i do not 'heart' Keith Olbermann aka i ♥ Keith Olbermann

Update: 2008: since Keith has joined the Hate-Hillary uncritically Adore-Obama legions of his military industrial complex G.E./General Electric Masters, I no longer ♥ this cowardly sexist bandwagon joiner. Feh.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown "Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld"

Keith's right on the mark when he says we have no modern-day Churchills, not here, not anywhere that I have seen or heard. But Keith is getting pretty close to being our contemporary version of Edward R. Murrow. Bless his sweet soul and backbone!

With gratitude from Crooks & Liars + they have clip(s) of Keith's comments Video - WMV Video - QT

Keith had some very choice words about Rumsfeld's "fascism" comments tonight. Watch it, save it and share it.

Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld's comments echoes other times in our world's history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.

Remember - Rumsfeld did not just call the Democrats out yesterday, he called out a majority of this country. [Rumsfeld's] wasn't only a partisan attack, but more so an attack against the majority of Americans.

Excerpts from the transcript of Keith's on-air comments:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis -- and the sober contemplation -- of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq. It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile? it is right -- and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.

For, in their time, there was another government faced with true peril - with a growing evil -- powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England's, in the 1930's. It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England. It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all
treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience -- needed to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth. Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated.

In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile -- at best -- morally or intellectually confused. That critic's name ..... was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill. History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy. Excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government? of Neville Chamberlain. But back to today's Omniscients.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused.....is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count -- not just his. Had he or his President perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago -- about Hurricane Katrina's impact one* year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to enveloppe this nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?

With what country has he confused ... the United States of America?

---

The confusion we -- as its citizens -- must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light? and we can, too.The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

---

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.This country faces a new type of fascism -- indeed.

---

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute -- I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear -- one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; "Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were -- for the moment -- unpopular."

Catch Keith on his informative, unique-in-perspective, cuts-through-the-BS (or at least points it out) show "Countdown" on MSNBC weeknights at 8:00 PM Eastern with various repeats later in the evening. Keith also has a blog, called appropriately enough "Bloggerman" where you can read the full transcript of his own words and in his original writing style (since I'm not sure where the C&L transcript emanated from).

I ♥ Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann, Countdown, MSNBC, Rumsfeld, Winston Churchill, Edward R. Murrow, dissent

Guest Commentary: An Accessory to War Crimes (in Lebanon)

Another thought-provoking, morality-challenging essay by decorated Vietnam War veteran, Dr. John Bomar:

U.S. complicity and encouragement of Israel?s recent air war against Lebanon makes us war criminals in the mind of many around the world. The savage brutality of Israel?s response to the capture of two of its soldiers was an obviously pre-planned exercise. Such number of military air attacks (thousands), targeting areas of civilian populations and civilian infrastructure cannot be accomplished without preparation beforehand. The destruction of Lebanese bridges, ports, oil facilities and transportation was out of all proportion to the provocation of a few Hezbollah militants. It reminds one of nothing less than the Nazi blitzkrieg of WWII when whole villages and towns were leveled because of the actions of a few resistors. It was deemed war criminal behavior by the entire civilized world.

Now comes word that Israel has sprinkled south Lebanon with hundreds of cluster bombs in the last days of the conflict, another universally declared criminal act. These anti-personnel bombs, which look like toys to children, will probably kill and maim hundreds, if not thousands of innocents. When these US manufactured bombs were provided to Israel, it was with the specific agreement that they would only be used in specific circumstance, as against large military concentrations.

Sadly, the Bush administration, once again, reveals its true stripes by its actions. Such barbarous hypocrisy in American foreign policy is what drives the forces against us. When things go terribly wrong, only a neurotic places all the blame on the other side of the ledger.

John R. Bomar
Arkadelphia, AR

On the Anniversary of Katrina: What Would Jesus (Re-)Build?

Mega-millions for huge new church sanctuaries and superdomes OR provide housing, jobs, health and other services for the poor, displaced, elderly, sick, youth, abused, foster children, homeless, disabled, veterans?

In my own southern small-town, rural, blood-red county which has few if any real services for those populations, I see an evangelical fundamentalist baptist church building a multi-million dollar grander bigger taller sanctuary -- adding onto their just-a- few-years old already largest-in-the-county church -- all right across the street from a defunct, now-closed small assisted living home for the elderly and disabled.

It's the kind of glory-monument-bigger-is-better-proof-of-our-power thing that has been a trend for the past 30 years throughout our land. Apparently Katrina, among many other things, simply hasn't made a dent in that way of thinking or behaving.

And while the housing crisis deepens, even for 'the suburbs (here, too)' what about the fact that poverty has increased while wages decreased (wages as well as health and pension benefits for workers and working class people --all but the top tier elite) ever since Bush and the rabid right took control 6 years ago.

I just have to wonder: what would Jesus do and say about all that?

Return to the Scene of the Crime

By FRANK RICH
August 27, 2006
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist

PRESIDENT BUSH travels to the Gulf Coast this week, ostensibly to mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Everyone knows his real mission: to try to make us forget the first anniversary of the downfall of his presidency.

As they used to say in the French Quarter, bonne chance! The ineptitude bared by the storm -- no planning for a widely predicted catastrophe, no attempt to secure a city besieged by looting, no strategy for anything except spin -- is indelible. New Orleans was Iraq redux with an all-American cast. The discrepancy between Mr. Bush's "heckuva job" shtick and the reality on the ground induced a Cronkite-in-Vietnam epiphany for news anchors. At long last they and the country demanded answers to the questions about the administration's competence that had been soft-pedaled two years earlier when the war first went south.

What's amazing on Katrina's first anniversary is how little Mr. Bush seems aware of this change in the political weather. He's still in a bubble. At last week's White House press conference, he sounded as petulant as Tom Cruise on the "Today" show when Matt Lauer challenged him about his boorish criticism of Brooke Shields. Asked what Iraq had to do with the attack on the World Trade Center, Mr. Bush testily responded, "Nothing," adding that "nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks." Like the emasculated movie star, the president is still so infatuated with his own myth that he believes the public will buy such nonsense.

As the rest of the world knows, the White House connived 24/7 to pound in the suggestion that Saddam ordered the attacks on 9/11. "The Bush administration had repeatedly tied the Iraq war to Sept. 11," Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton write in "Without Precedent," their new account of their stewardship of the 9/11 commission. The nonexistent Qaeda-Saddam tie-in was as much a selling point for the war as the nonexistent W.M.D. The salesmanship was so merciless that half the country was brainwashed into believing that the 9/11 hijackers had been Iraqis.

To achieve this feat, Dick Cheney spent two years publicly hyping a "pretty well confirmed" (translation: unconfirmed) pre-9/11 meeting in Prague between Mohamed Atta and a Saddam intelligence officer, continuing to do so long after this specious theory had been discredited. Mr. Bush's strategy was to histrionically stir 9/11 and Iraq into the same sentence whenever possible, before the invasion and after. Typical was his May 1, 2003, oration declaring the end of "major combat operations." After noting that "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11th, 2001," he added: "With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got." To paraphrase the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, this was tantamount to saying that the Japanese attacked us on Dec. 7, 1941, and war with Mexico is what they got.

Were it not so tragic, Mr. Bush's claim that he had never suggested a connection between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq would be as ludicrous as Bill Clinton's doomed effort to draw a distinction between sex and oral sex. The tragedy is that the country ever believed Mr. Bush, particularly those Americans who were moved to enlist because of 9/11 and instead ended up fighting a war that the president now concedes had "nothing" to do with the 9/11 attacks.

A representative and poignant example, brought to light by The Los Angeles Times, is Patrick R. McCaffrey, a Silicon Valley auto-body-shop manager with two children who joined the California National Guard one month after 9/11. He was eager to do his bit for homeland security by helping protect the Shasta Dam or Golden Gate Bridge. Instead he was sent to Iraq, where he was killed in 2004. In a replay of the Pentagon subterfuge surrounding the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, another post-9/11 enlistee betrayed by his country, Mr. McCaffrey's death was at first officially attributed to an ambush by insurgents. Only after two years of investigation did the Army finally concede that his killers were actually the Iraqi security forces he was helping to train.

"He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there," his mother, Nadia McCaffrey, told the paper. Last week's belated presidential admission that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on America that inspired Patrick McCaffrey's service was implicitly an admission that he and many like him died in Iraq for nothing as well.

Mr. Bush's press-conference disavowalof his habitual efforts to connect 9/11 to Saddam will be rolled back by the White House soon enough. When the fifth anniversary of 9/11 arrives in two weeks, you can bet that the president will once again invoke the Qaeda attacks to justify the Iraq war, especially now that we are adding troops (through the involuntary call-up of reservists) rather than subtracting any. The new propaganda strategy will be right out of Lewis Carroll: If we leave the country that had nothing to do with 9/11, then 9/11 will happen again.

But before we get to that White House P.R. offensive, there is next week's Katrina show. It has its work cut out for it. A year after the storm, the reconstruction of New Orleans echoes our reconstruction of Baghdad. A "truth squad" of House Democrats has cataloged the "waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement" in $8.75 billion worth of contracts, most of which were awarded noncompetitively. Only 60 percent of the city has electricity. Half of the hospitals and three-quarters of the child-care centers remain closed. Violent crime is on the rise. Less than half of the population has returned.

How do you pretty up this picture? As an opening act, Mr. Bush met on Wednesday with Rockey Vaccarella, a Katrina survivor who with much publicity drove a "replica" of a FEMA trailer from New Orleans to Washington to seek an audience with the president. No Cindy Sheehan bum's rush for him. Mr. Bush granted his wish and paraded him before the press. That was enough to distract the visitor from his professed message to dramatize the unfinished job on the Gulf. Instead Mr. Vaccarella effusively thanked the president for "the millions of FEMA trailers" complete with air-conditioning and TV. "You know, I wish you had another four years, man," he said. "If we had this president for another four years, I think we'd be great."

The CNN White House correspondent, Ed Henry, loved it. "Hollywood couldn't have scripted this any better, a gritty guy named Rockey slugging it out, trying to realize his dream and getting that dream realized against all odds," he said. He didn't ask how this particular Rockey, a fast-food manager who lost everything a year ago, financed this mission or so effortlessly pulled it off. It was up to bloggers and Democrats to report shortly thereafter that Mr. Vaccarella had run as a Republican candidate for the St. Bernard Parish commission in 1999. It was up to Iris Hageney of Gretna, La., to complain on the Times-Picayune Web site that the episode was "a huge embarrassment" that would encourage Americans to "forget the numerous people who still don't have trailers or at least one with electricity or water."
That is certainly the White House game plan as it looks toward the president's two-day return to the scene of the crime. Just as it brought huge generators to floodlight Mr. Bush's prime-time recovery speech in Jackson Square a year ago -- and then yanked the plug as soon as he was done -- so it will stop at little to bathe this anniversary in the rosiest possible glow.

Douglas Brinkley, the Tulane University historian who wrote the best-selling account of Katrina, "The Great Deluge," is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. "I don't think anybody's getting the Bush strategy," he said when we talked last week. "The crucial point is that the inaction is deliberate -- the inaction is the action." As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans's opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees ("Only Band-Aids have been put on them"), the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. "Out of the Katrina debacle, Bush is making political gains," Mr. Brinkley says incredulously. "The last blue state in the Old South is turning into a red state."

Perhaps. But with no plan for salvaging either of the catastrophes on his watch, this president can no sooner recover his credibility by putting on an elaborate show of sermonizing and spin this week than Mr. Cruise could levitate his image by jumping up and down on Oprah's couch. While the White House's latest screenplay may have been conceived as "Mission Accomplished II," what we're likely to see play out in New Orleans won't even be a patch on "Mission: Impossible III."

From "The More Things Change..." Files: WHITES ONLY

Hat-tip to CarpetBagger -- just had to pass this one along -- especially since it's practically in the backyard of one of my early childhood (red)-necks of the woods and really does give weight to the FRENCH adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same" not only in those woods but, as we've witnessed lately, far beyond:

This Week in God from The Carpetbagger Report

First up from the God machine this week is a [Northeast Mississippi] Baptist church that is filled with the Christian spirit ? just as long as church officials approve of your racial background.

Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo, Mississippi, voted out a 12-year-old boy who "asked Jesus to live in his heart" at the church two weeks ago. Why the ban? Joe is biracial, and church members didn't want the black side of his family attending with him.

They were "afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church," church pastor John Stevens told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

To his credit, Pastor Stevens resigned from the church the same day 12-year-old Joe was voted out of the church. Cliff Hardy, a local police officer, also resigned from the church. "My best friend is a black man," he said. "I wouldn't be comfortable going to a place where I couldn't ask my best friend to go to church with me."

The local paper contacted church members, but they refused comment. Go figure.

================================================
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal 8/26/2006 8:34 AM

Pastor claims church voted to reject black membership, resigns
BY CHARITY GORDON

SALTILLO - A pastor who says his congregation voted not to accept black membership has resigned. The church says it never made such a decision.

The Rev. John Stevens says Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo voted not to approve blacks as members during a scheduled Sunday night business meeting Aug. 6. Because of the decision, Stevens stepped down from the Baptist Missionary Alliance congregation that has an average Sunday morning attendance of 30 people.

According to Stevens, the church made race an issue after a biracial 12-year-old boy, Joe, began attending Fellowship Baptist with his temporary guardians.

The church was "afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church," Stevens said. "I could not go along with that. There would always be a wall between us, so I resigned that night."

After the Daily Journal contacted Fellowship Baptist members, they gathered Aug. 17 to form a response. Mike Dillard, who acted as spokesperson for the church, said the congregation "categorically denies" accusations that the church took such a vote and feels the charge is an attempt by a party to do them harm.

Family leaves
After being told of the vote, Cliff Hardy, an officer with the Tupelo Police Department, left the church. He and his family had been going to Fellowship Baptist for about a year and had been praying about becoming members there.

"I was asking the Lord to lead us," Hardy said.

The police officer says there are good people at Fellowship Baptist, and the Bible was preached there.

However, "You see, my best friend is a black man," he said. "I wouldn't be comfortable going to a place where I couldn't ask my best friend to go to church with me."

Hardy says he knows there are still a lot of folks who are not comfortable with people from other races - there is still a lot of holdover from the past, there is still a lot of fear.

"But that's not what Christ died for," he said. Jesus' death and resurrection "is supposed to be a uniting force, not a separating thing."

We're all God's children'
In July Joe moved in with his uncle and aunt, Saltillo residents Jason and Melinda Kirk. The Kirks, who had been attending Fellowship Baptist for almost five months, were Joe's temporary guardians until recently, when his stepmother moved here from Ohio.

During the week of July 23-26, Fellowship Baptist held revival services, and on July 26, Joe became a Christian.

The following Sunday, people at the church asked the Kirks if they would become members, and the family started praying about it.

The next Sunday morning, Aug. 6, the Kirks went to Fellowship Baptist. When company arrived at their house that afternoon, they decided not to go to the church that night.

Later that evening, the Kirks received a phone call from their pastor, Stevens, who said the church had voted not to accept black membership. The minister, 72, who has now retired, said he had resigned from the church over the decision.

Joe overheard the telephone conversation.
"We explained to him that everybody didn't feel like that," Melinda Kirk said. "But it really bothered him. He felt like our pastor had to quit his job because of him."

The Kirks reassured their nephew that Stevens was just standing up for what is right.

"People have got to realize we're all God's children," Jason Kirk said. "It's not God so loved the white people; it's God so loved the world."

Since Stevens' resignation, one church member who was not at the Aug. 6 meeting has called the former pastor and told him he was in favor of what he did. Stevens estimates 80 percent of the church is against having blacks as members of the congregation.

"It's between them and God," police officer Hardy said. "I love those folks, but I can't agree with them."

Click on image above to enlarge. Original artwork/cartoon "Republican Jesus" by Ward Sutton appeared in the Village Voice.

Thomas Frank: G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives

By THOMAS FRANK
NYT: August 22, 2006

In the lexicon of American business, 'cynicism' means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is 'government,' whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.

Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'? Or how the humorist P. J. O'Rourke won fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting were a form of thievery?

The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to corruption; government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from industry, and even federal quality standards - pure food and so on - are tantamount to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won't kill you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual companies in the field have built up at great expense over the years.

The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement's literature. You can hear their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things - who think that 'the public interest' is a joke, that 'reform' is a canard, and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some company or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which it was designed?

The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the 1920s. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier fund-raisers even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for unprecedented amounts.

What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that owns the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still vivid and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though, that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail sentences for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in 1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.

In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are infinitely better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative operatives or their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they've been in D.C. so long they've 'gone native,' to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are 'becoming cozy with Beltway mores,' in The Wall Street Journal's telling. If you don't like the corruption, you must do away with government.

Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described 'free-marketeer' who spent his days fighting 'government intervention in the economy' and leading the catcalls at Tip O'Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the political gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff's crimes, we are induced to accept Abramoff's politics, it will be K Street's greatest triumph yet.

Thomas Frank, GOP Corruption, NYTimes

Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out -- Frank Rich

Notice how desperately the bushies are to take credit for the allegedly foiled terrorist operation? (which if it was foiled, was due to the Brits, not the US).... Frank Rich has been paying attention, too.

by Frank Rich
The New York Times
August 20, 2006

The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over.

In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot -- Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew -- George W. Bush's approval rating remains stuck in the 30s, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency. While the new Middle East promised by Condi Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order we've lived with since 9/11 can be found everywhere: in Americans' unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians' and pundits' hysterical overreaction to Joe Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center.

It's not as if the White House didn't pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in '24.' But Mr. Bush's Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of 'Top Gun.' By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on The Daily Show. June's scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a 'full ground war' and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat -- though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair's vacation -- is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn't stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday's talk shows. 'It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out,' he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn't figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

No matter what the threat at hand, he can't get his story straight. When he said last weekend that the foiling of the London plot revealed a Qaeda in disarray because 'it's been five years since they've been capable of putting together something of this sort,' he didn't seem to realize that he was flatly contradicting the Ashcroft-Gonzales claims for the gravity of all the Qaeda plots they've boasted of stopping in those five years. As recently as last October, Mr. Bush himself announced a list of 10 grisly foiled plots, including one he later described as a Qaeda plan 'already set in motion' to fly a hijacked plane 'into the tallest building on the West Coast.'

Dick Cheney's credibility is also nil: he will always be the man who told us that Iraqis would greet our troops as liberators and that the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005. His latest and predictable effort to exploit terrorism for election-year fear-mongering -- arguing that Ned Lamont's dissent on Iraq gave comfort to 'Al Qaeda types' -- has no traction because the public has long since untangled the administration's bogus linkage between the Iraq war and Al Qaeda. That's why, of all the poll findings last week, the most revealing was one in the CBS survey: While the percentage of Americans who chose terrorism as our 'most important problem' increased in the immediate aftermath of the London plot, terrorism still came in second, at only 17 percent, to Iraq, at 28 percent.

The administration's constant refrain that Iraq is the 'central front' in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically: only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. The box-office returns of 'World Trade Center' are a cultural sign of just how much America has moved on. For all the debate about whether it was 'too soon' for such a Hollywood movie, it did better in the Northeast, where such concerns were most prevalent, than in the rest of the country, where, like 'United 93,' it may have arrived too late. Despite wild acclaim from conservatives and an accompanying e-mail campaign, 'World Trade Center' couldn't outdraw 'Step Up,' a teen romance starring a former Abercrombie & Fitch model and playing on 500 fewer screens.

Mr. Lamont's victory in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary has been as overhyped as Mr. Stone's movie. As a bellwether of national politics, one August primary in one very blue state is nearly meaningless. Mr. Lieberman's star began to wane in Connecticut well before Iraq became a defining issue. His approval rating at home, as measured by the Quinnipiac poll, had fallen from 80 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in July 2003, and that was before his kamikaze presidential bid turned 'Joementum' into a national joke.

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician's opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn't easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman's loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont's victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont's pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11.

That's just another version of the Cheney-Lieberman argument, and it's hogwash. Most of the 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq also want to win the war against Al Qaeda and its metastasizing allies: that's one major reason they don't want America bogged down in Iraq. Mr. Lamont's public statements put him in that camp as well, which is why those smearing him resort to the cheap trick of citing his leftist great-uncle (the socialist Corliss Lamont) while failing to mention that his father was a Republican who served in the Nixon administration. (Mr. Lieberman, ever bipartisan, has accused Mr. Lamont of being both a closet Republican and a radical.)

These commentators are no more adept at reading the long-term implications of the Connecticut primary than they were at seeing through blatant White House propaganda about Saddam's mushroom clouds. Their generalizations about the blogosphere are overheated; the shrillest left-wing voices on the Internet are no more representative of the whole than those of the far right. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and (if you listen to Chuck Hagel and George Will, among other non-neoconservatives) even the center right.

As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It's hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who've presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.

Source: NYTimes.com

Frank Rich, NY Times, NYT.com, Iraq War, politics, 06 election, fear mongering

The Mac Community Loses a Creative Talented Mind

... And the World Loses a Kind, Wise and Unique Soul

I never personally knew Tera Patricks (even though we both lived in L.A. at least during some of the same time apparently). But sometimes you really can tell an awful lot about someone through their creative output, writings, favorite software freebies and creative tools, simple meanderings ... and by what the people who love them say and share. Tera was deeply loved and respected.

Tera died today after a long battle with cancer. A sad and shocking loss to her friends, family, loved ones and to the mac community. She was only 46.

Tera was also co-founder of the uniquely creative and special Mac360.com -- a really wonderful portal for the mac community. She also shared some of her life's final take on things big and small at her blogsite, Tera Talks.

This is just my small way of acknowledging her presence, her loss, her contributions to the internet and to me personally through her writings and her sites -- a small tribute sending that acknowledgment into the cosmos ... sweet travels, Tera.

Tera Patricks, mac community, OS X, mac360.com, mac 360

Soaps' Fave Lesbian Mom Returns to Pine Valley; 'patron saint of gay soap characters'

viewers from all walks of life united around bringing a baby back to her lesbian mother

TV Guide and AfterEllen are reporting "Eden Riegel Returns to All My Children!"

Hallelujah! All your fervent prayers for the return of the patron saint of gay soap characters have been answered.

Daytime Emmy winner Eden Riegel is going back to All My Children as Bianca Montgomery, the iconic role she played from July 2000 to February 2005. Riegel has briefly revisited her ABC soap three times since Bianca relocated to Paris. However, she has just signed a longer-term contract with AMC.

"I am thrilled to have Eden return to All My Children," executive producer Julie Hanan Carruthers said in a statement. "She continues to be a cherished member of this talented ensemble. Bianca's presence enriches the canvas, and we all look forward to having her back home."

Especially insightful:

TVGuide.com: How unique she is. Soaps are supposed to cater to "mainstream" America, but a gay woman is Pine Valley's most decent, moral citizen.

Riegel: Yes, it's funny that Bianca is supposedly on the fringes of society, and yet she's the one keeps others morally in check.

During the baby-switch saga, [ABC Daytime chief] Brian Frons mentioned, "Isn't it amazing that the whole country -- viewers from all walks of life -- have united around bringing a baby back to her lesbian mother?"

With all the controversy about gay parents and all that stuff, people were universally opposed to this lesbian heroine being apart from her child. It's wonderful. People are a lot more tolerant and understanding when you put a human face on it.

Let's hope this time Bianca gets to actually have a real girlfriend and a real relationship. Fans (known as BAM-fans*) are especially keen that it's longtime-love Maggie (Elizabeth Hendrickson) who also left the show around the same time as Riegel in 2005 when both moved to the west coast to try their hands at Hollywoodland and pilot season.

Riegel goes back to work at All My Children on Sept. 12; she first airs on Oct. 11.

(*BAM = Bianca and Maggie), soaps, daytime TV, soap fans, lesbians on TV, gay characters, gay parents, lesbian moms, gay marriage

Macaca Allen Update

Jake Tapper asked for feedback from readers -- Much a 'do' about nothing? Racism? Bullying? You be the judge. -- in his "Political Punch" blog on ABC News, under the "MACACA-MANIA" topic.

Here are some great comments by readers:

You just know that those racist Republican crackers down in ol' Virginny are eating this up with a spoon. I'll bet if Allen came right out and used the N-word while wrapping himself in the stars and bars he would be elected in a landslide. Today's Republicans are yesterday's Klansmen. The GOP has been a haven for racists and race-baiting ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy went into effect. Why do we still tolerate it?

Posted by: JRDobbs | Aug 17, 2006 4:13:56 PM

Definitely racism. Forget the "macaca" bit - Allen's "welcome to America" to a native-born Virginian who was the only brown-skinned person there was some straight up Klan business. Allen is a racist and a bully. No doubt about it. This guy is your typical George Bush Republican: vicious, cruel, bigoted and, apparently, very, very stupid.

Posted by: KingDong | Aug 17, 2006 4:05:05 PM

I think that the best possible interpretation here is that Sen. Allen was disrespectful to the cameraman, and, the worst possible interpretation is that he was showing his true character.

Once again, I'm reminded of the extremely embarrassing incident many years ago when former Rep. Robert Michel of Illinois, the House Minority Whip at the time, was interviewed and expressed his fondness for minstrel shows! What's even worse is that he didn't seem to realize he'd offended a lot of people until it was pointed out to him! It seems that politicians reach a point in their careers where they cease rational thought and blurt out whatever comes to mind--not a very good idea, guys!

Posted by: chuck | Aug 17, 2006 3:57:57 PM

And my own little 2 centavos worth, of course:

Racism + Bullying = appealing to the worst aspects of their dearly beloved repugnacon rightwing evangelical (mostly) southern base.

I know. I grew up in it. The repubs use it incessantly when they think only their base is watching and claim a big tent when in public.

just like any sick & dysfunctional social organism.

Thomas L. Friedman: Big Talk, Little Will

Big Talk, Little Will
By Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times

The defeat of Senator Joe Lieberman by the upstart antiwar Democrat Ned Lamont has sparked a firestorm of debate about the direction of the Democratic Party. My own heart is with those Democrats who worry that just calling for a pullout from Iraq, while it may be necessary, is not a sufficient response to the biggest threat to open societies today -- violent, radical Islam. Unless Democrats persuade voters -- in the gut -- that they understand this larger challenge, it's going to be hard for them to win the presidency.

That said, though, the Democratic mainstream is nowhere near as dovish as critics depict. Truth be told, some of the most constructive, on-the-money criticism over the past three years about how to rescue Iraq or improve the broader "war on terrorism" has come from Democrats, like Joe Biden, Carl Levin, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Bill Clinton.

But whatever you think of the Democrats, the important point is this: They are not the party in power today.

What should really worry the country is not whether the Democrats are being dragged to the left by antiwar activists who haven't thought a whit about the larger struggle we're in. What should worry the country is that the Bush team and the Republican Party, which control all the levers of power and claim to have thought only about this larger struggle, are in total denial about where their strategy has led.

Besides a few mavericks like Chuck Hagel and John McCain on Iraq and Dick Lugar and George Shultz on energy, how many Republicans have stood up and questioned the decision-making that has turned the Iraq war into a fiasco? Had more of them done so, instead of just mindlessly applauding the administration, the White House might have changed course when it had a chance.

Not only is there no honest self-criticism among Republicans, but -- and this is truly contemptible -- you have Dick Cheney & Friends focusing their public remarks on why Mr. Lamont's defeat of Mr. Lieberman only proves that Democrats do not understand that we are in a titanic struggle with "Islamic fascists" and are therefore unfit to lead.

Oh, really? Well, I just have one question for Mr. Cheney: If we're in such a titanic struggle with radical Islam, and if getting Iraq right is at the center of that struggle, why did you "tough guys" fight the Iraq war with the Rumsfeld Doctrine -- just enough troops to lose -- and not the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force to create the necessary foundation of any democracy-building project, which is security? How could you send so few troops to fight such an important war when it was obvious that without security Iraqis would fall back on their tribal militias?

Mr. Cheney, if we're in a titanic struggle with Islamic fascists, why have you and President Bush resisted any serious effort to get Americans to conserve energy? Why do you refuse to push higher mileage standards for U.S. automakers or a gasoline tax that would curb our imports of oil? Here we are in the biggest struggle of our lives and we are funding both sides -- the U.S. military with our tax dollars and the radical Islamists and the governments and charities that support them with our gasoline purchases -- and you won't lift a finger to change that. Why? Because it might impose pain on the oil companies and auto lobbies that fund the G.O.P., or require some sacrifice by Americans.

Mr. Cheney, if we're in a titanic struggle with Islamic fascists, why do you constantly use the "war on terrorism" as a wedge issue in domestic politics to frighten voters away from Democrats. How are we going to sustain such a large, long-term struggle if we are a divided country?

Please, Mr. Cheney, spare us your flag-waving rhetoric about the titanic struggle we are in and how Democrats just don't understand it. It is just so phony -- such a patent ploy to divert Americans from the fact that you have never risen to the challenge of this war. You will the ends, but you won't will the means. What a fraud!

Friends, we are on a losing trajectory in Iraq, and, as the latest London plot underscores, the wider war with radical Islam is only getting wider. We need to reassess everything we are doing in this "war on terrorism" and figure out what is worth continuing, what needs changing and what sacrifice we need to demand from every American to match our means with our ends. Yes, the Democrats could help by presenting a serious alternative. But unless the party in power for the next two and half years shakes free of its denial, we are in really, really big trouble.

Original source: NYTimes

Republican Candidate a Racist? What else is new?

Media coverage continues about George Allen's recidivism into his racist underpinnings. Reminds me of those stories about painting horses to look like one color or breed only to have the rain wash away the coating to reveal the true colors.

WP articles here, here, here, here, here; NYT here. The notorious video here.

If, as I've heard and read, Allen spent most of his early pre-politics time in California then he knows full well that caca is a spanish term used for 'poop' (and often in place of the english curse word that starts with SH and ends with IT). Using 'ma caca' (or 'muh caca') would be along the lines of 'yo mama' or 'tu caca' or a combo of 'Mo-Caca' in reference to their other derogatory name for him "Mohawk" (which can easily be construed to mean "shit-head" ... so I don't buy Allen's dumb guy act (although I think he's plenty stupid).

Not to mention that singling someone out to intentionally humiliate them in front of others is simply the hallmark of a rude, brutal bully. More 'boys will be boys' arrested development among the so-called 'leaders of the free world."

Ryan Lizza of The New Republic has already written about how Allen's racist tendencies and 'confederate flag fetish" will fare with voters in the south:

On the right, a debate is now brewing about what Allen's four-decade embrace of the Confederate flag means for his presidential ambitions. Some are bothered by the revelations. At the influential conservative website Redstate.com, the blogger TheCollegian, who volunteered for Allen in 1993, writes, "George Allen did not simply adopt an affection for the South, but the South at a certain time: a time when it was fighting to keep slavery legal. Even this would be ok if he had some family tie to the region at that time, but he doesn't. I find that to be disturbing."

But there's a second view. It is best expressed to me by [Greg] Stevens, now a consultant to John McCain. He argues strenuously that I should not write a piece about Allen and the Confederate flag. He says it would be unfair to Allen. But, when I explain Allen's record on the issue, he makes another argument that has nothing to do with fairness, and I figure out why he is so forceful. "Well, you also realize you're getting him votes for the primary, right?" Stevens says, alluding to key states in the South. He raises his voice to a shout: "You're getting him votes! Big time!"

Yep. The repugnacons just love to 'play the race card' when it suits them (when they think only their hard core lemmings are looking) and throw open the big tent when in public.

Just notice what kinds of messages they've already been sending regarding Revs Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson being on the podium behind Ned Lamont during his victory speech.

(Yes, I think they're both media whores, but so are a bunch of white politicians, ego-maniacs, religious fanatics and activists of all stripes and parties, but the repugs don't send 'coded' messages to scare their flocks regarding the skin color or ethnicity of the other white progressives they love to attack -- they send sexist/gender messages for sure about Pelosi, Clinton, gay men and lesbians -- it's replaced the commie pinko red scare of the 50s. They effectively utilize the intersections of hate, fear, ignorance which is the foundation for the collective American cultural psyche's embrace of their right-wing propaganda and fear mongering: racism, sexism, homophobia being the big three).

Can people really pretend to not understand 'why they hate us' in so many other parts of the world? When will American voters tire of voting for the bullying jocks and arrogant frat boys?

A purely technical geek related quandary: Help Wanted

Firefox 1.5.0.6 is very very crappy on OS X 10.4.7 -- lots of stalls, stutters, delays, lags .... AND worse: frequent dropped DSL broadband internet connections -- is it firefox or something else? I try to use mostly safari because on my system it's faster than firefox.

Quandary #1:

Whenever I post to blogger via firefox -- which I have to do because safari is not wysiwyg compatible with blogger/blogspot.com -- or vice versa -- my DSL ethernet connection simply drops out of sight for minutes at a time. All the network status lights go from green to red. Then some to yellow, back to red, and eventually in a few minutes back to green again. But if I re-post, connection drops again. After about 20 attempts, usually the damn thing will have made it onto blogger/blogspot

Is that my motherboard/ethernet connection? my configuration? or is firefox or is it the Zyxel 660R ADSL router modem or what? It always happens on firefox anytime I post an entry. And sometimes just during regular surfing on either browser but always with firefox posting on blogger/blogspot.

Any insights appreciated. You are requested to and more than welcome to leave comments/ideas and your link/site in the comments section and i'll be happy to give you/your blog credit and a link in an updated post if you help me solve this problem!

Much thanks and hoping some of you really smart brilliant thinkers who know this stuff out there can assist.

PS: Actually, there's a related quandary #2:

Is there any possibility that this is a problem or something related to an incoming hardwire PPPoE connection being translated/converted by the modem to a DHCP wireless connection .....something something something ... and then re-converted to a wired DHCP signal thus also contributing to the frequent dropped connections, stalls, lags, stutters that occur on both firefox and safari every day, many times a day, often many times per hour, and which occur when NOT posting to blogger/blogpot?

An apple tech person told me this was also frequently a cause of the stutters/lags and that I should not be using outdated DHCP ethernet software connection -- that it should be direct PPPoE -- and I of course have no idea what this means, especially as regards my situation.

He said to tell my ISP to give me a direct PPPoE hard wired connection not a translated/converted one. Is that correct? Ideas, suggestions, SOLUTIONS especially welcome.

Re: the accompanying image above: when it drops, it starts out with the Built-in Ethernet button going quickly from red to yellow to green, but it's so fast, I can never capture it at the very beginning of the dropped connection cycle. And as mentioned the others go from green to yellow to red in various phases before returning to green after the long wait and all the re-load attempts.

Why does a 'special agent' for the US department of transportation have 133,000 names, SS#s, birthdates, etc of FL residents?

Consumers get burned again.


More bureaucratic incompetence from this administration according to the Washington Post:

Transportation Dept. Reveals 2nd Laptop Theft in Florida Office

"The inspector general's office at the Department of
Transportation disclosed yesterday the theft of another laptop from one of its agents in Florida, the second such report in less than a week. ....

"[Inspector General] officials began reexamining the incident after a different laptop was stolen last month from a special agent's government-issued vehicle near Miami. That laptop contained the unencrypted names, Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses of as many as 133,000 Florida residents."

Some obvious questions emerge:

• Why does an 'agent' of the department of transportation have the SS#s etc of 133,000 Florida residents?

• What kind of 'special agents' does the Dept of Transportation have that need/seek/use names and address of 133,000 residents of any state?

• Who is snooping on whom and why?

Related article about Veterans Affairs losing a second computer (if things happen in threes, guess each of these has one more to go).
washingtonpost.com, lost latptops,, lost computers, stolen computers
stolen data, department of transportation, special agents, florida , bureacratic incompetence

R.I.P. Fred

In memoriam. Fred the Detective Cat.
NYT article. Previous Buzzzed entries here, here.
WCBS TV video of the story that originally made Fred famous.

The Spoils of Victimhood
By THOMAS FRANK

"President Bush operates in Washington like the head of a small occupying army of insurgents," the pundit Fred Barnes writes in his recent book, "Rebel-in-Chief." "He's an alien in the realm of the governing class, given a green card by voters."

Let's see: These insurgents today control all three branches of government; they are underwritten by the biggest of businesses; they are backed by a robust social movement with chapters across the radio dial. The insurgency spreads before its talented young recruits all the appurtenances of power -- a view from the upper stories of the Heritage Foundation, a few years at a conquered government agency where expertise is not an issue, then a quick transition to K Street, to a chateau in Rehoboth and a suite at the Ritz. For the truly rebellious, princely tribute waits to be extracted from a long queue of defense contractors, sweatshop owners and Indian casinos eager to remain in the good graces of the party of values.

What a splendid little enterprise American conservatism has turned out to be.

How does this work? How does the right keep its adherents in a lather against government bureaucrats and Washington know-it-alls when conservatives are the only bureaucrats and know-it-alls who matter anymore?

Part of the answer is that, after their crushing defeat in the 1930's, conservatives rebuilt their movement by adopting a purely negative stance against liberalism. They were so completely excluded from power, they believed, that in 1955 William F. Buckley Jr. famously depicted them "Standing athwart history, yelling Stop." Writing in the middle of the Reagan years, the journalist Sidney Blumenthal gaped at the persistence of this "adversarial" mind-set long after the liberals had been routed. "Even when conservatives are in power they refuse to adopt the psychology of an establishment," he marveled.

Here we are, 20 years later, and to hear conservatives tell it, every election is still a referendum on the monster liberalism, which continues to loom like a colossus over the land. Even Tom DeLay -- the erstwhile "hammer" -- becomes a martyr when addressing the faithful. "The national media has taken my own re-election as their own personal jihad," he moaned in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. "So we're fighting the fight of ages."

That conservatives continue, as Rick Perlstein writes, to "soak in [their] marginalization" four decades after the election of the last liberal president puts this victimology beyond implausible. It is more on the order of a foundational myth, like the divine right of kings, a fiction that everyone involved must accept as fact.

A century ago, it was conservative stalwarts, not liberal reformers, who were the natural party of government. And they were forthright about what they stood for as well as what they were against: They were for rule by a better class of people, for a Hamiltonian state in which business was unified with government. And conservatism is still for those things, tacitly at least. Just look at the résumés of the folks the president has appointed to the Departments of Labor, Agriculture and the Interior. Or scan one of the graphs that economists use to chart the distribution of wealth over the last hundred years. The more egalitarian society we grew up in is gone, snuffed out by the party of tradition in favor of an even rosier past that lies on the far side of the 1930's.

These ought to be easy things to deplore. They ought to arouse precisely the kind of simmering fury that millions of Americans feel toward lewd halftime shows and checkout clerks who don't say "Merry Christmas." But we have difficulty holding conservatives accountable for them, so potent is their brand image as angry outsiders. What conservatives do, as everyone knows, is protest government, protest modernity; to hold them responsible for government or for modernity is to bring on cognitive dissonance.

Or, rather, it might bring on cognitive dissonance. We don't know because puncturing conservatism's marginalization fantasy hasn't really been tried. If liberals are ever to recover, this will have to change. Against the tired myth of the "liberal elite" they must offer a competing and convincing theory of how Washington works, and for whom.

Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.'' He will be a guest columnist during August.

From New York Times

Let's Invade England!

Since we're 'fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here' we better hurry to bomb and invade both England and Pakistan since that's where 'they' are now.

Today's NYTimes editorial basically asks Bush, Cheney, Lieberman: Have You No Shame? The answer of course is "not a whit."

In the Neat Little World of Shrub Bush

From Harold Myerson's very good column in WP today "So What's Our Role in Iraq's Civil War?":

For the Bush administration, then, any admission that the Iraqi civil war is in fact a civil war destroys whatever remains of its justification for our presence there. For while it is true that the withdrawal of our forces will probably unleash even greater sectarian mayhem, it is also true that our presence cannot stop it and that our presence there has also greatly diminished our diplomatic and military capacity to accomplish anything else anyplace else. ...

Once it's acknowledged that the war in Iraq is a sectarian civil war, however, staying the course has no logic for anyone. Which is why Bush remains determined to dispute any such characterization. "You know, I hear people say, well, civil war this, civil war that," he told reporters at his Crawford, Tex., ranch on Monday. "The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box. And a unity government is working to respond to the will of the people. And, frankly, it's quite a remarkable achievement on the political front, and the security front is where there's been troubles."

As long as there's an Iraqi government, apparently, there can be no civil war in Iraq. Another problem solved in the neat little world of George Bush.

A Gordian knot of Hobson's choices? It's a horrific mess -- Bush and the neocons (and the people who voted them in and supported them all along the way) put us and the Iraqi people there.

Bloomberg, Salazar Endorse Loser Lieberman, Dem Leaders Endorse Lamont

NYC Mayor Bloomberg has endorsed Sore Loser Lieberman's run as an independent.

New York Times has a lively blog discussion going, especially in Morning Buzz. One writer asks: "Why exactly is the Mayor of New York City endorsing anyone in a CT race?"

Time to Go Joe

Support Lamont here.

Word is that Senator Ken Salazar (Dem - Colorado) has endorsed Lieberman but most Party Dems (including Hillary) are supporting Lamont -- joint statement issued by Senators Reid and Schumer.

The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken and chosen Ned Lamont as their nominee. Both we and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fully support Mr. Lamont?s candidacy. Congratulations to Ned on his victory and on a race well run.

Joe Lieberman has been an effective Democratic Senator for Connecticut and for America. But the perception was that he was too close to George Bush and this election was, in many respects, a referendum on the President more than anything else. The results bode well for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country in a new direction.

WP's Murray and Balz write about Lieberman's independent candidacy, chance, hurdles, hopes. One conclusion which is one of those 'from your pen to the great spirit's ears' prayers:

At a minimum, the Connecticut primary is likely to ensure that Democrats of all stripes -- those who initially supported the war and those who have opposed it -- take a more aggressive posture in combating the president and his policies at home and abroad.

Joe Lieberman is a Sore Loser

Lamont denounced the (possible) shenanigans of hackers early yesterday afternoon. No way a serious campaign would have endorsed such activities -- but actually it appears from my readings more likely to have been server overload (okay, maybe a concerted DOS -- Denial of Service -- effort) but the fact that the Lieberman camp has this whiney victim statement up simply shows the sore-loser mentality.

Time to go Joe.

Reminder: Wonkette has a couple of informative (and funny) entries about this Lieberman website issue.NYT has an updated article about the site gymnastics here.

Lieberman Lamont Watch: CT Democratic Senate Primary Thread

11:14 PM EDT Lieberman Concedes, Lamont Announced as Winner

U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
724 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 96.79%
Lamont, Ned Dem 141,623 51.85
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 131,491 48.15

10:20 PM EDT

U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
618 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 82.62%
Lamont, Ned Dem 119,100 51.83%
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 110,686 48.17%

10:03 PM EDT

U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
575 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 76.87%
Lamont, Ned Dem 109,239 51.76
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 101,818 48.24

9:59 PM EDT Gonna be a long night. A close race apparently. And absentee votes? Where will they land?

U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
551 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 73.66%
Lamont, Ned Dem 103,145 51.73%
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 96,235 48.27%

9:47 PM EDT The gap narrows as larger urban precincts begin reporting results.

484 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 64.71%
Lamont, Ned Dem 89,814 51.60%
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 84,231 48.40%

9:30 PM EDT: Honing in toward 50% of returns and Lamont's lead is holding.

U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
332 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 44.39%
Lamont, Ned Dem 64,383 53.09%
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 56,891 46.9%

Wonkette has some interesting entries with regard to the Lieberman site being down, here and here including the original site designers sending a note that they haven't hosted the Lieberman site for more than three months and that it had been moved from a dedicated server with wide bandwidth allocation to a cheap shared hosting site with restrictions on bandwidth.

Some other blog sites are reporting that other shared sites on that same server block allocation went down also, although when I checked the hosting site was down, but a guitar site on the same block IP numbers with shared hosting was operating.

Ralph Nader expressing opinions about the Lieberman Lamont race on WNPR.

Here's the photo of a very stressed very young-looking youngster who apparently made the decision to move the Lieberman campaign to the shared hosting site (from the NYTimes website front page).



9:05 PM EDT: From the Hartford Courant: "...former state Democratic party chairman George Jepsen [was] relying on something slightly more reliable than gut instinct - he had word from people in the field that returns were coming in overwhelmingly for Lamont."

160 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 21.39%
Lamont, Ned Dem 35,942 56.01%
Lieberman, Joe Dem 28,227 43.99

Election officials predicted 40 to 50 percent voter turnout in the primary -- a figure considered high for a primary. At 6 p.m. West Hartford recorded 59 percent voter turnout.

The mood at Lieberman's headquarters was subdued Tuesday afternoon...

6:15 PM EDT Less than two hours to go before the polls close. Listening to streaming radio from Hartford, CT's NPR station, WNPR. It's All Things Considered right now, but assume there will be local coverage during the breaks and once the polls close. Yes, in fact they just announced they will have live coverage beginning at 8PM.

Also, here's the link to the Hartford Courant newspaper's website.


5:40 PM EDT: Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post are now on Washington Post Radio discussing the Lamont / Lieberman issues, including the possibility that Lieberman's server is down not due to hacking, but due to ... server overload, past due hosting bills ... who knows? But for the Lieberman campaign to immediately blame Lamont is lame and paranoid.

Murray is pointing out that more is afoot in the CT primary than just the Iraq war -- anti-incumbency fever being a major issue -- voters are fed up with people like Lieberman who have lost touch with the real lives of every day citizens.

5:15 PM EDT: Chris Matthews just reported on his live-from-CT Hardball on MSNBC that he heard from an "unimpeachable Lieberman campaign source" that if Lamont wins, no matter what the point difference, he will run as an independent third-party candidate. That's enough reason for me to STRONGLY URGE Connecticut democrats to get out and VOTE FOR LAMONT! If Lieberman is such a 'loyal' party member, if he is such a vociferous voice for and supporter of participatory Democracy, he should accept the voters' will NO MATTER WHAT. And if he loses, he should bow out gracefully.

P.S. I still LOATHE Chris Matthews, but he's the only one on site for the duration.

Richard Cohen Nails Military Leadership with Award for Truly Dumb Statements

Richard Cohen has a must-read column today -- Civil War? What Civil War? -- which analyzes recent testimony by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. John P. Abizaid, who is in charge of everything in Iraq. Both appeared with Rumsfeld at last week's Senate Hearing. He reminds us just how politicized the military has been under this administration, how complicit the military have been in conveying and promoting this lying administration's politicization of the Iraq War. Excerpt:

Can these high-ranking military officers possibly mean what they said? Even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the term "civil war" was being bruited about. This was because even a casual viewer of the Discovery Channel or some such thing knew that Iraq was an artificial creation of Britain -- Gertrude Bell, Winston Churchill, et al. The casual viewer also knew that a minority of Sunnis had governed a majority of Shiites through the application of violence and a not inconsiderable amount of torture. Why this country would hold together once the locks were clipped is a question whose answer we are now seeing: It's not.

The high-ranking officers cited above are neither stupid nor ignorant of Iraq's history. I can only conclude, therefore, that like countless others before them they feel compelled to say things that fit the political ideology and delusions of their civilian bosses in the Bush administration. The official line there, of course, is that Iraq is not and will not and could not descend into civil war because, well, that would aid the evildoers.

Whatever the case, we now have to understand that uttering the word "Iraq" does to Bush administration officials what a touch of tequila does to Mel Gibson. I could spend the rest of this column quoting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others on what would happen when GI Joe got to Baghdad or why the war had to be fought in the first place. The collected quotes are funny in one context, sad and infuriating in another: the playing of taps, the folding of the flag and the required lie about "a hero's death."

I dutifully read the news about Iraq. But I recognize most administration statements as lies or, if by accident the actual truth, a mere snapshot of a moment that will change over time. More troops one day, fewer the next. We have this town one day, we don't the next. Iraqi troops are up to snuff; oops, no they're not. This is the babble of chaos, the telltale rhetoric of defeat.

As an interesting supplement to Cohen's piece, the NYTimes has an op-ed entitled "Our Veterans' Missing Medals" which discusses why "the Pentagon top brass don't feel that our heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan are especially meritorious. President Bush has yet to award a single Medal of Honor to a living veteran of combat in either place. (Only one has been given posthumously.)"

During the Vietnam War, 245 Medals of Honor were awarded. If President Bush awarded the medals at roughly the same rate for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than two dozen would have been bestowed by now.

Cohen's WaPo column, here, explains the genesis Oveta Culp Hobby Award (she was part of the Eisenhower administration). PS: I think it should be awarded, not for "a truly dumb statement" but for a truly disingenuous one (or more).

When you read the quote which serves as the basis for the award, I think it will probably sound eerily familiar. That's because numerous iterations of it have been repeated ad nauseum on a regular basis by not only the generals above, but by all key members and representatives of this administration ever since 9/11.

History Channel Series: "Gestapo" -- Parallels to Today?

Insomniac watching late night (actually, early morning) TV, encountering the first repeat of the History Channel's new "Gestapo" series (2006) and in particular being drawn to reminders of the early development of Germany's slide into fascism and Hitler's vision of the 1,000 year Reich -- couldn't help but be struck more strongly than ever by the parallels to now of those events occurring in the 1930s. My stomach became knotted and nauseated while viewing this amazing new and valuable History Channel series.

It documents Germany (and Europe's) easy slide into murderous fascism all under the guise of National Security and National Unity. And remember, much of this is before the terrible Final Solution actually began to be enacted -- the mass murder of 12 million innocents -- including 6 million human beings who were gay men and lesbians, handicapped/developmentally delayed, artists, alien foreigners, gypsies, communists, union activists and other dissenting voices along with 6 million Jews.

There are other similarities and other non-similarites of course -- as well as parallels to the lessons not learned in Vietnam -- and many people rightly resist shrillly calling those with differing viewpoints 'Hitlerian, fasicst, or Nazi-like'.

However, this list of historical events and patterns jumped out immediately as obvious similarities began to emerge:

• Hyping the threat posed by other countries and internal undesirables -- with willing participation of news media.
• Dispensing military and police to protect its borders (and to await orders for war).
  
• Invasion of other countries (Poland, Austria, France...) preceded by the initial public statements of the pending threat and often 'caused' by staging a false incursion or attack attributed to the 'threat' country, and then responding with invasion and deadly militaristic force.
• Active identification, expulsion, arrest of unwelcome 'aliens' in Germany and annexed countries -- those who did not sign on to the patriotic German notion as promulgated by the propaganda machine.
  
• Massive spying on its own citizens as well as on enemies, outsiders and other 'threats' to national security.
  
• Massive numbers of citizens informing on neighbors, family members, 'undesirables.'
• Intolerance of public or private criticism of the leadership.
• Intolerance of difference; active denigration of 'others' who were 'different'; decimation of undesirables and those who were branded as puttting state/national security in danger.
  
• Widespread interrogation and torture of enemies and 'enemy combatants.'
• Scapegoating, jailing and massive deportation of 'undesirable' others within and without Germany and the occupied territories, nations.
• Legalized/legislated discrimination against undesirable groups including banning/barring/prohibiting marriage by some undesirables to others.

This is from the description of the first episode in the 3-part series, "Gestapo: The Sword is Forged":

The Nazis converted their country from a flawed democracy to a fascist dictatorship in which the rights of the individual were trampled in the interests of the state. Institutions and organizations were warped to serve this purpose, none more than the police. At first, it was the Storm Troopers of the SA, who beat, intimidated, and killed those who opposed the regime. But something more was needed than simple thuggery and the police were co-opted. The Gestapo, the Secret State Police, was the organization set up to perform this function. By reputation its network of black-clad officers spread everywhere; yet it was a small organization--at its height in 1941 there were only 8,000 officers.

From episode number two, "Gestapo: The Sword Unsheated":

The Gestapo's role changed from merely "protecting" the state from dissent to enabling its expansionist policies. As the Reich took over new territories, the Gestapo expanded its policies of seeking out enemies--dissenters, spies working for the Allies, and organized resistance. When security chief Heydrich was assassinated in Prague, the Gestapo carried out the brutal revenge. But it viewed its ultimate enemy as the Jew and death-squads, the Einsatzgruppen spent much time tracking them down and deporting them

From the third and final episode, "Gestapo: The Sword is Shattered":

Even within the dwindling resources of a doomed regime, the Gestapo was determined to keep its grip on the people. They persecuted resistance members, the merely indifferent, "decadent" jazz musicians, and couples of mixed race. As with any corrupt system, they lost touch with reality, and its violence spiraled out of control even while in its own death throes.

In the 1940s the White Rose group of mainly college-age youth arose to actively and publicly dissent from Hitler's Nazi ideology and the bungling of the War -- they were swiftly destroyed, disbanded, imprisoned and murdered. But the unease of German citizens with Hitler and the war debacles (and lies) finally began to grow as Goebbels (the Defense Minister) continued to call for 'total war.' One SS officer wrote that the leaders were obstinate, intractable and unwilling to acknowledge or admit to the realities and facts of the war.


Exactly how does history repeat itself? With the willing participation of its citizens who value conformity and loyalty over dissent, difference and open transparency, sameness over diversity.

The series is a stark reminder that this never could have happened without both the willing active participation and passive acquiesence of Germany's and the world's citizenry. The worst prejucies and racist, bigoted inclinations of German citizens were stoked and inflamed, used as a tool to ensure and hasten the country's dissent into and participation in mass psycopathy and sociopathy, mass murder of 12 million human beings.

Sadly this series reminds us that many of the pariticpants and architects of this holocaust escaped punishment. Many were in fact rewarded handsomely for their actions.

And of course, it brings to mind the famous writing by Pastor Martin Niemöller, imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps during WWII:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me --
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I've discussed the 'obedience to authority', 'just following orders' form of morality in this blog previously, and likely will again. This series however, mainly explores national and group, not merely individual, patterns and actions. History Channel here.