors and got them what they wanted in the Congress. Anybody in shock?

Of course, Congressmen are going to do what their donors want them to - and are then going to play the chicken and egg game, saying they got the donations because they were already inclined to do those things.

Donors don't give money and hope for good results. Not even me and my twenty-five bucks. I don't give money unless I'm sure they'll do what I want, or think the way I want them to. So how do you tell a bribe from a political contribution?

There are two measures I would use: 1) how specific is what the donor wants? I.e., if the only beneficiaries of a legislative action are a very small group, of whom some donate to the Congressman, and no legitimate argument can be made that the legislation is in the general public interest, that's a bribe. And

2) How focused is the legislator on giving his donors what they want? If the percentage of actions he takes which benefit his donors is high relative to what he does for the rest of his constituency, he may be taking bribes. How high is too high is a subject for statistical study.

BYE BYE ETHANOL

So my first thought was that Republicans had gotten whoever-it-is to manipulate oil prices to help them with the election.

But there's a better reason to drop oil prices now. A company that was going to build an ethanol plant in Florida has dropped plans to do so, saying it was too expensive and that the cost of ethanol equipment has "gone out of sight." Allegedly the price of their proposed plant was originally $145 million and has now gone to $200 million. They say increased demand (due to a boom in production of ethanol plants) for things like heat exchangers has driven the prices up fourfold.

Seems to me if companies want to sell heat exchangers, they are not going to price them beyond affordability.

Seems to me the problem is lack of profitability due to the drop in oil prices, not the cost of equipment. Other ethanol companies are cutting back or quitting, and stock prices on other producers have dropped by half.

'Course, the problem wouldn't be that the Florida ethanol producer is owned by an oil company, would it?

That was the shortest alternate-fuels craze ever. Less than two months and it's falling apart. Hey, it took three years to kill "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

That's why I love this country.

IN MY DAY

According to the LA Times, Ken Mehlman got an Interior Department officer fired to help Abramoff's sweatshop clients in the Mariannas.

But this is what really bothers me. Henry Waxman says that one price of Mehlman's support was two U2 concert tickets.

In my day, rock 'n' roll was a liberal thing. It just offends me to the gut that bad Republicans like the music. It's like long hair: in my day, if you wore long hair in the South you risked your life. Now, if you see long hair in the South, it's probably on some white power guy.

These bastards have stolen everything that mattered to me!

And the absolute worst: rock 'n' roll legends are playing Vegas! In my day, they wouldn't touch the place.

But that's where the money is. And these days, money is all that matters.

Pete Seeger, where are you?

INCONSISTENT

From TPM Cafe:

Congressman Christopher Shays (R-CT) issued the following statement about the recent NRCC mailer linking Diane Farrell to a group supportive of having talks with the Taliban:

“Recently, the NRCC sent an outrageous mailer to the homes of Fourth District residents claiming she is supported by a group sympathetic to the Taliban. The NRCC has crossed the line.

“I have always been against these political attack ads, whether they are from the Democrat Party or Republican Party. They are an insult to the intelligence of residents of the Fourth District.

“These ads have to stop. I call on the NRCC to put an end to sending this type of garbage to Fourth District mailboxes.

“My opponent’s party and shadow organizations working on her behalf have made negative, misleading and outrageous charges against me for three years and she has said nothing about them. That is the difference between my opponent and me.

“I put forward a schedule of 11 debates with my opponent because I want this to be a race about issues and the legitimate differences between us. I look forward to the remaining debates and interacting with voters throughout the Fourth District.”

See anything inconsistent here?

Shays disowned this particular attack because if he hadn't, it would have killed him with independents. It wasn't that it was inappropriate; it was that it was bad politics.

Well, at least he's thinking strategically, unlike his President.

DAVID ZUCKER

Bad Jew.

THE DEATH OF THE ILL-CONCEIVED

So Air America went into bankruptcy. As it should have.

Not only did it not have any star power - Franken has long been eclipsed by Maher and Stewart - but the whole idea went against the grain.

Progressives have essentially abandoned on the air radio. Leaving aside NPR, there has been so little of interest on it for so long - good liberal talk died with the Jean Shepard show (or is that still on?) from the beat era, and Clear Channel killed free-form music programming. Progressives are getting their material from the internet (not sure whether satellite radio may make a dent in this, but I doubt it.) Radio is redneck country now, or your father's medium, the Oldsmobile of media. Progressives are too busy to turn it on during working hours (or use NPR if they do turn it on), have the internet for the evenings, and pretty soon car stereos will all have auxiliary inputs so the iPod will dominate drive time. And no one but progressives would even consider listening to a liberal radio talk show.

I wouldn't even bother to try to put this thing back together. Let it die the death of the ill-conceived. It was only a manifestation of envy, anyway.

SILENCE IS DEADLY

In the internet age of immediate response, three days is about the outside time frame to respond to a negative commercial. The most effective response would be the following day at the outside, and with technology what it now is there is no reason that can't be done.

People are impatient these days and make judgments about delayed response. Watching the Florida races, I see Republicans putting out attack ads and I sit there and twiddle my thumbs for days waiting for some kind of answer. I'm even wondering if what they said is true. That's very bad for Democrats. It's a good reason why they lose. Vale Kerry and the Swift Boaters. Silence is deadly.

GOOD MOVE

The Pope is proposing a return to the Latin Mass. Very wise, I think.

I couldn't look at a mass the way a Catholic would, but from my irrelevant perspective, the Latin mass was a brilliant piece of theater - and religion needs theater, I think, to motivate faith. The English masses I saw - with guitar-playing blondes singing boring songs - had none of that, for me. I know the theory was to bring religion into people's daily lives - but it doesn't seem to have worked for the Catholics, does it, if we judge from the drop in membership.

If religion is not a mystery, it isn't anything. Good move, Pope. I approve.

DANIEL LAPIN

From Crooks and Liars, another bad Jew:

Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued today.

The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between Officers of the groups "were generally available to carry out Mr. Abramoff's requests for help with his clients in exchange for cash payments," said the report, issued by the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee after a one-year investigation.

Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy and is cooperating with federal investigators in the ongoing influence-peddling probe that has resulted in seven guilty pleas and convictions.

The report states that the groups probably violated their tax-exempt status "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange or writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients."

The groups are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of the Interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, which was a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a religious group founded by Abramoff friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

DAN BLUMENTHAL

From Think Progress, another bad Jew:

“With our intelligence on North Korea so uneven, the doctrine of pre-emption must return to the fore,” writes American Enterprise Institute scholar Dan Blumenthal, one of several prominent neoconservatives now advocating regime change “by military means, if necessary” in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test.

NEWSWEEK DOES IT AGAIN

From Wonkette:

"Once again, Newsweek’s U.S. editors have chosen a stupid cover for Americans while filling all three international editions with interesting, in-depth articles about disturbing topics Americans should know.

Last time — just three weeks ago — the international editions’ cover story was “Losing Afghanistan.” The U.S. dummies got a cover story about a lesbian who takes pictures of celebrities.

Once again, the international readers get a serious, sobering story about something that’s not looking so good. It’s a 2,000-word piece with reporting from three continents about all the various species that are suddenly vanishing off the face of the Earth due to rapid climate change.

U.S. readers get another story about the gay dude who quit Congress weeks ago.

It gets worse.

The international edition has the damning background to the North Korean nuke test:

One year ago, Washington and Pyongyang made a deal and everybody was happy:

On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, for some perverse reason we’ll never know, Washington signed the thing and then deliberately provoked Lil’ Kim so he’d break the deal and let the neo-con nuts have a new “regime change.”

That seems like something a few people in America might like to know, right?"

Obviously Newsweek thinks American are less ...uh ... worldly than the rest of the world. And, of course, they're right. But that's no excuse for depriving American readers of at least the chance to educate themselves.

Oh, I forgot. That's not the media's job.

TWIT

Chris Wallace is a registered Democrat!

Does Fox know? As a matter of fact, does it matter that instead of being a hard-line neocon he's a supercilious twit?

BOGUS?

In his new book, "Tempting Faith," David Kuo, associated with Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, says that some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.” “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

Some people are assuming that Bush's alleged Christian faith is also bogus. But I think his faith is real - that's the kind of guy he is. What all this proves, though, is that Bush doesn't really run anything. He's being run, like the rest of us. That's the only answer consistent with the fact that he still hasn't proved that anything substantial goes on in his head.

DETERRENT

I see no point to continuing to deprive felons of voting rights.

When that concept was first enunciated, it was seen as a punishment, something that might deter people from committing felonies. Now, though, when so many people view voting as a chore, I think it more appropriate - as a punishment - that felons be compelled to vote.

Now there's a deterrent that has a chance of working.

SO RIGHT

How is it possible that George Soros gets so many things so right?

MINUTEMEN

After Columbia University students protested the on-campus speaking appearance of Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen (he was invited by the College Republicans), the Minuteman Project announced yesterday that they are seeking to strip Columbia of federal funding for what they say are violations of their civil rights.

Experts say there is no longer any doubt that a civil war has begun in America.

COCKROACH WARS

PETA is insisting that Six Flags cancel a competition in which people will try to break the world cockroach-eating record. "Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.

We are at war with cockroaches. They have no rights, under the Geneva Convention or anything else. It's either them or us.

How crazy are these people? I mean, all of them.

FOUR STORIES

Four big stories this week, and three of them - Foley, the Amish shootings, and Cardinal Mahoney - have to do with religious people with no morality.

Why is it assumed that people who profess piety are moral? I do not judge people who believe - they have every right to it - but I do judge their inability to face crimes like these and the relationship of religion to those crimes. If they can't do that, they have no morality either, even if they never do anything like this.

PREDICTIONS

I don't like to make predictions, but I'm ready for these. In Florida races:

Charlie Crist (R) beats Jim Davis (D)
Clay Shaw (R) beats Ron Klein (D)
Whatever his name is (R) beats Tim Mahoney (D)

Because these Democrats ran the worst campaigns I have ever seen.

But - Nelson (D) beats Harris (R). If he couldn't win this one, Nelson would have to move to the Mariannas and cut dresses in Abramoff sweat shops.

WHAT?

From the AP:

"The Bush administration rejected anew Tuesday direct talks with North Korea and said it would not be intimidated by a reported threat from Pyongyang that it could fire a nuclear-tipped missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve the standoff."

Can someone explain to me what Bush thinks is accomplished by refusing to negotiate?

Because he isn't scaring anyone to death any more.

GOOD MOVE!

So GM has named Sean Hannity as its spokesperson.

This is the first time I am aware of that an American corporation has made a conscious decision to write off half of the American market.

Not me, of course. I wouldn't have bought their crap before they chose Hannity - not since I had a Blazer that had the turning radius of the QE2.

ONE MORE REASON

Republicans are going to play the North Korean bomb for all it's worth. But there are plenty of ways to play it back.

Republicans will say there is a threat that North Korea will transfer nuclear capability to terrorists.

It is highly unlikely that North Korea has enough nuclear capability to be willing to give some of it away. And if they did, why would they do that?

Think of it this way: it was Bush who associated Iran, Iraq and North Korea in the "Axis of Evil." We now know (and if we were thinking clearly, we knew it when he said it) that Iran and Saddam's Iraq had diametrically opposite interests. And there is no commonality of interests between North Korea and al Qaeda or Iran - unless it is in responding to Bush administration policy.

So if there's any risk of North Korea helping Islam, it's a risk that Bush himself created.

Anyone with any sense had to realize years ago that the U.S. had no military option vis a vis North Korea. That left only diplomacy and sanctions. Sanctions cannot be implemented by the U.S., since the U.S. has no contact with North Korea, and therefore nothing to cut off. (If the Clinton diplomatic initiative had been continued, there might have been something to cut off, but Bush deep sixed that effort within months of his inauguration). The U.S. is dependent on China, Japan and South Korea to implement any sanctions. China and Japan will do what is in their interest. As for South Korea, that country had decided years ago to open a dialog with North Korea, including what they called a "sunshine policy" which even involved building a cross-border superhighway. But, again, Bush deep-sixed that. If South Korea can be helpful, it will be on its own terms.

So - bottom line - if there is a crisis (which is questionable anyway in my view; i.e., there was no crisis for the U.S. when Pakistan got the bomb), it is the result of Bush's ideological nonsense. He created this situation, and left himself no way to deal with it.

One more reason to get rid of the guy.

By the way, I do enjoy it when somebody agrees with me.

Read this for an excellent explanation of what has happened re Korea from Clinton through Bush.

MORE BAD JEWS

Not Judt.

REALLY GOOD JEWS!

Okay! I found some. Watch this.

THE PROMISE

And here is the statement Reid and Pelosi should make immediately in the event of a victory: "We promise we will never lie to you."

And they'd better not.

THINKING

The day after the election (if the Democrats win anything), they should set up a website (and an 800 number) and invite everyone to make suggestions on legislation and correction of Republican crookery.

They should be heavily promoted on TV and radio. Even if nothing good comes from them (and I am willing to bet they'd get pretty great stuff, considering how many people are already blogging on the subject), and even if they can't get anything actually passed, the image of openness and responsiveness would be great PR, while the Republican efforts to torpedo Dem proposals would make them look - as they are - the opposite.

I'm thinking here. I hope Pelosi is, too.

FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

Here's another quick and easy method of restoring political balance:

Simply reinstating the Fairness Doctrine - and coupling it with significant penalties for violation, up to and including loss of license - would destroy Fox News. That station, and Rush Limbaugh, could not have existed if the Fairness Doctrine had not been repudiated. Reagan's practically unnoticed removal of the doctrine was the key predicate of the Republican takeover.

Okay, so you won't have the votes to override the veto. Simply making the arguments would have a wonderful effect.

AFGHANISTAN GOING?

Read it.

ELECTION HOLIDAY

In their book "Off Center," Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson suggest a very simple way to increase voter participation: make Election Day a national holiday. A bank holiday.

If civic events were then organized around voting places, so that people off work could bring their kids and participate in games, concerts, lectures, conversations, or whatever the locals would be interested in, it would be a simple matter for them to spin off and vote.

Since the Republicans have limited the political activities groups like the League of Women Voters can engage in, here is a non-partisan project they could easily pull off with their devoted and skilled membership.

I really like this. If 1,000th of the celebration of days like Halloween were harnessed to democratic participation, Republicans (or anyone else) could no longer count on the non-involvement of the center.

THE ONLY OPTION

One of the first things Democrats must do - and very quietly - if they take control of Congress is restore all the cuts made in union-enabling regulations and laws by the Republicans, the most recent of which happened just last week. They've been smart - they know that unions were the only organized way for people without money to compete politically and economically with the rich, and the destruction of the unions has paved the way for the current state of affairs. Not that the unions didn't contribute, in many ways, to their own destruction. But unless some other sort of socializing organization surfaces strongly, unions are the only option.

TAKE UTAH

Everybody knows one of the reasons conservatives have so much control of our government is that in the Senate small states have as much power as large states - so legislation can be passed without the consent of the American majority.

But I've got a plan.

Take Utah, for instance. We move 3,000,000 liberals from Manhattan and San Francisco to Salt Lake City. That's more than the state's present population. Presto chango, we get a state.

Why not? It's very pretty out there, and they already have Starbucks.

TINPOT

According to the LA Times, products which can't be sold in Europe and elsewhere (even China) because they're dangerous - like formaldehyde-soaked wood - are being shipped to and sold in America. It seems our toxic chemical standards are among the lowest in the world.

How the worm has turned. Up until recently, it was the U.S. that was dumping toxic products that couldn't be sold here, mostly in Africa and the rest of the third world.

I guess we're the third world now.

Well, we do have a tinpot dictator ...

TALKING POINTS

Since they seem to be spread pretty thickly to the right-wing media, etc., is there no way someone can't get hold of these daily talking points the Republicans issue? All you need is one mole in the media. Seems to me the Democrats should have been working these last six years to create one - someone with media credentials who spouts the bullshit and can get on the mailing list.

Not too late.

THE OTHER GUY

If you mention to a Republican voter the people who are suing McDonald's for making them fat, he tell you that those people have to take personal responsibility for themselves, it isn't McDonald's fault.

And then he'll vote for a politican who refuses to take personal responsibility for anything.

And then he'll refuse to take personal responsibility for the consequences of that vote.

It really bothers me that people can do so well being dishonest not only to everyone else but to themselves.

But then that's why dishonest religion has done so well.

What's immoral is always what the other guy does.

UP WHERE?

Florida Senator Bill Nelson supported his vote in favor of the war in Iraq - which he has since backed away from - by saying the administration told him, among other things, that Iraq could hit East Coast cities with chemical and biological weapons delivered by "unmanned aerial vehicles."

Yeah. Kites.

This particular lie is so absurd, such a cartoon, that - I'm sorry to say - it proves that any Democrat who bought the administration's case for the war had his or her head up ... well, you get it.

PEARLY GATES

When Condi Rice, in her recent whirlwind trip through the Middle East - referring to the speed of the trip, not the speed of her mind or her efforts - was told by the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms that the U.S. had to assert leadership in breaking deadlocks among them, she told them that first they had to, according to the WaPo, "take difficult steps to create conditions more conducive to greater U.S. involvement."

Oh. Conditions are not conducive already? Like, the growth of Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda are not conducive enough?

This government will never learn that it can't back up its arrogance.

But then it's possible this government doesn't want to do anything, because they like things just the way they are. Has Bush yet answered the question of whether he believes or desires that Armageddon occur during his administration?

If he pulls off Armaggedon, he goes down as the greatest Christian ever - besides Jesus, of course. But Jesus was a Jew, so that puts Bush first!

I think George is going to get a nasty surprise when he gets to the pearly gates.

MIDDLE NAMES

The press calls the milkman who killed five Amish girls Charles Carl Roberts.

Middle names are used for bad people in the press. Lee Harvey Oswald. Jon Mark Karr.

What's Denny Hastert's middle name? Now that you mention it, what's his first name?

CUT THEM DEAD

Assuming the Democrats take control of something, would it be too much to ask of them to enforce one rule among themselves: that no Democrat is to talk to or feed information to any media figure who has routinely and knowingly touted Republican lies?

Republicans have cut off balanced reporters, and it hasn't hurt them any - in fact, it's resulted in what used to be balanced outlets hiring propaganda reporters just to get access.

It won't hurt Democrats not to talk to these shills. Whatever Democrats tell them they spin it negative anyway. Will it hurt Democrats not to appear on Fox News? Who's going to be left watching it, if there's a Republican meltdown, besides true believers Democrats don't and won't have a chance of convincing? Will it hurt Democrat issues if David Brooks and Tom Friedman can't get a quote or inside dope?

If all they can get is Republican spew, their reporting or commenting becomes less meaningful and more recognizably biased - and then, God willing, their bosses replace them with someone who knows what balance is.

This post will be updated as I add to the list:

Kim Strassel, Wall Street Journal editorial board

OUT

Gays who sign on to a Republican agenda which includes demonizing gays ... no, I'll limit that to gays who sign on to that part of the Republican apparatus which demonizes gays (and that concession is simply to cut them some slack) deserve to be outed for their betrayal of their own. If a gay person wants to stay closeted, he shouldn't associate himself with an organization which makes gays a target.

Worst case, they'll lose their jobs, and pay for their betrayal. Best case, they might be able to convince some Republican gay-basher that gays really aren't all that bad - which would help the gays they've betrayed. You know, "some of my best friends are Jews ...."

I do wonder, though, whether non-Republican gays share my attitude. I'll be watching the blogs on that one - because if progressive gays disagree, I will retract this post.

'DEATH OF A PRESIDENT"

We do not want this movie, about the fictional assassination of George W. Bush, released before the election. It will reverse the Foleygate momentum overnight.

Thank God some theater chains won't run it. If I were a Republican and I had a theater chain, I'd put it in every theater I had.

BRIAN BENNETT

Bad homosexual.

MICHAEL STEELE

Another bad Negro.

STUD(D)S

The fact that Republicans are bringing up Gary Studds to counter Mark Foley is a comfort to me. Because it at least suggests that there are no vulnerable Democrats out there now. And that means that there's no answer to Foleygate.

FAITH

So the Vatican is thinking about changing the rules on where unbaptised babies go. Jesuits say they "hope" these babies will go to heaven instead of to limbo, where they've been said to have gone since whatever century it was that the church said so. They can change the rules so that these babies can go to heaven because the Church has no "formal" doctrine on that matter.

So what happens to all the babies who have gone to limbo by mistake - sort of like innocent people who've been executed in Texas? Is it too late, or will God take them up to heaven because the church thinks that's what He should do? (It's certainly too late for those poor guys in Texas.) Or did they never go to limbo at all? Or to heaven, for that matter? And what about the poor unbaptized babies who die while the church is trying to make up its mind? (What the church has done is float a trial balloon, just like a political party which is trying to decide whether something they do will win them converts or lose them the faithful. Religion by polling. Fascinating.)

Who runs this show - God or the church? If God didn't make the rule that unbaptized babies go to limbo, then I guess they went to limbo because the church said they did. In that case, the question really is: who is God, God or the church?

When a church changes the rules on a fundamental aspect of belief - that is, something that God supposedly does, as opposed to what a church does - there is nothing left to believe but that it's all a fiction. But that won't stop believers, because ... they have ... faith.

BEDTIME READING

Read it.
Read it.
Read it.
Read it.
Read it.

Trust me.

IDIOT SPIN

The latest Republican spin on Foleygate - that the Democrats knew about Foley all along and held it back to release it five weeks before the election, thus leaving the pages vulnerable for God knows how long?

Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter that there is no truth to it at all. It doesn't matter that even if true, it wouldn't excuse the Republicans. It isn't intended to convince the unconvinced. It's intended to energize the base.

Proving that Republicans think their base is as dumb as dirt, even dumber than the poor dolts jihadists have talked into blowing themselves up.

Because at least the jihadists could point to some evidence.

If the Republican base is that dumb, you can't do a thing about it. If it isn't, perhaps it might let the Republicans know.

Besides, they're giving the Democrats far too much credit. Democrats aren't together enough to pull off what they've been accused of. If they were, they would have released the emails two weeks before the election - so the Republicans wouldn't have time to spread their spin for idiots.

ANOTHER BAD JEW

Lisa Schiffren

I HAVE TO

I am reprinting this Huffpo post by Jonathon Tasini (Hillary Clinton's recent primary opponent) because ... I just have to.

______

A couple of days ago, Joe Lieberman attacked Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont for supposedly not being a strong enough "supporter" of Israel because Lamont's supporters include some people who have been critical of Israel. But, the truth is, Joe, you're no friend of Israel.

Like too many politicians, Jewish or non-Jewish, Lieberman's stance on Israel is as dangerous as the friend of an alcoholic who would slap him on the back and yuck it up at a bar, offering to pay the alcoholic's tab--forget the consequences, as long as it makes him feel good.

A true friend of Israel would not have stood by and remained silent as Israel dropped thousands of cluster bombs in Lebanon, which, according to The New York Times today, left one million unexploded bomblets littered throughout southern Lebanon--small devices the size of a light socket that are killing and injuring innocent civilians. As The Times reports, "When they fail to detonate they cling to the ground, and with their white tails look deceptively like toys, so children are often those who are injured." A true friend of Israel would have taken its country's leaders to the woodshed and said, "Responding to Hezbollah is one thing but turning Lebanon into rubble and embittering an entire new generation towards the existence of your country is madness."

A true friend of Israel would be appalled at Israel's policy that has brought Gaza to the brink of economic collapse and civil war. Because of the economic boycott and severing of funds to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians are undergoing a severe economic depression and malnutrition, especially among children, is on the rise. A true friend of Israel, and a devout Jew as Lieberman claims to be, would have said, "it is a sin to blame the entire Palestinian people for acts of violence by a handful of terrorists--and shame on us, as Jews, for bulldozing homes of innocent people, killing children in military raids and cutting off medical care, food and water to an entire population."

A true friend of Israel would not try to fan, in a not-so-subtle fashion, the fears of anti-Semitism by trying to tar people who are critical of our country's policy in the Middle East. Criticisms of Israel may be painful to American Jews--but it is high time that any person, Jew on non-Jew, can raise legitimate critiques of our one-sided policy in the Middle East and Israel's policies towards the Palestinians without fearing a McCarthy-like smear.

As a Jew, I speak about Israel out of love and pain, in the same way that I am a deeply patriotic American who is harshly critical of our government and its behavior in Iraq. My father was born in then-Palestine. He fought in the Haganah (the Israeli underground) in the war of independence; my father's cousin, whose name I carry as a middle name, was killed in that war. I lived in Israel for seven years, during which I went through the 1973 war: a cousin of mine was killed in that war, leaving a young widow and two children, and his brother was wounded. My step-grandfather, an old man who was no threat to anyone, was killed by a Palestinian who took an axe to his head while he was sitting quietly on a park bench. Half my family still lives in Israel.

I know Lamont, as a non-Jew, feels that he has to constantly talk about being a strong supporter of Israel. I hope that, once he is elected to the U.S. Senate, he can lead an honest discussion about the future of the Middle East. In the meantime, those of us who are not standing in the cross-hairs of the ugly rhetoric of campaigns have to speak up and say quite clearly that anyone who cares about the future of Israel, and the well-being of all the people in the region, has to reject the Lieberman vision of what it means to support Israel--a vision that only endangers Israel's long-term security and threatens the lives of people throughout the region because it fuels hatred, violence and intolerance.

OPEN LETTER TO WALTER KRONKITE

Open letter to Walter Kronkite:

Are you still on the Vineyard?

I'm writing this to you because you're the last one left. Ed Murrow is dead, Dan Rather is disgraced. You're the last living vestige of the CBS we used to revere. You had the moral authority to singlehandedly begin the reversal of the course that led to the Vietnam war.

So I'm kind of puzzled why you haven't spoken up about what's happened to CBS.

OK, Couric is a judgment call. Maybe putting a lightweight in charge of the news division that destroyed Joe McCarthy is defensible. After all, America's gotten pretty lightweight, too, what with buying into all these years of Republican lies, and all.

But that you haven't spoken out about what Couric is doing - like putting a know-nothing on to tell the world that the recent school shooting followed, as night follows day, from the theory of evolution - is puzzling. With all due respect, I hope you don't have Alzheimers and aren't completely unaware of what's going on. If you do, I take it back; pretend I didn't write this letter.

But if you don't, where are you? Matter of fact, where were you when they took Dan Rather down because he didn't properly vet documents which may have been forgeries, but yet which clearly revealed the truth?

If you're of the opinion that it's not your problem anymore, you're wrong - it is your problem, in the same sence that it's my problem, every American's problem. We can't afford to lose another beacon of common sense. I don't mean CBS. I mean you.

THE PLAN

The LA Times reports the release of a videotape by the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, the man who replaced Zarqawi. Perhaps the most significant thing in the tape is his statement that 4,000 "foreign fighters" (read terrorists) have been killed.

How come we haven't heard this from our own government? How could a government so determined to keep us fighting in Iraq not have publicized a figure like that?

Bush could have succeeded in Iraq if 1) he had gone after jihadists, 2) not gone after (except in self-defense) local fighters whose only interest is freeing Iraq of Americans and 3) made a real effort to improve conditions in the country.

Apparently he has done #1, but certainly not #2 - this administration is so blinded by ideology that it doesn't understand that Iraqis are fighting for a number of different reasons. And he didn't do #3 because he can't understand that it can be helpful if you do good things for people.

You do have to recognize, taking the tape as evidence, that there are people out there with whom you cannot negotiate because they are just as blindered as Bush is, and even more deadly. Like Bush, those people have to be gotten rid of. Hopefully, getting Republicans out of office is all that needs to be done re them. As for the jihadists, they will have to be killed.

If I were Bush, this is how I'd have fought it. I'd have stayed away from Iraq, or occupying any territory. I would have sent kill teams in to destroy confirmed jihadists, whether they were in Pakistan, England, France or anywhere. I would even have approved torture if I were sure that the people I had in custody were actually enemies - and I would have approached the situation surgically enough that I wouldn't be holding people I had nothing real against. I would just keep killing them until they got discouraged, and if they didn't get discouraged, I wouldn't stop. And I would have been very quiet about it. We wouldn't have a war on terror - we'd just kill terrorists.

These people are killers, and deserve to be killed (and I oppose capital punishment). They are torturers and deserve to be tortured. Bush's problem is that he'll torture anyone he thinks is a terrorist - the truth being that he has no idea who a terrorist is, what motivates them, how to identify them.

Americans would have had no problem with the above plan. In fact, it ought to be the Democratic plan. It's succinct and understandable; the public would get it and support it. And there's the end of the Democrats' security dilemma.

STONERS

The October 2 issue of the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceutics reports that the active ingredient of marijuana could be considerably better at suppressing the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s than any currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of the disease.

This is like manna from heaven for baby boomers. It gives them a good excuse to go back to the roots which they have been publicly scorning, but probably secretly yearning for.

What will the world be like when the middle-aged are freaking out and the old people are stoned and groovin'? I don't care, because I'm old and I won't give a shit.

THE WAR ON YOUTUBE

People are putting up videos on YouTube of attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.

This is the kind of video that routinely appeared on U.S. TV during the Vietnam War. During the Iraq war, there has been minimal (if any) of this on the MSM.

You Tube is removing the sites on complaints from other users. But they can't keep up.

Americans should not be allowed to support a war without seeing what war is. Actually, I would guess that America is the only nation in history which was involved in a war and yet has no concept of its destruction. That disconnection is dangerous in itself, and it's also indicative of the way this country runs its politics and its foreign affairs - a sort of "don't worry, be happy" approach which permits us glibly to say yes to whatever they want to do.

So, once again, it's bloggers who are telling us the truth. I am distressed that YouTube is not on board with this, preferring to preserve its profits rather than get at the truth - particularly since "truth" is one of the selling points of YouTube.

Well - if they start censoring speech which threatens only the status quo, there'll be another site along. They're not going to stop it.

INFERIOR

In his new book, "Never Again" (interesting title). John Ashcroft complains that the 9/11 Commission "seemed obsessed with trying to lay the blame for the terrorist attacks at the feet of the Bush administration, while virtually absolving the previous administration of responsibility." (For God's sake, don't buy this book.)

Never mind the question of whether his statement is true. It's Ashcroft's behavior in making it that I'm interested in.

Bullies typically whine if they are picked on, because their aggression and their certitude masks a deep sense of inferiority. You could call it an "inferiority complex" if the self-doubt is not justified - but since Ashcroft is inferior, I'd say his behavior was right on the mark.

NUMBERS

Two stories about numbers:

1) Evangelists are saying only about 4% of their teenage kids are following in their footsteps.

Nothing unusual about that - kids who follow their parent's path have historically been thought of as pathetic weenies - except when it comes to living at home to save a couple of bucks. If the evangelicals are right, they have reached their apogee and are on the back side of the cycle. That saves me a whole lot of future angst.

But what if they're not right - what if this is a scare tactic to get evangelicals to repress their kids a bit more? This could be the first generation in history which adores its parents - after all, isn't that what the metrosexuals are setting up? If kids in New York penthouses think their parents are great, well ... we can't hold the same sentiment against kids of evangelicals.

But a little rebellion would be good - kind of healthy, ain't it?


2) If the Democrats elect a bunch of new congresspeople but don't take either house, they are still ahead of the game. Because from what I've been hearing and seeing, the present set of candidates is, for the most part, a whole lot smarter and ballsier than the old, tired, polite folks who represent us now. At least we can have some confidence that, even in the minority, these men and women won't just sit there, shut up and roll over. And the best thing about that is - one of them might just be the person we need to articulate Democratic anger, and Democratic vision, and run for president.

I don't know who we have to thank for this bunch of recruits - but I think it's more likely Howard Dean than Rahm Emanuel. If they win seats - or even if they don't - we need to turn them loose to replace the ineffectual farts who've been running the show since Clinton.

I FEAR IT

I listened to Keith Olbermann's most recent angry response to Bush lies about Democrats (available at Crooks & Liars.) He closed his comments: "Good night, and good luck." Olbermann has decided to be the Ed Murrow of our time. And God, how we have needed one these past few years!

Now if we can only find a Joseph Welch, maybe we can put an end to this evil Republican spew.

Whether we find a Welch or not, it is now necessary that what Olbermann said be repeated over and over and over by every Democrat and every American with half a sense of honor. We are very near a tipping point, very near a wave which could cleanse this country before it slips into civil war - which is what Bush and Limbaugh and Hastert are trying to provoke.

One thing is apparent: Woodward and Foley have raised the Republican response to hysteria. They have no grounding whatsoever in reality, and that has to be clear to anyone who watches them.

Maybe we are seeing their self-destruction. If not, we should help them along. But I fear it - because I don't know what they will take down with them. Hitler was determined that nothing be left of Germany after his death. I would not put it past these guys to feel the same way.

DO AMERICANS JEWS LOVE ISRAEL?

Very interesting ...

GOOD NEWS

This is the best news I've heard all year. I hope it's true.

DO WE? HUH?

Tom Friedman now says the Bush team is incompetent. He wants the Democrats to win both houses, but only by one vote, because he wants them to have to govern from the center.

I never heard him ask the Republicans to govern from the center.

Friedman is just another Republican candidate belatedly distancing himself from Bush.

Do we get to vote him out of office, too?

SPEAK UP

Wouldn't it be nice if as many Muslims were protesting the behavior of their jihadists as there are Americans protesting the behavior of Christian jihadists? There aren't, of course. Maybe it's a cultural thing - Muslims don't exercise their democratic right to speak out as a rule. Or maybe they agree with their jihadists. In either case, they are validating feelings that Islam is bloody by nature.

Muslims have also drawn the conclusion that America is bloody by nature. Looking at what's immediately visible, that's a not unreasonable conclusion. But a closer look - at history and at the American opposition - might give them a slightly more accurate perspective. It may be too much to ask of them that they give it a closer look. It may be too much to ask Americans that they give a closer look to anything.

The results of the next election will allow us - and Muslims worldwide - to draw conclusions about how adept at democracy Americans really are. That is, if we want to know - and if Muslims want to understand us. But there's not going to be any defining event that will let us draw different conclusions about Islam.

Muslims need to speak up - or don't bitch if you get dirty looks when you walk into a grocery store with a shmatah on your head.

BLOCKHEADS

From the WaPo:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged Wednesday to "redouble" U.S. efforts to alleviate the economic plight of Palestinians facing escalating tensions and the threat of a humanitarian crisis. But U.S. officials cautioned not to expect any significant breakthroughs as prospects for a renewed Arab-Israeli peace process seem further away than ever.

2 x 0 = 0

This is the administration which failed to make any real effort to rebuild either Afghanistan or Iraq, notwithstanding it was clear that rebuilding was crucial to winning the "hearts and minds" of their people - particularly after previous Republican administrations had promised rebuilding to both countries, and delivered nothing.

This administration never had any intention of improving conditions in either country - or New Orleans, for that matter. When they say they are not into nation-building, what they mean is they are not into nation-helping, nation-repairing or anything beside blowing nations up.

One of the great criticisms of Islamic fundamentalists is that they have no positive program for improving the lot of their people. Their sole interest is in destruction. That's just another aspect in which this Republican administration is identical to its jihadist enemies.

From before 9/11, this administration made it clear it had no interest in getting involved in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace. One would think that after 9/11, when it became clear to the blindest that the Palestinian problem was a prime mover for terrorists, Bush would at least make a tenth of the effort Clinton made to remove this irritant from the world scene and deprive jihadists of at least one of their motivations. But no. They want the world on edge, because they need it to be, so they can tell dense Americans how much they need Republicans to protect them. Theory and practice both: behave so as to make enemies, and then hold on to power by offering to defend America from the enemies you create.

There are blockheads in every element of this equation. And they're all responsible for the current state of the world.

SORTA LIKE

But he's right about Pelosi ...

NO PASS FOR THE TIMES

Nobody needs the New York Times any more. Yes, from time to time they do important reporting, but others - and increasingly the internet, as it becomes possible to actually pay people to report - will pick up the slack. You don't need to read the paper, because anything important it publishes gets repeated on the internet.

So - I think it's time we boycott the paper, until it gets rid of dishonest Republican apologists like David Brooks. Brooks needs to be out of a job - or, to be slightly kinder, let him work for people who appreciate what he has to say. Brooks to Fox News or the New York Post. Let's be consistent here.

Don't forget Judy Miller. Don't give the Times a pass.

OPTIMISTIC

This article's excellent - if a little too optimistic. Hope he's righter than I am.

THE FEDORA

I just watched Bill Moyers' excellent PBS expose of the workings of Abramoff and Tom Delay. And here's what I noticed:

Jack Abramoff is hatless throughout the film. But after he is indicted, he's seen wearing a black fedora.

Which means Abramoff is trying to be a born-again Orthodox Jew. He's looking for absolution from God. Like all the rest of these crooks.

I don't think he needs to bother. A year from now, nobody will remember what he did, and when he gets out of jail, he can go and do it all over again.

But he'll probably wear the fedora - because he'll want God's endorsement. And he'll get it. Because God only punishes those who don't believe in Him. If you believe, God approves of everything you do.

THE RULE

OK. Here's the problem:

Even if the Democrats take both houses, and even if they win the presidency in 2008, democracy is still in danger here.

There is a huge cadre of operatives - conservatives, neocons, Republicans, Christian right, whatever you want to call them - who have been taught hatred, duplicity and contempt for the democratic process in the madrassas of Republican think tanks and Christian institutions. In their cases, it is not simply a matter of political conviction - they are sick people, amoral, sociopathic, who have the absolute conviction that they have the truth and that anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be destroyed. One has to assume that many of them were born sick, or made so in childhood - but I'm sure there have been many who began with pure hearts and have been turned vicious without even knowing it. Over forty years, they have been taken up as children and taught this poisonous doctrine, and they still are now, more than ever, in the born again universities, in Republican clubs at Harvard, in the meeting halls of churches and synagogues. If you sat down and made a list of them, it would contain at a minimum hundreds of thousand of names. Considering evangelical willingness to do or countenance anything as long as it results in more political control for them, we are probably talking of Manchurian candidates numbering in the millions. They are completely corrupt, but the worst of it is that the corruption is not simply for personal gain but employment of an "end justifies the means" ideology. It is in their souls - it has replaced their souls - and there are more and more of them made every day. It is not, nor will it ever be, in them to moderate.

I suspect one of the reasons they are so ferocious against fundamentalist Islam - aside from the fact that the Muslims have the wrong God - is that, consciously or subconsciously, they understand the seriousness of the jihadi threat because they recognize their own nature in the jihadists. Truly, there is very little difference between their world views. The only difference, so far, in the nature of their activity is that the American variety have so far not been willing to die for their cause - and that's because they don't have to, they have taken charge of the U.S. military and (like the al-Qaeda leadership) can send young naifs to die for them. In every other aspect - the way they manipulate money, the way they seduce converts who may be sincerely religious, the way they will do anything to get or hold power - these two groups are identical.

If they're not part of the problem, Americans don't have the sophistication even to know there's a problem. Consider that there has been dishonest government in the U.S. since 1968 (I include Clinton's presidency only because it was dishonest, but I don't imply that it was in any way the same kind of dishonesty. However, it was not a period where public service was particularly prized). How much of the American population has any memory of a time when government worked, and spoke, for justice - and not only meant it, but understood "justice" to mean what the Judeo-Christian tradition said it meant)? Many Americans are like the Coushatta indians; they resent the fact that Jack Abramoff robbed them blind, but they don't really for sorry for contributing to the process of buying off the American Congress. Or they're like the Jews in Weimar Germany - they can't conceive that the government of the land they dearly love promotes evil. Or they do understand that, and they're cynical and turned off and don't vote, because they think - with some justification - that the Democrats will be no better. And that just helps the Republicans. As Thomas Frank said, the Republicans like a cynical electorate.

So we can assume that Republicans will never give up this fight. As the Taliban is making a resurgence in Afghanistan, the Republicans, if defeated, will redouble their efforts and will never be satisfied without total power.

How do you change this? I don't think, in any short term, it's possible. And by short term I mean the next twenty years. These agents of totalitarianism will not learn to be something else; we're going to have to wait until they get old or die and get out of the way before there is any possibility of peace in this country - and that assumes they will not continue to train jihadists, which is an assumption which cannot be made.

It would be possible if there were enough Americans who came to understand what democracy is, and to identify with a progressive mindset which posits that each of us has an obligation to others than ourselves and a moral obligation not to rape the polity for personal benefit. As I've said a million times, there is only one relevant moral imperative. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the rule that, in civilized society, governs personal behavior - and it is no part of the world we live in now.

I'm too old to fight this fight. But somebody has to, or these fools will destroy us all, one way or the other.

IN CASE

Here's a suggestion:

If the Democrats actually win a house, they will need to run it exactly as the Republicans have - by suppressing dissent and blocking every Republican attempt to control the agenda.

That victory will not be the time for magnanimity or for returning to prior liberal practices. This is a war, and one defeat will not change the Republicans one whit. They are an army of rottweilers which will need to be chained down.

Democrats will need to move on three simultaneous tracks. They need to adopt the Republican attitude that they must change as much as they can as quickly as possible, in case they lose power again. Those tracks are: 1) reverse as many of the Republican actions as possible; 2) investigate the manner in which Republicans have governed; and 3) devise and present a plan to restore our democracy.

Democrats should be planning now to begin these initiatives on day one. Firstly, because they cannot afford to lose initiative or momentum, and secondly because these are what will give them a chance at the presidency.

I don't actually believe there are Democrats out there who are capable of doing this. I just put the idea out there, in case someone turns up.

MILITARY TRUTH

Military voices have been the only ones to tell us the truth of what is happening in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and the so-called WOT. They are the only ones who seem to comprehend that in order to protect and advance its national interests, a country must use far more than military power to succeed. Amazingly they seem to be the only ones who approach their objectives rationally.

So I wonder whether, if in fact an invasion of Iran is in the works, some general or admiral is going to step forward and warn us ahead of the fact. Because nobody else is going to tell us the truth.

EVEN BUSH

If it does evil, Republicans will protect it.

Come on, you bastards. Even Bush has a dog.

WIN FIRST

Bloggers are complaining that Foleygate has diverted attention from the loss of habeas corpus in the military detention bill.

Obvious, the removal of the right of habeas corpus is a much more significant matter than Foleygate - particularly since under the new legislation that right could be taken away from U.S. citizens whom the president designates as enemy combatants or persons who have acted harmfully to the U.S. It is a major infringement of constitutional rights.

But parents will not see it as more significant. Firstly, they won't understand it; and secondly, Foleygate is symbolic of a direct threat to the family. Obviously, Foleygate will have a much more immediate impact on public opinion than habeasgate.

I don't like to see purists on the liberal side. We are not engaged in an academic argument; we are engaged in political war, and in war one must recognize the situation on the ground and deal with it pragmatically to have a chance to win.

Foleygate can turn the election. Habeasgate can't.

Let's win it first, and then fix habeasgate.

TOO LAZY

This is the headline story from today's Salon email:

Mark Foley's sexual pursuit of underage boys has Republicans cowering in defensive spin and frantic scapegoating. But will the scandal ensure a November sweep for Democrats?

By Walter Shapiro

Why do people write stories like this?

1) The question is unanswerable.

2) Tomorrow the situation on the ground will change, requiring a new analysis

3) You have no better than a 50/50 chance of being right

4) Who the hell are you, and why do we care what you think?

5) It's not important whether the Democrats will win. It's important whether the Democrats do win. And sorry, you can't report that until November 7th.

6) Too lazy to do some real reporting today?

OUTSOURCING

I love this, from Wired News:

Outsourcing is continuing apace. You can now hire an Indian woman's womb to incubate your test tube baby, at 1/10th the price a US womb charges. And you can get a priest in India to say a mass for you.

What's up in the future? You don't feel like eating tonight? Get an Indian to absorb your caloric intake. Don't feel like sleeping? Get an Indian to take your nap. Don't feel like exercising? Etc. Etc. Don't feel like having a job? No problem there.

Don't feel like thinking? Ahh, you've already outsourced that.

DEPRESSING

There was a lot of press on how the Republicans were successful in Rhode Island when they came into the Republican primary in support of Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate Republican whom they have to hate, against a more conservative Republican who they thought had no chance of beating Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic candidate.

Well, if they had such an influence in Rhode Island, how come, when they did the same thing in Arizona, they lost? In the Republican primary there, Randy Graf, a Republican jihadist, defeated the moderate whom the party supported on the same theory as in Rhode Island.

It pained me to see the reporting on Rhode Island. It showed the complete lack of sophistication with which the press approaches political analysis. The truth is, as one Rhode Islander blogged, that once you get elected to the senate from Rhode Island, the seat is yours for life unless you really screw up. I don't believe the Republican Party had any significant impact on that race. Chaffee is an honest guy, he's respected in the state, everyone thinks he's doing a good job and there was no good reason to believe a challenger had a chance against him. In fact, except for the anti-Bush political climate (Rhode Island is purportedly a solid Democratic state, although it's had lots of Republican governors and one senate seat has been Republican for decades), I don't think Whitehouse would have a ghost of a chance against Chaffee - unless the race was manipulated by local political bosses.

So much of the American media has lost its capability to understand what it is reporting on. Either it's laziness, lack of education, lack of intelligence, deadline pressure or lack of a sense of moral obligation to speak the truth.

Depressing, ain't it.

FRAT BOY DIPLOMACY

So George Bush throws a dinner and invites Musharraf and Karzai. He's going to solve all the problems in the Middle East.

This guy actually thinks that through the force of his personality and his brilliant convincing skills (and, of course, his cogent foreign policy analysis), he is going to talk other leaders into changing the dynamic in a dangerous region. Two and a half hours and all issues resolved. That's how he did it in Texas - his only real experience with dealing with people who don't agree with him. Well, I would love to see Texas as an independent nation (I really would love that, as a sort of quarantine measure to allow the rest of America to return to sanity) trying to make its way in the world. Texans don't negotiate; they knock you down, or they dig the ground out from under you. Subtlety is not a Texas habit. I haven't seen a hint of it in George Bush.

Frat boy diplomacy is no substitute for the real thing. If I had the misfortune to sit down at dinner with George Bush, all I'd be thinking about is when can I go home.

NUFF SAID

I get about a thousand RSS feeds to my email every day - most of them from blogs, some of them from newspapers and other media.

What I notice is that, unless a media outlet is breaking a new story, the feeds from the media are dated compared to what I get from the blogs. The media stories assume that their readers know nothing. The blogs assume that their readers are up to date. That means the blog posts are more focused, so new information pops out at you without you having to strain through a narrative looking for something meaningful. MSNBC's blog and The Opinionator are fairly often exceptions. I do see good stuff there that isn't anywhere else.

But I also have to say that there is a staggering amount of repetition on the blogs. With all due respect, if all what you want to say is that Denny Hastert is a bad guy, don't bother saying it. We already know. If you have new information, or a different take on a situation, by all means let it fly. That's what we're looking for - not your repetitive expressions of outrage.

My philosophy as to this blog is: I don't have new information, and I don't put up my opinion unless it's something I haven't seen much of on other blogs. I will from time to time link to some piece of news I consider important, even if I don't have anything different to say about it. But that's just to remind me that the story exists, and to let readers know about it when I think it isn't getting enough coverage elsewhere.

If it's been said enough, I don't say it. Nuff said.

NO SPIN ZONE

Republicans are spreading the story that the Foley emails were leaked by a Democrat staffer, the argument being that the leak was politically motivated.

I suspect - and apparently the Republicans don't - that this is the first story of Republican shiftiness which cannot be argued politically. I don't think anyone cares who leaked these emails - in fact, they probably think that person was performing a public service. This story cannot be spun politically. That's why it might have a devastating impact.

BLOCKBUSTERS

This fascinates me:

Woodward puts out a book which has some insightful "revelations" about Bush. Most of it is nothing new - the info, and the logical conclusions to be drawn from it, has been out there for some time. But the book is invaluable because it focuses the media on Bush failures at this particular point in time. So it has a huge impact, potentially.

The book came out formally on Monday. And it's already over. We have absorbed Woodward's points and moved on. The book is now worthless.

In non-fiction publishing, the book business has become like the media business. Blockbusters make most of their money on their opening weekend. After that, they earn in the remainder bin. Littler quieter books, like "Hubris" or "Fiasco," build their audiences over time. Maybe the difference is that the littler books make you think, while the blockbusters give you only a short burst of information.

I wonder which type is more significant in the current media climate.

BAD NEGROES

Every so often I put up posts about what I call bad Jews - Jews who are disconnected from the Jewish social conscience which is the value which I think defines Jewishness - Jews whose response to the Holocaust is to wish it on other people rather than to recognize humanity's interconnectedness - like Christians who view their religion as a tool of conquest rather than a commandment to practice the Golden Rule.

I feel comfortable doing that because I'm a Jew - and also because, since I'm not religious and I criticize Jews and Israel, I am what they call a bad Jew.

Well, I've decided to start similar posts on what I call bad Negroes - blacks who forget their own people, forget their struggle for civil rights and despise the civil rights of others, blacks who have no soul (in the '60's sense of the word), who are the antithesis of Martin Luther King. I feel entitled to do that because of Schwerner and Goodman - we Jews fought for you back then, and look how you repay us.

Item One - Condi Rice. Looking at her, you have to wonder if she is actually human. I have never seen her say anything that was believable, or gotten any sense that there is any human feeling behind what she says and does. What she says is so convoluted that no one can follow it - that's the result of everything she says being calculated to within an inch of its life. I'm sure she sees herself as a deep thinker, but I see a shallow woman who has no comprehension of where she comes from, who she is or what she is doing. I have the sense that she is a deeply unhappy woman with no roots. Besides, she's a very bad liar - she gets a shifty look when she lies, and since she's doing more and more of it, she begins to look permanently shifty.

As Secretary of State, she has done precisely nothing. She has made no attempt whatsoever towards effective diplomacy - in fact, I don't think she understands what diplomacy is. At this point, she confines herself to making specious statements that support the plans of the president or the Secretary of Defense. She is a flack for an administration that has contempt for the poor - which include a hell of a lot of her own people. You just know that if she'd been put in charge of the administration's Katrina response, she would have come off exactly like George Bush the elder did in 1992 - transparently unfeeling and unconcerned. She doesn't even look like she shares the hate and the anger that define this Presidency - she just seems to be riding that wave for her own benefit, although I'm certain she thinks she knows how to right the world better than the people with real ideas.

I get the feeling that if we had a conversation, it would come to a grinding halt shortly after hello.

As Gertrude Stein would put it, there's no there there.

FUX NEWS

So brazen - so contemptuous of their own listeners ...

SOMEWHERE ELSE

Read this and remember that Rush Limbaugh doesn't say anything that doesn't come from Rove. Combine this with Frist's comment, noted in my previous post, and it sorts of looks like Rove's October Surprise could be a pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan ...

But that's not possible ... for the Republicans to do that they would have to face every statement they've made for the past four years.

But Rove may be willing to take that risk if he still thinks he can make America believe whatever he says - and if he needs the troops somewhere else.

ANY IDEAS?

I am having a serious problem understanding why Bill Frist came out with a statement to the effect that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily and should be included in the Afghanistan government.

The only reason why the Taliban can't be defeated militarily is that all our soldiers are in Iraq. I don't know why they couldn't be beaten otherwise; have they been strengthened significantly? I doubt it.

But it is true that as things are, they can't be beaten.

If they are taken into the Afghan government, either they will come to dominate it as they previously had, or they will fight it out with the warlords - also as they previously have. There is a certain sense to their inclusion - assuming, that is, that anyone involved has a genuine interest in creating a democratic polity. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that.

So basically what Frist is saying is: the US should get out. And if that is the case, then why did we go there in the first place? Afghanistan will certainly once again become an Islamic state and a haven for terrorism. Why is Frist willing to accept that now? Or ever, considering his stated positions on Islam and jihadis?

Let's mull the possibilities. He could be paving the way for an American withdrawal from Iraq. But Republicans would have to eat so much crow - I don't understand why Frist isn't eating crow now.

It's more likely that he wants to get the troops out of Afghanistan. Why? Either to use them in Iraq, or to use them in Iran. If the former, there may be an administration desire to follow Bill Kristol's advice, put more troops on the ground and win that war. But my bet is on the latter - if only because Republicans are always thirsting for new enemies.

Why say it now? It will take a long time before the American public is ready to pull troops out of Afghanistan - that is, surrender on the original "war on terror." And if they are willing to do that, they will be willing to pull out of Iraq, too.

Whatever Frist's intentions, they probably will not flower until a year from now. And that does not suggest the target is Iran, since it's likely that Bush will move in that direction much sooner.

Could the statement be tied to Pakistan's recent deal with the Taliban? Maybe - but that is thinking deeper than I am able to, and I haven't known Frist to think that deeply yet.

So what the hell is going on? Any ideas out there?

ALL SIX

You need to read this staggeringly apt article - in Salon, yet!

My only complaint is that it does not go far enough in describing Republicans for what they are and exposing things they've done which don't relate to Iraq or the WOT. But that's a cavil - this is big progress, particularly in a high-profile webmag.

Of course, you only need to read this if you haven't been reading me. Otherwise, you know this stuff already. All six of you.

FAMILY VALUES

From Daily Kos:

Via Buffalo Geek and Jane Hamsher, who have the YouTube video, NRCC Head Tom Reynolds is facing a barrage of questions about what he knew in the Foley scandal, when he knew it, and why he didn't do anything about it other than passing it off to Dennis Hastert.

So today he held a news conference, in which he rented out a daycare center in order to surround himself with small children to talk about on Foley's sexual predation in the halls of Congress.

Even the reporters couldn't believe the rancidity of it:


Reporter: Congressman, do you mind asking the children to leave the room so we can have a frank discussion of this, because it's an adult topic. It just doesn't seem appropriate to me.

Reynolds: I'll take your questions, but I'm not going to ask any of my supporters to leave. [...]

Reporter: Who are the children, Congressman? Who are these children?

Reynolds: Pardon me?

Reporter: Who are these children?

Reynolds: Well, a number of them are from the community. There are several of the "thirtysomething" set that are here and uh I've known them and I've known their children as they were born.

Reporter: Do you think it's appropriate for them to be listening to the subject matter though?

Reynolds: Sir, I'll be happy to answer your questions, I'm still, uh...


Hiding behind children. Literally, in this case, holding them up to shield himself from the questions the reporters were trying to ask.

I'm looking at this point for one man in the entire Republican leadership with the integrity of a fleabitten stray dog. I'm still looking for that one man.

WHAT'S SAFE

Sometimes I'm so dense I ought to be sent back to kindergarten.

I've been wondering why immigration has become such an issue? How come I couldn't figure it out?

Take any economic problem the middle class has - loss of jobs, high medical costs, lack of medical insurance - and blame it on illegal immigrants. Why does it cost so much to go to a hospital? All them immigrants use the services and don't pay. Etc.

And the real reason just disappears. It was pretty dim anyway, since most people can't comprehend what's being done to them.

We need to recognize that we are at war. It's just that the guns haven't been upholstered yet. The Republican revolution is almost complete - and what they have been stalled at so far, they will get sooner or later. There is a parallel between them and the jihadists - they will not accept defeat, and they will persevere as long as it takes.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is no alternative to dealing with either than complete extermination. So far, with the Republicans, I'm just talking political extermination. But they are clearly far more dangerous than al Qaeda.

Maybe we should just leave them in power and let them ignite WWIII. Get somewhere safe and let them destroy each other. Tell me what's safe and I'll go there. Any good ideas?

RIGHT MOMENT

I have been waiting for the right moment to call someone a scumbag ...

BAD APPLE

Listen, all you frantic mothers (scatalogical sense): Republicans hope Hastert goes. He was never all that good anyway, and once he's gone they can say the problem has been resolved. You know - one bad apple does not a rotten barrel make.

Counterargument: one bad apple suggests there may be more. We have to dig into that barrel and check each apple out. One by one.

INEXCUSABLE

Not a bad Jew, just a stupid one. For a Jew, that's inexcusable.