As I watch the disastrous consequences of the Bush policies unfold - not just in Iraq, but here at home as well - I am struck by the immaturity of this administration, whatever the ages of the officials involved. It's as if the children have taken over and sent the adults packing. The counsel of wiser heads, like George H. W. Bush, or Brent Scowcroft, or Colin Powell, is not needed and not wanted.

Some of the world's most important decisions - often, decisions of life and death - have been left to those who are less competent and less experienced, to men and women who are deficient in such qualities as risk perception and comprehension of future consequences, who are reckless and dangerously susceptible to magical thinking and the ideological pressure of their peers.

I look at the catastrophe in Iraq, the fiscal debacle here at home, the extent to which loyalty trumps competence at the highest levels of government, the absence of a coherent vision of the future for the U.S. and the world, and I wonder, with a sense of deep sadness, where the adults have gone.

This got me thinking about filial rejection as an underlying mindset for way too many of the Bushies. Ari Fliecher and his Democratic parents. Dick Cheney, who's dad was a federal civil servant and whose mentors included the eminently decent Gerald Ford. Donald Rumsfeld, a Congressional ally of Ford's, and an aide to Nixon. And Karl Rove...well, there's way too much material there for a quick psycho-political assessment.

I've long thought of the neocons as approaching politics like a graduate seminar, where the goal is to distinguish oneself with flashy rhetoric and verbal gamesmanship, preferably by constructing and then demolishing straw man arguments. But Herbert may be on to something: this administration, especially in terms of its foreign and defense policy, may be a big exercise in saying screw you to, in addition to most of the world and nearly half the country, the administration members' own elders, mentors, and parents.

The Israelis have made it clear that they believe Iran is fast becoming an imminent threat that justifies preemptive attack.

There's a multinational effort underway to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium. The Europeans think they've reached a solid agreement, but the United States remains skeptical.

An exile group is loudly claiming that the Iranians are lying and there's a secret enrichment facility the Europeans don't know about.

Liberal hawk Kenneth Pollack has a big new book out telling us how dangerous Iran is.

I can't be the only one to think I've seen this script before, can I? Is real life turning into Groundhog Day?

The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush.

Irvine, CA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) November 17, 2004 -- The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush.

The secret Thanksgiving trip was the first visit by an American President to Iraq. The trip was said to have boosted the morale of troops serving in Iraq, as well as to have inspired patriotism among many Americans at home. Regardless of how the visit was viewed politically, it has become a piece of our nation’s history. It also inspired John Warnock of Talking Presidents to create a new President Bush action figure.

“It was such a cool, historic moment, I immediately wanted to make a doll to celebrate it,” said Warnock. “As I watched him carrying the turkey tray on television, I started picturing him in a display box.”

Turkey Dinner Bush is dressed in a replica of the Army Jacket, blue shirt and black pants he wore while visiting the troops, and comes complete with a turkey dinner tray similar to the one he carried last Thanksgiving Day. Unlike the company’s other dolls, Turkey Dinner Bush does not talk. This limited edition action figure is strictly limited to production of 5000 dolls.

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.

The proposed rule change, which several leaders predicted would win approval at a closed meeting today, comes as House Republicans return to Washington feeling indebted to DeLay for the slightly enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered a grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.

Mom, I had to kill a woman and a baby. . . . . . .I shot her and my rifle is automatic so before I knew it I had shot about six rounds. Four of them hit her and the others went into the cave and must have bounced off the rock wall and hit the baby. Mom, for the first time I felt really sick to my stomach. The baby was about two months old. I swear to God this place is worse than hell. Why must I kill women and kids? Who knows who's right? They think they are and we think we are. Both sides are losing men. I wish to God this was over.

Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week.

The Senate might vote on the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.

The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed language, viewers would not be allowed to use software or devices to skip commericals or promotional announcements "that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture," like the previews on a DVD.

FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 15 -- Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe.

The aluminum shutters of shops on the main highway through town have been transformed by the force of war into mangled accordion shapes, flat, sharp, jarring slices of metal that no longer obscure the stacks of silver pots, the plastic-wrapped office furniture, the rolls of carpet. These things would be for sale, except there are no traders, no customers, hardly any people at all in the center of Fallujah.

As Brig. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was touring a western neighborhood near the neck of a bridge that crosses the Euphrates River, a firefight erupted between Marines conducting the house sweep and insurgents hiding on a narrow street.

The sound of the skirmish intensified, and Hejlik walked toward the crack of guns and bang of mortars. His security detail and aides followed behind him, guns at the ready. Hejlik watched for a while and then returned to his vehicle.

Asked how the battle was going, Hejlik looked out at the deserted street. "This is what we do," he said. "This is what we do well."

The U.S. military is investigating the videotaped fatal shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner by a U.S. Marine in a mosque in Fallujah, a Marine spokesman said.

The dramatic footage was taken Saturday by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other prisoners wounded a day earlier in the mosque had also apparently been shot the next day by the Marines.

The incident played out as the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, returned to the unidentified Fallujah mosque Saturday. Sites was embedded with the unit.

Sites reported that a different Marine unit had come under fire from the mosque on Friday. Those Marines stormed the building, killing 10 men and wounding five, Sites said. The Marines said the fighters in the mosque had been armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles.

The Marines had treated the wounded, he reported, left them behind and continued on Friday with their drive to retake the city from insurgents who have been battling U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq (news - web sites) with increasing ferocity and violence in recent months.

The same five men were still in the mosque on Saturday, Sites reported.

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

"He's (expletive) faking he's dead!"

"Yeah, he's breathing," another Marine is heard saying.

"He's faking he's (expletive) dead!" the first Marine says.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.

"He's dead now," a Marine is heard saying.

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.

(October 12, 2004) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced today a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to conduct a landmark study to learn more about how young children come into contact with household pesticides and other chemicals in their homes.

The study is being conducted to understand more about children's exposure to chemicals in their environment. Families will be asked to keep records of their pesticide and household product use and children will be monitored in their homes. The study is designed to measure the concentrations of the chemicals in the children's homes and determine how the children who are exposed to chemicals that are present in consumer products used in the home.

The study will involve 60 children, age 0 to 3 years, for two years in Duval County, Florida.

The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended a controversial study aimed at exploring how infants and toddlers absorb pesticides and other household chemicals, officials said yesterday.

Several rank-and-file EPA scientists had questioned the ethics of the two-year experiment, which would have given the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., $970 each as well as a camcorder and children's clothing in exchange for having the children participate. The critics said low-income Floridians might continue to use pesticides -- which have been linked to neurological damage in children -- in their homes to qualify for the project.

Environmentalists had also criticized the study because the industry-funded American Chemistry Council had agreed to pay $2 million of the project's approximately $9 million cost.

EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said officials had asked a group of independent experts to reexamine the study design, which has already been reviewed by several independent panels of academics, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and representatives of the Duval County Health Department. The new panel is set to give the EPA its assessment next spring.

"Since the study was announced last month, many have raised concerns, including scientists within EPA. We want to be responsive to those concerns," Bergman said.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said, "Regardless of the number of reviews, paying poor parents to dose their babies with commercial poisons to measure their exposure is just plain wrong."

Here it is, just days after the red states gave their presidential seal of approval to the man from Texas, and we've already been treated to another skirmish in the culture wars. The Texas Board of Education has now given its educational seal of approval to what may soon be dubbed Red Sex Ed.

The big news is the state's successful demand that textbook publishers change the description of marriage between "two people" to marriage between "a man and a woman." They also ordered that marriage be defined as "a lifelong union between a husband and a wife."

Frankly, I found the "lifelong" description charming considering that the Lone Star State has one of the highest divorce rates in the country. Massachusetts, by the way, has the lowest divorce rate in the country. We are so fond of marriage that we want everyone to do it.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

The German word Gleichschaltung (literally "Synchronising"; synchronization) is used in a political sense to describe the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of total control and coordination of all aspects of society. The term itself is a typical Nazi euphemism.

The Nazi party's desire for total societal control required the elimination of all other forms of influence. The period from 1933 to around 1937 was characterized by the systematic elimination of non-Nazi organizations that could potentially influence people, such as trade unions and political parties. The regime also assailed the influence of the churches, for example by instituting the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs under Hanns Kerrl. Organizations that the administration could not eliminate, such as the schools, came under its direct control.

In a more specific sense, Gleichschaltung refers to the legal measures taken by the government during the first months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In this sense, the term was used by the Nazis themselves.

One day after the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, the increasingly senile President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg, acting at Hitler's request, issued the Reichstag Fire Decree. This decree, of very questionable constitutionality, suspended most human rights provided for by the 1919 constitution of the Weimar Republic and thus allowed for the arrest of political adversaries, mostly Communists, and for general terrorizing by the SA to intimidate the voters before the upcoming elections.
In this atmosphere of terror, the Reichstag general elections of March 3, 1933 took place. Surprisingly, these yielded only a slim majority for Hitler's coalition government and no majority for Hitler's own Nazi party.
When the newly-elected Reichstag first convened on March 23, 1933, (not including the Communist delegates, since their party had already been banned by that time) it passed the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz), transferring all legislative powers to the Hitler government and in effect abolishing the remainder of the Weimar constitution as a whole. Soon afterwards the government banned the Social Democratic party which had voted against the Act, while the other parties chose to dissolve themselves to avoid arrests and concentration camp imprisonment.
The "First Gleichschaltung Law" (Erstes Gleichschaltungsgesetz) (March 31, 1933) gave the governments of the Länder the same legislative powers that the Reich government had received through the Enabling Act.
A "Second Gleichschaltung Law" (Zweites Gleichschaltungsgesetz) (April 7, 1933) deployed one Reichsstatthalter (proconsul) in each state apart from Prussia, which had already been under Nazi control since the Preußenschlag of July 20, 1932. These officers were supposed to act as local presidents in each state, appointing the governments. For Prussia, which comprised the vast majority of Nazi Germany anyway, Hitler reserved these rights for himself.
The Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reiches ("Law concerning the reconstruction of the Reich") (January 30, 1934) abandoned this concept. Instead, the political institutions of the Länder were practically abolished altogether, passing all powers to the central government. Consequentially, another law dating February 14, 1934 dissolved the Reichsrat, the representation of the Länder at the federal level.
In the summer of 1934, Hitler instructed the SS to kill Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Nazi party's SA, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and several aides to former Chancellor Franz von Papen in the so-called Night of the Long Knives. These measures actually received retrospective sanction in a special one-article Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense (Gesetz über Maßnahmen der Staatsnotwehr) (3 July 1934).
At nine o'clock in the morning of August 2, 1934, Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg died at the age of 86. Three hours before, the government had issued a law to take effect the day of his death; this prescribed that the office of the Reichspräsident should be united with that of the Reichskanzler and that the competencies of the former should be transferred to the "Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler", as the law stated literally. Hitler henceforth demanded the use of that title. Thus the last feeble remains of separation of powers were abolished.