There's been much speculation that Joementum's sucking up to Captain Codpiece is because he was angling for the Secretary of Defense spot.

Now, with his re-nomination hopes fading and party luminaries telling him to give it up if he loses on Tuesday, he's tired of waiting for Rumsfeld to sneeze and taking his fate into his own hands:

Nine minutes into the interview, Schultz turned the interview to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, asking "Do you think Don Rumsfeld should resign or stay on the job?"

Lieberman responded, "I understand you are asking that after Hilary Clinton's statement yesterday..."

Cutting in, Schultz told Lieberman that "there's also been seven Generals that [believe] he should leave, too."

Lieberman continued, "I understand their calls...Two and one half years ago... I was asked and I will give you the same answer I gave then.

"Rumsfeld serves at the pleasure of the President. But, I can tell you this, if I were President, I would say "Thank you, but we need some new leadership at the Pentagon."

Schultz then asked, "So you think Rumsfeld should go?" After an extended response from Lieberman, Schultz said he was assuming Lieberman's answer to the question was "yes."

"I have to take that as a "yes;" I think our audience would take it as a 'yes,'" he said.

Lieberman replied, "Yeah. Yeah Yeah. -- No. No, it is a 'yes.'"

Gee. I wonder who Holy Joe thinks that new leadership should be?

Just how much dirt do the Bushistas have on EVERYONE anyway?

How else can you explain this:

The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and FAA about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book.

Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it.

The book, a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, recounts obstacles the authors say were thrown up by the Bush administration, internal disputes over President Bush's use of the attacks as a reason for invading Iraq, and the way the final report avoided questioning whether U.S. policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the attacks.

Kean and Hamilton said the commission found it mind-boggling that authorities had asserted during hearings that their air defenses had reacted quickly and were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93, which appeared headed toward Washington.

In fact, the commission determined — after it subpoenaed audiotapes and e-mails of the sequence of events — that the shootdown order did not reach North American Aerospace Command pilots until after all of the hijacked planes had crashed.

The book states that commission staff, "exceedingly frustrated" by what they thought could be deception, proposed a full review into why the FAA and the Pentagon's NORAD had presented inaccurate information. That ultimately could have led to sanctions.

Due to a lack of time, the panel ultimately referred the matter to the inspectors general at the Pentagon and Transportation Department. Both are preparing reports, spokesmen said this week.

"Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue," the book states.

"Due to a lack of time"??? So they just kept quiet, issued their report that exonerated everyone and said, in essence, "Shit happens"?

Something stinks royally here. If Kean and Hamilton really felt that they were being deceived, it was their OBLIGATION to the American people to speak up then, not wait till there's so much water under the bridge and they can do it in a context that will get them royalty dollars.

We are now seeing the fruits of just about everyone's utter refusal to hold this administration to account for anything. Everyone now knows that the president is the inept, dangerous sociopath that some of us always knew he was. And now they think that by publishing books appearing on talk shows, and raking in the royalty cash, they can somehow ease their consciences?

Predictably, the Pentagon denies Kean and Hamilton's charges:

There is no evidence that senior Pentagon commanders intentionally provided false testimony to about the military's actions on the morning of the September 11 attacks, according to a report by the Defense Department's watchdog agency cited in the New York Times on Saturday.

The Pentagon's office of inspector general said the Defense Department's initial inaccurate accounts could be attributed largely to poor record-keeping, the newspaper said in an article on its Web site, citing the newly released report.

In a report dated May 27, 2005, but not released until Friday, the inspector general's office found that ``the inaccuracies, in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities,'' including poor log-keeping at military air traffic control centers, the newspaper said.

The report was initially classified secret but was released under a freedom-of-information request by the Times. What amounted to several pages' worth were blacked out on national security grounds, the newspaper said.

The Pentagon had initially suggested that the North American Aerospace Defense Command had reacted quickly to reports of the hijackings and been prepared to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the hijacked planes, United Flight 93. But investigations determined that the Pentagon was not aware of Flight 93 until after the aircraft had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

The September 11 commission then requested that the inspector general investigate why senior military officials made so many inaccurate statements to the commission.

A spokesman for the inspector general's office, William Goehring, told the Times that the question of whether military commanders intentionally withheld the truth from the commission would be addressed in a separate report, but he suggested it would exonerate them. ``We haven't found any information to indicate that testimony was knowingly false,'' the newspaper quoted Goehring as saying.

The report said commanders had found it difficult to create an accurate timeline of the events of September 11 because of the lack of a well-coordinated system in logging information about air-defense operations, the Times said.

And, newly disclosed audio tapes provided to the commission by Norad demonstrated widespread confusion within the military on September 11, with many commanders uncertain whether the reported hijackings were part of an unannounced military exercise.

And this is supposed to reassure us? This is how we're supposed to believe this Administration is keeping us safe? Just how disorganized IS the military apparatus, anyway? Think about it -- these guys are choosing to appear incompetent as a better alternative to appearing corrupt.

Because of the cowardice of the 9/11 Commission, the placing of party loyalty above the good of the nation by Congressional Republicans, and the ineptitude of the Democratic Party, here are the crimes George W. Bush has been able to get away with (as set forth in the report Rep. John Conyers, one of the few House Democrats doing his job, released yesterday:

• Deception of Congress and the American Public
• Committing a Fraud Against the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371)
• Making False Statements Against the United States (18 U.S.C. § 1001)
  
• War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148)
• Misuse of Government Funds (31 U.S.C. § 1301)
• Improper Detention, Torture, and Other Inhumane Treatment
• Anti-Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. § 2340-40A)
• The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. § 2441)
• The Geneva Conventions and Hague Convention: International Laws Governing the Treatment of Detainees
• United Nations Convention Against Torture, and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment: International Laws Governing the Treatment of Detainees
• Command Responsibility (for known illegal acts of subordinates in the military)
• Detainment of Material Witnesses (18 U.S.C. § 3144)
• Retaliating against Witnesses and Other Individuals
• Obstruction Congress (18 U.S.C. § 1505)
• Whistleblower Protection (5 U.S.C. § 2302)
• The Lloyd-LaFollette Act, or "anti-gag rule" (5 U.S.C. § 7211)
• Retaliating against Witnesses (18 U.S.C. § 1513)
• Leaking and other Misuse of Intelligence and other Government Information
• Revealing Classified Information in Contravention of Federal Regulations (Executive Order 12958/Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement)
• Statutory Prohibitions on Leaking Information (18 U.S.C. § 641, etc.)
• Laws Governing Electronic Surveillance
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 U.S.C. § 1801, et seq.)
• National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. chapter 15)
• Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. § 222)
• Stored Communications Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. § 2702)
• Pen Registers or Trap and Trace Devices (18 U.S.C. § 3121)
• Laws and Guidelines Prohibiting Conflicts of Interest (28 U.S.C. § 528, etc.)

The very same Senate and House Republicans who thought a president should be removed from office for lying under oath in a civil case that had nothing to do with his vow to uphold the Constitution have been applauding this president's crimes.

As far as I'm concerned, EVERYONE -- Republican or Democrat -- who has enabled this president should be booted from office with all due haste. If they're running for re-election this year, boot 'em out. 2008? Boot 'em out.

It's time for some serious electoral housecleaning.

Provided the Bushistas allow that to happen.

Texas (where else?) Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who made the most dumbass remark of the day yesterday:

...we are turning our back on the middle-class and poor people in this country who depend on the minimum wage and death-tax relief.”

The proposed estate tax cut would exempt the first five million dollars of an estate from taxation. Who knew the poor had that kind of money?

Joementum doesn't just kiss and embrace Republicans, he has his people resort to their campaign tactics.

Matt Stoller reports:

So I just tracked this down with several sources, and something really strange is going on. Lieberman's campaign seems to arming his supporters with aggressive talking points in order to pick fights at Lamont events. There were two separate events today where this happened. At a Machinists union endorsement event for Ned, some Lieberman supporters (probably paid) started arguing with union members, and a sign got torn.

Later in the day, Ned was ambushed at a diner stop. At 5pm, Ned was scheduled to stop at a cheeseburger joint in Meridan (Ted's Cheeseburgers). The burgers were really good, apparently, and the place is famous for delicious cheeseburgers. Mmm. As I write this it's dinner time.

Anyway, Lamont was going to the restaurant for a scheduled stop to do a meet and greet. The field organizer got there 20 minutes ahead of schedule. A bunch of Lieberkidz were already inside, but they were disguised because they weren't wearing their standard white T-Shirts. They were just sitting in the booths, in the smallish restaurant.

There were about 15 Ned supporters outside, holding signs and milling about. There were also some reporters, a photographer, and a bunch of journalists. Ned arrived at 5:05, and spent about 10 or 15 minutes outside before heading in to give a speech and eat a cheeseburger. He goes inside, and all of sudden the field organizer who was behind Ned heard a lot of screaming directed at Ned.

There were only four booths and six stools in the whole place, and they were basically all occupied. When Ned went in, all of the supporters ripped off their 'civilian clothes' and revealed their Lieberman T-Shirts.

A large man, around 50 years old or so, then started screaming at Ned, "Are you an Al Sharpton Democrat, or a Bill Clinton Democrat?" Ned was trying to answer, and the gentleman kept yelling. The Lamont press secretary tried to intervene, and meanwhile, the people behind the counter who owned the restaurant were horrified and embarrassed. Then Ned Lamont went up to the few people in regular clothes and introduced himself, even as the Lieberman supporters kept screaming. He also tried to introduce himself to the Lieberman staffers, but to no avail. The screaming continued, and it was so abrasive that he left, and the whole crowd followed him outside.

These kids poured out, and a half a dozen reporters were mostly outside. The large man kept yelling, and was joined by one particularly obnoxious Lieberman supporter who started yelling about national security and how Lamont would endanger the country. The messaging seemed rehearsed. The Lieberman supporters started getting aggressive, pushing some of the Lamont staffers. When confronted, the Lieberman staffers said that they are just doing what the bloggers did.

In the whole affair, one photographer caught an elbow and got a bloody nose. It seems that the Lieberman campaign is explicitly setting up their supporters at Lamont events in tense and aggressive situations, all in the presence of reporters. When asked, the Lieberman campaign is expressing outrage at the unsavory and unruly behavior of the Lamont supporters.

It's like third grade version of Karl Rove, and it really upset all the people at the various events, who are now going to tell everyone in their town about it. Connecticut is still a small town state, and this does not go over well. Picking a fight and then blaming it on the people you picked a fight with is an interesting tactic, and an extremely high risk move to get the reporters to do a feeding frenzy on the movement behind Lamont. The Lieberman campaign is hoping that the press will pick up their narrative, and begin to express the same outrage that Lieberman feels at his challenger, and the people of Connecticut who are unhappy with their Senator. How dare they?!?! was always the unstated campaign message, and now, apparently it's also the new field strategy.

Does this sound like the lunatics who demonstrate at abortion clinics? It should. This is all Lieberman has left. Holy Joe Lieberman, the one who denounced Bill Clinton, the one who thinks religion belongs in the public sphere, Mr. Holier-than-Thou himself -- his campaign is the one causing trouble with this kind of thuggish behavior. It's Joe Lieberman, the Orthodox Jew, whose campaign staffers are behaving like Sturm Abteilung. Remember, it was Hitler himself who exhorted the brownshirts to carry out acts of violence against his left-wing political opponents. And this differs from the tactics the Lieberkinder are using -- how?

And all this is because Lieberman feels he's entitled to keep his Senate seat in perpetuity. Lieberman could have accepted what looks like the decision of his constituents gracefully and made a nice career as a party elder emeritus. Instead, he's going to go down in history as the REAL "sore loserman."

American foreign policy is based not on geopolitics OR American self-interest, but on the apocalyptic ambitions of lunatic Christofascists:

Although Republicans would never admit it -- they claim their support for Christian Zionists like Hagee is based on their own support for Israel -- it is clear that they know they need the votes of this constituency to win. In the same way that Karl Rove courted conservative evangelicals in 2004 by appealing to their homophobia, Republican campaign rhetoric for 2006 and 2008 has already shown signs of playing to voters who have been hearing hype for a war with Iran for months -- at church.

While Washington insiders wonder what it means when Republicans like Mehlman and presidential aspirants Gingrich and McCain finger Iran as the central player in an epic clash of civilizations, Hagee already has spent months mobilizing the shock troops in support of another war. As diplomats, experts and pundits debate how many years Iran will need to develop a viable nuclear weapon, Hagee says the mullahs already possess the means to destroy Israel and America. And although Bush insists that diplomatic options are still on the table, Hagee has dismissed pussyfooting diplomacy and primed his followers for a conflagration.

Hagee wields "a very large megaphone" that reaches "a very large group of people," said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who has studied the Christian right for 30 years. With CUFI, the pastor has exponentially expanded the reach of his megaphone beyond his television audience. Thanks to the viral marketing made possible by the hundreds of evangelical leaders who have signed on to his new organization, his warmongering has rippled through megachurches across America for months. Hagee calls pastors "the spiritual generals of America," an appropriate phrase given his reliance on them to rally their troops behind his message.

The CUFI board of directors includes the Rev. Jerry Falwell, former Republican presidential candidate and religious right activist Gary Bauer, and George Morrison, pastor of the 8,000-member Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colo., and chairman of the board of Promise Keepers. Rod Parsley, the Ohio televangelist who is rapidly becoming a major political player in the Christian right, signed on to be a regional director.

For Hagee's new project, his influence in Washington is probably less important than his influence over his audience. With the clout of his listeners, he can serve Bush administration hawks by firing up grassroots support for a military strike against Iran. Over 700,000 people purchased his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," and countless more have heard him promote it on Christian radio and television programming. Dramatic, doomsday advertising has been heard by listeners of Christian media as well as on Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly's radio programs. The pages of "Jerusalem Countdown" provide a peculiar mix of biblical prophecy, purported inside information from Israeli government officials and a mixed-up, pared-down lesson in nuclear physics.

[snip]

Hagee speaks simultaneously to two audiences about Iran's nuclear capabilities: one that fears a terrorist attack by Iran and another that embraces a biblically mandated apocalypse. To impress the fearful, he mimics Bush's deceptions about Iraq's capacity to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction, Condoleezza Rice's warnings of mushroom clouds, and Dick Cheney's dissembling about an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Hagee argues that Iran's development of nuclear weapons must be stopped to protect America and Israel from a nuclear attack. Preying on legitimate worries about terrorism, and invoking 9/11, he vividly describes a supposed Iranian-led plan to simultaneously explode nuclear suitcase bombs in seven American cities, or to use an electromagnetic pulse device to create "an American Hiroshima."

When addressing audiences receptive to Scriptural prophecy, however, Hagee welcomes the coming confrontation. He argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia's leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an "inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon." In Hagee's telling, Israel has no choice but to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities, with or without America's help. The strike will provoke Russia -- which wants Persian Gulf oil -- to lead an army of Arab nations against Israel. Then God will wipe out all but one-sixth of the Russian-led army, as the world watches "with shock and awe," he says, lending either a divine quality to the Bush administration phrase or a Bush-like quality to God's wrath.

But Hagee doesn't stop there. He adds that Ezekiel predicts fire "upon those who live in security in the coastlands." From this sentence, he concludes that there will be judgment upon all who stood by while the Russian-led force invaded Israel, and issues a stark warning to the United States to intervene: "Could it be that America, who refuses to defend Israel from the Russian invasion, will experience nuclear warfare on our east and west coasts?" He says yes, citing Genesis 12:3, in which God said to Israel: "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you."

To fill the power vacuum left by God's decimation of the Russian army, the Antichrist -- the head of the EU -- will rule "a one-world government, a one-world currency and a one-world religion" for three and a half years. (Hagee adds that "one need only be a casual observer of current events to see that all three of these things are coming into reality." The "demonic world leader" will then be confronted by a false prophet, identified by Hagee as China, at Armageddon, the Mount of Megiddo in Israel. As they prepare for the final battle, Jesus will return on a white horse and cast both villains -- and presumably any nonbelievers -- into a "lake of fire burning with brimstone," thus marking the beginning of his millennial reign.

Hagee doesn't fear a nuclear conflagration, but rather God's wrath for standing by as Iran executes its supposed plot to destroy Israel. A nuclear confrontation between America and Iran, which he says is foretold in the Book of Jeremiah, will not lead to the end of the world, but rather to God's renewal of the Garden of Eden. But Hagee is ultimately less concerned with the fate of Israel or the Jews than with a theocratic Christian right agenda. When Jesus returns for his millennial reign, he tells his television audience, "the righteous are going to rule the nations of the earth When Jesus Christ comes back, he's not going to ask the ACLU if it's all right to pray, he's not going to ask the churches if they can ordain pedophile bishops and priests, he's not going to ask if it's all right to put the Ten Commandments in the statehouses. He's not going to endorse abortion, he's going to run the world by the word of God The world will never end. It's going to become a Garden of Eden, and Christ is going to rule it."

Unless you're sure, even when you tuck your children in at night, that you're really going to be snatched up by Jesus himself, and sit with him on the Heavenly Futon with a big bag of popcorn and a plate of nachos watching the heathen burn, you'd better speak up now to put a stop to this insanity. Because the people running the show in Washington are every bit as crazy as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The 101st Fighting Keyboarders will be all over Gen. John Abizaid for this, and the Swiftboaters might have to distract themselves from trying to destroy John Murtha in order to address this latest treason:

The commander of American forces in the Middle East bluntly warned a Senate committee on Thursday that sectarian violence in Iraq, especially in the capital, Baghdad, had grown so severe that the nation could slide toward civil war.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, also acknowledged that since the security situation remained so unstable, significant reductions in American forces were unlikely before the end of this year.

Asked by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, whether Iraq risked falling into civil war, General Abizaid replied, “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”

In March, General Abizaid told the Senate Appropriations Committee that sectarian violence in Iraq was replacing the insurgency as the greatest threat to security and stability.

But the tone of the testimony at the Armed Services Committee’s three-and-a-half-hour hearing was strikingly grimmer than the Pentagon’s previous assessments, which have sought to accentuate the positive even as officials acknowledged that Iraq’s government was struggling to assert authority and assure security amid a tide of violence.

Meanwhile, die-hard war hawk Hillary Clinton soundly bitchslapped Rumsfeld yesterday:



Gens. Abizaid and Pace, however, later backtracked somewhat off of their grim assessments of the situation, deciding that maybe they'd spoken too much truth already. Instead, based on absolutely nothing, they dutifully reported to John McCain that despite all evidence to the contrary, they still believed that the daily killings would not devolve further into civil war:

General Pace added his voice to General Abizaid’s somber assessment of the increasing sectarian violence, in an exchange with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Senator McCain: “You said there’s a possibility of the situation in Iraq evolving into civil war. Is that correct?”

General Pace: “I did say that, yes, sir.”

Senator McCain: “Did you anticipate this situation a year ago?”

General Pace: “No, sir.”

Before the session ended, the two generals made a point to offer relatively upbeat predictions.

While civil war in Iraq is possible, General Pace said, “I do not believe it is probable.”

General Abizaid said: “So the question is, am I optimistic whether or not Iraqi forces, with our support, with the backing of the Iraqi government, can prevent the slide to civil war? My answer is yes, I’m optimistic that that slide can be prevented.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times war apologist Thomas Friedman, who in 2003 wrote:

...this war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan...it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.

...has now changed his tune:

It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.

[snip]

The Sunni jihadists and Baathists are as dedicated as ever to making this U.S.-Iraqi democracy initiative fail. That, and the runaway sectarian violence resulting from having too few U.S. troops and allowing a militia culture to become embedded, have made Iraq a lawless mess.

Yes, I believe it was and remains hugely important to try to partner with Iraqis to create one good example in the heart of the Arab world of a decent, progressive state, where the politics of fear and tribalism do not reign — the politics that has produced all the pathologies of unemployment, religious intolerance and repression that make the Middle East so dangerous to itself and others.

But the administration now has to admit what anyone — including myself — who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.

But where Friedman is sitting, in his big comfy chair, it was perfectly OK to throw those OTHER good lives away, back when SOME of us knew exactly how this was going to turn out, even if the so-called "experts" didn't.

Light blogging during the day on weekdays for the next couple of weeks, folks -- work demands have me pretty swamped.

Keep visiting, though...I'll still be blogging every morning and will post as I can.

Last night I had the "privilege" of asking a question of Paul Aronsohn, who is the person the Democratic Party in my district somehow decided had the best chance to beat wingnut Scott Garrett this fall. This is of course the same Democratic Party that recruited Republican-turned-Democrat Anne Sumers in 2002 and Anne Wolfe in 2004 and then refused to give her any money or help.

It's clear that the party has no interest in winning this seat, and so this year they have given us Paul Aronsohn, a former Pfizer PR flack.

Admittedly, I'm predisposed to find Aronsohn wanting, since I worked for, and am a friend of, his primary opponent. But since these are dangerous times, and we have a president who wants to give the Secretary of Defense the power to brand ANYONE for ANY REASON as an enemy combatant and deprive them of their until now Constitutionally-protected right to due process combined with a Republican-controlled Congress who gives him everything he wants, one could argue that Democratic control is the only way to stop him.

There's just one problem. Look at the Democrats in Congress. Look at the Democratic leadership. Do YOU think these people are going to stop him -- even if they control the House and Senate?

I vowed in 2004, after John Kerry took his $14 million in leftover campaign cash and got outta Dodge even before all the Ohio votes were counted, even as his running mate was announcing that the ticket would fight for every vote, that I would never, ever again vote for another Democrat who wasn't in it to win; another Democrat who refused to understand what we're dealing with in these Republicans; another Vichy Democrat more concerned with his own career than with serving his constituents.

In 2004, I watched in Iowa as John Kerry and Dick Gephardt pooled their funds to run a barrage of attack ads against Howard Dean to knock him out of the race. And when the time came, I was a good soldier. This year I watched as Chuck Schumer forced Paul Hackett out of the Ohio Senate race in favor of the "party guy." And I vowed never again to further enable this bunch.

In the primary race in NJ, I worked for the campaign of Camille Abate, who got into the race barely three months before the primary, and managed to get a third of the vote, with a ragtag team of highly committed people, running off the party line (which in NJ is as bad positioning as you can get), with 1/6 the money spent by her opponent. 66% is a pretty shabby primary performance for a candidate backed by all the district's party organizations. In 2004, by comparison, Anne Wolfe received 85% of the primary vote.

But when the dust cleared, Paul Aronsohn was the candidate we've been given to vote for if we want to get rid of Scott Garrett.

Garrett is about as odious a Republican as you're going to find. He's been a loyal disciple of Tom DeLay. He's a Christofascist who got into office on sheer name recognition after the retirement of Marge Roukema in 2000. He had mounted primary challenges to the moderate Roukema twice, running as a conservative alternative. But when Roukema retired, suddenly he was running on "I'm just like Marge." In fact, there are many people in this district who still believe Marge Roukema is their representative.

Garrett's voting record is dismal. Most recently, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act and against embryonic stem cell research. This is a Very Bad Guy, who can be relied on to allow George W. Bush to continue to turn the United States of American into the Fourth Reich.

And here in the Fifth District of New Jersey, standing between us and this Bush enabler is one Paul Aronsohn, a dweeby pharma flack who refuses to take a stand on anything.

My previous dealings with Mr. Aronsohn took place in an e-mail conversation about net neutrality. I was concerned because Mike McCurry is one of the public faces of his campaign, and wanted to know if he supported net neutrality, given the fact that the telecom industry's leading lobbyist for HR5252 is helping him raise funds. I was met with a torrent of righteous indignation, accusing me of making "personal attacks", in which Aronsohn said he didn't know enough about the issue to venture an opinion.

"I don't know enough about it" is standard Aronsohn boilerplate, it seems; for he answered a question last night in the same way. In one interview, he has said that he would confer with people he respects to determine how he would vote on issues on which he isn't sufficiently informed. He's not saying he's going to learn, he's essentially saying he's going to take marching orders from Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton and the other hacks of the Democratic Party.

I had prepared three questions -- one on net neutrality, one on Iraq, and one on health care. Net neutrality is moot at this point, for HR5252 will be either passed or rejected by November. Most of the questions were the kind of softballs that made me feel as if I were sitting at a Bush press conference in which just about everyone other than the people I was with were clones of Jeff Gannon and Les Kingsolver -- questions like "How can we help you?" and "Which grassroots organization should we support?" -- and I'm Helen Thomas, the 4'10" Mouth that Walks who's the only one asking the tough questions.

Another attendee at the meeting finally asked him about Iraq, confronting him on an earlier statement that we had to stay the course -- a statement which he denied ever making but which two people have attested he has made. So I asked him about health care in the context of corporatism. You see, Aronsohn describes himself as a "pro-business, pro-defense, moderate Democrat" -- which to me spells C-O-R-P-O-R-A-T-I-S-T.

Here's what I asked:

You've advocated a "national health care summit" that brings together "all stakeholders -- governors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, nurses, patient advocates, etc. -- everyone except the actual consumers of health care. You are a former employee of Pfizer, and you have accepted campaign donations from them. What assurance do we as your potential constituents have that you will be voting in our interest and not the interest of Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies?

Predictably, Aronsohn waxed rhapsodic about how wonderful his experience with Pfizer was, and about how Pfizer decided while he was there to reach out to the Democratic National Committee, especially with the tide turning against Republicans. He mentioned that the new Pfizer CEO is a Democrat. He brought out his standard biolerplate about "we have to stop pointing fingers", which is Aronsohn-speak for "I don't want to answer your question." As with everything else with this guy, he didn't answer the question, and his response, quite frankly, just confirmed him as just another corporatist Democrat. He didn't even have it together enough to lie to me and say, "I will always put your interests first." Instead, he spouts the DLC corporatist line, which is essentially "What's Good for General Bullmoose (sic) is Good for the USA"

So this is my alternative to Scott Garrett -- a guy who didn't even live in the district until he decided to run for this seat and who is likely to ditch his rental apartment the minute he loses; a Clintonista hack who can't directly answer a question; a guy who refers to his experiences as a Big Pharma PR flack as "public service."

I'm not implying that Aronsohn is a bad guy, and I have no doubt that on some level he believes that what he does really IS public service. But I do get the sense that he is a lot more about Paul Aronsohn's career, potentially a cabinet spot in what he believes will be a Hillary Clinton administration in 2008, than about representing the Fifth Congressional District of New Jersey. Yes, he's better than Garrett -- but is he enough better to cause change in the Democratic Party? I don't think so. I think he is More Of The Same, and that brings me back to the vow I made on Election Day 2004.

So what the hell am I supposed to do in November? Paul Aronsohn is everything that makes me disgusted about the Democratic Party. The way he was chosen by the Bergen County Democrats is everything that makes me disgusted about party politics. I feel it's vitally important that we hold Democrats' feet to the fire and let them know that we will not put up with "Repub-lite" any longer; that we will no longer tolerate their enabling of the Bush Administration. But how are we going to do that as long as we continue to let them give us candidates like this?

This is the most profoundly anti-American act ever considered by a sitting President:

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

An early draft of the new measure prepared by civilian political appointees and leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from uniformed military lawyers. But the provisions allowing a future expansion of the courts to cover new crimes and more prisoners were retained, according to government officials familiar with the deliberations.

In other words, the Administration is preparing to set up a kangaroo court for sham trials in which defendants have no way to defend themselves. And Donald Rumsfeld will decide what "crimes" warrant the removal of due process. Let me reiterate from this article:

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism,

So who are the people likely to be tried in such courts, if they are not terrorists? How about dissidents, liberals, bloggers who write entries like this one, people who hold up signs at presidential appearances, people who march against Bush's warmongering, people who support candidates opposed to Bush's policies, reporters who write articles embarrassing to the Administration and their publishers who print them, and so on and so on and so on.

In short, anyone who does not march in lockstep with the Administration can be locked up upon word from Donald Rumsfeld and held in an Administration gulag indefinitely, without trial, and when trials DO take place, they will be sham trials designed to produce a predetermined result.

If this legislation becomes law, then all is truly lost. We will have become the very kind of dictatorship we give lip service to wanting to overthrow elsewhere.

At least now we know the purpose of those internment camps Kellogg Brown and Root is contracted to build.

And wingnuts wonder why we call this Administration fascist?

The problem with The Onion is that this stuff isn't even funny anymore; it's all too plausible:

Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self
August 2, 2006 | Issue 42•31

WASHINGTON, DC—In a decisive 1–0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.

"As president, I strongly believe that my first duty as president is to support and serve the president," Bush said during a televised address from the East Room of the White House shortly after signing his executive order. "I promise the American people that I will not abuse this new power, unless it becomes necessary to grant myself the power to do so at a later time."

The Presidential Empowerment Act, which the president hand-drafted on his own Oval Office stationery and promptly signed into law, provides Bush with full authority to permit himself to authorize increased jurisdiction over the three branches of the federal government, provided that the president considers it in his best interest to do so.

"In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power," Bush said. "To do otherwise would be playing into the hands of our enemies."

Added Bush: "And it's all under due process of the law as I see it."

We will probably be long dead, but the fact that there are holes in the "official" accounts of the 9/11 attacks that you can drive a truck through are no longer the exclusive province of nuts and flakes indicates that the truth is trying mightily to be revealed:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Although the commission's landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department's early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the inspector general's office will soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was "knowingly false." A separate report, delivered secretly to Congress in May 2005, blamed inaccuracies in part on problems with the way the Defense Department kept its records, according to a summary released yesterday.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department's inspector general's office said its investigation is complete and that a final report is being drafted. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she could not comment on the inspector general's inquiry.

In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate -- though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals -- and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night.

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft -- American Airlines Flight 11 -- long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes -- along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence -- led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.

"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. "The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. . . . This is not spin. This is not true."

I ask you again to consider one question: Who benefitted most from allowing the 9/11 attacks to play out?

I heard about this one last night on Olbermann:

According to reports from the Boulder police, several joggers encountered a modern-day variety of bridge trolls in a park near the intersection of Foothills Highway and Colorado Avenue shortly after noon on July 7, although the trolls may have taken it a step too far when they challenged an off-duty Boulder County sheriff's deputy.
Police said they came across the encounter about 12:27 p.m., in which the off-duty sergeant faced off with Robert Hibbs, of Boulder, armed with broken golf clubs.

As the police officers took Hibbs, 19, into custody he allegedly insisted he was a troll and claimed the bridge as his own, reports state.
Several witnesses noted that Hibbs and companion Bradley Boville, 19, were confronting joggers and bikers attempting to cross the bridge, demanding a dollar.

Boville, who lives nearby in an apartment on the 4200 block of Monroe Boulevard, did not tell police he believed himself to be a troll, but did offer an alternative explanation, telling police he thought Hibbs was having a bad trip.

Boville told police he had taken a single tab of LSD, and Hibbs had taken two tabs. The two had rolled a big joint, he allegedly told police and found themselves without either a lighter or a dollar with which to buy a lighter and had subsequently begun asking people for money who were crossing the bridge.

The off-duty deputy painted a more violent side to the situation, saying he came up on the bridge and apparently having neither a piece of gold nor a goat with which to gain passage forced his way past Hibbs, who responded by hitting the deputy's bicycle tire with a golf club.

The deputy was apparently able to secure a golf club himself, with which he struck Hibbs across the chest and shoulder, reports state, breaking the club, but not fazing Hibbs. Hibbs' bloodied his nose, police said they were able to ascertain, before meeting up with the off-duty deputy.

The off-duty sergeant and other witnesses said that after they crossed the bridge, Hibbs would tell Boville go stab them. Boville insisted to police that he had not stabbed anyone, which was apparently true.

The strangest part of the reports, however, noted that a large joint found in Boville's front pocket appeared to be rolled out of two one-dollar bills. Police said Boville took them to his nearby apartment, where they confiscated three more grams of marijuana, 11 marijuana pipes and bongs and a number of other golf clubs.

Hibbs was arrested for investigation off menacing and possession of a controlled substance. Boville was arrested for investigation of possession of a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia.

Both apparently finished their trip, or perhaps fantasy, lodged at Boulder County Jail.

What the article doesn't report, however, is that the teens were inspired by this:



Maybe I'm just twisted, but if I saw a couple of teenagers demanding a dollar by re-enacting this scene, I'd probably give them a buck for sheer ingenuity.

Kansas may be the main front of the Evolution Wars, but yesterday Kansans showed that they haven't lost their minds entirely:

Conservative Republicans who approved new classroom standards that call evolution into question lost control of the State Board of Education in Tuesday's primary election.

A victory by pro-evolution Republican candidate Jana Shaver over conservative Republican Brad Patzer, who supported the standards treating evolution as a flawed theory, meant conservatives would at best have five of 10 seats on the board.

Five seats were up for election in the primary, the latest skirmish in a seesawing battle between faith and science that has opened Kansas up to international ridicule.

Conservative Republican John Bacon kept his seat by besting two pro-evolution challengers. But Shaver's win split the makeup of the board between evolution supporters and opponents. She won a seat that was vacant because a conservative Republican evolution opponent was retiring.

Besides Bacon and Shaver's races, the seats of two conservative Republicans who oppose evolution were up for grabs, along with that of a Democrat who favors evolution.

Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat who opposed the new standards, defeated a more conservative Democrat who favored the anti-evolution language with 65 percent of the vote.

One conservative incumbent, Ken Willard, held on to his seat, but another, Connie Morris, was losing to a pro-evolution candidate.

Morris' race in western Kansas was the most closely watched. The former teacher has described evolution as ''an age-old fairy tale'' and ''a nice bedtime story'' unsupported by science.

Think about that for a minute: A Biblican literalist calls Darwin's theory of evolution "an age-old fairy tale." Pot, kettle, etc.

Okay, everybody, get off that couch! We're gonna work out this morning to DJ Ted Stevens' Techno Remix, Series of Tubes!

It's global warming.

And if you don't believe Al Gore and the climate scientists, perhaps you'll believe George W. Bush's own Pentagon. This is an amazing find from 2004 by Eric Alterman that I'll bet you missed, because I did:

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

[snip]

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

[snip]

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

Meanwhile, from the fiddling while Rome burns file, those advising the President are focusing on very narrowly-defined possible manifestations of global warming. Bruce Reed reports in Slate today that Congressional Republicans are responding to the global warming threat by deciding that they should take a longer vacation, starting the August recess in July from now on. And the president, still basking in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry, has stated as recently as June 26 of this year that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused."

But he's wrong. As ThinkProgress notes:

Bush is describing a debate that doesn’t exist. There is a scientific consensus that global warming is real and the human activity is largely responsible. This is reflected in the most recent report by International Panel on Climate Change, which was vigorously reviewed and accepted by thousands of scientists, and every peer-reviewed journal article since 1993.

The only "scientists" still debating whether human activity is having an impact on global warming are those bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry.

And in case you think 2020 is far enough off that you don't need to think about it now, here, via Mike Stark, is something to consider on this day where the current temperature in New York City is 98 degrees with THI of 112:

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

The alarming news comes in the midst of a heatwave gripping Britain and much of Europe and the United States. Temperatures in the south of England reached a July record of 36.3C on Tuesday. And it comes hard on the heels of a warning by an international group of experts, led by the Eastern Orthodox " pope" Bartholomew, last week that the forest is rapidly approaching a " tipping point" that would lead to its total destruction.

The research ­ carried out by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole centre in Santarem on the Amazon river ­ has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise. When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 ­ by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain ­ he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes.

The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.

As we report today on pages 28 and 29, the Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

So while the right wing talking heads and their mindless, idiotic supporters continue to laugh at Al Gore and gas up the Ford Excursion -- the one with the "God Bless America" and the "Support Our Troops" ribbon magnets; and while they continue their delusion that the war in Iraq and shoveling weapons into Israel are going to keep us safe from another 9/11, Mother Nature is planning a holocaust of her own that's going to make Osama Bin Laden look like a kid with a magnifying glass and a leaf.

Hot enough for ya yet?

Meet the Bush pilot.

I was born into an only marginally-observant Jewish family. When I was a kid, we went sporadically to the local synsgogue for a while, we went to the Unitarian church for a while, and then we went nowhere for religious affiliation. When I was very small, we celebrated Hanukkah. Later on, a Christmas tree became the norm.

When I was in my early teens, I became active in the temple's youth group, and when I lost interest in that, it was the end of my affiliation with organized Judaism until a 3-year stint as a macher in a group for single Jews when I was in my early 20's. That was the big opportunity for the so-called Jewish community to bring this particular renegade back into the fold, but when they killed the program because, and this is a direct quote from the director of the YM/YWHA that ran it, "Single people are narcissistic and don't care about the future of the Jewish community or its agencies", I flipped the bird at organized Jewry and never went back.

I have only rarely experienced anti-Semitism in my life. A high school friend had a virulent anti-Semitic mother who referred to her "dirty Jew" friend. I've already blogged on the lawsuit in the early 1970's about the high school's Christmas tableau that resulted in swastikas being spray-painted on the doors of Jewish-owned stores and anti-Semitic tirade letters printed in the local newspaper. And in the small, provincial college I attended, I encountered the anti-Semitism of ignorance -- the notion that Jews have horns and astonishment that a Jewish person would be driving an old Dodge Dart instead of a Cadillac.

There are some Jews who are as lapsed as I am who feel absolutely no connection to Judaism as either a religious or a cultural tradition. My own sister is one of them. When a Mel Gibson erupts in a hate-filled tirade, it sets nothing off. When Israel is in the news for some military action or other, it evokes no feeling of dread.

I have no explanation for why the Jewish identification lingers in some of us and not others. Sometimes this identification results in anti-Semitism used as a convenient excuse for one's own social difficulties -- our small social circle isn't because we're shy, or because we're not putting out the effort, or because we just don't have that certain something that draws people to us -- it's because they hate Jews. It removes the responsibility to examine our own behavior and shifts the blame for our own failings outwards.

This is not to say that anti-Semitism doesn't exist. And for even lapsed Jews like myself, there's a certain "Jewdar" that allows us to smell anti-Semitism at a thousand paces -- or so we think. Sometimes it's easy to spot an anti-Semite. Despite Mel Gibson's denials during his promotion of Get A Stiffy Watching A Jew Get The Crap Kicked Out Of Him For Three Hours, it was pretty clear that he really IS an anti-Semite -- and with his arrest tirade last week, he dropped the rest of the veneer that hid that fact.

But sometimes it's more difficult.

Which brings us to the Israel Problem.

Unlike most American Jews, I feel no particular kinship with Israel. I've never been there, I really have no desire to go there, and my answer to "Next year in Jerusalem" is "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Like many Americans, I've been heartsick at what Israel is doing in Lebanon over the last few weeks. If there was ever a shandeh far di goyim, it's the bombing of Qana. I simply cannot see how destroying Lebanon, massacring women and children, and then marching on into Syria (which is what the American Neocon Administration wants Israel to do) is going to make Israel one iota safer.

I'm not an idiot. I understand that Israel is besieged by its neighbors on three sides. I also believe that perhaps carving out a Jewish homeland in 1948 in that particular location as a way for the United States and Europe to try to assuage its collective guilt about the Holocaust probably wasn't the smartest idea. But what are you going to do about it now? Dismantle it? Throw all the Jews out and give the whole mess to the Palestinians? Does that really solve anything? Most Israeli Jews were born there. Do you throw them out of their homeland and into a world in which the Poles still blame the Jews for everything and Mel Gibson blames the Jews because he tries to squelch his demons with tequila? Does anyone honestly believe that dismantling Israel would turn the Middle East into a land of milk and honey?

These are tough times to be on the left side of the fence with even a marginally Jewish identification. Sometimes the left is as knee-jerk in its "Israelis are butchers" generalizations as the right is in its "everything Israel does is justified" attitude. I'm disgusted at the nearly 60-year-long battle on the part of the Arab world to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Right now I feel like a parent with two squabbling kids in the back seat of the car. I don't give a shit who started it. I just want it to stop. As Bill Cosby once said about HIS kids, I don't want justice, I want quiet. Deal with it and find a way to live with it. It's not that the Arab world is so fond of the Palestinians

I'm equally appalled at the Israelis thinking they can prevent another Holocaust by behaving like Nazis. I'm doubly appalled because these are supposed to be arguably "my people." These are the people who are really the public face of worldwide Jewry.

There is plenty of blame to go around here. I don't think we need to choose up sides.

I understand that opposition to Israel doesn't necessarily mean hatred of all Jews.
So why does it FEEL as though it does? Why, even when I agree with the anti-Israel blog rant, does my stomach knot up?

Perhaps it's because of statements like this, in a blog that's on my blogroll:

I suggested in my post the other night that the Israelis really didn't care about anyone but the Israelis, no one else matters. Could this arrogance have something to do with the 2500 years of prejudice they have suffered?

If that isn't an anti-Semitic statement, I don't know what is. For one thing, "Israel" as a country didn't exist until 1948. Therefore, if you're talking about the 2500 years of prejudice the "Israelis" have suffered being their own fault because of their "arrogance", you're talking about Jews, not just Israelis. There's no wiggling out of that one.

The blog's author has since explained thusly:

The heat of anger can result in the hands dancing across the keyboard before the brain is fully engaged....I will stick by the first sentence but the second was uncalled for. I was confusing nationality and ethnicity. I should have know better as most of the Jews I know here on the left coast are just as shocked by the action of Israel as I am. Ditto for Jill out there in New Jersey. My anger should not only be directed at the politicians in Israel but their brothers in homicide here in the US, the Bush administration and the neocons.

I confused nationality and ethnicity and I apologize for any offense that might have caused. I have been called anti-semitic many times recently for opposing Israeli actions, Joe Lieberman and the neocons - that too is confusing nationality and ethnicity.

Sorry, Ron, but that still doesn't cut it. There are many Israelis who are appalled at the actions of their government, just as we here in the United States are appalled at the actions of OUR government. But Ron, in ignoring those Israelis, is still painting a particular nationality with a broad brush -- because it's easier. And it's still making a sweeping generalization of an entire group of people. This still smacks of "All Jews are cheap -- oh, I didn't mean YOU...."

Ron says:

Could this arrogance have something to do with the 2500 years of prejudice they have suffered?

Mel says:

The Jews are responsible for all the war in the world.

Ron says:

The heat of anger can result in the hands dancing across the keyboard before the brain is fully engaged.

Mel says:

I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable."

Do YOU see a difference there? I don't.

The Talmud states:

You can gauge a person's true nature by the way he spends money, the way he handles anger, the way he acts when drunk, and some add by what makes him laugh: Eruvin 65b

If people like Mel Gibson and like Ron want people like me to believe that they are simply disagreeing with the tactics and policies of the Israeli government, and want to keep a dialogue going, then they really need to look inside themselves and examine what's really going on in there. If you really do hate Jews, that's fine. Then at least I know the context of your argument and we can talk with all our cards on the table. After all, Everyone's a rittre bit lacist, as Christmas Eve says in Avenue Q. But don't hide behind the easy target of Israeli atrocities.

PRESS RELEASE -- JULY 31, 2006


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Subject: WORST EVER SECURITY FLAW FOUND IN DIEBOLD TS VOTING MACHINE

Contact: Alan Dechert

Reference: PICTURES
(Click on thumbnail. Click again on lower half of picture for high resolution)

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.

The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".

A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.

This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.

“These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled”

OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION is a nonprofit non stock California corporation dedicated to demonstrating the need for and benefits of voting technology that can be publicly scrutinized.

###

So what does this mean to the layman? Well, you know those little "flash drives" that you use to copy files from one PC to another? If you don't, they are mini-hard drives housed in a casing about the length and width of a tongue depressor cut in half. They plug into the USB port of your PC and become just another drive that you can look at in Windows Explorer. What this means is that by opening up the PC that houses the voting machine software and flipping a switch, you can set the voting machine to boot from the internally-configured drive to an external flash drive instead. So someone could very easily plug in a flash drive and reboot the PC after the polls close to manipulate the totals, then shut it down and walk away.

This is not "vulnerability to hacking." This is "open to rigging" -- and Diebold isn't even trying very hard to hide the fact that their machines can be rigged, and that they are DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY for this purpose. Diebold makes most of the ATMs in this country, and I don't know about you, but I have never once had to deal with an ATM error. So it isn't that Diebold doesn't know how to make a secure machine running secure software.

This machine was developed EXACTLY according to spec. Now who gave them the specs?

Yesterday, July 30, was B@B's two-year blogiversary.

How time flies.

I was a young and cute thing of 49 when I started doing this...look at me now.

That seems to be the attitude of the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, anyway:

The United States Embassy in Kingston has denied visitors’ visas to several Jamaican students who were scheduled to travel to Florida to participate in Culturama 2006 on Sunday.
The annual performance festival, which was to celebrate Jamaica's 44th year of independence, has since been cancelled.

RJR News has been informed that Jamaica's 50 top middle and high school dancers from the annual Mello-Go-Round competition were scheduled to perform in Florida.

However when they went to the Embassy on Thursday all the visa requests were denied.

The US Embassy has provided no reason for the decision.

The performance, scheduled for the Coral Springs Centre for the Arts, would have marked the event's 14th year.

Organisers expected the event, featuring live Jamaican music, poetry and traditional dance, to draw 1,500 patrons as it did last year.

This particular tidbit comes to us courtesy of Hoffmania, who is arguably even more of a Jamaicophile than Mr. Brilliant and I are.

This decision makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and only serves to turn Jamaica into yet another country in the world that hates Americans.

This year we are going to celebrate our 20th anniversary here. Looks like I'll have to pack my "American Traveler Apology T-Shirt".

...real people die.

On the heels of the report from the Jerusalem Post on which I blogged yesterday that the U.S. is hoping for Israel to attack Syria, it becomes clearer every day that the Administration is using Israel to fight a proxy war with Iran. David J. Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace agrees:

"It's really a proxy war between the United States and Iran," said David J. Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "Running the World," a book on U.S. foreign policy. "When viewed in that context, it puts everything in a different light."

This is a dangerous game the Administration is playing, encouraging a highly paranoid ally (however understandable that paranoia might be) to do Whatever Is Necessary to stop a threat. Yesterday, Whatever is Necessary turned out to be the bombing deaths of 60 Lebanese, many of them children.

This is not a situation where you want either power-mad neocons (Cheney) or apocalyptic nutcases (Bush) pulling the strings of a nation they ultimately cannot control.

And Bush continues to get up and offer pipe dreams of hope, just has he's done in Iraq, completely ignoring the reality on the ground:

The president hopes the crisis will ultimately help him rally world leaders against Iran's nuclear program. Even as the U.N. Security Council today considers a peacekeeping force for Lebanon, it may vote on a U.S.-backed resolution to threaten sanctions if Iran does not suspend uranium enrichment in August.

"There's no question that this is going to stiffen up in the long run the resolve of the Europeans in dealing with Iran," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department official who teaches at Lehigh University. "Even if they don't like what Israel is doing," he said, they will recognize that Iran "is a menace."

Others are not so hopeful. Outside the White House, the mood among many foreign policy veterans in Washington is strikingly pessimistic, especially as leaders of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, traditional rivals based in different Islamic sects, began calling for followers to take the fight to the enemy.

Richard Haass, a former Bush aide and current head of the Council of Foreign Relations, is quick to burst Bush's bubble:

"An opportunity?" Haass said with an incredulous tone. "Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"

The Administration's obsession with Iran, as with Iraq, had to do with nuclear weapons. However, just as the Bushistas are once again looking to go to war with a nation that currently has none, they're facilitating another Muslim country, one whose government is one lunatic bullet away from being an unstable Islamic theocracy, to be able to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons a year:

Over the past few years, Pakistan has been hard at work building a powerful new plutonium reactor that when completed will be able to produce enough fuel to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.

This is happening at the same time that the Bush administration is pushing hard for final Congressional approval of a nonmilitary nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan’s rival, India, that would in fact enhance India’s bomb-making capacity. The deal would enable India to free up its own stocks of nuclear fuel to the extent that it could expand its nuclear weapons production from about seven warheads a year to perhaps 50.

Yes, Virginia, the world is going mad.

Pakistan’s initiative, which in a few years could increase its bomb-making capacity twentyfold, was first reported last week by The Washington Post. Experts at the Institute for Science and International Security, after analyzing the program, concluded that “South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons or, at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material.”

[snip]

Common sense should tell you that thundering along the road to ever more nuclear weapons in ever shakier hands is madness, the global equivalent to driving drunk at ever higher speeds. Does anyone think China will sit quietly by as India and Pakistan develop the capacity to outpace it in the production of nukes?

Does anyone doubt that at some point, if the spread of nuclear weapons is not vigorously suppressed, a bomb will end up in the hands of a freak who has no other intention in the world than to use it?

And meanwhile, the Administration spinmeisters continue to make up stories that sound lovely but are in no way based in reality:

Jon B. Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlined "not even the worst-case scenario, but a bad-case scenario: South Lebanon is in shambles, Hezbollah gets credit for rebuilding it with Iranian money, Hezbollah grows stronger in Lebanon and it's not brought to heel. The reaction of surrounding states weakens them, radicalism rises, and they respond with more repression. None of this is especially far-fetched. And in all of this, the U.S. is seen as a fundamentally hostile party."

All of this is far too gloomy for administration officials, who see such dire forecasts as the predictable reactions of a foreign policy establishment that has produced decades of meaningless talks, paper peace agreements and unenforced U.N. resolutions that have not solved underlying issues in the Middle East.

"Some of the overheated rhetoric about how the United States can't work with anybody, we've lost our leadership in the world, is just completely ridiculous, and this crisis proves it," said the senior administration official involved in the crisis. "We are really indispensable to solving this crisis, and you're not going to solve this problem merely by passing another resolution."

While the diplomats work, the Pentagon is studying the possible impact on an already-stretched U.S. military. Commanders have diverted the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group from a training mission in Jordan where they were available as reserves for Iraq. Now they are on ships in the Mediterranean Sea to help with humanitarian efforts, and another unit has been put on alert as backup for Iraq.

The Pentagon has done contingency planning for U.S. troops participating in a multinational peacekeeping mission, but Bush aides have all but ruled out such a scenario. A more likely option, officials said, would have the United States provide command-and-control and logistics assistance.

Peter W. Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said that officials are studying the possibility of putting troops in Lebanon but that it is too early to comment on what such a force would look like. "The concept is still under development, and discussion of any potential U.S. participation would be premature."

I wonder how many of these guys voted for George W. Bush:

Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid.

So instead of heading to work, Mr. Beggerow, now 53, fills his days with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style — all activities once relegated to spare time. He often stays up late and sleeps until 11 a.m.

“I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,” he said. To make ends meet, he has tapped the equity in his home through a $30,000 second mortgage, and he is drawing down the family’s savings, at the rate of $7,500 a year. About $60,000 is left. His wife’s income helps them scrape by. “If things really get tight,” Mr. Beggerow said, “I might have to take a low-wage job, but I don’t want to do that.”

Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow — men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.

About 13 percent of American men in this age group are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960’s. The difference represents 4 million men who would be working today if the employment rate had remained where it was in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Most of these missing men are, like Mr. Beggerow, former blue-collar workers with no more than a high school education. But their ranks are growing at all education and income levels. Refugees of failed Internet businesses have spent years out of work during their 30’s, while former managers in their late 40’s are trying to stretch severance packages and savings all the way to retirement.

Accumulated savings can make dropping out more affordable at the upper end than it is for Mr. Beggerow, but the dynamic is often the same — the loss of a career and of a sense that one’s work is valued.

Maybe that's because politicians have decided that the work Americans do is NOT valued, and that's why they've made it so easy to outsource jobs to low-wage countries, essentially turning high-paid jobs here into sweatshop jobs overseas.

I'm not solely blaming the Bush Administration; the exodus of high-paying jobs began with the sainted Bill Clinton, who triangulated his way into NAFTA and really got the ball rolling. But it has been Republican rule over the last six years that has accelerated the trend towards less opportunity, less pay, and fewer benefits.

But there's an issue of culture shock here too, for it seems women -- the very same women that Republicans and their Christofascist minions would like to see out of the work force -- have a better sense of Doing What Has To Be Done. For all of the residue of Reagan's "welfare queen" speeches during the 1980's, it's women who are out there working menial jobs, sometimes more than one, in order to feed the kids and keep a roof over their heads:

Even as more men are dropping out of the work force, more women are entering it. This change has occurred partly because employment has shrunk in industries where men predominated, like manufacturing, while fields where women are far more common, like teaching, health care and retailing, have grown. Today, about 73 percent of women between 30 and 54 have a job, compared with 45 percent in the mid-1960’s, according to an analysis of Census data by researchers at Queens College. Many women without jobs are raising children at home, while men who are out of a job tend to be doing neither family work nor paid work.

And while Bush loves to crow about the low unemployment rate, the numbers do not take these guys into account:

Despite their great numbers, many of the men not working are missing from the nation’s best-known statistic on unemployment. The jobless rate is now a low 4.6 percent, yet that number excludes most of the missing men, because they have stopped looking for work and are therefore not considered officially unemployed. That makes the unemployment rate a far less useful measure of the country’s well-being than it once was.

Indeed, a larger share of working-age men are not working today than at almost any point in the last half-century, which raises the question of how they will get by as they age. They may be forced back to work after years of absence, they may fall into poverty, or they may be rescued by the government. This same trend is evident in other industrialized countries. In the European Union, 14 percent of men between 25 and 54 were not working last year, up from 7 percent in 1975, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Over the same period in Japan, the proportion of such men rose to 8 percent from 4 percent.

Of course, we are also living in a country where businesses largely put their workers out to pasture around age 50, so where the jobs for these guys are is an open question.

Perhaps it's because men have always defined themselves by what they do for a living, and have devalued hobbies and other nonpaid pursuits. I'm not sure that's changed all that much over the years. So perhaps being out of work, and not being able to find work, frees these guys to do things they've never felt free to do before. The problem is that our society is more unforgiving than every of those who can't pay their bills, as evidenced by the punitive bankruptcy legislation passed by Congress last year and signed into law as a means of protecting the credit card industry against just the kind of contracting job market we're seeing now.

Here in New Jersey, we've seen some job growth, but it is modest, it's expected to remain that way through the end of the decade, and the growth that does occur is expected in low-wage industries, such as education, health, hospitality and restaurants, and other leisure activities -- which means that an ever-growing sector of working poor will be providing the leisure fun for the wealthy.

Men like the one that opens this article may be able to get away with tapping home equity for a while, but with a falling real estate market, these guys may find themselves tapped out for more than their houses are worth:

the number of unsold homes is at the highest level ever. Housing starts are starting to fall, but remain at a high level by historical standards. If sales do not pick up this summer, when sales are usually seasonally strong, it could be a sign that prices are going to come under pressure and lead to a much larger decline in housing starts.

The accompanying charts show year-over-year changes in sales of existing single-family homes and apartments, using six-month moving averages to smooth out monthly fluctuations. The latest figures show sales of single-family homes down 4.4 percent, the largest dip since 1995, and apartment sales off 6.6 percent. Statistics on apartment sales are only available back to 1999, but that is the worst showing in that period.

Meanwhile, the number of existing single-family homes on the market is up 33 percent year-over-year, measured the same way. Figures from the National Association of Realtors, going back to 1983, show no comparable increase in homes for sale. The number of condominiums and cooperative apartments for sale is up 61 percent.

The picture is consistent with demand for homes suddenly drying up, while sellers are reluctant to cut prices.

If men continue to shun jobs that aren't "good enough" for them, while their wives swallow their pride and become grocery cashiers, fast food service workers, and other menial workers, there's going to be a poverty problem among the elderly in about 20 years that's going to be monstrous.

Perhaps this is why the president wants to revive privatization of Social Security.

Does Dick Cheney actually believe that there will be anything left worth presiding over after he gets his dream of global thermonuclear war?

The neocons want Israel to be their proxy in invading Syria:

The IDF is also concerned about a possible Syrian attack on Israel in response to the ongoing IDF operations in Lebanon. It is also known that Syria has increased its alert along the border out of fear in Damascus that Israel might attack Syria.

Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

This is just insanity. Cheney may think his hands are clean if Israel attacks Syria, but the whole world will know just who's pulling the strings. And if Syria is attacked, then Iran gets into the game, and then all bets are off.

When your Republican friends say this is part of the war on terror, ask them if they think their children can survive global thermonuclear war -- and if a post-nuclear world is what they want their children to live in.

And this is the Administration Joe Lieberman supports wholeheartedly.

Two reports on the cancellation of Condoleeza Rice's "diplomatic" visit to Lebanon.

The domestic spin, from the New York Times:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday she is ''deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life'' from Israel's attack on a Lebanese village, but she held firm to the internationally unpopular position that a quick cease-fire won't solve the crisis.

Israel's early morning missile strike sparked protests in Beirut and forced Rice to cancel an expected visit Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. She planned to remain in Jerusalem instead, where she said she had work to do to end the fighting.

The international coveage, this one from Australia:

LEBANON told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today it could not meet with her before a ceasefire ends a 19-day-old Israeli offensive.
Lebanese officials said Dr Rice, who was due in Beirut later in the day, was told of the Lebanese position after an Israeli air strike killed at least 51 civilians in southern Lebanon.
They said Dr Rice's visit to Beirut had been cancelled.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the deadly raids as a "war crime", vowing there was no place for talks until Israel ceased its attacks.

"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," Mr Siniora said at a press conference.

At least 51 people, including 22 children, were killed in blistering raids on the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, the civil defence chief in the region said today.

The bodies of men, women and children retrieved from under the rubble of dozens of buildings which collapsed after the bombardment, Salam Daher said.

Israel rejected responsibility for civilian deaths in the Lebanese village of Qana Sunday, where at least 51 people were killed in Israeli air strikes, saying Hezbollah was to blame.