No, this one doesn't have to do with abortion, but it's a symptom of what we are likely to see more of as women's bodies cease to be their own property and begin belonging to the state or to whatever man thinks he should control it at any given time.

Shakespeare's Sister has the story:

A 17-year-old girl went to police at the urging of her friends after she was allegedly gang-raped by three men, including her boyfriend. The men testified that the act was consensual. After reviewing all the information and statements, prosecutors decided they didn’t think they could prove a rape allegation, and so declined to prosecute the case.

Instead, they prosecuted the victim for filing a false police report. Yesterday, she was found guilty.

The victim has never recanted her story. Instead, the decision was based on the judge’s opinion that the three men were more credible, in part because a police detective and the victim’s friends testified she did not “act traumatized” in the days after the incident.

In cases like this, people tend to draw their own conclusions, based on what’s reported, filling in the blanks in a way that satisfies one’s judgment. What are you thinking right now? That maybe it really was a false rape charge? That maybe the victim was just vindictive? That there had to be some reason that the judge found her guilty?

Let me give you some more information—something that is only a possibility because The American Street’s Kevin Hayden has known the victim nearly her whole life. He attended the trial. He noticed that the prosecutor repeatedly referred to the attackers as “boys,” even though they were grown men and the victim was 17. He noticed that the judge acknowledged he had found inconsistencies in all of their stories, but, inexplicably, decided that the same reasonable doubt that kept prosecutors from pursuing charges against the attackers wasn’t enough to keep him from finding the victim guilty.

Now think about this: this judge decided that "reasonable doubt" about whether a rape took place prevented conviction of the men involved, but the victim wasn't granted the same "reasonable doubt" -- instead, preconceived notions about how she "should" have behaved warranted conviction. This wasn't a case of a recanted report, it's a case in which because a woman didn't respond to the incident in an appropriately traumatized way, it means she's a criminal.

Of course what we're likely to hear in the comments is that women do make false rape claims, and that's true. But such claims are few and far between, and most of them do not end in convictions. (See also: Kobe Bryant.) Making a claim of rape is hardly a pleasant thing for a woman to do, since her entire life is going to be held up to scrutiny...and that an assumption is going to be made that if she ever said "yes" to sex with any man, that means she was consenting to sex with any man, at any time, for any reason, in perpetuity.

Does anyone honestly believe that?

ShakesSis points out:

There is no such thing as a “typical” response to rape. Immediately following a rape, some women go into shock. Some are lucid. Some are angry. Some are ashamed. Some are practical. Some are irrational. Some want to report it. Some don’t. Most have a combination of emotions, but there is no standard response. Responses to rape are as varied as its victims. In the long term, some rape victims act out. Some crawl inside themselves. Some have healthy sex lives. Some never will again.

When I was in college, I was in a similar situation to the girl in this case, to the extent that I was in a guy's room. I was held down on a bed in a frat house room and told that if I didn't have sex with the guy holding me down, he'd tear my clothes off and throw them out the window. With that as my choice, I submitted. Was it rape? I suppose by today's standards, it was, though that wasn't how I thought of it at the time. Mostly what I thought was how stupid I was to go to the guy's room and sit on his bed, even though I had a passing acquaintance with him from an earlier encounter which passed without incident. I treated it as a learning experience, stopped going to frat parties, and went about my life without adverse effects. That same year, a friend passed out in a different frat house, awoke unable to find any of her clothes except a coat, and walked back to our campus through a bad neighborhood, barefoot, in November, wearing nothing but her coat. She never knew what happened to her, but do the math.

That was in the late 1970's, it was a pretty provincial college atmosphere, and feminism didn't exist. We chalked it up to being stupid and vowed not to make the same mistake again.

But that was then, and that was our experience. Someone else's might have been different, and of course if there had been more than one guy in the room, I might have fought. I don't know, and I'm glad I don't know. But 'm not going to sit in judgment on anyone who has a different one. And neither should the judicial system.

Maybe there wasn't enough proof to convict these men. But when giving the benefit of the doubt to alleged rapists also involves prosecuting an underage woman for giving a false report, something is very, very wrong. Being present in a guy's room is not tantamount to consent to sex, or to rape. And contrary to popular belief, women are not dying to have group sex with a bunch of men. Yes, perhaps a few do. But most don't. Are we going to start prosecuting women forced into sex against their will because we don't have a clear definition of what constitutes rape? And why was the same evidence good enough to convict the woman of making a false claim, but not good enough to convict the men?

It's a very short step from this case to making rape a nonexistent factor as a prosecutable offense -- codifying in the practice of justice the notion that any man who doesn't leave concrete evidence is not regarded as a rapist, and any woman who doesn't exhibit a certain amount of male-determined "appropriate" behavior is not regarded as having been raped.

All this said, I'm not the sort to say that every kind of coercive sex is by definition rape. I'm not convinced that I would have gained anything by regarding myself as a rape victim as a result of what happened to me in college. I was sexually active, I was in a guy's bedroom. I had said yes to other guys, didn't that mean I meant yes to everyone? I have no doubt, though, that the guy probably went on to do similar things to other girls before settling down and probably becoming a good right-wing Republican. I wouldn't know. I ran into him a few months later and smacked him across the face -- right in front of his friends -- hard enough to leave a welt. He was around six feet tall. I am 4'10". It was very gratifying. But I could have gotten slugged right back in a different situation.

I'm all for young women making smart decisions, like not getting drunk, like not getting into cars with young men they don't know, like not going off to the bedroom of a guy you don't know. But young women don't always make smart decisions. That doesn't mean they deserve to be raped. If a young man gets drunk and is wounded in a bar fight and can never walk again, do we say he "asked for it"? Do we say he "deserved it"? Then why do we say this about women? Why do men decide they know what an "appropriate" response is for a rape victim?

I'm not saying there aren't false rape claims. If there weren't any, we wouldn't even have to have this discussion, now, would we? But how many women have been raped and been afraid to report it, for fear of being put through just this kind of meatgrinder? My guess is that it's far more than the number of false rape claims.

It's a very slippery slope we're on here, folks: Because a very few women file false rape claims, ANY woman who files a rape claim risks being convicted of filing a false report if a judge chooses to believe her attackers. Because a very few women have repeated abortions or have elective third-trimester abortions, we're at risk of losing the right to control our own reproduction. Because a very few women deliberately become pregnant to entrap men, some say we should give men the final to say as to whether the pregnancy should continue.

Isn't it funny how when conservative white males feel threatened, they take out their frustrations on women? Right now their jobs are being outsourced, their health benefits are at risk, they are mortgaged to the hilt, and it's very likely that within the next five years, they'll be foreclosed out of their houses. So what do they do when faced with an increasing loss of control over their own economic destiny? Instead of looking at the Republican government and the mega-corporations who discard them as so much used toilet paper, they sustain their illusion of control the only way they can: by controlling the bodies of women and making sure WE are punished when we don't live by their ever-changing, ever-more-restrictive rules -- rules now being apparently set by Fundamentalist Christian men -- the kind who write novels in which ten-year-old girls are raped by bears -- but God forbid a real flesh-and-blood woman ever had sex for fun, because if she did, any man has a right to her.

The first time we refinanced our mortgage, we went through a mortgage broker, and the new mortgage was sold two weeks after closing to Norwest Bank. Norwest Bank was taken over by Wells Fargo, and we've been with them ever since. Aside from the $19.95 fee they charge to pay online (which I refuse to pay), Wells Fargo has been just dandy to deal with. We were able to refinance again last year in a no closing cost, no in-person closing, no-doc refi that only cost us a $350 application fee and what we paid the notary. It was one big package of paperwork, and at the end we had a nice spanking new 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 4.75%.

Now, as Pam reports, there's another reason to do business with Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo's decision to support GLAAD by matching contributions to "fight for equality against the Anti-Gay industry." This is a decision that has gained them the ire of the guy who thinks fathers should take their young sons into the shower with them and show them daddy's penis: the so-called Rev. James Dobson.

Here's Wells Fargo's GLBT record:

Wells Fargo has embraced the GLBT community for over 20 years.

Since the 1980s, Wells Fargo has given more than $14 million to organizations serving the GLBT community nationwide.

The company has donated to several local non-profits and national organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Wells Fargo offers Domestic Partnership Benefits to our GLBT team members’ partners and families.

Our non-discrimination policies include language specific to sexual orientation as well as gender identity.

Wells Fargo sponsors 21 GLBT resource groups called PRIDE – a forum for diverse team members to connect with each other, the company and the community.

2004 and 2005 HRC Corporate Equality Index: Perfect score of “100”

2003 Diversity Inc.com: #7 Top Companies for GLBT Employees

2000 GLAAD Fairness Award

2000 Advocate Magazine: Top 10 Workplaces for GLBT Employees

In thumbing his nose at the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Richard M Kovacevich, CEO of Wells Fargo, is our Most Brilliant Person of the Week.

Forget the politics, and the blogswarms for verified voting for a minute. We all know that blogs are REALLY for fun stuff like Lynn's astrological speculations on the characters of Lost.

I would make a snarky remark about how some people need to get out more, but as someone working on my own list of the Brilliant 25 of 2005, who am I to talk?

Now back to our serious side, already in progress.

Does anyone actually believe that bombing the shit out of Iraq is the way to make a difference in the future lives of the people who call it home?

How about a way to make a small but very real investment in Iraq's future?

Maj. Bob Bateman has been keeping progressives informed for well over a year via Eric Alterman and Jim Romanesko. When Bateman requests something, progressives listen and respond:

Ten months ago, not long after my arrival here in Iraq, a friend posted to this letters page a personal plea for some reading material, and perhaps a little French Vanilla non-dairy creamer. The response from Romenesko readers, and those at Eric Alterman's site, overwhelmed. As an example, your generosity buried us beneath one hundred and thirty pounds of French Vanilla creamer. Have you any idea of the cubic volume which that much creamer occupies? Just as importantly, at least for my own sense of mental balance, were subscriptions to the New Yorker, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal ...all unexpected, each of which did its part in preserving an important part of each of us here.

Now Bateman is asking us to make an investment in the future journalists of Iraq, so that the Iraqis can have real reporters, instead of American Republican shills.

have carried weapons for seventeen years, weapons which made journalism possible in this country. But I have known from the outset that ultimately, only journalists can save this country. There is a catch. In this I refer to neither American journalists, nor European ones, but Iraqis. I live in a city in which Boss Tweed would feel completely at ease. I want to help create his Thomas Nast, or the Iraqi Upton Sinclair, and there is only one way to do that. Education.

Accordingly, I browbeat my peers into helping me in the de facto adoption of a school here. It's just one school, but it is a start. There are 450 grade school boys (a riotous unruly pack), about 400 grade school girls (well behaved and groomed), and an as-of-yet undetermined number of High Schoolers. The school is ramshackled, dirty, and underprovisioned in every category but the dedication of the teachers. I want to change the first three parts of that situation, and I want you all to help.

Go here for a list of needed supplies and where to send them.

Got a kid in school? Teach him or her that patriotism isn't about rah-rah-ing a delusional president; teach him or her how ordinary people can make more of a difference than the barrel of a gun can. Suggest that his/her class adopt this school and donate supplies.

Work in a corporation? Ask for donations from your co-workers.

Or if you can't do either of those, for God's sake go to Staples, buy a couple of boxes of pencils and writing pads and send them along.

Conservatives show their so-called patriotism by reciting slogans, bashing liberals, and Swiftboating 37-year military veterans. Progressives show their so-called patriotism by rolling up our sleeves and doing something. We send USO care packages to soldiers. We go to hurricane-ravaged areas to rescue animals. We help others. We don't believe that "I got mine and fuck you" is a philosophy to live by. We may not all be religious, we may not wear our religion on our sleeve, but to us, morality is about a lot more than nosing around other people's bedrooms; it's about how we treat the other people and creatures with whom we share this planet. It's what being liberal stands for, and it's why no one should be ashamed to be one.

Let's show some Iraqi students what this country is supposed to stand for.

Back in the Bush I era, everyone thought that old Barbara Bush was this kindly matriarch. Not me. All you had to do was look into that woman's eyes and you'd see someone who could gut you from neck to crotch without ever mussing her hair.

It's been reported that George Jr. gets his pettiness and his vindictiveness from his mother; and yet you don't get the impression either that he's really the apple of her eye.

However, she seems more concerned than the old man does with the Bush Legacy; perhaps because she still has dreams of King Jeb dancing in her head. So, in true Mafia Don fashion, it seems she's looking to whack the person she has deemed responsible for the failed administration of her son.

Steve Clemons reports:

Barbara Bush is allegedly TICKED off at Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Andy Card, nearly all of them -- except Karen Hughes -- for how her boy is faring in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The matriarch of the Bush clan is colder than North Pole ice right now to those around her son who she thinks have undermined him. I'll tell who my sources are if Patrick Fitzgerald gives a call and makes me -- but the sources are very close to Poppa Bush (41), who has been traveling a bit with some of his old entourage, including Brent Scowcroft and others of the first Bush regime.

While TWN has been able to confirm that Laura Bush's mother-in-law wants to do more than put coal in the stockings of the Vice President and the other top handlers of her son's White House, we have not been able to confirm a slightly stronger bit of the rumor, which is that Barbara -- not Laura -- was planning to call on Nancy Reagan just to get a refresher lesson on how she took on and kicked out then Chief-of-Staff Donald Regan. (I embellish here; Barbara Bush is not going to take lessons from Nancy, it just sounded good. My source told me that Barbara was about to "pull a Nancy Reagan" on these attendants.)

Cheney may be tougher to dump than Don Regan, but then again, Barbara Bush is one of those wonders of nature (we hear) who knows no limits and can easily surge beyond category 5 hurricane winds.

Should be interesting to watch the role of the First Mother in the coming couple of months. Watch for a lot to change right after the State of the Union address, I've been told.

Never forget Rule #1 of the Bush family: Loyalty is paramount, until you make us look bad. Then we'll disappear you so fast it'll make your head swim.

Jonathan "Clutch" Larsen, who was one of the original creators of Morning Sedition, has a blog (which is the latest addition to our blogroll), and gives us the inside scoop into the mind of Danny Goldberg and why the show has been cancelled.

If you're a Seditionista, or if you are just wondering what the fuss is about, go read Larsen's blog entry in its entirety. Here's just a snippet:

Maron is pretty damn close to a national treasure. His level of emotional intelligence is off the charts and he applies it to issues of politics and society in ways that make his work the comedic equivalent of "Freakonomics" or "Tipping Point," his synthesis of insights (his own and others) into how people work individually and societally is just about that revolutionary.

And it's piss-your-pants funny. The New Haven Advocate came pretty close, I think, to nailing what made Sedition good and valuable to AAR, and in general. When Goldberg arrived at Air America, everyone -- including him -- acknowledged that Morning Sedition had been neglected by the network.

[snip]

Sedition had a couple strikes against it -- it started off with a mismatched team and only really took off once one of the three initial hosts left the program. Also, Maron had never done radio before and Riley had only done local radio. Maron was the lead host and needed a few months to find his groove -- which he did in preternaturally quick time.

The biggest strike against us, though, was that we were operating in the most competitive daypart -- morning drive. And no one knew we existed. Despite that, however, and despite Goldberg's public rationales, Sedition usually did relatively okay in the ratings. When it stumbled, there was usually some clear reason for it or it was part of a larger pattern (affecting AAR or talk-radio overall). So, we needed to let people know our show existed. And this wasn't another case of a show feeling neglected and making excuses; all the executives agreed, and said, in essence, that it wasn't possible to put a show on in the nation's number-one market, in the most competitive daypart and expect it to succeed without spending a single dollar to let people know it existed. To his credit, Goldberg brought in people to remedy that. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my ken, the additional staff didn't yield any additional attention for or promotion of the show. We were, in fact, told to wait. First a new logo had to be developed. Then an overall network-marketing plan would have to be developed. Only then, finally, would the network be able to market Morning Sedition properly. If that was true, why cancel the show before allowing the still-unseen marketing to debut? If it wasn't true, why should we believe what we're being told now?

Goldberg's claim that he's dividing the morning-drive slot into two shows of radically different sensibilities rather than retain a sharp, critically acclaimed comedian at a time when fans of Howard Stern (some of whom had already discovered us and joined the ranks of our listeners) would be looking at alternatives, is both laughable and transparently false. The reality is he dislikes Air America's comedic elements.

Remember when you first started hearing that Shel and Anita Drobny were working on a progressive alternative to conservative talk radio, and everyone said it wouldn't work, because liberals have no sense of humor and liberal talk radio is invariably as dull as dishwater?

The Morning Sedition crew proved that this need not be the case. I don't include Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo in that category, because Franken has been just awful without a straight foil, and Garofalo isn't funny at all on the air; she just screams and rants -- and sounds less intelligent than she is.

All you have to do to see the Goldberg imprimatur on Air America radio is listen to WLIB in New York on a weekend these days. The soon-to-be-gone Morning Sedition is repeated for only an hour. Then you get an almost uniterrupted snoozefest including the horrifyingly chickish and unlistenable Satellite Sisters, The Sporting Blues, Eco Talk, Politically Direct with David Bender, and Ring of Fire -- all well-intentioned, informative programs; all of them dull as dishwater, just as the wingnuts predicted.

Air America could have been the Daily Show of the radio airwaves, and for a while, it was. Now, because of a CEO who thinks that people will switch from NPR and sit through the ghastly ads that AAR runs, to listen to Mark Riley and Rachel Maddow -- who are fine, professional broadcasters -- something fresh and new has become just another droning voice of the mushy middle. It isn't just right-wing executives who can run a company into the ground.

The Transportation Safety Administration and Congressional Republicans are making damn sure that "fighting them over there" means that if any do slip through, another terrorist attack is almost a foregone conclusion:

A new plan by the Transportation Security Administration would allow airline passengers to bring scissors and other sharp objects in their carry-on bags because the items no longer pose the greatest threat to airline security, according to sources familiar with the plans.

In a series of briefings this week, TSA Director Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley told aviation industry leaders that he plans to announce changes at airport security checkpoints that would allow scissors less than four inches long and tools, such as screwdrivers, less than seven inches long, according to people familiar with the TSA's plans. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the TSA intends to make the plans public Friday.

"We'll be announcing a number of new initiatives that will have both a positive security and customer service impact," said TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark, who declined to comment on the details of the announcement. The plans must be approved by the Homeland Security Department and the Office of Management and Budget.

Faced with a tighter budget and morale problems among its workforce, the TSA says its new policy changes are aimed at making the best use of limited resources. Homeland Security Department officials are increasingly concerned about airports' vulnerability to suicide bomb attacks. TSA officials now want airport screeners to spend more of their time looking for improvised explosive devices rather than sharp objects.

The TSA's internal studies show that carry-on-item screeners spend half of their screening time searching for cigarette lighters, a recently banned item, and that they open 1 out of every 4 bags to remove a pair of scissors, according to sources briefed by the agency. Officials believe that other security measures now in place, such as hardened cockpit doors, would prevent a terrorist from commandeering an aircraft with box cutters or scissors.

Right. Whatever you say. Flight attendants are not convinced that allowing 4" scissors on board makes THEM safer:

They argue that even though such items would not enable another Sept. 11, 2001-style hijacking, the items could be used as weapons against passengers or flight-crew members. "TSA needs to take a moment to reflect on why they were created in the first place -- after the world had seen how ordinary household items could create such devastation," said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, which has more than 46,000 members. "When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safety but the aisles will be running with blood."

But hey, that's the Bush "culture of life" for you -- if you're not a fetus or a military-age youth, or a brain-dead woman, your life doesn't count. And after all, the last terrorist attack gave them 90% approval ratings. So why WOULDN'T they think that allowing another one would give them a much-needed boost?

Wonkette has the photographic evidence demonstrating that when it comes to the war in Iraq, Bush hasn't a clue what to do.

On the other hand, sloganeering costs a lot less than giving our military adequate equipment to do the job you sent them to do.

Pam performs a valuable public service today with this update on which major pharmacy chains are recognizing that it is not the job of their pharmacists to impose their morality on the customers:

Walgreen Co., the nation's largest drugstore chain by revenue, said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and "have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option," Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

A rule imposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April requires Illinois pharmacies that sell contraceptives approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Pharmacies that do not fill prescriptions for any type of contraception are not required to follow the rule.

Ed Martin, an attorney for the pharmacists, on Tuesday called the discipline "pretty disturbing" and said they would consider legal action if Walgreen doesn't reconsider.

At least six other pharmacists have sued over the rule, claiming it forces them to violate their religious beliefs. Many of those lawsuits were filed by Americans United for Life, the Chicago public interest law firm with which Martin is affiliated.

The licenses of both a pharmacy and that store's chief pharmacist could be revoked if they don't comply with the Illinois rule, Bruce said.

Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Ill., put the four on leave Monday, Bruce said. She would not identify them. They will remain on unpaid leave "until they either decide to abide by Illinois law or relocate to another state" without such a rule or law.

This is actually only a modest victory, because it simply involves Walgreens' resolve to adhere to Illinois state law, but other chains, such as Target, don't seem to care about state laws requiring that prescriptions be filled.

The article goes on to state that Eckerd and Brooks stores require their pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, and CVS isn't talking.

Use this information as you will.

It's more than a little disingenuous for the newspaper which printed Judith Miller's utter fabricated Administration-fed crap on the front page to start squawking about the Iraq war now, but I'll take it:

We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.

It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.

Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.

The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.

Americans have finally realized that this president lives in a bubble and that his speeches are delivered only before hand-selected audiences. It's reminiscent of the country's disenchantment with game shows in the aftermath of the Charles Van Doren scandal of the 1950's. People may be gullible, and they may want to believe in their leaders, but they now realize that this president's words are hollow; that he either is delusional enough to believe his own words, or else he's lying through his teeth. And they no longer want to hear it.

When Ron Suskind quoted a White House aide as saying, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality", that should have been the wake-up call for all Americans. Instead, the already-aware became even more appalled, and those who wanted, who NEEDED to believe, refused to believe that this Administration could possibly be delusional. Well, there's no getting away from it now.

The tipping point has been reached with this president, and there's no turning back. We can only hope that his messianic delusions and this idea he has, fed by the likes of James Dobson and others, that he is God's anointed architect of Armageddon, can be kept in check long enough for us to get out of his Administration alive.

It sure as hell isn't Holy Joe Lieberman OR Hillary Clinton.

MBNA Biden? Forget it.

No, the one guy who can count on me getting out on Election Day 2008 would be Russ Feingold.

Jeffrey Feldman explains why:

Kerry made a series of statements where he attempted to parse the difference between his position and President Bush's statements. According to John Kerry, the problem with the President's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" was that it made the claim that the U.S. military belonged to the President's policy and not to the American people (hang on, here, it's hard to explain Kerry's arguments). He then went on to explain that Democrats are not calling for a time table for leaving Iraq, but were instead calling for a time table for success in Iraq which would allow for the U.S. military to leave (See the difference? Yeah...me neither).

Kerry was confusing, he was overly patrician. He was unclear. After listening to him speak for five minutes, it was not clear what his ideas were.

Feingold was the exact opposite.

Interviewed by Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC, Feingold was asked a series of questions where he was supposed to respond to the President's attacks on his position. Rather than answer those false charges, each time he reframed the debate. Each time he did this--he was fantastic. FANTASTIC!

Feingold made several points that were crystal clear.

First, he said that the President's strategy should not be "Victory in Iraq," but "Victory Against Al Qaeda." That was a very good point. He held up the President's document and said, essentially, the title of this document is wrong. Very clear. Our goal is to stop Al Qaeda.

Second, he said that just because the President made the mistake of confusing the war in Iraq with the fight against Al Qaeda, doesn't mean that we should make that mistake over and over again. We must refocus the war on the real enemy: Al Qaeda.

Third, he said that winding down the mission in 2006 would not mean that America had 'cut and run' from Iraq, thereby giving the terrorists a victory. He explained clearly that the American presence in Iraq--our military occupation of Iraq--was the single largest factor fueling the terrorists in the world, today. He said that the President was mistaken or confused in his understanding, and that key generals and Iraqis themselves had said that the most important factor that his helping Al Qaeda is the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Fourth, he used a chessboard metaphor to explain that the fight against Al Qaeda is taking place in dozens of countries around the world. Therefore, what the President is advocating, according to Feingold, is that we fight only in "one square" and not on the whole board. It was a very clear way to frame this discussion. And one that has legs, I believe.

Feingold was great and he demonstrated the importance, and the power, of his general idea that we must initiate a 'new beginning' or 'refocus' our fight for national security. This is clearly more powerful and more effective than Kerry's attempt to blame the President for Iraq.

With Kerry, we are stuck trying to out maneuver the White House on Iraq--stuck in the frame of the Iraq war as the lone key to national security.

With Feingold, we get a comprehensive vision of national security based on success and action across the board. National security is about engaging Al Qaeda everywhere and playing on our terms, not the terms that help Al Qaeda.

Feingold's frame is not perfect, but it is powerful in how distinct and clear it is. I believe we are seeing a new leader emerge in the Democratic party in Russ Feingold and we will see his frame and his positions become more refined and more articulate as he circulates more and more in the media.

Finally! A real voice of leadership emerges.

Of course Feingold doesn't have a chance in hell. First of all, he's unafraid to frame an issue in a way that isn't "We're just like Bush...only not crazy!" And second of all, this country is NOT going to elect a twice-divorced Jew. It's just not going to happen.

A damn shame, too.

Contrary to what some of my trolls think, I don't hate men. I've always kind of liked men, which is something Mr. Brilliant just can't seem to understand. He thinks the reason men don't respect women is because we put up with them. He could be right, though I happen to be still extremely fond of Mr. Brilliant, even after lo these 23 years (Discordians and Lost fans, take note). And even at my advanced age, I still enjoy looking at a nice-looking, broody, tortured, Mr. Darcy-type on a movie or TV screen.

Mr. Brilliant is dashingly handsome, intelligent, and has a wicked sense of humor. And he knows who the Wooleyburger was, which is what sealed the deal for me back in 1983.

But lately the battle of the sexes has been in the news again, in between the ranting about the liberal war on Christmas, largely because of Maureen Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary, in which she apparently hashes out the old chestnut that men can't handle strong, successful women; and because of recent stories indicating that Ivy League women are back to wanting their MRS degree.

I'm not going to rant about that now, though I have plenty to say on that front. But you can read an interesting, if ultimately pointless back-and-forth on the subject here.

Maybe it's that I'm not as highly accomplished as Maureen Dowd, or that I never looked to a guy to support me, but her angst has never been an issue for me.

But when I read something as vile and reprehensible as this, I think she may be on to something, though not for the same reasons.

Another Jill at Feministe does a fine job of eviscerating the piece of human excrement that wrote the above.

I've taken a fair amount of crap from our wingnut trolls over the past year and a half, and even more before then from Republicans who seem to think that unverifiable voting is A-OK by them -- especially when the machines are built and programmed by companies that support Republicans.

America's moral authority, or what little of it is left, is predicated on the idea that we elect our leaders in free elections in which the votes are counted as they are cast. The last three elections, in 2000, 2002, and 2004 cast doubt on this principle, as more and more districts using electronic voting reported machine glitches, votes being cast for the wrong candidate, and other "quirks", not all of them easily attributable to malfunction.

I'm hardly a power programmer, but I could write a web-based system in an afternoon that would take every "n"th vote for Candidate A and change it to Candidate B. I could also write a function that would watch for a certain vote percentage before kicking the count change into play.

Those of us with programming and system knowledge are appalled at the kind of loose controls placed on these machines -- the security holes, the insecure databases, the level of crappy code that most of us would be fired for producing.

Although Rep. Rush Holt is, alas, not my representative (my own representative, Scott Garrett, feels that rigged voting is just fine with him), I'm proud to be from the same state as the Congressman who introduced Bill HR 550: the The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act.

This bill, if passed, will:

• Mandate a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast in every federal election, nationwide; because the voter verified paper record is the only one verified by the voters themselves, rather than by the machines, it will serve as the vote of record in any case of inconsistency with electronic records;
  
• Protect the accessibility requirements of the Help America Vote Act for voters with disabilities;
  
• Require random, unannounced, hand-count audits of actual election results in every state, and in each county, for every Federal election;
  
• Prohibit the use of undisclosed software and wireless and concealed communications devices and internet connections in voting machines;
  
• Provide Federal funding to pay for implementation of voter verified paper balloting; and
  
• Require full implementation by 2006
  

A petition to support this bill can be found here.

President Rubber Room's remarks yesterday at a greedfest for embattled Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave are a perfect example of projection at work:

We believe in the freedom of people to worship and speak their mind, the freedom of the press to print what they want. They believe in the opposite. They have a dark vision of the world. They have made their intentions clear. They want to establish a totalitarian empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia. And one way for them to accomplish their objective is to drive us out of the Middle East, is to cause America to become isolated. It's not going to happen on my watch. (Applause.)

One of the reasons I'm proud to stand here with Marilyn is she understands the stakes, as well. It's important to have a -- somebody from the United States Congress from that district, from her district, who understands that on September the 11th, 2001, an enemy declared war on the United States of America, and we must do everything in our power to protect the American people.

This is an enemy that has declared their intentions in Iraq. They've got one weapon, by the way -- their ideology is so dark, nobody believes in it except for a handful, but they've got the capacity to kill innocent people and have those images on the TV screens around the world, all attempting to shake our will and to get us to retreat. They have stated openly their desire to do to Iraq what they did to Afghanistan, to convert that country into a safe haven so they can plan, plot and attack. We will defeat the enemy in Iraq. We will do our job to protect the American people.

I think you just read the President of the United States telling us what HIS agenda is, not that of the Islamists.

But if you need further proof that Peggy Noonan has left the building, Pam points it out for us:

Also, the Chimperor spent a lot of time building up the "dark swarthy enemy" imagery in this speech. God, this writing is awful. The only numnuts that could possibly tolerate a speech like this are the hand-picked automaton event supporters. I'm just surprised that his staff can't come up with anything less hoary and tired to say than this.

Some of you may remember me blogging on the story of Miss Kitty, the heroic cat who saved the life of her owner, Bill Harris, as the flood waters rose in his Slidell, Mississippi home during Hurricane Katrina. (Previous entries here, here, here, here, and here).

I'd like to be able to say that Harris and his cat lived happily ever after, but alas, Harris died last week from a recurrence of the gastrointestinal bleeding that took him from a Red Cross shelter to a hospital in September, where he was reunited with Miss Kitty.

Miss Kitty, who at age 17 is no spring chicken herself, will be moving to her new home in Canada with Donna Wackerbauer, one of the animal rescuers who found her.

Noah's Wish is working on a way to commemorate Bill Harris and Miss Kitty in Slidell.

The story of this amazing cat should put to rest the idea that only dogs have the heart to save the lives of their owners.

And this is even BEFORE the Abramoff Gang starts singing:

Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, resigned from Congress on Monday, hours after pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes to help friends and campaign contributors win military contracts.

You've got to give Duke credit: at least he's an expensive whore.

Mr. Cunningham, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, tearfully acknowledged his guilt in a statement read outside the federal courthouse in San Diego.

"The truth is, I broke the law, concealed my conduct and disgraced my office," he said. "I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions and, most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."

Mr. Cunningham, 63, pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, tax evasion, wire fraud and mail fraud. He faces up to 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeitures.

Prosecutors said he received cash, cars, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees, moving expenses and vacations from four unnamed co-conspirators in exchange for aid in winning military contracts. None of this income was reported to the Internal Revenue Service or on the congressman's financial disclosure forms, the government said.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known as Duke, lived while in Washington on a 42-foot yacht, named the Duke-Stir, owned by one of the military contractors that received tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts that prosecutors said Mr. Cunningham helped steer its way.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known for his combative conservatism and his emotional outbursts, served on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism and human intelligence.

"He did the worst thing an elected official can do," Carol C. Lam, the United States attorney, said in a statement. "He enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there."

Mr. Cunningham's plea adds to the ethics cloud over the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush White House.

These guys are never in the least bit sorry for their greed, but they're always very, very sorry they get caught. Shed no tears for the Dukester, my friends, for his trials and tribulations are well-deserved.

This is why we need a two-party system to provide oversight. The Republicans have been so certain of their own eternal rule that they believed they could get away anything. The one hopeful sign that our system, as creaky and damaged as it is by this bunch of criminals that constitute today's GOP, still has some life in it is the fact that while Republicans control everything, there are still some people with integrity in the Justice Department.

So here's the GOP scorecard so far:

Rep. Randy Cunningham: plead guilty

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: under investigation by the SEC for insider trading.

House Majority Leadert Tom DeLay: indicted on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon: plead guilty to bribery charges.

Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby: indicted on perjury charges.

Ohio Rep. Bob Ney: under investigation for bribery, tied to Jack Abramoff

Montana Sen. Conrad Burns: part of the Abramoff campaign finance investigation

California Rep. John Dolittle: part of the Abramoff campaign finance investigation

And that's just where we are so far. Now tell me again how Republicans are the party of high moral values.

Freedom on the march:

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Some of the young men have turned up alive in prison. In a secret bunker discovered earlier this month in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that some of the mostly Sunni inmates appeared to have been tortured.

Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, and other government officials denied any government involvement, saying the killings were carried out by men driving stolen police cars and wearing police and army uniforms purchased at local markets. "Impossible! Impossible!" Mr. Jabr said. "That is totally wrong; it's only rumors; it is nonsense."

Well, at least we know the Iraqi government has been well-trained by the White House -- they use the same tactic: act shocked, shocked, and appalled; and then deny, deny, deny.

This isn't even funny anymore. Forget impeachment, we may be looking at a 25th Amendment removal from office scenario before this is all over.

This Kos diary excerpts an interview Wolf Blitzer did with Sy Hersh today that represents quite probably the first time the idea that the president is a few sandwiches short of a picnic has appeared in the mainstream media:

BLITZER: In this new article you have in The New Yorker, you also write this about the president: " 'The president is more determined than ever to stay the course,' the former defense official said. 'He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, "People may suffer and die, but the Church advances." ' He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. 'They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,' the former defense official said."

HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I'm sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He's upbeat. He thinks that he's going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He's committed to the course. He believes in democracy.

HERSH: He believes that he's doing the right thing, and he's not going to stop until he gets -- either until he's out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.

BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him? HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he's absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He's been sold on this notion.

He's a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn't have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn't able to change.

I'll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they're not sure how you get to this guy.

We have generals that do not like -- anymore -- they're worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that's -- Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don't know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He's a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they're not saying to them.

And if you're a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved.

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding."

Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.

They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able -- is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.

He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews.

How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.

And so we have an election coming up -- Yes. I've had people talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this war if it gets to that point. I don't think they're ready to do it now.

But I'm talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that's seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in terms of getting information it doesn't want to receive.

It's one thing for bloggers like me to talk about how Bush feels he's anointed by God to be president; and to believe that Bush sees himself as God's messenger to bring about Armageddon in our lifetime. I have long believed this is true, and I've seen little to dissuade me from that notion. But it's quite another for someone with the journalistic track record that Seymour Hersh has saying essentially the same thing, especially when taken in conjunction with other articles also tiptoeing around the delusions of this president. Hersh isn't using the "God's messenger" language, but his implication is clear: the current occupant of the White House is clearly off his rocker. His messianic narcissism is putting us all at risk, and at a time when we need a clear thinker who understands geopolitics, what we have is a religious fanatic with delusions of grandeur.

Pleasant dreams.

The kool-aid drinkers who constitute the remnants of Bush supporters will always parrot the meme that tax cuts for those already rich beyond their ability to spend it all are justified because "rich people create jobs."

This particular model of benevolent corporate executives showering jobs upon us, the teeming masses, has always seemed a peculiar one for middle-class people to embrace, but embrace they have.

Of course outsourcing has been eliminating any sense that this argument might have ever have made for some time, but now industry has found a NEW place to outsource: Central America. And CAFTA, passed in Congress with both Republican AND Democratic support, is going to make it easier for them to put YOU out of work for good:

A lot has been written about the outsourcing of high-tech and customer-service jobs to lands overseas. But the latest threat to job security in the United States, some argue, lies right next door, south of the border.
Touting Central America as the "new Asia," pro-business and investment organizations across the region are all talking about the benefits of "nearsourcing." It's the same thing as outsourcing - that is, sending jobs to lower cost locations outside the US - but closer to home: It's South rather than East, near rather than far. And it's increasingly attractive to US firms.

Lured by the ease of working in the same time zone a mere three or four hours' flight away from headquarters in the US, such companies as Dell, Sykes, Sitel, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, and Western Union on the service side and Sara Lee/Hanes, VF Corp., and Russell Athletic on the manufacturing side have been moving business into the region.

Central America received just over $2 billion in foreign investment last year, up from an annual average of $633 million in the first half of the 1990s, according to the UN's Economic Conference on Latin America.

To be sure, the numbers of US jobs - manufacturing and service alike - that are going to Central America is minuscule when compared with those being outsourced to Asia. The number of jobs currently outsourced to India alone ranges between 400,000 and 700,000, says market-research company Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

[snip]

"It would be hard to find people in the US who wanted this job because they have too many other options," he says. "But here the pay [$400 a month plus incentives] is triple minimum wage."

So think about that as you whip out the Visa card to buy your kids ever more gewgaws this Christmas. The corporate executives who already make 431 times the pay of the average worker think that American workers are worth only about $400/month.

Hell, it'll cost that just to fill up the SUV.

For the oh, five or six of you who have been following our Save Morning Sedition Blogwhoring, at last we have some answers.

Unable to find a way for Danny Goldberg to save face, and unwilling to fire his know-nothing ass, which is what he richly deserves, it seems that Air America Radio is trying to keep Marc Maron in the AAR fold by negotiating a one or two hour show, buried in the dead of night when Goldberg no one's listening. One word for Danny Goldberg: PODCASTING.

Of course, Danny Goldberg is still living in Radio World Circa 1972, so he doesn't care about podcasts and streaming.

The new morning configuration at Air America Radio will consist of Mark Riley from 5-7, and Rachel Maddow from 7-9. While an additional presence of Rachel Maddow is welcome, it remains to be seen whether she's going to be allowed to retain the snark of her current 5-6 AM show, or if Goldbert is going to try to turn her into Mara Eliasson.

So after December 15, Morning Sedition listeners will be faced with the choice of selling out to Danny Goldberg's dumbass vision, or penalizing a good man like Mark Riley by not listening.

Happy fucking holidays.

While the Christofascist Zombie Brigade decides that the period which began yesterday and ends around 6 PM on December 24 is some kind of Onward Christian Soldiers crusade, in which you're either with them, or you're some kind of JEW or something, here's how some shoppers began their celebration of the birth of Their Lord:

Mays Landing, NJ:

Pre-dawn pandemonium and violence erupted at two Mays Landing stores as thousands of shoppers eager for Black Friday sales overwhelmed retailers and police.

Customers trampled, shoved and assaulted fellow shoppers and even fought police in "their race to be the first in line" for discounted electronics at Circuit City and Wal-Mart on the Black Horse Pike, said Police Chief Jay McKeen.

Trouble began shortly before 6 a.m. at Circuit City when employees handed out pamphlets to shoppers at the front of a line of about 1,500 people. Customers further back, mistakenly thinking vouchers for limited-supply items were being distributed, rushed to the front.

"The lemming-like action of the entire crowd resulted in injuries to several shoppers who were pushed to the ground and trampled, or crushed against the doors at the front of the store," McKeen said.

Two women were hospitalized for rib and other injuries. At least three other shoppers suffered minor injuries.

A half-hour later, some 1,000 shoppers began forcing their way past employees, security workers and police at Wal-Mart when doors opened.

Orlando and Sunrise, Florida:

In Orlando, security guards at a Wal-Mart wrestled a man to the ground after he cut in line to get a discounted laptop computer, according to WFTV-TV crews who captured the brawl on videotape that was broadcast nationally. An elderly woman was trampled by shoppers at a Sunrise outlet mall; she wasn't seriously hurt.

[snip]

At Sawgrass Mills outlet mall in Sunrise, Josephine Hoffman, 73, was trampled at the entrance to an electronics store as a crowd rushed the metal security gate.

"I was trying to get out of the way, but they knocked me down. I hit my head on the floor and people stepped on me. I don't understand why people do these things," the Coconut Creek resident told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as she rested on a box at the BrandsMart USA.

Grandville, Michigan:

Erik Turk, 38, left the Grandville store in an ambulance -- but with a $400 laptop computer. Deja McHerron, 13, shopping at the Cascade Township store, wasn't so lucky. She only got a trip to the hospital.

They were among a dozen or so people trampled at local Wal-Mart stores as shoppers rushed through the doors at 5 a.m. Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. They fell like dominoes, with other shoppers going over and around the downed individuals to get to the merchandise they sought.

Cascade Township, Michigan:

The bargains were so good at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which offered better deals than last year, that things got out of hand. In Cascade Township, east of Grand Rapids, Mich., a woman fell as dozens of people rushed into a store for the 5 a.m. opening. Several stepped on her, and a few became entangled as a man pushed them to the ground to keep them away.

By the time the rush ended, the woman and a 13-year-old girl had suffered minor injuries.

Renton, Washington:

Sergeant Paul Cline with the Renton, Washington Police Department said, "People pushing and shoving and starting fights. That’s something that we really ant to avoid. People are getting a little out of control wanting to get the best buys to the counter."

Now, I'm not a Christian. Never have, probably never will be. But it just seems to me that if so-called religious leaders are going to talk about a war on Christmas, they ought to be talking about this. What on earth does trampling a 73-year-old woman in a Wal-Mart while racing for a $300 computer have to do with a baby in a manger that you believe is your messiah?

If this is Christmas, then damn it, yes, LET'S declare war on it. Let's stop this nonsense with the greed and the shopping hysteria and the "must-have" items of the year and the "can you top this" attitude of homeowners who insist on putting as many cheap plastic inflatable Santas/snowmen/penguins/whatever as they can on their lawns, amidst the wire reindeer. Yes, let's put the Christ back in Christmas. Let Christians tell the story of the baby in the manger, go to church, and have a nice dinner -- and then call it a day.

That should make the fundies happy, because they'll have Jesus back in Christmas. It should make parents anxious about how they're going to give each kid an iPod Nano this Christmas and still pay the heating bills happy because the pressure will be off. It won't make the kids happy, but too bad. It's a tough world, kid, deal with it.

And Northern Trust Company Bank chief Economist Paul Kasriel will be happy, because if people go into debt this Christmas, they may very well be in for a rude awakening come 2006:

"We have a very accident-prone economy," Mr. Kasriel said. "We have the most highly leveraged economy in the postwar period, and the Fed is increasing rates. In the past 30 years or so, whenever the Fed has raised interest rates, we've quite frequently had financial accidents."

Much has been written about the deeply indebted consumer, of course, and even more about the bubble in real estate. But Mr. Kasriel is especially persuasive because of the data he presents to support his gloomy view.

If a financial blowup occurred, the unhappy fact is that few consumers would be able to walk away unscathed. After all, over most of the last five years, American households have spent more than they earned. In contrast, for almost 30 years beginning in 1970, the opposite was true: households earned more than they spent.

Here's a stunning figure: In the third quarter of 2005, Mr. Kasriel calculates, households spent a record $531 billion more than their after-tax earnings, on an annualized basis.

These nonstop shoppers have propelled consumer spending to a record high as a share of gross domestic product - 76 percent in the third quarter, Mr. Kasriel said, up from 73 percent in 2000.

Real trouble could begin, Mr. Kasriel fears, with a decline in property values, the assets backing the enormous debt of consumers and banks alike.

It seems to me that if Jesus is going to come back, riding Shadowfax and brandishing his Terrible Swift Sword, he might want to start with the Wal-Mart shoppers scrambling for bargains.

Given the obsession with sexual perversion of some White House staffers as evidenced by their penchant for writing trashy novels, and the overall bloodthirstiness of the Bush Administration, one has to wonder if this is what "Mission Accomplished" meant all along:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.
'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

So we ousted a secular dictator who was concerned about keeping Al Qaeda out of his country; one who gassed his own people in the early 1980's and THEN was visited by Donald Runsfeld -- and replaced him with this. And now, despite all the hue and cry about Rep. Jack Murtha's move last week for a phased withdrawal, it looks like the Bush Administration is planning to declare victory and get out before the 2006 elections anyway -- ONLY because it hurts their chances.

You'd almost think this is what they wanted in the first place.