There's something funny about Alan Keyes

Dear Chairman Topinka,

I can't help thinking that there is something wrong with Alan Keyes. It's as if he's intentionally trying to lose the election. I mean who in their right mind would believe that coming out against the direct election of Senators would be a good way to garner votes?

Pardon my use of the vile language of the French, but have you considered the possibility that he might be an agent provocateur? I'm told that there are people who mock us by acting like fools while masquerading as conservatives. Keyes certainly seems like he's doing that.

Look at the evidence. When asked about his biting comments in regard to Hitlery Klinton's New York senate run, he replied that there was nothing hypocritical about his own carpetbagging because 9-11 changed everything. Now I use 9-11 as an excuse when my wife asks why I don't mow the lawn, but then I've never criticized Klinton for doing the same thing. Keyes looked like a fool.

And what about his criticism of his opponent where he said he had a "slaveholder position" because he's pro-abortion? Even I think that's just nuts. He's starting to sound like a Tom Delay on meth.

Now I enjoy old time minstrel show buffoonery as much as the next conservative, but if I was a black man, I'd slap Keyes silly for perpetuating a negative stereotype. It has to hurt our chances of winning in November.

We have to convince him to drop out. You should considered enlisting Ted Sampley and John O'Neill to make something up about him so that he quits--I hear they're very good at it. Then, we could recruit someone rational like Ted Nugent.

Heterosexually yours,

General JC Christian, patriot

Iraq War by the Numbers

Sorta like Harper's magazine lists, I thought this might enlighten some about our supporting cast in our war with Iraq.

Number of countries in the world: 192

Number of countries, counting the US, originally in our Coalition of the Willing, in Iraq: 37

Number of countries that will be in the Coalition at the end of the Republican Convention: 30

Number of those remaining who have less than 200 troops in Iraq: 16

Number of those with more than 500 troops in Iraq: 8

Number of those with more than 3,660 troops in Iraq or planned to be in Iraq: 2

Number of troops from Great Britain in Iraq: 9,000

Cumulative total of all troops from the remaining 28 Coalition members (Great Britain and the US excluded): 18,055

US troops in Iraq: 138,000

US troops who've died in Iraq: 936

With the US excluded, number of Coalition countries with more than 936 troops currently in Iraq: 5

British troops who've died in Iraq: 64

All other coalition member troops who've died in Iraq: 61

Per the Department of Defense, number of US troops wounded in Iraq as of 7/24/04: 5,976

And for some added perspective of country sizes (mid 2003 figures), by the end of the Republican convention....

Number of countries with over 1 billion people: 2

Number of countries with population between 200 million and 300 million: 2

Number of countries with population between 100 million and 200 million: 7

Number of those 11 largest countries, besides the US, in the Coalition: 1 (Japan - 127 million; 500 troops)

Number of countries with population between 50 million and 100 million: 12

Excluding the US, number of coalition members from these 23 largest nations: 3 (Japan, Great Britain - 60 million; 9,000 troops, and Italy - 58 million; 3,000 troops)

Combined population of the US, Japan, UK, and Italy: 539 million

Combined population of the other 19 largest nations (non-Coalition members): 4 billion, 956 million

Total population of the Earth: 6 billion, 386 million

Total coalition forces, including US troops, in Iraq: 165,055

Total population of Iraq (July 2004 estimate): 25,374,691

Percentage of Iraqi public support (May 2004) for US troops: 18%

Percentage of Iraqis (May 2004) who want the troops to leave immediately: 57%

57% of the Iraqi population = 14, 463, 574

And once again, total coalition forces, including US troops, facing 14.5 million Iraqis who want them to leave: 165,055

Choosing to defend America

Bush is getting sensitive about falling behind in the polls:

In Phoenix on Tuesday night, Bush explained his decision to invade Iraq this way: "I had a choice to make. My choice was do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and hope for the best and trust the word and deeds of a madman, or do I take action to defend America. I will defend America every time."

That wasn't his choice. His real choice was whether to believe UN inspectors who asked for a few more months to complete their work. Its nuclear inspectors indicated no evidence existed that Hussein had nuclear weapons or was close to having any. Instead Bush chose to believe Ahmad Chalabi, whose former work with US intelligence had proved so unreliable that they'd stopped working with him in the 1990s.

Chalabi provided us informants sure of sites where Hussein was building WMDs. That information was forwarded to UN inspectors... who found nothing, repeatedly.

Bush's choice was to believe a man whose 'evidence' repeatedly failed to deliver, instead of trusting UN inspectors whose efforts had successfully disarmed Hussein repeatedly. The head UN inspectors had always been Americans and Brits, so why were they shunted aside in favor of Chalabi?

"Defending America every time" is a goal even an average President should aspire to. But defending us from reality and plunging us into a quagmire of a war that has killed nearly a thousand of our own and left 7,000 wounded, that has angered the world and divided our nation, that has weakened our economy and mortgaged our future with crippling debts is not the type of defense any President should ask you to support.

We can't be defended by strong words alone. Better planning and competent decisions are necessary too.

Our best defense has been provided by our troops in the field, not by the man armed with choices that have continually misfired.

Last Nation Standing

If you conduct foreign policy with a view towards provoking political opponents to respond defensively, you can sell the claim to the public that the defender is really the offender. And based on my observation of this administration, it looks like they create self-fulfilling prophecies so they can get their wish to continue a permanent war against whoever they say.

"The rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration has convinced Iran that military conflict is inevitable and rather than await an attack at a time and place of America's choosing, the Iranians will try to inflict significant damage to U.S. forces on Iraqi soil by means of the Mahdi Army and other Shi'a groups," an informed intelligence source told This Is Rumor Control. Senior officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would not comment on these reports, but a former senior intelligence officer said that the conclusion was "a no brainer." As he noted: "If you had U.S. troops on your doorstep and George Bush calling you a part of the axis of evil you would take steps to protect yourself. And it would be better to protect yourself on Iraqi soil than to have to do so on Iranian soil. That is what they are doing. Are we surprised? We shouldn't be."

(From This Is Rumor Control via The Republic of T.)

While today Juan Cole questions whether Iran is involved with al Sadr, he spoke to this topic yesterday, with great perception:

Some readers have written to ask if I think the Bush administration is deliberately provoking Iran, in hopes of widening the war and getting a pretext to attack Tehran.

I don't know what in the world they are thinking. All I know is that they are acting in a hamfisted manner that is endangering the United States in the medium term for no good reason.

If I were thinking conspiratorially, this is what I would say: The Mahdi Army continued to be a challenge to the caretaker government of Allawi and could possibly have launched violence at any time. The Bush administration may have feared leaving this element of uncertainty out there, with the risk that it might explode in their faces in October just before the election. So they could have thought that there are advantages to just taking care of the problem in August, on the theory that the American electorate can't remember anything that happened more than one month previously. Likewise, if they finish off the Mahdi Army, it sends a signal to other potential challengers to the Allawi government and they may think it will be strengthened. Likewise, the Mahdi Army's control of so many neighborhoods was a problem for the proposed January elections, and might have allowed a Sadrist party "machine" to dominate the returns from them.

The problem is that in actual fact they are undermining the credibility of the Allawi government as an independent actor. They are probably also actually increasing Muqtada's popularity, and the likelihood there will be new recruits to the Mahdi Army. The radical Shiites are reworking the conflict as a defense of Iraq's independence from brutal American Occupation.

On Thursday, the Board of Muslim Clergy, a Sunni fundamentalist organization with substantial support from Sunni Muslims, issued a fatwa or ruling that no Iraqi Muslim may participate in an attack on other Iraqi Muslims in support of the occupying power. That is, even the hard line Sunnis, who mostly don't like Shiites, are siding with Muqtada against Allawi and Rumsfeld on this one.

So, we take out the hated Saddam and his ruling Baathists (Sunnis), which was desired by the majority Shiites and the Kurds. Then, were it to be a true democracy, the Shiites would rule, and when we prevent that, an insurgency results (though, to be fair, al Sadr was likely angling for a major political role in the government-to-be). To quell the insurgency, we put more Baathists back in charge of things and resort to our superior firepower. Now we've united the Shiites and Sunnis against us while, according to Seymour Hersh, the Kurds are working with Israel's Mossad to monitor Iran. And Iran, understandably alarmed, might be considering whether 'tis better to aid Iraq's Shiites to fight a proxy war in Iraq in hopes of avoiding a confrontation with the US on its own soil.

Is that about right? Maybe.

But what does any of this have to do with the fact that a bunch of mostly Saudis, after training in Pakistan and Afghanistan, attacked us on 9-11? This is perfect neocon thinking. Let's provoke a war that embroils the entire Middle East in conflict with the US and our dwindling base of allies. Why? Because we're bad, uh-huh. Because we can.

Or at least, the neocons think we can. And no matter what your politics are, the last guy who provoked such wars on multiple fronts caused the deaths of tens of millions before he got defeated by fighting on too many fronts.

Yes, 9-11 is where we vary from Hitler. But that's no excuse to pursue his strategic mistakes. Nor is it an excuse to use similar and racist propaganda to rally our insecure nation into acts of aggressive provocation that ignites the world into World War III.

I'm witnessing the Bush Master Plan and despite the rationales, it results in tens of millions of corpses. And they have the audacity to proclaim they're Pro-Life. Come, stick me in your prisons for calling it what I see: Bush claims he's hearing God, but his actions resemble Satan's aims as the bloody corpses multiply beyond all rationale.

Past associations present and accounted for

When I read informant's not so gentle reminders of Bush policies now and times past, I'm reminded how short the public attention span is.

I also wonder whether an ad would be effective that quotes only Bush critics who used to be in the Bush administration.

Or an ad that throws before us the worst footage of Bush team people saying gnarly stuff that came back to bite them in the ass (Rummy, Ashcroft, Cheney, Rice, Bush himself).

Or an ad that revisits all the bad appointments and associations made (Kissinger, Poindexter, Negroponte, Chalabi, etc).

Or an ad that has all Bush's guys talking about 'turning the corner' with a soundtrack of a car's tires squealing and a crash. The visuals could be economic numbers that compare Bush to Hoover.

There's enough talent out there to make these ads, but will they work? Howzabout one of Americans of all ages and demographics simply talking about how the economy devasted their lives and their family's hopes?

One thing's certain. as I view the past 4 years, it's like an unbroken trauma that leaves me profoundly depressed.

Au revoir, Julia

Scroll down about 60% here. That was her at 90. And now she's gone.

She was one of a kind. And maybe we'll get a break from the madness and pain now because God can finally eat well.

another bullet hits the bone

the Center for International and Security Studies is at my old school, along with the American Journalism Review. back in March, the CISSM published a report titled "Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction," by Susan Moeller (report summary available here)

quote: "If the White House acted like a WMD story was important, ... so too did the media. If the White House ignored a story (or an angle on a story), the media were likely to as well."

The Washington Post now joins the long list of media outlets who are now apologectic about not doing their jobs the first time around during the rush to war against Iraq.

Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq. Alluding to the finding of the Sept. 11 commission of a "groupthink" among intelligence officials, Woodward said of the weapons coverage: "I think I was part of the groupthink."

i don't have the words to express my anger at statements like this. being afraid of looking silly is not part of your job description. parroting the White House is not reporting the news.

fortunately, others are displaying some of the outrage more eloquently than i can.

more New Jersey storms

i've been talking with some friends back in Jersey about the destructive flooding and McGreevey resignation, and the anger with some in South Jersey seems to be more because he "ran on a family values platform that was false," concerning the infidelity, and not so much about his coming out as gay.

the earliest reports had me confused, why bother resigning because you're announcing your sexual orientation isn't what other people thought it was unless it was to avoid blackmail over some poor decisions, but those same friends mentioned that rumors of lawsuits had been going around for some time. later reports mentioned the lawsuit by the "other man".

and how must he have felt when his church was going to deny him Communion because of his stance on abortion, secretly knowing they had another reason to despise him?

i know i'm not the only one who thinks so, but who other people sleep with doesn't affect my life, so why do so many other people think that their world will end because of who someone else loves? if it doesn't involve rape, sexual abuse of minors, or barnyard animals, how does that impact me?

maybe the world would be a slightly better place if we could all be a little more honest with ourselves and each other about interpersonal relationships.

i know. the mother of all pipe dreams.

whither the oil and the responsibility

i always come across the coolest posts far too late, such as this one from one of Kos' diaries last month: "We" invaded Iraq because of a LACK of WMDs

now that's one theory you won't hear bandied about in its entirety in the mainstream media, but damned if it doesn't make sense, in a scary sort of way. makes my head hurt and makes me want to grieve for this country if any significant portion of the political wrangling is true, but also makes sense.

the part about the oil running out is something most of us already knew. if anyone tries to tell ya different, remind them of something that the author mentioned... Pennsylvania used to be the place for US oil. where is all that PA oil now?

you'd think that since they know that the resource is finite, they'd prepare now to move to alternatives on a massive scale beforehand to avoid an economic and societal collapse. but instead, they hope to pass the problem off to their children and their corporate successors so it won't be their problem.

strange. it just now occurs to me, taking into account the people running the government and the corporations and the country into the ground, that "Boomer" is a more apt description for their generation that initially realized. it's almost as if they want to be the "boom" that brings everything their parents worked to honor and build down.

it's gonna take one magical mystical therapy session to figure out why. these can't all be Daddy issues...

whither the debates

the final 2004 presidential debate will be held in Tempe AZ, at the Gammage Auditorium (great place, btw... designed by Frank Lloyd Wright).

but not many regular folks are gonna get to see it:

No public tickets available

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) produces the presidential and vice-presidential debates to inform and educate the voting public and to reach as wide an audience as possible. Although Gammage Auditorium can normally seat more than 3,000 people, most of that space will be taken up by network television broadcast booths and security. The Secret Service has said the entire balcony area is off limits for security purposes. This will limit the in-person audience almost exclusively to a very small number of guests of the two presidential candidates and the CPD.

ASU may receive a very small allotment of tickets, which would be distributed to debate sponsors at the $200,000 level and above.

at least it'll be on tv. i think.

War of the Sensitive

Bill Scher debunks the attack on Kerry for using the word 'sensitive.' Last night, Jon Stewart added a clip of Bush using the word, too.

Service in a time of war

Pessimist, at The Left Coaster, covers Korean War vet Philip Vargas' review that suggests our President is a war deserter.

Considering all the hashing out that's gone on about Kerry's service by other veterans, it's always good to hear that veterans aren't a monolithic bloc of voters. As a military dependent, I learned this growing up. I knew service people far more hawkish than I who voted for Democrats. Though many will claim that military folks are heavily Republican, my experience suggests that's especially true in two groups: officers and the very young soldiers, particularly in the Marines and Army.

Recently, the blogger known as Sgt. Stryker made some very good observations that he had to defend repeatedly to commenters who disagreed. I'll let Ken Layne direct you to those posts and comments. I'll only add that his words and the words of Sgt. Mom about feminism, tell me these are the kinds of folks that my Dad enjoyed the company of in his 28 years of service. While I bet I'd find topics we'd disagree on, they strike me as an engaging pair who represent the good sense and decency of dedicated public servants that I've admired in other military families.

Why do I support our troops, even when they're engaged in conflicts that I view as wrong? Because of folks like these: dedicated, pragmatic, passionate in their love of this country, and stubbornly refusing to yield to partisanship and jingoism that lack reason.

I should note, too, that there's a sense of balance and fairness in Andrew Olmstead's posts about the views and spins of both sides. Though Stryker and Olmstead seem more conservative than me, they demonstrate a practical conservatism, rather than the extremist ones so prevalent these days. I appreciate that because it opens the way to reasoned debate instead of the name-calling of more polarized folk.

Whacking a wackjob: yours for free!

Sometimes you have to shell out money to read a good book written by Street teammate David Neiwert. Other times, you can kick back for an hour and read one of his longer blog entries. (No complaint; he's always a good read.)

With his latest, he links to others who've done a thorough takedown of a conservative author's book, so if you read all the links and the added value Dave provides, you can easily spend two to three hours. It's like a free book!

I know many readers won't take such time, but if you're a history buff like me, you'll read some, print some out and eventually read it all.

I encourage this. For David and the other history-loving reviewers have done a killer job ripping apart the text of someone known as Michelle Malkin, who defends the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2 and Arab-Americans today.

Now I know many know who she is, just as they know who Ann Coulter is. I guess I've just been long-conditioned to the techniques of behavior modification so when I see evidence that somewhat photogenic Valley Girls are acting out inappropriately, I usually ignore them, hoping their behaviors go away.

The only reason it doesn't work with these two is that fiction's a popular genre these days, even revisionist history stuff. So they get paid pretty handsomely to make shit up.

Still, I think I'll continue to mostly ignore them. Unless they take up Jello wrestling to redeem themselves for their articulate emptiness. (I kid; why ruin a perfectly good gelatin?)

Goss vs. Goss: modelled after Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy

Whoops indeed.

U.S. Congressman Porter Goss, President Bush (news - web sites)'s nominee for CIA (news - web sites) director, could be his own worst enemy when it comes to making the case that he deserves to lead the U.S. intelligence agency.

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," the Florida Republican told documentary-maker Michael Moore's production company during the filming of the anti-Bush movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

A day after Bush picked Goss for the top U.S. spy job, Moore Wednesday released an excerpt from a March 3 interview in which the 65-year-old former House of Representatives intelligence chief recounts his lack of qualifications for employment as a modern CIA staffer.

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

Goss, who served with the CIA clandestine services in Latin America and Europe in the 1960s, was not immediately available for comment.

And Moore adds a salient point:

Moore told Reuters that Goss, who until Tuesday was chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, granted an interview to two of his producers without first checking to see who they worked for.

"You'd think the person who was the head of the intelligence committee would ask a few more questions," said Moore.

Apologies to Scott McKenzie

If you're going to New York City,
be sure to wear a helmet on your hair.
If you’re going to New York City,
You’re gonna meet some wingnut androids there...

Look at all the events planned to counter the coronation of America's first dictator.

If I were there, just as Muslims put up signs pointing to Mecca, I'd have arrows pointing to New Haven, birthplace of you-know-who.

Then precisely at sundown, me and 100,000 demonstrators would turn that way and , cupping our hands to help our voices project further, we'd yell "Barbara! Close your legs!"

I know that sounds like too little too late and that retroactive actions are a measure of futility but Stephen Hawking says, if we do it near a black hole, there's a chance it could work.

Uphold the sanctity of New Jerseyness too

The embattled governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, resigned after admitting he was gay and admitting to marital infidelity that he said could leave the governor's office vulnerable.

“Shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affairs with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony,” said McGreevey, 47, the married father of two. “It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable.”

McGreevey said his secret — both his sexuality and his affair — left the governor’s office vulnerable. “I am removing these threats by telling you about my sexuality,” he said.

Specter of lawsuit

WABC-TV of New York reported that McGreevey was expecting a lawsuit by a former aide accusing him of sexual harassment. The station identified the former aide as Golan Cipel, who resigned as McGreevey’s security adviser in 2002 after months of questioning about his credentials and job qualifications.

While it was certainly a painful moment for the governor and his family, in the heat generated by this election year, I'd anticipate a lot of quasi-religious self-righteous pronouncements from the Hate-dwelling Right. Needless to say, the idea that the actions of one gay man represent the rest is as ludicrous as the notion that heterosexual women would be as likely to marry and divorce as much as Elizabeth Taylor has.

Infidelity is a threat to marriage. So is poverty, abuse and mental illness. McGreevey's choices were human ones and his personal failings remain between him, his family and friends, and any deity he might worship. The only larger lesson from this event is that infidelity is bad for marriages. His gayness bears no lessons in itself except, perhaps, that gays and lesbians might wish to avoid committing to a heterosexual marriage because it undercuts the sanctity of their gayness.

(Link via Josh Marshall)

Sometimes a banana is just a cigar

Now here's science Bush can support:

Lazy monkeys became workaholics when scientists blocked a key chemical in their brains, it emerged today.

Researchers in the US found that when they stopped the primates’ brain cells from receiving dopamine the animals worked harder with better results.

“Like many of us, monkeys normally slack off initially in working toward a distant goal,” said lead scientist Barry Richmond of the National Institute of Mental Health.

But when dopamine was blocked they became “extreme workaholics”.

“This was conspicuously out-of-character for these animals. Like people, they tend to procrastinate when they know they will have to do more work before getting a reward,” Dr Richmond said.

The article goes on to say the research would be used to treat mental illnesses, not to get folks to work without reward.

Uh, yeah.

If you believe that, you'll likely fall for the 'here's-a-banana-to-lick' line that works so well for Senator Santorum.

Would you like nuts with that?

Four plus months?

Behaving like trained lemmings, the media across the US has picked up every Karl Rove-sponsored meme that's poured forth from his golden lips. The latest is to belittle Kerry's Vietnam service because he spent nearly 5 months in combat (they call it 'four-plus'), as if he skipped out shy of some commitment. Atrios is pouring it on in return, on that point and others about Kerry's service.

I'd like to add a couple of facts that matter to me.

The US population was a bit over 203,300,000 in 1970. Of the military personnel we had between 1961-1974, approximately 2,700,000 served in theater, in Vietnam. That means a mere 1.33% of the US served in Vietnam and Kerry was one of them.

The Bush administration and its supporters, almost completely without any military service and with only Colin Powell who served in 'Nam (per my best recollection) is choosing to fight a war it can't win, by denigrating Kerry and McCain, part of that brave 1.33%, both of whom suffered for their efforts in behalf of this country.

Four-plus months, wounds not so bad, heroics not perfect... these are the nitpicky complaints of the 43rd Lardass Closetcower Brigade. And everyone can see that the Vietnam Veterans who've joined that chorus remain ticked off because he opposed the war later, when polls showed close to 70% opposition to the war nationwide. Despite the fact that Kerry joined that huge majority shortly before Nixon started pulling troops out, these vets seem to think that Kerry damaged them in some way.

The folks that damaged them were US politicians and a few military brass who mismanaged things. And the soldiers who took part in My Lai and other war crimes tarnished the efforts of every good soldier as well. But instead of taking out their anger on the real culprits, they choose to go after the messenger, Kerry, who was not even the first messenger to report.

With Bush's own military service record riddled with inconsistencies, his guys are waging a war to trivialize the exemplary record of a lieutenant whose records repeatedly applaud his service in the words of every superior he had. They pursue targets who were among the bravest 2% in the country, instead of running on their own record there, or Bush's record as President, because there's too few successes to base their campaign on that.

Kerry served and served well. To this day, numerous military generals and leaders support Kerry's record and candidacy for the simplest of reasons. He's been steadily competent throughout his military and public service careers.

I'd feel better about this race if Bush had four plus years of competence. At anything. Ever.

So far, he did a decent job in the first three months of the Afghanistan war, and in the 2-2/3rds years since, there's been nothing significant enough to mention. And that war in Afghanistan? That was done by our military troops. Less than 1% of our population. Bush and America are safer because that fraction of America took out the enemies who attacked us. They have their own pains for serving our country, just as Kerry and McCain suffered.

Bush may think it's fair to attack such men in the name of politics, but he's wrong. And so is the media that sells whatever chicken manure gets shovelled from Rove.

I support the troops, no matter what war, and thank them for their service in wartime. If the president and the media don't, that's their moral failing. America works best with moral leadership, not leaders whose reportoire consists mainly of cheapshots directed at the brave.

I'll take those four plus months and raise it to four plus years. I'll take the leader who earned the right to sit at that desk, not the guy who spent that war hiding under it.

Autocrat v. Democrat

"President Bush enjoys leaving Washington and speaking directly to people where they live and work. The campaign's goal is to ensure an environment where the president can speak to as many people as possible in a nondisruptive environment."

--Bush campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, on why only the loyal are allowed to attend his "rallies"

Tomorrow, Bush and Kerry both make simultaneous appearances in Portland. John Kerry will appear at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, named for the Republican governor who pioneered land-use planning in Oregon. Thanks to McCall's foresight and consensus-building, the freeway that used to run along the river was replaced by a ribbon of green. It's now the most-used public space in the city. Kerry has decided to throw a big party there for all McCall's constituents--replete with glamor (Leo DiCaprio) and music (the mixed blessing of Bon Jovi). You wanna come?--no problem. It's a free park.

Citizens wishing to attend a public gathering by their elected leader, however, may be disappointed. The only way they can get tickets to see Bush is by demonstrating loyalty in some overt manner--likesay if a GOP made man tells the brass "it's okay, he's a friend of ours." Bushies justify this through the usual doublespeak. They're not weeding out the disloyal (or even wavering), they're rewarding "the volunteers who have been working so hard this summer." Once there, those volunteers won't have to endure the "disruptive environment" of an actual democracy--only the nodding heads of the already converted. (Can I get an Amen?) Hey, at least they don't have to swear an oath of loyalty to get tickets.

Continue reading "Autocrat v. Democrat"

Say Aloha to ...

Among yesterday's finds were some interesting faith-based sites such as Renee's blog the religious left, and the revealer. A hearty welcome to both; I'll be including you in our new links section that I'm completing this month.

The others I found mostly cover foreign policy or foreign places and some sound very promising. Let's start with a Peace Corps worker in Uzbekistan who blogs as wanderlustress. Her Bio suggests she doesn't have much time for boredom.

Up New Hampshire way is Mathew Gross' Deride and Conquer. In addition to passing on info about a hangout for bloggers going to the RNC, he suggests he has big news on the way.

Most of the rest came from stumbling across this Berkman fellow, because he shares my own growing concern about the genocide in Sudan. Stick with me here, while diving in the underbrush to avoid Bush while he enters what he thinks is a corner.

Continue reading "Say Aloha to ..."

Pipe down with the WMD talk

While I was trying to keep from getting theoretically run over as Bush was busy turning and turning and turning and turning the corner of some psychedelic flashback he was having, I started encountering a series of interesting sites.

Surfing - or 'spacing' as it used to be called in the pre-Net daze - was especially rich yesterday, so let's consider what I found. But be careful; Bush is still negotiating that corner.

Lisa, at a complete bunch of pants, began with a moth photo that morphed into a story of a North Carolina kid caught with some pipe bombs. Nobody's sure why he created the things though his background sugggests he's just a bright kid experimenting. But as Lisa notes, he had 6-inch pipe bombs and they were labelling them WMDs.

The article says they contained gunpowder and the casing was copper pipe. Now the typical pipe bombs I've seen in photos are made with galvanized pipe whose components screw together. So I immediately wondered how the kid sealed the thing. It's unlikely you'd use hot solder near gunpowder, yanno?

They're setting the bar pretty low to call an overgrown firecracker a WMD. Sure, it could kill, but even if all two dozen were complete, a kid with a car and a fifth of Jack Daniels represents a similar lethality to what this kid possessed.

(My other finds will be in the next post)

Restoration Project

America needs to restore its honor and there's only one way. After all, it's America's treasure and it must be returned.

Praying for guidance is certainly the first step. But you must bow only before the real, living God.

Exploiting our power over others inevitably leads to unimaginable disasters. So if you want our honor restored, you must be motivated to be of service to the country. You wouldn't want to end up being compared to losers, would you?

It takes intelligence to restore the nation's honor and we have plenty of that. So button up your shirt, button up your coat, and you, too, can have a say in restoring our honor.

(Hat tip to Dave for the cockle story and to Awnry Young Texan for Ike and Vietnam)

Help Bring America and the People of Darfur Together to Stop Genocide

...if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

- Isaiah 58:10 (NRSV)

FaithfulAmerica.org is working with TrueMajority.org to raise $45,000 that will be used to send a camera crew to the Sudanese border to broadcast live from the refugee camps via satellite. They hope to bring the stories of the people suffering under genocide in Darfur to light, and Western eyes and hearts.

Learn more about the crisis in Darfur by visiting: www.darfurgenocide.org

Find out more about the campaign to raise the $45,000 by visiting: www.faithfulamerica.org/darfurvideo

And contribute by clicking: http://faithfulamerica.kintera.org/darfurdonate

cross-posted from chuckcurrie.blogs.com

the post where I ask you to donate money

Remember that nice Rep. Alexander? The one who switched parties fifteen minutes before the cutoff to make it one seat harder to take back control of the House of Representatives?

Susie says he's all hurt 'cause people are mad at him.

Unfortunately, we can pretty much assume that whatever considerations he's getting from his new friends matter far more to him than what his constituents think or he wouldn't have done it in the first place.

What would really hurt him is not getting all the candy he jumped the fence for, and the only way we can manage that is to make sure that the people he's in bed with don't control the House.

The last thing we need is for this kind of garbage to look like a good career move.

The DCCC is raising money to make Rep. Alexander's life difficult, and I think we really should. If you can't donate money, they're also looking for volunteers (and they can find something for you to do that fits into your life, already in progress).

We just can't have these people running the country. It's like having a delinquent kid tearing around with your credit card buying things you don't approve of. Eventually the bills come.

I can't afford to pay them myself, and why the hell should I? Why the hell should you?

This is much cheaper.

Thanks.

She's Probably In The Zen Room

Apparently intimidated by my own parodies of her anti-Bush song parodies, the Mistress of Mock, Mad Kane, has cut and run, fleeing to a new medium: the haiku. She has retreated in defeat from using as her source fine traditional U.S. musical and pop songs. Instead she has adopted a Japanese verse form. This is just following the example of her new hero, that multilingual foreigner-marrying un-American, The Ketchup Consort. Even when she lapses into including a recognizable lyric, it is from some other country. For instance, read her snarking at one speechwriter who will be helping Republicans this fall:

Peg Noonan's on leave.
The GOP's her new boss.
Same as the old boss.

That third line was lifted from what has been described as "the greatest political rock song of all time", but it was not penned under Old Glory, but the Union Jack. Kane is now writing new examples every day, all attacking Our Noble Leader or other good conservatives. This politicization dishonors the Japanese masters of this art by ignoring many established traditions. One is "Each Haiku must contain a kigo, a season word, which indicate in which season the Haiku is set." Most important is "Use only images from nature." That is what they are supposed to be about, not partisan personal pastiches.

Proper haiku about nature, sans human beings, do have appeal to some other leftist scribes, however. Reports are that the tree-hugging author of Earth In The Balance will take this idea and become a guerrilla eco-poet, changing his name to Che Gorevara. Here's his first deep green opus, called "A Tear For Kyoto":

Warmth melts Greenland ice,
Slows Gulf Stream, and chills New York:
Buildings glaciers slice.

Primary events

Voters headed to the polls today in Colorado and Connecticut. Colorado voters, with two hotly contested party primaries for a single Senate seat, expected a big turnout, as the absentee ballots alone nearly equalled the entire 2000 primary turnout.

Polls indicated that party fave Ken Salazar would handily beat Mike Miles though as an outsider, I can say the Dems there should feel proud to have two such fine candidates. I hope there's room elsewhere for Miles to serve the state, without any bitterness for the snubbing he was given by the party.

On the other side, Pete Coors may have a razor thin lead over Bob Schaffer, but it's too close to call..

The Congressional race drawing the most interest is the sprawling 3rd district - almost half the state - where 5 Republicans are vying to take on Ken Salazar's brother, John, in November.

In Connecticut, the turnout's been just the opposite because August is the time New Englanders head to the beach. The DNC-targeted race there will be to see if Jim Sullivan will defeat Shaun McNally for the right to face GOP incumbent Rob Simmons.

Addendum: There's another primary on the last day of August. After that, I'll be assembling a list of the races nationwide where your support could spell the difference between a GOP or Dem Congress. I'll keep you apprised around the conclusion of the RNC.

McCain sold out the USA

Julia catches WorldNutDaily and the Wall Street Urinal publishing a repudiation of John McCain's war service now.

Apparently risking your life in combat and experiencing the torturous life of a POW no longer qualifies as worthy of respect or admiration from craven cheapshot copyboy pseudojournalists whose idea of patriotism is licking the heinyholes of powerful oil moguls who only serve Saudi tyrants.

I've never heard of this guy Farah, but I'm sure he'd fit right in with the profoundly retorted blithering idiot reportage of the Daily Tattler. So why does the WSJ give him space for such crap? Can it be they serve the corporafascists too?

Nawwwwww. Not those paragons of virtue. No way. {eyeroll}

For whom the Pell Tolls

Shari has in-law problems; they want to vote Republican because they're hearing the submissive media talking fluff to the power of its master.

But she finds sustenance from a chart displaying -among other things - how Bush is selling out college students by over $1000 per school year.

Swift Gloats Skipper

Bubba has the latest rundown on all the veterans for truth.

Goss Goosed

Susan apparently thinks little of new CIA chief-to-be Porter Goss.

Mary interviews Paul

Our pal Mary has the first part of her interview with Paul Krugman posted. Nice work, Mary!

Who and where Al Qaida targets seems clearer

Yes, get the day pass or whatever to read this Salon story.

When the Justice Department obtained two videos suggesting terrorists had cased Las Vegas casinos, the discussions didn't center on public alerts or heightened security. Rather, authorities worried about the effects on tourism and the casinos' legal liabilities, internal memos show.

One of the tapes, found in Spain in 2002, shows al-Qaida's European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included an apparent reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The other tape found in a Detroit terror cell's apartment had eerily similar footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New York, New York casinos -- three hotels within a short distance of each other on the Las Vegas strip with a combined total of 11,000 rooms.

Though the FBI offered, most local law enforcement and casino security officers declined an invitation to view the footage after it was obtained in 2002, according to the memos and one of the prosecutors in the Detroit case.

One document obtained by The Associated Press quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the city's mayor was concerned about the ``deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry'' if the evidence became public. The mayor said Monday he was never told of the footage.

I'm not even going to discuss the greed at the root of the decisionmaking among Las Vegas government officials and business owners, because that's so typical it barely registers on my outrage scale. Profits before people creates problems across the globe yet outrage does little to contain it.

Instead, I want to point out how this country has fretted willy-nilly about all the thousands of potential terror targets in the unlikeliest of places, while ignoring the disturbing traits of Al Qaida that keep coming forth with every intelligence report we've been privy to. Clearly, the number one target of this terrorist group is Jews.

Al Qaida, and extremist religionists throughout the Muslim world, parrot the sentiments of Nazis and many others in their stereotyping of Jews. Jews control the money. Jews control the media. Jews control the US government, as evidenced by the US defense of Israel.

So Al Qaida's targets and hangouts have been where Jews are concentrated in the US. Consider where most Jews live in the US, per the 2001 census. New York's population is 8.7% Jewish. After that, the states with the highest percentages are New Jersey (5.7%), DC (4.5%), Massachusetts (4.3%), Maryland (4.0%), Florida (3.9%), Nevada (3.8%), Connecticut (3.2%), California (2.9%), Pennsylvania (2.3%), and Illinois (2.2%). Beyond those 10 places, only 8 more states have Jewish populations between 1.1% and 1.7%. The other 33 states are less than 1% Jewish.

Looking at the actual numbers of Jews by city and county, and the population trends - per this 1998 survey - their concentrations become more evident:

The article reports that almost half of U.S. Jews are concentrated in three metropolitan areas: New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island (32.8 percent); Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside (10.5 percent); and Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (5.9 percent).

The metropolitan area with the largest Jewish population, proportionately, is West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, Florida, where Jews account for 16 percent of the population (though in absolute numbers, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton is the 9th largest Jewish community in the U.S.). Closely following are the New York metro area and Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, where Jews are, respectively, 10.6 percent and 10.4 percent of the total population.

The five states reporting the largest Jewish populations in 1997, in absolute numbers, were: New York (1,653,000), California (956,000), Florida (620,000) [Ed. note: with 134,000 in Miami/Dade County], New Jersey (461,000) and Pennsylvania (282,000).

As the article notes, Los Angeles (519,000), Massachusetts (279,000, with 233,000 in Boston), Philadelphia (206,000 of PA's 282,000), and the Southeast Florida area from West Palm Beach, Delray Beach and Boca Raton through Fort Lauderdale and Miami are the cities where Jewish concentrations are highest after NYC. It's reasonable to guess that most Jews in Illinois live in the Chicago area and that many Los Angeles Jews reside in the Beverly Hills/Hollywood area or Palm Springs.

And though Las Vegas only had 55,600, it was the fastest growth area for the Jewish population. Cleveland OH, Denver CO and Dallas TX are nearer this range as well.

Now consider where the 9-11 hijackers lived, trained, partied, flew out of and flew into. Consider the areas the recent intelligence has pointed to as being targeted. To me, it starts to become clear that financial centers aren't just targeted for their global reach but because of the extremist view that Jews are behind that global reach.

There's many reasons our government might prefer to avoid mentioning these 'coincidences'. If Al Qaida's primary targets are revealed, they could broaden their targets. Among anti-semitics in the US, it could create a backlash movement against Jews, due to the collateral damage others in these areas could endure.

But it's understandable why Al Qaida would target Jews. They can only remain viable by recruiting in the face of the global crackdown on their ranks and nothing can draw in fresh recruits faster and steadier than the killing of Jews.

Now, my own thoughts on this are rooted in pragmatism, not the apocalyptic visions of Bible devotees looking for the last stand in Jerusalem. I don't think support for the rights of Jews to exist without fear means I have to accept the over-reach of West Bank settlers or the excesses that sometimes occur under Sharon and other Israeli leaders. I simply think that it's a good idea if those trying to dismantle groups like Al Qaida keep their greatest focus on the most likely areas of attack, so our resources can be more efficiently spent.

That means I'd keep Jewish brokerage houses protected along with the other financial centers. New Haven to New York City to Philadelphia, Baltimore to DC, Boston, the areas mentioned around Southeast Florida and Los Angeles, plus Chicago and Las Vegas would be the areas where most of my intelligence efforts would be directed. I'd like to think the FBI and Tom Ridge would be quietly informing governors, mayors, police chiefs and National Guard in these areas so they can identify where to look for suspicious activity.

I'm sure I'm not the first to discern the methods in Al Qaida's madness as I describe here. And most of it becomes irrelevant if Al Qaida gains possession of WMDs. But at this point, I hope this is where our defense resources are directed.

We are the Yin; we are the Yang

America's Two Faces in Somalia: An exchange of letters between two journalists about what America is. The two men first met during the US intervention in Somalia.

Celebrate Equality but not out loud

34 years ago today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equal Rights Amendment by a vote of 350 to 15... and the amendment died years later because enough states refused to ratify it.

39 years ago today, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, eliminating literacy tests, poll taxes and other barriers designed to keep southern blacks from voting... and in 2000, Florida's then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris used a flawed felon list to exclude tens of thousands of blacks from voting.

And to a degree, women and blacks have a little more freedom. They're free to accept wages that don't keep up with the cost of living, free to accept higher rates of unemployment, free to hear equalization programs criticized for having quotas, free to have man-based religionists control their bodies, their sexual choices, their marriage partners, free to hear a few bad apples who shipped them off to kill tens of thousands call them the bad apples instead, free to get ripped off by Enron and Halliburton, free to get outed as spies by their traitorous leaders, free to get sick without access to medical care, free to watch prices soar that put college out of reach of their children, free to go bankrupt and free to make every adult choice, so long as they understand that if they dare criticize the overprivileged spoiled rich kid at the top of the pile, half of the country will call them unAmerican and the FBI will search through their library records to make sure they can't threaten the status quotas.

They oughta just be thankful for their freedom and shut up if they know what's good for them.

Intelligence takes a leak

So... now it's certain. So excited did they get that after three years of hunting, they finally got a great source of Al Qaida information that they nearly wet themselves in their eagerness to tell the world.

And in telling the world, they enabled several key Al Qaida terrorists to get away.

The last time I recall such overconfident excitement was when they had Osama surrounded in Tora Bora, and he got away, too. And it amazes me that people consider this competent management of the war against terror. The only competence I've seen is in the selling of the excuses for what went wrong.