June 2006 Archives

Shorter Glenn Greenwald: Opponents of monarchical power should celebrate this decision.

In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast. They produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone.

What happened?

Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?

Stephen Colbert addresses the secret banking records surveillance scoop published in the New York Times:

On Wednesday night's show, Colbert suggested that the Times could learn a thing or two from Superman (now appearing in yet another movie sequel) about keeping a secret.

Superman, he said, went so far as to hide his identity "by disguising himself as the farthest thing from a hero -- a newspaper reporter." He could have broken the story of his own identity at any time, won headlines and maybe a Pulitzer, but no, he wanted to save his friends Jimmy and Lois from the terror of Lex Luthor.

So Superman, Colbert added, courageously continued to be "a pretend journalist"-- with a title card on the screen next to Colbert commenting "like Brit Hume."

Tim Grieve posts the items on the House Republican Cultist "American Values Agenda:"

• The Pledge Protection Act.
• The Freedom to Display the American Flag Act.
• The Public Expression of Religion Act.
• The Marriage Amendment.
• The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act.
• The Human Cloning Prohibition Act.
• Reform of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
• A ban on Internet gambling.
• Permanent tax relief for families.
• And the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act.

That last one sounds pretty reasonable, but you want to know what it really is? According to the Library of Congress, the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act is a bill that would "amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to prohibit the confiscation of firearms during certain national emergencies."

A cult can be defined as a group of people devoted to beliefs and goals which may be contradictory to those held by the majority of society. Alternately, a cult can be defined as an interest followed with exaggerated zeal.

Either way you define it, it's clear that the Republican formula for success has devolved into appealing to a small cult of very dedicated followers. If those followers come out and vote in great enough numbers, it can be enough to sway an election.

Beware!

Tim Grieve:

The Supreme Court just ruled 5-3 that George W. Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay -- and that procedures the Bush administration had intended to use violate both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions. While the court said that the Bush administration may hold detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan "for the duration of active hostilities," it said that the president must "comply with the rule of law" if he wishes to have Hamdan or other detainees tried and subjected to criminal punishment.

Justice Anthony Kennedy joined John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter in the majority. Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Chief Justice John G. Roberts did not participate in the decision.

People for the American Way, which filed an amicus brief in the case, is already hailing the decision as a "major defeat" for the Bush administration and a "victory for the rule of law." The White House had no immediate comment.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

WaPo:

President Bush attacked congressional Democrats and the news media at a Republican fundraiser Wednesday night, accusing the opposition of "waving the white flag of surrender" in Iraq...

Ignore the taunts -- don't bother responding to this. And, for sure, don't repeat the words "white flag of surrender."

Instead, relentlessly repeat the Republicans' dismal record of performance and call for a change in direction:

Under the Republican war plan, we have seen over $300 billion wasted, over 20 thousand American casualties lost and still there is no end in sight.

You can extend this approach to every district where there is a Republican incumbent:

Bush = bad
Republican candidate = Bush
Therefore...
Republican candidate = bad.

Remember: do NOT respond to the taunts -- go on the attack and never let up.

So if you still think Iraq is going well, vote for the Republicans because they'll give you more of the same.

But if you've had enough, if you want a change in direction, vote for the Democrats.

Attack, attack, attack. Never let up.

Oh, crap.

Washington -- The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday rejected a network neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users.

The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.

Under Senate rules, a tie vote means the amendment failed.

HT to mcjoan, who writes this:

The future for the telecommunications bill is unclear, as Stevens has said he doesn't have a 60 vote margin to pass the bill and thus might not get leadership support to bring it to the floor. Sen. Wyden has vowed to put a hold on any anti-net neutrality legislation.

So while this is a discouraging impasse, we don't know how it plays out from here. The fact that Stevens says he doesn't have a filibuster proof majority means that our voices have been heard. That much is clear.

OK, better than nothing.

Thanks to everyone who contacted their Senators.

UPDATE: Sen. Ron Wyden Blocks Telecom Legislation over Net Neutrality

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

A cult can be defined as a group of people devoted to beliefs and goals which may be contradictory to those held by the majority of society. Alternately, a cult can be defined as an interest followed with exaggerated zeal. Either way you define it, it's clear that the Republican formula for success has devolved into appealing to a small cult of very dedicated followers. If those followers come out and vote, it will be enough to sway this fall's election...again.

House Republicans intend to hold votes this summer and fall touching on abortion, guns, religion and other priority issues for social conservatives, part of an attempt to improve the party's prospects in the midterm elections.

The "American Values Agenda" also includes a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage — which already has failed in the Senate — a prohibition on human cloning and possibly votes on several popular tax cuts.

"American Values Agenda?" Human cloning? Yes, you heard me.

Nothing on Iraq. Nothing on global warming. Nothing on energy independence, health care, education.

Nothing.

But by pushing votes on a kaleidoscope of issues that have narrow appeal to a small but dedicated band of zealous followers, the Republican party is hoping it can garner enough votes this fall to stay in power. And if they win, it will prove once again that a small cult of very actively involved voters has taken over this country.

Fact is, if Democrats let that happen, then they deserve what they get.

So the New York Times publishes a story about a coordinated plan that would use international banking data to track its terror-funding efforts.

One U.S. official was quoted as saying: "It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions."

That official wasn't one of those anonymous leakers -- it was Bush himself, back when he was at the top of his game and had all the world with him, on Sept. 24, 2001, just 13 days after al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He announced the first of a series of measures that made clear international bankers were cooperating to track al Qaeda's funding.

No matter. The press must be stopped!

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.)

[N]o one elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant elitest left wing agenda before the interests of the American people, and I'm calling on the Attorney General to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times -- its reporters, the editors who worked on this, and the publisher.

I'm pretty sure that's how they sounded in Stalinist Russia.

Thomas Jefferson:

Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel:

Thirty-five years ago this week, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 against the Nixon administration's efforts to prevent publication of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam War. Justice Potter Stewart wrote for the majority:

"In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government."

High on the job-description priority-list of an independent press is the task of keeping an eye on the government. My gosh! You'd think "conservatives" would understand this.

And now it's come to this:

Hitler Cats!

CNN:

A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.

"We're going to do anything it takes to stop the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference.

"They can play all the games the want," Reid said derisively of the Republicans who control the chamber. "They can deal with gay marriage, estate tax, flag burning, all these issues and avoid issues like the prices of gasoline, sending your kid to college. But we're going to do everything to stop the congressional pay raise."

Imagine you are craving a delicious In 'N' Out burger. So you get on the road and drive to the local In 'N' Out, only to find that the road is blocked off with a detour to McDonald's. It doesn't matter that you don't like McDonald's. The people who maintain the road made a deal with McDonald's and now that's all you can have.

That's what will happen to the Internet, unless we all insist that Congress support net neutrality.

As of Tuesday, here are the Senators that Save the Internet says haven't stated a position on net neutrality. If any of these Senators represent you, please take a few minutes Wednesday morning to call to request support for the Snowe/Dorgan amendment to the Telecom Act (S. 2686). You can also contact them via the main switchboard toll free at 1-888-355-3588.

* Chairman Ted Stevens, Phone: 202-224-3004
* Sen. John McCain, Phone: 202 -224-2235
* Sen. Mark Pryor, Phone: 202-224-2353
* Sen. Bill Nelson, Phone: 202-224-5274
* Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Phone: 202 224 3224
* Sen. David Vitter, Phone: 202 224-4623
* Sen. Trent Lott, Phone: 202-224-6253
* Sen. Conrad Burns, Phone: 202-224-2644
* Sen. Ben Nelson, Phone: 202-224-6551
* Sen. John Ensign, Phone: 202-224-6244
* Sen. John E. Sununu, Phone: 202-224-2841
* Sen. Gordon Smith, Phone: 202-224-3753
* Sen. Jim DeMint, Phone: 202 224-6121
* Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Phone: 202-224-5922
* Sen. George Allen, Phone: 202-224-4024
* Sen. John D. Rockefeller, Phone: 202-224-6472

C'mon -- it's easy! Just dial the number and say, "I'd like to urge the Senator to support the Snow/Dorgan amendment to the Telecom Act (S. 2686)."

Do it right now, before you get another email or drink another cup of coffee.

You deserve to have whatever hamburger you want, don't you?

(HT to mcjoan)

Thomas Jefferson:

Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

That was then. Now, we have a flag-burning amendment and heated calls to prosecute the New York Times for "helping terrorists."

Glenn Greenwald's post is a must-read.

Everyone Volvo owner I've ever met was a Democrat.

So you'd think that there would be lots of Democratic campaign workers compiling easy accessible direct mail lists of Volvo owners, right?

Wrong:

Republicans have moved well ahead of Democrats nationally in their ability to find previously unaffiliated voters or even wavering Democrats and to target them with specially tailored messages.

Voter Vault, although it is a closely guarded GOP trade secret, is nevertheless easily accessible to on-the-ground campaign workers and operatives should they need to mobilize votes in a hurry.

One suburban African American woman in Ohio, for example, told us that though she tends to vote Democratic, she was deluged in 2004 with calls, e-mail messages and other forms of communication by Republicans who somehow knew that she was a mother with children in private schools, an active church attendee, an abortion opponent and a golfer.

I'm just saying.

From Jim Webb, Democratic Senate candidate, Virginia:

Jim Webb has great respect for our national flag and great respect for our Constitution, and is proud of the many contributions his family has made in defense of both. Like many combat veterans such as General Colin Powell and former Senators John Glenn and Bob Kerry, he does not believe it is necessary to amend the Constitution in order to protect the dignity of our flag.

"This is yet another example of deliberately divisive politics that distract Americans from the real issues that are facing our country," said Kristian Denny Todd, spokeswoman for the Webb campaign.

The Senate is set to vote on this amendment today. Call or write your Senators today and urge them to keep their hands off our Constitution.

It's easy:

1. Visit this site
2. Look up your Senator's phone number, fax, and/or email address.
3. Contact them today, urging them to vote against the flag amendment.

Please do this right now, before you get distracted by the next email, phone call or other matter.

The vote is slated for today. It is crucial that your voice be heard before it is too late and the matter moves to the 50 state legislatures.

UPDATE: Feel free to use the text of this letter I sent to Sens. Landrieu and Vitter:

Senator:

I strongly urge you to vote against the flag amendment when it comes to a vote in the Senate.

I do not believe it is necessary to amend the Constitution in order to protect the dignity of our flag.

Furthermore, this is yet another example of deliberately divisive politics that distract Americans from the real issues that are facing our country.

Please vote against the amendment.

Thanks.

UPDATE II: Senate rejects the amendment by one vote, 66-34. Senator Clinton reverses course and votes against it.

Here's a video my daughter and I shot while I was in Detroit.

The memorial was something we found by accident in Farmington Hills right outside Heritage Park. I don't know who put it up. The music is from Bruce Springsteen (from a performance on Conan's show) and the aerial photography was shot out the window during my flight home.

Hope you like it.

P.S. Click the "Share" button and send it to your friends.

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

First of all, let's look at some Civil War history:

During the American Civil War, political prisoners and prisoners of war were often released upon taking an "oath of allegiance". Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction featured an oath to "faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder" as a condition for a Presidential pardon. During Reconstruction, retroactive loyalty oaths were required, so that no one could hold federal office who hadn't been loyal in the past.

Is this the basis for any kind of amnesty for Iraqi insurgents who have killed American military? No. And here's why:

1. Lincoln's Proclamation was issued by (wait for it) Lincoln. In order for Iraqi amnesty to work the same way, Bush would have to grant it. Not Republican Senator Cornyn, not Republican Senator Alexander, not Republican Senator McConnell, not Republican Senator Chambliss, not Republican Senator Stevens. Amnesty would have to be granted by Republican President Bush.
   
2. Lincoln's olive branch was granted to the side that was soundly defeated in the war. Needless to say, nothing of that sort has happened yet in Iraq.
   
3. The fundamental issues of the Civil War -- slavery and states' rights -- had been resolved. Lincoln was inviting the defeated side to rejoin the Union. In Iraq the Sunni, Shia and Kurds are still at each other's throats. What issues have been resolved by this war?
   
4. Lincoln himself said this at Gettysburg:

   It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

   It is now painfully obvious that Iraq will be a theocracy, with the mullahs on the Supreme Court, sitting in final judgement of the Iraqi Constitution. That is not "government of the people, by the people, for the people." It's bad enough that our fighting forces died for that -- now we have to stand by while the insurgents are granted amnesty as well? No way.

The Maliki plan offers a timetable and benchmarks for the withdrawal of American troops. That's good. If amnesty is taken off the table, I could get behind the rest of the plan.

But amnesty is a deal-breaker.

by Mark Adams

I don't believe the U.S. Department of Labor's mandate is to is to promote anti-labor, union busting organizations.  Neither does Jordan Barab of Confined Space.

The folks at CREW obtained E-mails between the office of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and conservative lobbyist and executive director of the anti-union group Center for Union Facts, Richard Berman through the Freedom of Information Act, which shows that the Department of Labor is actively anti-labor.  In the words of Confined Space:

Those younger than a certain age may not remember that the law of the land encourages the formation of labor unions, and that the Department of Labor was created to improve the working conditions and welfare of working people.  Yet, these days the sole purpose of the Department of Labor seems to be ignoring workers and acting as if all unions are mafia offspring that deserve about as much sympathy as Al Queda.

Barab, a former Labor Liaison for OSHA who 16 years running AFSCME's health and safety program, has been documenting the fact that Berman's "Union Facts" is neither factual nor about anything much but the destruction of organized labor.

The FOIA request -- which has the promise to bring out even more "smoking guns" now that Secretary Chao has claimed some of the Department's communiques with Berman are privileged -- documents "a close and supportive relationship between the two entities," to the point where the Department actively distributed an "op-ed drafted by Berman, anti-union newspaper accounts as well as anti-union blogs and news releases".

Also, in addition to promoting Berman's web-site as "dedicated to providing information on labor unions and their expenditures," the Secretary herself agreed to be profiled by one of Berman's front groups.

Look, you don't like Unions?  Fine.  You're misguided, but entitled to your opinion.  In fact you can campaign against them, lobby against them as Berman does.  Be a hired gun for corporations and fight against them, making a buck or $8 million along the way.  This is America, an allegedly free country.

But the Department of Labor was not created as a marketing tool to spread anti-union propaganda.  In fact, it's very purpose is to promote the rights of workers to organize.  Like it or not, hate unions or love them -- not only is collective bargaining a right in this country, but the government is supposed to protect that right, not work against it.

Hey, maybe the Labor Secretary and her staff are just incompetent.  Too dumb to realize that not every group with the word "union" in their name is,

"encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection."

Protecting and encouraging unions is what the National Labor Relations Act says is the "Declared policy of the United States."  We have no business doing official government business with a paid hit-man for union-busters like Berman.

Heckuvajob they're doing at Chao's office.

(Tip 'O D'Hat to Linkmeister Avedon.  Wag of the finger, as always, to the Bush Administration and their corporate minders)

by Mark Adams

Shorter Ian Welsh:  If the administration doesn't help America's filthy rich get even more disgustingly filthy rich, the Oil Sheiks will own everything worthy anything.

Helping out at Firedoglake, Ian Welsh sent along a series of extremely telling graphs that pierce the heart through the myth of trickle-down / voodoo / supply-side economics every bit as effectively as the studies on global warming show that not just for our financial health, but for our very survival as a civilization we must find alternatives to our oil addiction.

Ian draws some very telling conclusions from the trend graphically proving that the wealthy won the class war in this country and are still keeping us barbarians far away from their gated communities.  I know I'm just a naive liberal, but I'd rather a government created by and for the people look out more for, you know, the people.

Nearly every decision the Decider has decided, legal or otherwise, has been designed to perpetuate this status quo.  The invasion and occupation of Iraq was fueled not just by oil, but the quest to consolidate the power of the powerful.

Likewise we see this in the drafting of the administration's energy policy in secret by energy executives, tax-cuts after tax cuts, borrow and spending to strangle the government, the anemic disaster response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes, the attempt to dismantle Social Security, outsourcing, and the refusal to put any pressure whatsoever on employers who exploit and perpetuate the pool of underpaid, undocumented immigrant workers.

Do you really think it is a coincidence that unions represent less than half of the workforce they did before the Reagan Revolution?  George W. Bush is only the latest champion of the corporate class.  Neither is it a coincidence that the very same kingpins that fund the GOP and the K-Street criminals have been getting away with murder by criminally busting any attempts at organizing workers all over the nation and around the world.  And I really mean murder.

Here are your debating points when you want to talk about POTUS going well beyond the Constitutional framework designed to prevent this emergent aristocracy from taking over the country.  And here is a handy guide to who watches out for whom.

P.S. Our thoughts and good wishes go out to Jane at FDL and her family's lose.

Pitchfork Media:

So now we're making use of our video-inspired sloth, sharing 100 of our favorite music videos; simply, dozens of clips that, for various reasons (because they're so good, because they're so bad, because they feature the Jacksons imagining themselves as gigantic golden gods sprinkling gold dust on humanity), we enjoy watching and hope you'll enjoy as well.

Here's my favorite on the list: Rockit from Herbie Hancock.

by Mark Adams

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker is "Shocked!" that Haliburton is involved in war profiteering in Iraq.

I don't think the shocking thing is that a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's old company was getting kickbacks from government subcontractors, but that one of the subcontractors plead guilty to paying Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root Services, Inc. (KBR) a bribe/ransom to secure a contract to feed our troops.

The shocking this is the guy wasn't bought off, or otherwise "taken care of" before he could play nice with Federal Prosecutors.  There is, after all, a number of ways someone could end up being a ex-person in the Occupation Zone.

by Mark Adams

The E. Pluribus Unum Braintrust


Ara Rubyan stopped by this afternoon, all the way from Baton Rouge to Toledo.

We laughed, we cried.  It became a part of me.

Thanks Ara, let's do it again.

by Mark Adams

From the Department of Like-That-Matters:  conservative author, columnist and White House correspondent for NRO, Byron York begins laying the foundation for discrediting the Senate Intelligence Committee's long, long overdue "Phase Two" report on its investigation into pre-war handling of intelligence.

Not to be confused with "Phase One, in which Doris gets her oats."  This part concerns what the administration knew, and how did they lie about it.  Not surprising that the Republican chair of the committee, Pat Roberts, has stalled this important work, again, this time in an effort to try and make Democratic lawmakers share the blame for this fiasco of a war and look as duplicitous as Bush Administration officials.  Roberts insists that the Democrat's pre-war statements be examined in the same light as those who had the complete, unedited, non-cherry-picked version of the available intelligence -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell and Feith -- especially Feith and his office of Special Plans.

Certainly most of the public should see right through the charade, blaming Democrats for the hold up.  Everyone except the few remaining Bush apologists left peeking out of their bunkers know all too well that it just doesn't matter what Ted Kennedy said about Iraq's nuclear ambitions and capabilities.  What mattered was the President and his war cabinet trying to scare us into believing that Saddam Hussein was trying to put nuclear weapons in Osama bin Laden's hands.

But that won't stop Roberts.  His mission is damage control, not fact-finding.

York, however, goes one step beyond Roberts in his attempt to prime the well of distraction by reminding his Bush-Bot audience that the GOP may not only have disloyal defectors in their midsts,

Republican lawmakers have lost effective control because two of their own, Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, sometimes side with Democrats.

...but also a mole:

Eric Rosenbach, hired by Sen. Hagel to work on prewar intelligence issues, came to the Senate after completing studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government under Rand Beers, a top foreign-policy adviser for Kerry. In Fall 2004, Rosenbach took three weeks to volunteer for the Kerry campaign in York County, Pennsylvania.

Gotta love this.  Without hesitation, York characterizes Rosenbach as "a key Republican committee staffer" who committed the cardinal sin of being a "veteran" of the Kerry campaign.

No doubt this will escalate into a full fledged corruption probe and hatchet job against this poor kid.  For all we or York knows, he was crucial only in cutting the crust of John Kerry's peanut butter sandwiches and taking out the garbage for three lousy weeks of volunteering in the campaign so he could get some real-world experience to apply towards his political science studies.

Lovely.

The article takes the mundane fact that while working on his masters degree, Rosenbach took a class taught by Beers and that evil traitor, ex-counter terrorism chief Richard Clarke, then got some brownie points holding Beers' briefcase for a few weeks -- unpaid -- as did many other fortunate sons in the right place at the right time; and not so subtly implies that he's part of the vast left-wing conspiracy that has hypnotized Chuck Hagel into apostacy.

(Hat Tip:  Maha)

UPDATE:  I found this piece which informs us that the the investigation of Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans is being nicely set up to fail, scrubbed clean by an experienced team of whitewashers.

Yesterday, I posted a piece about Ron Suskind's new book, The One-Percent Doctrine.

The book has generated some buzz, mostly about the story it tells of an aborted al-Qaeda plan to attack the NYC subway system with poison gas. The traditional media has trumpeted this story as proof that Dear Leader is still protecting us. On the other hand, Sen. Shumer used it to demand that full funding be restored to NYC after the DHS sent their money to, um, Wyoming instead.

In his interview with Wolf Blitzer, Susskind details how, in the months following 9/11, "Dick" Cheney formulated something called the One-Percent Doctrine:

A key feature of the Cheney Doctrine was to quietly liberate action from such accepted standards of proof and it was effective. Suspicion, both inside America and abroad, became the threshold for action.

In other words, if there was a one-percent chance that terrorists had gotten WMD, then the US had to treat it as a certainty -- but not just in our analysis, but also in our response.

This makes sense up to a point.

When evaluating risk, one looks at three factors:

• the likelihood of a catastrophic event occuring
• the enormity of the resulting consequences, and
• the degree of vulnerability that you have to that potential catastrophe.

When all three of these are factored in, you can assess the risk you face from that catastrophic event.

But what bothers me is that in the one and only instance in which the Cheney Doctrine was put to the test, it failed miserably. Cheney's one-percent probability was significantly closer to zero percent.

And the resulting response resulted in a catastrophe of its own making.

And, ironically, Hurricane Katrina (itself a catastrophe with a likelihood quite a bit greater than 1%) made a further mockery of Cheney's doctrine.

P.S. There was a corollary to Cheney's doctrine: 99 innocent men are worth arresting so that one guilty man is captured. The backlash from that, and the resulting loss of trust in the US, will last a generation or more.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

From Ron Suskind's book, The One-Percent Doctrine:

What the CIA had learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons -- and those reasons are debated with often startling depths inside the organization's leadership...Today's conclusion [on the Friday before the 2004 election]: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's election.

You can view the video of Suskind's interview on Blitzer's show. There's lots of other good stuff in it.

Now Suskind's book has generated a lot of buzz, most of which centered around the tale of the aborted attempt to gas the NYC subways in 2003.

But this revelation has received next to no notice, even at Daily Kos. Granted, a lot of us have have long since intuited what Suskind is only now writing about. But still...

Let's be blunt: Osama has always known that George W. Bush is good for business.

Think about it: during the Bush years, the world army of terrorists has grown enormously. Not only that -- they are significantly more inspired to commit mayhem against the US and her allies.

But perhaps most frighteningly is this realization: if your goal is destroy what the US stands for, you have no greater ally than this President.

After all, Bush has wrecked the one thing that is the very foundation of our success: the US Constitution.

Without it, we are nothing. And Osama knows that.

by Mark Adams

Cost of shutting down the Democrats' phones on election day -- 10 months in prison (minimum security recommended); 2 years probation, and a $10,000 fine.

Price of being Jack Abramoff's inside man at the White House and covering up exchanging information for golf trips to Scotland -- up to 20 years and $1 Million in fines.

Dumping Ann Coulter's latest book for a lousy Five Bucks -- PRICELESS.

According to the USA Today, the Senate is currently only one vote shy of the 67 votes needed to pass the "Flag Desecration Amendment."

Oh, yeah, like that's really going to stop these people:

Anonymous Liberal has more.

Gas at $3 and record oil company profits. What else did you expect him to say?

They said it after 9/11, they said it after Katrina, now they're saying it about Iraq:

Q: Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency's strength?

Cheney: I think so, umm I guess, the uh, if I look back on it now. I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered....

Gah!

In the summer of 1972, the soundtrack to Superfly seemed to be playing from every radio in Detroit. And you know what? Bless Curtis Mayfield's soul -- his music sounds just as good today as it ever did.

Enjoy.

(HT to Crooks and Liars)

Cory:

Wardialling telemarketers keep happening upon the secret Homeland Security batphone numbers that ring on the nation's governors' desks when catastrophe strikes.

Bush says that we must stay the course, yet more evidence surfaces that our policy is a real horror show.

Al Kamen:

Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees. This cable, marked "sensitive" and obtained by The Washington Post, outlines in spare prose the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.

Here's the cable -- entitled Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Public Discord -- it's a must-read.

If we "stay the course," we'll get more of the same.

It's time to change direction.

Cenk Uygur:

1. No WMDs.
2. No link to Al Qaeda.
3. Democracy installed.
4. Regime change accomplished.

Iraq. Check.

What's left? What are we still doing over there?

The President will tell you that we are waiting for the Iraqis to stand up. Could there be a less clear and more ridiculous mission? When do we know they've stood up?

Are they squatting right now? Perhaps kneeling? I hope they're not lounging.

I can't wait for Bush to land on an aircraft carrier one day and tell us the mission has been accomplished -- Iraq has officially stood up. I wonder what it will do once it's standing? I hope it doesn't go for a walk.

The last time it did that, we had to liberate Kuwait.

Declare victory and bring the boys home.

by Mark Adams

Which is more cynical:  accusing the administration of co-opting the nation's security apparatus to solidify political control of the government, or the government actually doing that?

Do we still have that cute, color-coded threat level thingy that used to oscillate between yellow-watch-your-ass and orange-stick-your-head-up-it every time candidate Bush suffered a downward tick in the polls?  What ever happened to the fear-inducing press release from Joe Lieberman's brain-child at Homeland Security that kept us ever vigilant, duct-tape at the ready, dreading the change in signals to the cataclysmic red-kiss-your-ass-goodbye?

Since John Kerry was informed that the position he was seeking in November of '04 was already filled, we haven't seen too much (none) of that groovy light show.  Surely that's not because there are no more terrorist threats to the homeland, no more increased bouts of unspecific chatter, no more corners to be turned in the Global War to Terrorize us.

Is it because we are now safer, no need to run around like Chicken Little because of the success of the GWOT?  Absolutely not.  By replacing communism with islamo-fascism as the new boogeyman, the world has become safer for reactionary politicians and their war-profiteering corporate minders, but not for you and me.  And certainly not for our children who don the uniform and take arms against our enemies -- which are growing exponentially.

Most of the amateurs who gave us the color-coded threat indicator have left for greener pastures (and by greener, I'm talking about green-backs, by the truckload).  Keeping us afraid to change the course, knowing we had a trained chimp sitting in the Oval Office, was their ticket to power and wealth -- and it paid off.

Now only the professionals are left, and they are indeed pros at psy-ops.  Well, at least a bit more sophisticated, even though they do succumb to silly mistakes, like planting obviously phony al-Queda mission-statements on exterminated vermin like al-Zarqawi, or handing off a Pentagon funded briefing book (written for GOP lawmakers to use in making the case to continue our open-ended commitment in Iraq) to the real enemy -- Democrats.

The missing traffic light signals that told us the degree to which we should be afraid of a Democratic presidency are not the only thing missing from the GWOT.  The Office of Global Communications has all but shut down.  If it really was created to wage information warfare against our enemies abroad, you'd think they would have at least been maintaining an efforts against a resurgent Taliban and al-Queada in Afghanistan, and working full-out in support of the nascent democracy we're imposing on the Iraqi residents living outside the Green Zone.

The Office of Global Communications, under Tucker Eskew, a deputy assistant to the president and a longtime Republican communications consultant, touted a similar mission. A government organizational chart, dated July 2003, places this office at the nexus of the government's strategic communications apparatus. But Daniel Kuehl, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who directs the Information Strategies Concentration Program at the National Defense University, believes the global communications office never lived up to its mandate.

Nor, perhaps, did it ever intend to. "In my opinion, the global issue wasn't the reason why they were created," he told me. "They clearly had a completely domestic focus. They were part of the effort to re-elect the president . . . . I'm going to be real pejorative here: Their goal was psychological operations on the American voting public. That was part of the political arm doing that." He added, "You'll notice that not long after the election, the Office of Global Communications no longer existed." (Technically, it still exists, though it has been without a director for more than a year. No new content has been posted on its Web site, once updated regularly, since March 2005.)

Well, this is an off-year for elections with just Congress up grabs.  That is of little consequence to an administration that refuses to abide by statutory mandates.  They've got the White House, and therefore more power than Ceasar with the combination of signing statements and pardons.  All the rest is theater.

Besides, we already won the war.

Recently, the military reported that a milestone was passed -- 2500 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines killed. Logic tells us that is a very low number compared to other wars. The White House Press Secretary even went so far as to call it just "a number."

However, inexplicably, the public has long since turned against the war effort, saying the entire venture is simply not worth it.

Why? Are the American people mistaken in their logic? Or are they being very logical? Or is there something else behind this momentum against the war?

Last night, Miss Julie and I watched a documentary from the American Film Institute called "The 100 Most Inspirational Films." One of the films was Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson as William Wallace, Scotland's greatest patriot.

Here's Wallace rallying his troops before a climactic battle:

"I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?"

"Two thousand against ten?" - the veteran shouted. "No! We will run - and live!"

"Yes!" Wallace shouted back. "Fight and you may die. Run and you will live at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom!"

Logical? No, of course not. But inspirational? I can't even read the words without my heart soaring.

Did you ever see Spartacus? Or Gandhi? Or Glory? Or Mr. Smith Goes To Washington? Or Schindler's List? Or absorb ANY story about one man fighting for a lost cause or a hopeless quest? How about the story of the Founders of this country?

Where's the logic in ANY of that? It isn't there. And yet we do it because it is who we are.

Like Gandhi said, "Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." To me, that means logic isn't enough. You must speak from (and to) the heart.

by Mark Adams

I can come to but one conclusion:  that there has been so much wrong committed by so many for so long that blanket amnesty has become more than a viable, albeit vile solution. And I'm not talking about immigration, not yet.

I'm talking about beating President Bush to the punch, before someone reminds him that he has the same pardon power as his daddy.  (At least that part of the Constitution hasn't been shredded.)

Duncan Black (Atrios) sends us to a Tapped article by young Yglesias, who likens condemnation of offering "amnesty to to terrorists and insurgents who have attacked and killed U.S. troops" as an "unprincipled gambit." A principled stance that is further explained by Jim Henley.

The gist is that this may be the only way to prevent further American losses, steer us away from imperialism, and an opportunity lost to curb the absolutist dogma of the hawks later down the road.

Sometimes the problem with being a liberal, is that we'd rather be right than win.

Read On...

The final vote was 256-153.

(cross-posted at DailyKos)

Yesterday, I suggested that there is a simple and clear way for Democrats to make a clear distinction between themselves and the Republicans: The Republicans want endless war, the Democrats want to end the war.

Now, I think it's time that Democrats nationalize the mid-term elections by offering that choice to voters:

• If voters want endless war, they should vote for the Republicans.

• If voters want to end the war, they should vote for the Democrats.

This is a clear choice. It's a choice that requires the Democrats to have a backbone. I think voters will understand that.

Of course the powdered and pampered poodle-pundits will want to know: HOW to end the war?

A newly-contrite Ben Roethlisberger apologized to the Pittsburgh Steelers, fans and his family on Thursday, saying he was fortunate to be alive and pledging to wear a helmet if he ever again rides a motorcycle.

You know what? Shut up.

Just. Shut. Up.

What an idiot!

[crickets]

OK, that was harsh. I should remind myself that guys like Roethlisberger do perform a public service: they are organ donors on wheels.

And besides, eventually all motorcyclists will be smart enough to wear helmets because the stupid ones will have culled themselves out of the gene pool.

They handed out the 2006 Webby Awards the other night. One of the rules is that your acceptance speech must be 5 words (or less?) in length.

Here are some of the winners and their speeches:

"Discover digital objects and handles."
-- Dr. Robert Kahn, who received a special lifetime achievement award for co-developing the TCP/IP computer networking protocol that is the basis of the entire Internet.

"Jewish American Princesses ... Smokin'.'"
-- JDate.com is a dating service that caters to Jewish singles looking for kosher love. The site, designed by Sparks Network, won the Webby award for best social-networking site.

"Sports? Pornography? Sports? Pornography? Sports!"
-- ESPN.com won the Webby Awards for best sports site under the entertainment category. The awards show also featured several members of the cast of Avenue Q, a Broadway show consisting of puppets, who performed a scene about how the Internet's main function is really to host pornography.

"Everything you think is true."
-- Prince was awarded a lifetime-achievement award for his Web site NPGMusicslub.com, on which he has released seven full-length albums that are not available anywhere else.

"Two crackers, fighting racism, yo,"
-- RememberSegregation.org is a site constructed to recreate the era of racial segregation. Visitors first encounter a screen with two different areas to click on: one for "White Visitors" and the other for "Colored Visitors." Viewers then get to the site's main page, which features information on the history of segregation and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have a big ... pencil."
-- Big Ideas Come From Big Pencils.

"Darlings, make blogs, not war."
-- Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post.

"More than just bare breasts."
-- Genographic Project, National Geographic.

"Liberals have mojo ... we win!"
-- Mother Jones. After this win was announced, host Rob Corddry asked the crowd if there were any conservatives in the audience at all. One person applauded.

"Make UNICEF obsolete ... help kids."
-- State of the World's Children 2006, UNICEF

You can view a list of all the Webby Award winners here (complete with links to the winning web sites).

Net Neutrality is up for a vote in the Senate on June 22. That is the date that Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, are seeking to add their measure, S. 2917, to broad telecom legislation to be considered by the Commerce panel.

What is Net Neutrality?

From the comments at Firedoglake:

Imagine you are craving a delicious In 'N' Out burger. So you get on the road and drive to the local In 'N' Out, only to find that the road is blocked off with a detour to McDonald's. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like McDonald's. The people who maintain the road made a deal with McDonald's and now that’s all you can have.

That's how opponents of Net Neutrality want the Internet to function. They want large corporations to decide what websites you can visit. You don't get to decide for yourself.

Call or write your Senators today and urge them to support Net Neutrality and S. 2917. It's easy:

1. Visit this site
2. Look up your Senator's phone number, fax, and/or email address.
3. Contact them today, urging them to support Net Neutrality and S. 2917.

Please do this right now, before you get distracted by the next email, phone call or other matter.

The vote on S. 2917 is slated for June 22. It is crucial that your voice be heard before it is too late and the news cycle moves on to Britney Spears' new magazine.

P.S. You can also send a hard copy of your letter by visiting this site called It's Our Net. Do it now. It easy. And if you don't, you won't have another chance.

...unless you've been to Mardi Gras.

A gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth.

Here's a textbook example of a gaffe that cost a guy his job:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office on Thursday accepted the resignation of an aide who had told a reporter that Maliki was considering a limited amnesty that would likely include guerrillas who had attacked U.S. troops, the aide said.

In other news, Republicans come out for amnesty for terrorists who murder US soldiers.

Meanwhile, Democrats try to stop Republican "amnesty for terrorists" program.

Call or write your Senators today and urge them to back the Democratic resolution. It's easy:

1. Visit this site
2. Look up your Senator's phone number, fax, and/or email address.
3. Contact them today, urging them to reject Iraq's call for amnesty to persons who have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Urge them to demand that President Bush immediately notify the government of Iraq that the United States government opposes granting amnesty in the strongest possible terms. Urge them to support Sen. Menendez' and Sen. Nelson's "sense of the Senate" resolution on this matter.

Please do this right now, before you get distracted by the next email, phone call or other matter. The debate is happening right now in Congress and it is crucial that your voice be heard before it is too late and the news cycle moves on to the latest missing white girl in Georgia.

The other day, White House spokesperson Tony Snow responded to reporters' questions about reaching the recent milestone of 2500 US military killed in Iraq by saying this: "It's a number. And every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks, people want something."

Well, yeah, people do want something. They want to know if all of this has been worth it. And the answer, increasingly, seems to be no, it wasn't worth it.

Here are the names of those 2500 servicemen who died in Iraq.

A new study suggests that people may think that the happiest days of their lives are when they're young, but that belief doesn't jibe with reality.

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry has the recap:

The president was here for five hours. The first fifteen minutes were spent with the new prime minister, then a quick power nap to sleep off jet lag. That took two hours. Quick chat with the troops, judged a local hummus cook-off and then... With an international flight, you kinda want to get to the airport two hours ahead. You got the check-in, security, duty free shopping. (He picked up a bottle of perfume for Laura---Ahmed Chalabi's Desperation. It's an intoxicating blend of Sunni and Shiite aroma. Smells awful.)

Just his being there for five hours makes a statement. It told the Iraqi people: "I'm with you. I stand behind you. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm getting the fuck out of here."

Or as Jon Stewart put it:

He went to Iraq and spent five hours in the Green Zone. That's like going to the Olive Garden and saying you visited Italy.

BTW, I've added a new link on the blogroll: "Late Night Political Humor." It's updated daily.

On Wednesday, Bush again rejected calls for a timetable or benchmarks for success that would allow troops to come home. More and more Americans are convinced that this will be an endless war and an endless occupation.

The death of Zarqawi and the formation of (another) Iraqi government should have been the perfect moment for the administration to declare victory and begin winding down the war. Instead, we got vague assurances and equivication about the eventual outcome.

This makes perfect sense from Bush's point of view -- after all, why would the administration want to give back the absolute power it has seized in the name of fighting this war in the first place?

In the meantime, another grim milestone is passed: 2,500 US military killed.

OTOH, this is the perfect moment for the Democrats to offer a choice. They can pledge that the war will not be endless, the occupation will not be endless. It will end. The Democrats can pledge to do what needs to be done to end the war.

In acknowledging that, it will already have offered a clear choice versus the Republicans.

As for a specific plan, timing and benchmarks -- that is certainly debatable and should be open for discussion. Certainly that would be a meaningful discussion, unlike the useless debate that is occuring in the rubber stamp Republican Congress today.

In summary, the choice should be clear: one party will do what needs to be done to end the war, and the other will not.

by Mark Adams

. . . Dean is shaking wrapped boxes looking for an apology for Rove. He gets no pony either.

Big picture folks. What's it say about the state of our government when there are no consequences for powerful public officials, right or left, who can destroy the lives of opponents who inconveniently point a spotlight on their mistakes, and lie about it.

There was an apology in the Whitewater case, but it came from the guy who lied, not the guy who got caught lying but didn't get convicted. Herr Rove doesn't seem the least bit contrite, nor for that matter does the indicted Libby.

The other thing that's different is the nature of the witch-hunt. Whitewater was a molehill made into a mountain. In the Plame case, it's indisputable that something happened that shouldn't have, a government secret was exposed that we should never have learned.

You guys have a lot to be proud of. Yep, you take the high road and can gloat for winning this round of Tit-For-Tat. Why don't you run on that slogan: "Only one of our top White House aides has been indicted!"

Oops, sorry. Make that two. I almost forgot about David Savafian, the WH procurement officer caught up in the Abramoff case. You gonna cry "Victory!" if the jury let's him off? Put that one on hold for a minute since the jury in the corruption case might be corrupted.

Abramoff is looking at a minimum 5yrs, 10 months for his guilty plea in that deal, and another 9.5 in his other case.

How about making it three indicted top White House officials? Claude Allen's trial is set for the end of the month. Remember him, one of the guys you were so pissed at the Senate for denying an up or down vote as an appellate judge? The guy who was Rove's #2 as domestic policy advisor? The guy who's accused of being a klepto?

And let's not leave out the "Kenny Boy" at Enron to whom Bush owes so very much. Or the rest of the Texas mafia that was headed by the indicted Tom DeLay, the unindicted co-conspirator Ed Buckman, who used to run things for both DeLay and Abramoff, and Buckman's two indicted subordinates, Jim Ellis and John Colyandro. Not to mention DeLay/Abramoff aide Tony Rudy who's looking for a sentence reduction by cooperating after his guilty plea. He'll still be doing a minimum of two years.

Did you hear about James Tobin's vindication conviction? Good thing that this New England Regional Director for the GOP would rather go to prison for the NH phone-jamming case he was convicted of than explain how he was coordinating things with the White House. Maybe the pending civil suit will answer the question of why Ed Gillespie decided to use RNC funds to bankroll his defense or why Ken Mehlman decided to reward his illegal behavior by making him chair of the NE Bush/Cheney reelection campaign until the muck hit the fan.

Seems the vast left-wing witch-hunt conspiracy involves a huge number of independent prosecutors. New England, Texas, in the west they've already put Duke Cunningham in jail and are now looking at who was servicing whom at the Watergate/hookergate scandal. In the mid-west they're moving in for the kill against Bob Ney who's been named as an unindicted co-conspirator for taking bribes in Abramoff and Rudy's plea deals and in Michael Scanion's (Abramoff's partner) conspiracy to defraud the US plea (who's looking at 5 yrs minimum and $20 Million in fines and restitution). Neil Volz, Ney's former Chief of Staff, also named his old boss in his plea deal.

Yes, yes. William Jefferson, a Democrat, looks like he was caught red handed taking bribes. Sometimes when you open up your Fitzmas presents, you get the occasional pair of socks and underwear. And even more often, you don't get that exorbitant, over-the-top gift you asked for, like a pony. But you have to admit, there's a lot under this tree to keep us kids busy.

If you keep your eye on TPMMuckracker.com and The Grand Ole Docket, you can watch the pile of gift wrapped criminals grow. So don't get too smug.

Well, you know, he's a really busy guy but he had an opening in his schedule.

Rove is off the hook, Zarqawi is dead, Busby lost in California, Bush's polls are on the uptick -- these are all part of the instant conventional wisdom that says it's been a bad week or two for the Democrats.

Baloney.

The same people are still in charge who meant to destroy the career of Valerie Plame. The same people are still in charge who lied us into a war that has cost over 20 thousand American casualties and $300 billion. The same people are in charge that built a criminal enterprise that ran out of the House Majority Leader's office. And Bush's polls? His approval rating has been below 40% forever.

Democrats would do well to keep their eye on the big picture:

End the war in Iraq: It's over. Our work there is finished. Fact is, we killed Zarqawi from the the air. We could have done the same thing without any boots on ground. With Zarqawi out of the picture, the Iraqi security forces, the ministry of defense, the entire government is as ready as it's ever going to be to take over. Let them have it.

Ending the war will also allow us to end the President's unconstitutional seizure of "war powers." And if the rubber-stamp Republicans cannot exercise its oversight authority, the Democrats will.

Ending the war will also reduce the need for us to borrow endlessly from foreign governments. Under the Bush administration we have borrowed $1 trillion in foreign debt -- an amount equal to what was borrowed under all previous presidential administrations. Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend. It has got to stop.

Getting our finances straightened around will allow us to plan for the day we can be energy independent -- cutting our need for foreign oil. An Apollo-style program will promote jobs, address the problem of global warming and increase our national security.

These are just some of the things Democrats should be standing up for.

You've also got raising the minimum wage, rescinding tax breaks for oil companies included in the 2005 energy legislation, revising the Medicare prescription drug bill to allow the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices, cutting student loan rates and passing the remaining recommendations for improving national security by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

If I were a Democrat running for Congress, I'd use a simple formula:

Bush = bad.
Republican candidate = Bush.
Republican candidate = bad.

I'd go on the attack and I'd keep attacking without a let up. I'd attack Bush's dismal record in office; I'd tie Bush around my opponent's neck. Then I'd drop them both into the ocean and watch them sink to the bottom.

Attack, attack, attack. Never ease up. Never, never, never. Never ease up.

by Mark Adams

Two interesting polls.

Edwards is ahead of Hillary among Iowa Caucus goers.

al-Zarqawi's extra-jucicial termination did nothing for Bush's approval numbers.

I'm Oh for Three in punditry prognostication this week, and it's only Tuesday. But at least these two factoids are welcome news.

I really didn't need a pony anyway. And with this kind of record for political predictions, I'm sure I can get a job at t r u t h o u t now.

by Mark Adams

We took our two youngest girls to the bookstores today.  They'd both done outstanding this year in school and been very helpful at home since school let out.  Some kids get rewarded with toys, games and outings.  Mine chose the bookstores to cash in their gift certificates, one each from Barns and Nobels and another from Borders.

And of course, we about tripled their allotment.  They had a ball and I shouldn't hear anymore "I'm bored" and "When's dad going to finish the landscaping and put up the pool?" Not, at least, for a few days.

A few things struck me as I wandered among the stacks.  The first, naturally, was the sight of accused plagiarist Ann Coulter's smug sneer as soon as you enter Borders.  I swear I heard her book whisper, "Go ahead, buy me. Ya pussy."

I physically stopped, and swallowed down the bile inching up my throat.  But we were here for the children.  (It's always for the children.  Just ask Brangelina.)  Needless to say, I was able to avoid the temptation to plunk down my MasterCard for a copy -- even with the 30% off sticker on the cover.

The reaction to the Andrew Dice Clay of political discourse from the right is either deafening silence from elected GOP officials, rousing defense from wingnuttia radio talkers, GOP strategists, and Vice Presidential advisors, or dismissal, from Blogistgan, as someone not to be taken serious, indeed a comic.

Funny thing about humor . . . usually humorous books by funny people are in the, er ... humor section.  I saw a bunch of Al Franken books there: Truth, Lies.  Michael Moore's Stupid White Men was in that category too, as were books calling Franken a liar and Moore a fat white guy.  There they sat along with Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Dave Barry and Robert Klein.

I did pick up one of those thick bathroom readers filled with useless trivia.  I'm sure if I put Coulter in the john, one day when I was out of Charmin . . .

Seriously, the Ann Coulter is no comic, she's a joke.

I didn't see any Ann Coulter books in the humor section, although her last book was in the bargain bin along with Mary Cheney's newly released rant on the trials and tribulations of being an angry gay daughter of one of the angry leaders of the anti-gay party.

Now that is funny.  Mary Cheney got a million bucks and hasn't sold 6,000 books yet.

Even at full price, they need to sell another 34,000 copies just to break even.  Assuming her sales to date were all full price (they aren't since Amazon already cut the price by ten bucks) at the current sales rate of 574 books per week (a miserable figure which will only diminish) and at the $8.99 bargain price I saw at Barns and Nobels, they will take over three years just to pay her off, not including the actual printing cost.  It'll never happen.

One thing is for certain with Ann Coulter.  She knows how to promote her twisted world-view and undoubtedly has already surpassed Cheney's sales.  Funny sells, even whacked out, not really "ha ha" funny but twisted "Would it kill you . . . to do us all a favor and kill yourself" funny, sells better than angry rants about daddy always wanting a boy.

by Mark Adams

UPDATED...

The latest from Leopold and Co. on the Karl Rove non-indictment via Kevin Drum . . . Maybe the indictment was sealed, since about that time a "Sealed vs. Sealed" indictment was issued from the same grand jury investigating the Plame affair for Fitzgerald.

Truthout's Marc Ash [a dumb way to spell Mark, so I have my doubts. . . ;-) ] reports what they know for a fact -- the interesting timing of the mysterious indictment -- and what they believe.

Naturally, the tinfoil hat in my closet calls to me as I quote the speculation:

We believe that federal criminal indictment "06 cr 128" (Sealed vs. Sealed) is directly related to the Fitzgerald/Plame investigation. That's based on a single credible source and the information discussed above. We believe that Karl Rove is cooperating with federal investigators, and for that reason Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is not willing to comment on his status. That is based, again, on a single credible source, and background information provided by experts in federal criminal law. We believe that the indictment was returned and filed "on May 10 2006." Same single credible source, and details from the filing records. We believe that if any of the key facts that we have reported were materially false or inaccurate some statement to that effect would be forthcoming from Fitzgerald's staff. That is based on the same single credible source.

Heh, Marc (if that really is his name) wants us to keep focused on the important things, the war, election rigging.

Baloney. Give me a good excuse to break out my X-files decoder ring. Blogs are supposed to be entertaining, right?

MEANWHILE: CNN reports that I really need to let this go. You now have permission to pile on, I deserve it.

NY Times link on the update. I'm going to go sulk now.

From an interview in Salon:

Q: A substantial majority of the American people think the war was a mistake, disapprove of the way the president is handling it and want some or all of the troops to be withdrawn now. Why haven't the Democrats in Washington been able to take that big fat pitch over the middle of the plate and do something more with it?

A: I think when you're in a baseball game and somebody throws you four balls, there's no reason to take a lot of swings.

Tim Grieve's interview with Harry Reid is a must-read.

1. Always shop the periphery. Don't go into the center aisles.

2. If you do go into the center aisles, don't buy anything with more than five ingredients.

3. If you can't pronounce the ingredients on the package label, don't buy it.

4. Don't buy anything with a cartoon on it.

5. If you don't want your kids eating junk food, don't have it in the home.

But wait...

Garrison Keillor:

You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank. They might be lousy tippers, act snooty, talk through their noses, wear spats and splash mud on you as they race their Pierce-Arrows through the village, but you knew they could do the math.

To see them produce a ninny and then follow him loyally into the swamp for five years is disconcerting, like seeing the Rolling Stones take up lite jazz.

So here we are at an uneasy point in our history, mired in a costly war and getting nowhere, a supine Congress granting absolute power to a president who seems to get smaller and dimmer, and the best the Republicans can offer is San Franciscophobia? This is beyond pitiful. This is violently stupid.

It is painful to look at your father and realize the old man should not be allowed to manage his own money anymore. This is the discovery the country has made about the party in power. They are inept. The checkbook needs to be taken away. They will rant, they will screech, they will wave their canes at you and call you all sorts of names, but you have to do what you have to do.

On a related note, Miss Julie and I saw Prairie Home Companion over the weekend; I liked it more than she did.

Full disclosure: she is a faithful fan of the radio show, going out of her way to listen every weekend; I also listen and enjoy everything except the Lutheran choirs and the Norwegian bell-ringers (she doesn't care for them either). Furthermore, she thought a recent PBS special broadcast of the show had everything in it that the movie did, without the literary framing that GK put into the screenplay. She is also, I think it safe to say, not a Robert Altman fan, which I am.

I enjoyed seeing the radio show cast. I also enjoyed the performances of Woody Harreleson and John Reilly as Dusty and Lefty; I also enjoyed Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. Kevin Kline was fun as Guy Noir.

My favorite sequence was the very beginning when GK and the others are chattering on about the old days of radio, pulling on their pants one leg at a time in the dressing room, then being gently chased and nagged upstairs to appear onstage. Verrrrrry Altman-esque. In the middle of their conversation, the curtain goes up and GK, not blinking an eye, segues effortlessly into the familiar "Hear that old piano..." Very sweet.

This is one of the more bizarre reports I've heard in quite a while:

The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says.

The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

Lawyers said the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.

You know, I'm trying really hard to give Rear Admiral Harris the benefit of the doubt here.

But the best historical precedent I can come up with doesn't reflect well on the current situation.

Those of you who are of a certain age will remember this story. I was 10 years old and it was pretty shocking. I've never forgotten it:

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon, Vietnam.

Eyewitness accounts state that Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the intersection by car, Thich Quang Duc got out of the car, assumed the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over himself. He ignited the gasoline by lighting a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes. David Halberstam, a reporter for the New York Times covering the war in Vietnam, gave the following account:

"I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."

Thich Quang Duc had prepared himself for his self-immolation through several weeks of meditation and had explained his motivation in letters to members of his Buddhist community as well as to the government of South Vietnam in the weeks prior to his self-immolation. In these letters he described his desire to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. Prior to the self-immolation, the South Vietnamese Buddhists had made the following requests to the Diem regime, asking it to:

1. Lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag;

2. Grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism;

3. Stop detaining Buddhists;

4. Give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion; and

5. Pay fair compensations to the victim’s families and punish those responsible for their deaths.

When these requests were not addressed by the Deim regime, Thich Quang Duc carried out his self-immolation.

Following his death, Thich Quang Duc was cremated and legend has it that his heart would not burn. As a result, his heart is considered Holy and is in the custody of the Reserve Bank of Vietnam.

As I said, I'm trying to give Rear Admiral Harris the benefit of the doubt -- maybe the suicides really were a political act. But if so, things are far worse than we thought (if that's even remotely possible) and, if history is any guide, there doesn't seem to be any hope for a good outcome from the USA's perspective.

The Pixar cartoon's per-screen gross beats An Inconvenient Truth over the weekend.

Great overview of the ACLU challenge that begins on Monday in Detroit.

Something just dawned on me.

You know how I always say don't watch what they say, watch what they do? There's another thing.

Watch who they are -- because character counts.

MSNBC from April 2004:

Three times the the Pentagon drew up an attack plan [to Zarqawi], and three times, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

Yeah, I can hear the loyalists: don't look back, don't play the blame game, look to the future.

That's valid. But you know what? Character counts too. And if this is the kind of character Bush has...

People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of pre-emption against terrorists.

...then, no matter what Bush says, we can expect him to do more of the same in the future.

Because character counts.

P.S. I'm telling you: if I'm a Democratic candidate for Congress, the formula is simple. Bush = bad, Republican candidate = Bush, Republican candidate = bad.

P.P.S. More about Bush's refusal to pull the trigger on Zarqawi.

Not my cat, but I wish she was:

"Now, politics demands compromise...and even the most partisan among us have to understand that. But we must never forget that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are properly employed only in the service of higher principles.

"It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. For the true statesmen ... are not defined by what they compromise, but by what they don't."

---Tom DeLay, in his farewell speech to the House Republicans, June 2006

You could follow the Hillbilly Housewife's plan or you could eat Monkey Chow.

Yes, you heard me...Monkey Chow.

I put this up on YouTube.com a couple of months ago and, inexplicably, it's been viewed over 1,000 times since then.

Dahlia Lithwick:

Why is it that whenever conservatives behave stupidly, they blame it on Justice Kennedy? Liberals are equally capable of the stupidity. But they don't go around blaming Antonin Scalia for it.

Every picture tells a story, eh?

Sidney Blumenthal has the story, without mentioning any names.

P.S. Last week, Peter Beinart suggested in an interview that Bush 43 should fire Rumsfeld and bring in Brent Scowcroft. I wonder if he was tapped into the same story as Blumenthal.

If you are reading this, you probably have heard something about pundit Ann Coulter's recent comments addressing the families who lost loved ones on 9/11.

Up to now, I haven't written about her comments. Not because I don't know where to start. I'm afraid that once I got started I I simply wouldn't know where to stop.

So I'll just say that Keith Olbermann speaks for me.

On the other hand, what I can't fathom are the comments from our friend Rosemary Esmay:

I saw her defend herself and I think that she made some really good points....Lots of people lost [loved ones] on 9/11 but these 4 women are acting as political operatives and using their 9/11 widowhood as a shield from debate/response.

First of all, I can't think of a single thing that Coulter said that would qualify as a "really good point."

As for these women using their pain as "a shield against debate/response," I haven't seen or heard that -- have you, Rose? If so, let's have it. As far as I know, no one (not even Coulter) has been prevented from saying whatever they want about these women.

You know what I think? I think that for years the exact opposite has been ocurring right under your nose, Rosemary.The Bush administration and its loyalists have used 9/11 as a shield against any criticism whatsoever of their policies and performance in office. Anyone who dares to criticise Bush has been labeled a terrorist sympathizer and a traitor, a coward, or worse -- now they get accused of (get this!) enjoying the sight of their husbands being burned to death. Is that one of the good points you think Ann Coulter made?

P.S. Rose: you call yourself the Queen of All Evil, but I think Ann Coulter just ate your lunch. And you didn't even put up a fight.

For those of you who would like to read the response from the women that Coulter attacked...

Good riddance. And kudos to the US and Iraq militaries.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr.:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition Forces killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house."

The insurgents should be surrendering any time now. The war is all but over. We'll wrap this up and bring the troops home. There'll be parades and the people of Iraq will be throwing flowers and candy. Right?

This is just crazy:

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, the new concerns center around rules Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell has set for the people who register Ohioans to vote.

At a hearing Monday, lawyers for the Ohio Democratic Party, Common Cause and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now argued that training documents prepared by Blackwell's staff are so vague that people trying to register new voters may believe that they'll be subject to arrest on felony charges if they make even inadvertent errors in the process.

You mean to tell me that the candidate for governor makes the rules for who votes and who doesn't?

Why, Mark Adams, haven't the residents of Ohio stormed the castle and burned it to the ground?

The Senate rejected the Federal Marriage Amendment today (rejecting cloture and not allowing an up or down vote).

But before it was over, freshman Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said this:

I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one. I think this debate is very healthy, and it's winning a lot of hearts and minds. I think we're going to show real progress.

What a numbskull.

36% vs. 33% in last poll. The improvement is mostly from Republicans who don't hate him so much now.

In the end, Democrat Busby got the same 45% she got in the primary and Republican Billbray got 50%. And this was in a district that the Democrats should have won. Jay Cost and Kos have been warning Democrats about complacency for months and yesterday, sure enough, turnout was light and Busby lost.

[Note: Particularly disappointing to me were the robo-calls from Gore and Kerry into the district. IIRC, both of these candidates pulled only 45% in the district in 2000 and 2004 and, voila, after the smoke cleared, Busby got 45%).

Look -- this always was a Republican district (and may always be one). But if Democrats are going to win back the House, wouldn't you think this would be one of the districts they'd take away from the Republicans? C'mon -- the Republican incumbent is convicted of a felony and sentenced to jail and the other Republicans are fighting amongst themselves.

But it was not to be.

Some have said this is a "moral victory" because the Republicans were forced to spend nearly $5 million to defend the seat. Others say Busby stumbled badly at the end. Whatever it is, this morning, a loss is still a loss.

What are the Democrats to do? One thing for sure, they have to get more of their people to the polls. If people really want change they have to vote for it in overwhelming numbers, not the pallid response we saw yesterday. Like I keep saying, it doesn't matter what people say -- it's what they do that makes the difference.

UPDATE: Hesiod says it better than I:

To Rham Emmanuel and Chuck Schumer: If you think the Democratic party will coast into majorities this November by just sitting back and hoping the GOP implodes, you are in for a rude awakening.

The message you should derive from CA-50 is that you better do something to get the Democratic base excited and enthusiastic, or you are going to lose yet again...A dead buffalo could run the Democratic Congressional campaigns this year and pick up SOME seats!...The People WANT to vote for the Democrats. They just don't trust you yet. So long as that is the case, the GOP will be able to play on people's fears and doubts to squeak out narrow victories.

And I'm not talkng about national security here. I'm talking about being a sober, grownup, competent, level-headed party that actually listens to the people, and cares about what they think.

Matt Stoller:

The lesson from last night should be clear. Hiding from progressives and the left will lead to Democratic losses in 2006. Running as a progressive will lead to victory. Running on 'issues' and 'competence' instead of character will lead to Democratic losses. Talking about how the 'American people' care about gas prices and not gay marriage is insulting and loser politics. Running on bullet points is wrong. Running on character is right.

Georgia10:

There isn't some magical formula here. The more competitive the district (and yes, Busby did make the 50th competitive), the more critical it is for Democrats to define themselves as Democrats. Because promises of clean government will come from both sides. Promises to balance the budget will come from both sides. Promises to "set American back on track" will come from both sides.

Iraq. Gay marriage. Immigration. Iran. Corruption. Hiding in the grey shadows of these issues will not win us a Democratic majority.

Jon Stewart debates Bill Bennett on gay marriage.

9/11 was an election day. Today is an election day. Today is 6/6/06.

Has Tony Snow lost his marbles?

Q There is some criticism that the President's remarks today are merely intended to energize conservative supporters since there is little likelihood this is going to pass in the Senate. What's your response to that?

MR. SNOW: ...The President is making his views known. Whether it passes or not, as you know, Terry, there have been a number of cases where civil rights matters have arisen on a number of occasions and they've been brought up for repeated consideration by the United States Senate and other legislative bodies...

By now, of course, you've heard the blind quote about Bush:

Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers on the president's moral radar. "I think it was purely political. I don't think he gives a s--t about it. He never talks about this stuff," said the friend, who requested anonymity to discuss his private conversations with Bush.

That's pretty much the best you can say about Bush at this point: he doesn't give a shit.

The New Hampshire Democratic party held its largest convention in 30 years this past weekend and the big stars were Sen. Russ Feingold and former Gov. Mark Warner.

UPDATE: I'm already noticing that the "not ready for Feingold" quote from the Salon article has raised some hackles. Man, are people touchy or what? Lighten up people -- it is what it is.

...in an Iraqi court.

John Dickerson and Dahlia Lithwick debate it on the merits.

The Family Policy Network, Concerned Women for America and the Traditional Values Coalition are basically saying "too little, too late."

On a related topic: it's a truism in politics that even though an incumbent may seem like a crackpot, that's nothing compared to his constituency. That said, there is no doubt that many members of the House and Senate who vote for the FMA are doing so to rouse the base and demonstrate their street cred with voters in their districts/states.

For a Democratic party that wants to run a 50-state campaign, what would you say to people like this? HINT: "Wake up and smell the coffee" isn't going to cut it.

...despite only showing in 77 theaters.

The per screen revenue was a meaty, beaty, big and bouncy $17 thousand.

(HT to Crooks & Liars)

by Mark Adams

I know Jonah Goldberg is a GOP tool.  Not too sure about Jeffrey.  A quick look at his stuff via Google leads me to believe he's an honest broker, but lazy.

OK, I've rested and have 1.5 cups of coffee in me, took another look and realized where I turned sour on the New Yorker article Ara brought to our attention.  It wasn't Jeff Goldberg's assessment of Howard Dean, which I thought was fair, or the description of the dynamics of the personalities involved in the past and current Democratic Party campaign efforts that turned me off.  He even gave Bill a pass for not showing up at a New Mexico Democratic Party event without any insinuation that there was an intended slight against Dean.  B.R. has that integrity and straight talking thing going for him.

It was his math.

He offers up an uncritical factoid that there are more conservtives than liberals in this country.  I may be wrong, but I've never really accepted this bit of conventional wisdom.

Exit polls consistently show that twenty-one per cent of Americans self-identify as liberal and about thirty-four per cent as conservative,

He takes that "self-identified" liberal/conservative thing as gospel.  I don't.  I've long believed that the word "liberal" has been so demonized by the punditocracy that people who agree with liberal positions right down the line, point for point, will not admit to being liberal when asked the question in a vacuum.

It's almost a game for conservatives to define and redefine "liberals" as they prop up straw-man after straw-man, and then shoot them down like a lawyer in Cheney's duck blind.

Everyone wants to be one of the cool kids.  Call me elitist or snobbish, but when I see pot smoking union members call themselves "conservative", I suspect someone, probably that "liberal media," has brainwashed them.

I smell a rat in those figures, and that's where Goldberg starts his analysis.

John Kerry won 54 per cent of the moderates and still lost by 3.5 points because he won a much smaller share of conservatives.

Kerry lost because Blackwell stole Ohio for Bush.  What is dismissed as conspiracy theory now, will be conventional wisdom when we look back at Bush's legacy.  A swing of 60,000 Ohio votes wins the White House for Kerry.  That's less than the miscounts in Bush's favor, that's less than the purges, that's less than the 1 in 4 newly registered Democrats who were unable to vote and/or whose votes weren't counted.

When the numbers were rigged I'm not to impressed by any conclusions drawn from the numbers.  It's not enough for Goldberg that Democrats to go after the moderate center, he wants the conservative vote too?  Why even try to represent liberals under this analysis?

I came across this Columbia Journalism Review blogpost in my search for more writings by Jeff Goldberg.  It looks at a another bit of "conventional wisdom" just thrown out by Goldberg that left a bad taste in my mouth.  I had the same thought when I read the passage on the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, but CJR says is much better than me:

Goldberg wrote that while "Democrats have a set of policy prescriptions that they hope to enact if they win majorities in Congress ... they are only muddling toward a Gingrich-style Contract With America, which, in its drama and clarity, gave 1994 voters an understanding of national Republican priorities."

If we were handing out awards for outstanding work in upholding Beltway myths, Goldberg would get a star and a smiley face. But sadly, celebrating mythmaking isn't why we're in business.

The truth about the fabled Contract With America is much different than Goldberg's portrayal; in fact, he is propping up a thoroughly discredited bit of revisionist history. Rather than being the catalyst for the Republican's 1994 victory, as many reporters have since portrayed it, the Contract with America actually made its debut only six weeks before the 1994 election, which makes its effect on the outcome a debatable proposition.

I was thinking that "muddling towards a . . . Contract With America" is exactly what Gingrich and Co. were doing at this point on the calendar, and we also have to be careful not to look like we're just copying them.  Goldberg's then sets up a false dilemma that somehow increasing the minimum wage and making college tuition tax-deductible are mutually incompatible.  That's specious at best.

We're different than Republicans, and we need to shout out that fact, actually sing it.  We can't, ever, just try to be GOP-Lite.  The GOP agenda for America is despicable, their methods corrupt, their ability to govern effectively nonexistent, and their motivations are self-serving and misleading.  They should be loudly denounced, not imitated.

Mitch Albom:

It's not how you start but how you finish. And this was how the Pistons finished, missing, gasping, falling off the gangplank, looking up at the snickering pirates as they washed away in the deep, blue waters of their discontent.

Apparently, Josh Marshall hates the Jeffrey Goldberg article that I've been quoting so much from. Closer to home, so does co-blogger and good friend Mark Adams.

So, Mark: I thought the article good enough to read all the way through, quote here more than once and recommend to my friends and family.

But for Josh, not so much. He speaks for many Democrats when he says this:

What struck me most about [Goldberg's] article was how little grasp Goldberg seemed to have of the divisions and cross-cutting alliances that exist in the Democratic party today. Politicians that are darlings of the Democratic blogosphere appear in the piece as its critics and sworn enemies -- in most cases, seemingly, based on their willingness to provide a quote taking down one of the author's straw men.

Democrats arguing amongst themselves? There's a newsflash! In short, I wasn't bothered by this tone in the article.

Here's the thing: I know that Howard Dean is right -- Democrats have to be a national party. Democrats have to compete everywhere. Like Mark Warner says in the article: Democrats can't just try to perfect the "triple bank shot" approach of focusing on the Northeast and the West Coast and hoping for a win in Florida or Ohio. Democrats have to compete everywhere -- Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, and the majority of the Mississippi River states.

[Note: How on earth can you do that? Well, there is a way (see below).]

There wasn't anything in the article that convinced me otherwise -- in fact, I was left with the impression that folks like Warner, Claire McCaskill, Brian Schweitzer, Brad Carson, Harold Ford and Kathleen Sullivan understood that better than the likes of John Kerry, Chris Dodd, and (perhaps) Hillary Clinton.  

Speaking of Howard Dean, I can see where Marshall might be put off by the profile of Dean in this piece; more importantly, I can see how a non-junkie might get the idea that Dean is still a bull in a china shop. But, you know, on certain days, he is. And/but that's what I like about Dean. So I guess I wasn't surprised or dismayed by his portrayal.

On the other hand, I cringed when I read this quote from Chris Dodd:

Dodd is convinced that the Party is so weary of losing that its voters will make their decisions strategically. "The Party won't nominate someone who starts in a hole. They will make that determination if they perceive a person not to be a winner. They want to win. They really want to win.'

Hey, I want to win too. But, sadly, we picked the "electable" candidate the last time. It didn't work out so well.

The article hints at a different kind of Democratic candidate each time it returns to Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. He may not run; but Schweitzer has gone on the record (elsewhere) as describing the kind of Democrats the party needs:  

Does personal authenticity trump everything else in the minds of voters?

Look, I started this out by saying that Democrats can win if they lead with their hearts. Let people feel you! Don't try to verbalize. Let them feel you first. [...]

If I'm for something, you're gonna know it pretty quick. And if I'm agin it, you're gonna know it too. I'm straight about those things.

Some people can't do that. Maybe they've had a lot of time in politics, or they're lawyers, or it's just their makeup. And they have all these highfalutin pollsters and media people, and they say, "Well, there's this demographic that kind of bleeds into this demographic, and you don't want to lose these over here because you were on this." I don't believe any of it.

I think most people will support you if they know that you'll stand your ground.

Even if they don't stand on the same ground?

That's right.

George Burns used to say that sincerity was the most important thing in show business. Once you learned how to fake that, you'd have it made. Is that what we're talking about?

Just tell 'em what you are. [...]

[D]o you believe in something? Did you have something when you started? If you do, tell 'em what it is. You'll be all right. If you're a kook, you're not going to get elected.

But if you're real, you're normal, you're halfway bright, and you're willing to stand up -- that's the most important thing.

Sadly, recent history shows that (by far) the most important thing is:

• how you look,  followed by
• how you sound and lastly
• what you say.

You can resist that idea; you can even try to reverse it. But even Chris Dodd will tell you: Democrats don't want someone who starts in a hole. And trying to reverse human nature will put you in the hole before you even get started.

"You know who the most successful Democrats have been through history?" [Schweitzer] asks. "Democrats who've led with their hearts, not their heads. Harry Truman, he led with his heart. Jack Kennedy led with his heart. Bill Clinton, well, he led with his heart, but it dropped about 2 feet lower in his anatomy later on.

"We are the folks who represent the families. Talk like you care. Act like you care. When you're talking about issues that touch families, it's OK to make it look like you care. It's OK to have policies that demonstrate that you'll make their lives better -- and talk about it in a way that they understand. Too many Democrats -- the policy's just fine, but they can't talk about it in a way that anybody else understands."

The Moral Yardstick: What it is and why Democrats need to find it

In the absence of everything else, in the absence of a deep commitment to policy wonkery, in the absence of a politics jones, people will judge you with a moral yardstick.

In no particular order, they'll want to know:

• what shaped your life?
• What bad experiences did you endure and what did you learn from them?
• What good fortune have you had and what did you do with it?
• What are you enthusiastic about?
• What do you look forward to doing every morning when you get out of bed and your feet hit the floor?
• Who were your parents? Were they good to you? What was the best part of them that you carry with you today? What about them will you teach your own children? On the other hand, if your parents were bad to you, tell us what you did to rise above that disadvantage.

In short, they'll want to know: what was the crucible in which you were shaped?

They'll want to know these things about you and they will judge you by the answers you give and (most importantly)  they will judge you in how you look and sound when you give the answers.

These are the sorts of things that give people an idea of your moral yardstick. People want to know this because people cannot predict how good a President you'll be. But they can look at where you came from and get an idea of where you'll take them from here on out.

It's simple human nature. You can deny it; you can think it is unimportant; you can try to resist it, or change it. Good luck with that.

That's what I got from the Goldberg article and that's why I, as a Democrat, liked it.

Jeffrey Goldberg:

Sean Wilentz, the Princeton historian, said, "The impulse behind the people who run the [Democratic] party is humanitarian, and humanitarians have a problem in American history -- they're always trying to perfect you, make you better." Wilentz added, "Acceptance of human imperfection would do a lot to help the Democratic Party."

It's been said that Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in '96 because Dole's campaign asked, "Why can't you be more like me?" After all, Dole was a member of the Greatest Generation and he thought perhaps his message was inspirational. On the other hand, Clinton simply asked, "How can I be more like you?"

King Kaufman:

If Detroit does sweep the last three games, it'll be a comeback for the ages, and the signature moment will be Ben Wallace's block of a Shaquille O'Neal dunk attempt Wednesday. O'Neal was rising up for the slam, but Wallace somehow got his hand on the ball and pushed down, sending Shaq sprawling.

Quick: Name the states that border on the Mississippi River.

Answer: Take a look at the map. There are ten states that border on the river: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Now consider this: after the election of 1900, no party has won the White House without winning a majority of those states.

I suppose everyone has a mental image of the people in those states. Or maybe not -- it isn't like they're all the same. Are you kidding? Wisconsin and Arkansas? Minnesota and Mississippi?

Whatever it is, and knowing what you know now, pretend you're the Democratic candidate for the White House. Go ahead -- try to figure out what you're going to say to the residents of those ten states. There's a lot riding on it -- history shows that the candidate who connects with these voters is the one who wins.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that those 10 states should probably be the core of your national campaign strategery. And if not, then talking their talk should be the core of your message strategy.

Food for thought.

Jeffrey Goldberg describes Third Way's views as "similar to those of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped Bill Clinton win the Presidency in 1992, but more sharply focussed on the practical business of electing Democrats."

Well, you could count me in the group that thinks the DLC was OK in its day, but that was then, this is now. In other words, it was effective during a time of Republican ascendancy; but now that we've seen the rotten fruit that the Republican tree bore, Democrats need to take a different approach. It isn't good enough to simply be "another cheeseburger;" Democrats need to offer a clear alternative while being realistic about who we're talking to.

This passage caught my eye:

Third Way has distributed a primer on countering the traditional Republican emphasis on national security. It cautions Democrats to "take fear seriously," and says, "Voters will not respond to approaches that ignore fear, mock it or try to intellectualize it away, like calling Bush a 'fear-monger.' " The voters, the guide says, "need to know that you understand the dangers we face." The primer counsels Democrats to "show comfort with the military," and warns candidates not to "pity or patronize the troops when criticizing the war. Remember that they are serving their country and proud of it." The guide goes on to note, "Progressives have always been surprised that the morale among troops deployed in Iraq is quite high -- they are doing their mission."

As you know, I live in "Red Louisiana" and I work in an industry that has put me in close contact with the military. That said, what they're describing makes sense.

Not only that -- they take a very practical approach, developing talking points on what the Democrats will do if they regain the Congressional majority:

1. Turn up the pressure on the Iraqis
2. Fix the failed Bush military policy.
3. Protect our troops and our taxpayers from war profiteering.

This rings true to me.

Claire McCaskill:

Being a Democrat is about balance. It's about being moderate and truthful and strong. Harry Truman, leaders like that, they were strong enough to take on foreign enemies when they needed to, but they were also strong enough to know when not to fight, when to use other weapons besides military force. That's the message the Democratic Party should be sending. We should let the American people know we want to work with allies, work with the U.N., and that we don't like war, but that we'll defend this country's interests with everything we've got.