In an otherwise well-informed essay, where Bill Kristol juxtaposes George Eliot, who made a thoughtful case for Zionism in her novel, Daniel Deronda(1879), and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week said of the State of Israel, "...this regime is on its way to annihilation...," my mind wandered to a final bloody scene from the film, Lions for Lambs. See it. It resonates with the background of the next misguided U.S. incursion. We are on a collision course to a disastrous "October surprise" that Congress will, once again, be unable to deter.
My goodness how you've grown and changed! I just saw you on MSNBC advocating public policy that is very basically your mother's health-insurance-for-all platform. I disagree with that platform. I hope that your sound bite doesn't get repeated ad nauseum. And I have a few words for you when you publicly advocate for public policy that is harmful, not helpful, to the estimated one-sixth of the population who go without health insurance.
You are a lovely and beautiful young woman. But when you speak "truth" about health care as an ardent supporter of your mother, who is a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, please check your facts, and know what you are up against. The truth is plain and simple.
We all speak it plainly, and we also reveal the truth in that which we dare not say. And, then, there is the situation where we omit the truth because we aren't even thinking of it, or we aren't even aware of it.
I have made choices about who to vote for based on the crummy concept of whether or not a candidate shares my views. In a nutshell, that phrase encompasses values, issues, ideology, practicality, vision and optimism. Blindly, I have bought into a psychological contradiction, rejecting stringent evaluation of issues and the technicalities of proposals & platforms ...because when I vote, I want to feel good.
It is always so hard to find the explicit differences in our candidates, anyway, particularly as we get closer to election time. Messages get massaged, issues get clouded and here I am, at the impartial crossroads of an excellent website that valiantly proposes that we just pull the damn D lever and get Democrats elected. Obviously, we all want that, but it just is not good enough. I need to think about it. Because I want to feel Very, Very Good this time.
Cohen posits McCain as the honorable candidate Democrats most fear. But, there is nothing honorable about McCain and his measured silencing of the Abramoff scandal just as it was about to shed light on Oval Office criminality.
Why, when he was Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, did he sequester 29,000 documents related to Abramoff payoffs? McCain is part and parcel of the Bush protection racket and cover up, and he is not an honorable man at all.
Kristol has never been bothered by any fact that he could refute with utter deceit, and today's op-ed in the Times is just more proof.
Here are the facts: The recent average Coalition Casualty Report shows that mortality is actually on its highest trend since 2003: 2.56 deaths per day, versus the previous high in 2003-2004 of 2.93 per day. Source: http://icasualties.org/...
Kristol dishonorably enlists the military, but out of context, so as to mislead:
"Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began."
...what they [the American Electorate] should be looking for is [snip]...a good negotiator, someone who can bargain effectively with some very tough customers and get the deals we need on energy, currency policy and carbon credits.
Yeah, but powerful, vested interests like Big Oil, simply allow the market to dictate their terms. What the U.S. and China truly need is outside the cerebral box of Krugman's fictional negotiation: Solar power by the boatload would bring a new domestic policy independent of foreign oil, local coal or nuclear power. Big Energy will have no problem selling its gop to its customers, but the GOP will not be getting as much pay-to-play money from vested interests. Tell us another story, Mr.Krugman.
I am not sure why Brooks decided to extol Huckabee as "an evangelical [who] began the Republican Reformation," but he did.
Damned with faint praise? No, I think Brooks's intention is far more sinister. Here we have the results of the Iowa caucuses:
Total Voter Turnout (approximate)
356,000
Percentage of total vote
24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)
Beats the crap out me why Brooks would even mention Huck, except that he's the winner in Iowa, if you call 11% a winner. Not until parsons and ministers rejoin their flocks and stay in Church will we have a Republican reformation, Mr.Brooks. Reestablishment of the Separation of Church & State has only just begun.
Huckabee's poor showing in Iowa is a testament to America's Republican voters; it's a miserable footnote to the failure of the Christian Coalition attempt to hijack religion for political purpose.
I am proud to see that Republicans can repudiate this ex-clergyman. That's the "earthquake" here.
I am an activist, one of those people who come around ringing doorbells or hanging around bus queues asking you to sign a petition and give money for causes & candidates, politicians for whom you only have so much time. And you probably don't have all that much time or any extra money either, so you'll feel better buying a button for just a dollar or two, maybe sign the petition if I show some trustworthiness or something. I have an honest face. I'm earnest. Usually, people will not be afraid to sign up if they agree with the cause.
I read a lot, and I write letters and I make a lot of phone calls. I have the time, and it seems I have a gift, so I use it.
Here's a curious piece of work, just an exchange of a couple of short emails, letters to the New York Times (to publisher at nytimes dot com) on the auspicious occasion of their hiring of Bill Kristol as a featured columnist. I sent this rejoinder to them yesterday. Today, I deleted what I thought was their autoreply, but then I looked at it hours later, before it was autoerased today, January 1st 2008.
Hold your nose, and blow real hard. Some of this really stinks. So, look out below!!!
In an announcement yesterday, Meteor Blades has stepped it up:
MB has joined the ranks of War Tax Protesters!!
This IS Arlo, and enjoy the music from this guy as you...
...see how far down the rabbit hole goes:
(The poll is usually below the fold, at the bottom of the page.)
In 2006, when it needed the Patriot Act renewed, the Bush administration deployed an embarrassingly effective disproportional strategy of terrifying Congress and the American people. One sequence of events played out in the news when nerve gas alarms went off in Congress on February 8th 2006, and on February 10th House-Senate conferees agreed on passage of renewal of the Patriot Act.
The neocon job was too effective, allowing a sneak peek at an awful strategy that may just be deployed for the 2008 campaign season. But in order to know where we're headed, it's important to understand the magnitude of where we've been.
Iraq is a horror show. But to believe that the U.S. is managing an orderly partitioning of the country is delusional. Bookmark this site: Empire Burlesque explains it all with such succinct and well-written ease.
Bush and Cheney have wrought unholy disorder and a hellish nightmare of unparalleled significance to the entire Middle East. The nightmare scenario is playing out into an endgame of more disorder of clashing tribes and Islamic sects to come for years throughout the region. It would be unsafe to leave, and it would be immoral not to do so immediately.
In a remarkable treatise, Chris Floyd offers a compelling snapshot of the hell that Bush has wrought on a nation that never attacked us and the endgame that must ensue for Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Iran...but there will nothing left of Iraq.
I would love to be able to give this speech, but you don't even know my real name, nor will I tell it to you now. There are very few people who could give a speech like this one, in fact, and, alas, I am not one of them. If I said these things I'd be lying, for I have traveled little this past year. But this is what I would like to hear Al Gore say. He could say it all, and it would be the truth:
Good Evening.
I am running for President of our great nation.
I have been running a carefully orchestrated campaign, an unconventional campaign, to be the next President of the United States in 2009. I have been running for the past three-and-a-half years. But I wasn't absolutely certain of that until I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then I had a very short gleeful conversation with my wife, Tipper, who was absolutely delighted, of course, and she asked me if now was the right time.
Tipper has never asked me this question with as much concern as I saw in her eyes. I knew what she was asking me about, and I just said, "Yes, and I know just where to start. I will be fighting harder than I have ever fought for anything in my life, for it is the entire planet Earth in the balance."
"Tipper," I said, "This is a time for a radical change."
Just to get you caught up on some news since you left the U.S. nearly two years ago...
Since President Clinton took office, we have not seen any diminution of our military role in Mesopotamia;
rumors of openly hostile military actions against Iran have spread over the internet, but a media blackout prevents any actual coverage;
Iraq war troop deaths reached 5,400 only last month, but the actual count may be higher since the AP and the NY Times finally shut their doors only last week;
NewsCorporation reports...
/ˈegzaɪl, ˈeksaɪl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[eg-zahyl, ek-sahyl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, ex·iled, exil·ing.
–noun
expulsion from one's native land by authoritative decree.
the fact or state of such expulsion: to live in exile.
a person banished from his or her native land.
prolonged separation from one's country or home, as by force of circumstances: wartime exile.
anyone separated from his or her country or home voluntarily or by force of circumstances.
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In this world of nation-states, one's homeland is right where one happens to be living. What it is to be an American can no longer be explained by the simple phrase, "I was born there."
Obviously he took a good look in the mirror this morning constructing his speech:
On Friday morning, at a Hispanic Heritage Month ceremony at Bolling Air Force Base, Gonzo said his formal goodbyes.
"Over the past two and a half years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible. I've seen things I didn't know man was capable of.
"But I will tell you here and now that these things still leave me hopeful. Because every time I see a glimmer of the evil man can do, I see the defenders of liberty, truth and justice who stand ready to fight it."
Was this not a keen observation of his own immense miusdeeds?
