WHAT KIND OF A PRESIDENT DO WE WANT-- AN INSIDER AND CORPORATE SHILL OR AN INDEPENDENT OUTSIDER READY TO KICK SOME SERIOUS BUTT?

This morning I was watching a talk show on the BBC and the moderator asked for predictions about the biggest story of 2008-- the U.S. elections. Two of the talking heads thought McCain would win, one Clinton and one Obama. When talking about the Democratic nomination, no one mentioned Edwards; it was all Clinton the Insider who would provide a smooth transition from the Bush years and wouldn't change much and the quasi-"revolutionary" Obama. Do they ever have that wrong-- at least the part about Obama. Democrats in Iowa and Democrats starting to pay attention around the country are noticing that there is only one agent of change running this year: John Edwards. You want more of the same? Vote for Clinton, Obama or any of the pathetic pygmies seeking to personify a third George Bush term. You wanna shake things up a little? Edwards is the one. Insiders are scared shitless of him; his game plan will win in Iowa. Meanwhile an Insider hack like Stuart Rothenberg is already running around like a chicken without a head as Edwards surges and looks more and more like the victor in the first contest-- great news for anyone who actually knows the U.S. must end the war in Iraq.

Democrats must decide whether they want a candidate who is angry and confrontational, and who sees those favoring compromise as traitors (Edwards), or a candidate who presents himself as a uniter (Obama), or a candidate who presents herself as someone who understands the ways of Washington and can get things done (Clinton).

While Clinton and Obama both acknowledge the importance of working with various interests, including Capitol Hill Republicans and the business community, to come up with solutions to key problems, Edwards sounds more and more like the neighborhood bully who plans to dictate what is to be done.

The former North Carolina senator is running a classic populist campaign that would have made William Jennings Bryan (or Ralph Nader) proud. Everything is Corporate America’s fault. But he’s also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election.

...But let’s be very clear: Given the North Carolina Democrat’s rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart – even further apart than Bush has torn it.

On Capitol Hill, Edwards’s “us versus them” rhetoric and legislative agenda would almost certainly make an already bitter mood even worse. He would in the blink of an eye unify the GOP and open up divisions in his own party’s ranks. Congressional Republicans would circle the wagons in an effort to stop Edwards’s agenda.

Non-insiders, on the other hand, are starting to see Edwards as the one man who can help America break free of it's shameful Bush past, someone who really will right the wrongs of the past 8 (if not 28 years). Without Ralph Nader 2000 run, George Bush, if remembered at all, would be known as a hapless, sub-mediocre former Texas governor. Today Nader let loose on Clinton for the Bush-lite Insider and representative of a hopelessly corrupt system that she is. He acknowledged that Edwards is the only one fit for the job.

"The issue is corporate power and who controls our political system and it's not who has experience for six years or two years," he said, alluding to an ongoing debate over experience between Clinton and freshman Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"She has experience in the Senate, and what that experience has meant is going soft on cracking down on corporate crime, fraud, and abuse, soft on cutting tens of millions in corporate subsidies," he continued.

...Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, called Edwards a Democratic "glimmer of hope." He has long criticized Democrats as indistinguishable from Republicans, chiding both parties as slaves to corporate financing and interests.

And Nader isn't the only non-hack to slam back at the Rothenbergs, Clintons, Bushes, Romneys and Obamas. While fake populist Mike Hucksterbee wows credulous Republican rubes with his "Look at this negative ad about that horrible pro-abortion Mormon cultist and lying flip flopper I decided not to air," a real populist who speaks a language millions of ordinary Americans understand has endorsed Edwards. Yesterday John Nichols reported in The Nation why John Mellencamp is in Iowa supporting Edwards-- and why that's more important than the bevy of airheads who back Clinton, Obama, Giuliani and Huckabee.

Edwards "has waged a dramatically different campaign than Obama's feel-good effort. Where Obama has run the softest sort of campaign, Edwards is mounting a edgy, muscular effort that owes more to the memory of Paul Wellstone or the sensibilities of Ralph Nader than to the smooth triangulations of Bill Clinton or the not-so-smooth compromises of John Kerry. Edwards has fought his way back into contention with aggressively populist positions, anti-corporate rhetoric and a campaign that eschews glitz for grit. Necessarily, the former senator from North Carolina opts for a different sort of celebrity than the other contenders."

So it is that Mellencamp will come to Iowa Wednesday to close the Edwards campaign off with a "This Is Our Country" rally at the not-exactly-Hollywood Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines. (In case anyone is missing the point here, they will be distributing the tickets from the United Steelworkers Local 310 hall.)

Where Winfrey brought a big name but little in the way of a track record on the issues that are fundamental to the rural and small-town Iowans who will play a disproportional role in Thursday's caucuses, Mellencamp is more than just another celebrity taking a lap around the policy arena.

For a quarter century, the singer has been in the thick of the fight on behalf of the rural families he immortalized in the video for "Rain on the Scarecrow," his epic song about the farm crisis that buffeted Iowa and neighboring states in the 1980s and never really ended.

Mellencamp has not merely sung about withering small towns and farm foreclosures. As a organizer of Farm Aid, he has brought some of the biggest stars in the world to benefit concerts in Iowa and surrounding states, and he has helped to distribute the money raised at those events to organizations across Iowa.

Farm Aid is nonpartisan. It's not endorsing in this race. But Mellencamp is. The singer, who this year will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but whose music remains vital enough to have earned a 2008 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, was lobbied for support by other campaigns, especially Clinton's. But he has a long relationship with Edwards. He has an even longer relationship with the issues that Edwards is talking about. Indeed, his credibility is grounded in the recognition that Mellencamp has repeatedly taken career-risking anti-war, anti-racist and anti-poverty stances that other celebrities of his stature tend to avoid.

What matters, of course, is the fact of that credibility -- and the fact that it is so closely tied to the farm and rural issues that have meaning even in the more urbanized regions of Iowa. That is why, if there is an endorsement that is going to have meaning with the people who drive down country roads to attend caucuses on what looks to be a very cold and unforgiving Thursday night, it is likely to be that of the guy who proudly sings that, "I was born in a small town..."

If you check our Blue America site here at DWT you'll see that we're concentrating our efforts on House and Senate seats again this year. To me the most important races looming, the ones I plan to concentrate on for the next couple of months are Democratic primaries that pit agents of change against insider hacks-- like agent of change Donna Edwards vs hack Al Wynn in Maryland, agent of change John Laesch vs a Blue Dog hack named Foster in Illinois, and agent of change Mark Pera vs hack Dan Lipinski. Those are the races we urge our readers to contribute to this month. But... if any of our readers happen to live in Iowa or New Hampshire, please think carefully about doing the right thing and voting for John Edwards.


UPDATE: THE AGONIST ENDORSEMENT

Very much worth careful consideration for everyone in Iowa tomorrow. Also very worth paying attention to is Jane's on the scene coverage at FDL for the next few days. That's where I'm turning to for the straight story, not to the shallow hacks at CNN or the Washington Post.

AFGHANISTAN-- STILL THERE BETWEEN PAKISTAN AND IRAN... AND AS SCREWED UP AS EVER

When I tell people I spent the better part of a year in Afghanistan they assume I was in the military. I'm a bit old for that-- not to mention temperamentally unfit-- and when I mention it was in 1969 and 1971 when I was there, they write it off to eccentricity. I don't purport to be an Afghanistan expert, but recent history will bear out my claims to know a lot more about the place than Bush, his ill-starred regime or the self-serving mooks and clueless imbeciles whose advice the U.S. government has followed.

When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan after 9/11-- a target Rumsfeld and Cheney felt was unworthy of the mighty U.S. military-- almost everyone thought it was, aside from being just, a good idea-- everyone, that is, except people who know their Afghan history... and even more especially, the people who could factor in their knowledge of Afghan history with their knowledge of the Bush Regime's dearth of leadership abilities and monumentally breathtaking incompetence and arrogance (a bad combination).

"Here the for will not meet us in pitched battle, as other armies we have dueled in the past, save under conditions of their choosing. His word is worthless. He routinely violates truces; he betrays the peace. When we defeat him, he will not accept our dominion. He comes back again and again. He hates us with a passion whose depth is exceeded only by his patience and his capacity for suffering. His boys and old men, even his women, fight us as combatants. They do not do this openly, however, but instead present themselves as innocents, even as victims, seeking our aid. When we show compassion, they strike with stealth."

An American politician? No. An American general. Guess again. A Russian general in the 80s? A British general far earlier? No... Alexander the Great addressing Macedonian troops fighting in Afghanistan more than 300 years before Christ. Well, it's actually author Steven Pressfield's version of Alexander in his brilliant and timely (2006) latest book on the history of the ancient world, The Afghan Campaign.

The kind speaks of will-- our own and the enemy's. The foe, he declares, has no chance of overcoming us in the field. But if he can sap our resolution by his doggedness, his relentlessness; if he can appall us by his acts of barbarity, he can, if not defeat us, then prevent us from defeating him. Our will must master the enemy's. Our resolve must out last his.

It's never gonna happen. The Macedonians couldn't pull it off-- and their leader was brilliant, heroic, charismatic and beloved, as well as mortal-- nor did the Russians or Brits or anyone else who tried, at least not for the long run. Bush's resolve and will? The American people's? Hillary Clinton's? Mullah Omar and his boys aren't going anywhere. How many Americans could point out Afghanistan on a map-- even with my clue in the title... even if their life depended on it?

The following is neither an American nor a Russian; it's Pressfield's Alexander rallying his people again:

The types of operations we are now compelled to wage; methods of pursuit, of capture and interrogation; the treatment of so-called non-combatants; all actions we take in this theater-- these are war too. Are you are warriors who must perform these acts.

Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. Someone should have grilled Bush on what he learned in Yale, instead of speculating on whether he or Al Gore would have been more fun to have a beer with.

"The instrument of counterguerilla warfare is the massacre. Its object is terror, to make oneself an object of such dread that the foe fears to face you ever. This practice has worked for the army of Macedon across all Asia. It does not work here. The Afghan is so proud, so inured to privation, and so in love with liberty that he prefers death to capitulation."

Americans were once that in love with liberty as well-- which is how we kicked the British imperialist dogs out of our original 13 states. Now we're in love with comfort and safety and would exchange liberty for the chimera of security offered by avaricious political manipulators.


UPDATE: SHOCK! WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO REMEMBER AFGHANISTAN

And we're not the only ones who have noticed it isn't going as swimmingly as the Bushites want you to think. In fact A.P. reports that "U.S. military deaths, suicide bombings and opium production hit record highs in 2007. Taliban militants killed more than 925 Afghan police, and large swaths of the country remain outside government control." The A.P. story sounds like it could have been written by a Greek scribe 2300 years ago.

A DWT reader offers an interesting discussion of the contrast between Democrats and Republicans in what they're willing to do to gain and hold power

I was delighted to find this comment added to the comments discussing my recent post about the late Harry Dent, the Nixon-era political operative who more than anyone else masterminded and oversaw the Republican "Southern strategy," and his late-in-life acknowledgment, after years of heated denials, that of course that strategy was based on racial animosity. Our anonymous commenter has such interesting things to say about the power dynamics of Repubs vs. Dems that I didn't way any DWT readers to miss them.--Ken

The Republicans' Southern Stategy has ALWAYS been based on white fear/resentment toward blacks. It is the basic glue of Southern Republicans. I have lived in the South and worked for Republican and Democratic politicians my entire career. Nothing has really changed. It is the unspoken but understood undercurrent of Southern politics which I often refer to as the "they are not with me" rule. They don't have to say it, everyone just knows. Go ask some white male redneck with a pickup and gunrack and he will tell you very clearly why he is a die-hard Republican despite not having health insurance, a job with benefits, a mobile home he can barely afford, etc. How many black faces do you see at NASCAR?

The thing that MIGHT change this year, is that the average voter outside the hard-core South is more threatened by Bush and his henchmen than Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, assorted rappers and carjackers all put together. Quite an accomplishment, really. Good job, Georgie boy.

The funniest thing I saw in this story about Dent, Thurman and the whole sorry bunch was the discussion about Nixon's Supreme Court nominees. Suffice it to say that one of his nominees (who didn't make it) proved to be of the Larry Craig School of Bathroom Etiquette. It was pretty funny watching this unfold, since the R's were scared to death he would be confirmed and then pull a Larry Craig/Mark Foley on them. Didn't happen, since the D's, as usual, did the right thing and stopped it before the sorry mess destroyed a man and his family (not that his family was unaware of all this).

I remember sitting in a meeting listening to the rather unsavory details, thinking that the D's should let it go and let the R's twist in the wind when everything hit the proverbial fan (or men's restroom in this case). The D's fundamental problem boils down to the following. The R's only care about retaining power at all costs and would never let a man's reputation stand in their way. The D's just don't think that way and always throw in the equation some bleeding heart comments about doing the decent and honorable thing. This is why the R's continually kick their butts. It's unfortunate, but that is the reality of the situation. Have the D's learned their lesson yet? We shall see.

The stakes have gotten much higher. Let's hope the D's have finally grown some balls.

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Quote of the day: Is it possible that NYT op-ed chump-in-chief Andrew Rosenthal has the odious Bill Kristol mixed up with the sublime Billy Crystal?

"The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual - and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?"
--NYT Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal to politico.com

Rosenthal, it appears, knows Bill K. from his own days in the NYT's Washington bureau, when they seem to have done an inordinate amount of hobnobbing. Now you always have to worry about people who actually know transparently bogus people like our Bill and don't see through them, and sure enough, by the time Mr. Rosenthal is describing his Bill as "a serious, respected conservative intellectual," you know he's been totally hornswoggled.

It's like those people who claim to have known Chimpy the Prez before he made the big career change to defiling the White House, and tell us what a "nice guy" he is. No, he's not, and in all likelihood the reason theythink so is that whenever theyspoke to him, he mostly nodded in agreement and said things like, "You're so right." And they didn't even notice the blank glazed look in his eyes.

Just for the record, Andy, I can't imagine any rational acquaintance or detached observer describing Billy the K as "serious" OR "respected" OR "intellectual," and I like to think that no serious conservative would accept him into that fraternity either. All the guy is, and I mean all, is the son of a famous father who did a famous, even pioneering political crossover from left to right to become, as he's often referred to, "the godfather of neoconservatism," and has ever since shown himself to be a blithering idiot.

I suppose you could still call Irving Kristol an "intellectual"--just a very stupid and thuggish one. Little Billy has inherited (or acquired--I don't want to assume the primacy of nature or nurture here; the kid was probably doomed either way) the stupidity and thuggishness, with nothing to accompany them but his outsize lack of self-awareness. So no, Andy, we on the left aren't afraid of opposing views. We're just embarrassed for the NYT to see them lending space and credibility to a no-account, vicious pseudo-intellectual hooligan.

Note about the head on this post: I didn't meant to tar Billy Crystal with the suggestion that he's conservative, which as far as I know is far from the truth. But he is certainly worlds more serious, respected, and intellectual than Bill K., which makes him three-for-four on the Rosenthal Scale, where Bill K. finishes with an oh-fer.

#

As Tom Tomorrow completes his review of the year 2007, Chimpy the Prez blithers incomprehensibly and Glenn Beck's head explodes (no harm, no foul)

Has it been only a week that we've been waiting for the thrill-packed conclusion of Tom Tomrrow's annual Year in Review? Well, "Part the Second" is here! [As always, click anywhere on it to enlarge.]


And if you missed "Part the First," you can find it here.

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Correction: Sometimes you pull a date out of your head, and it's a real date, but not the one you were looking for

I've just gotten around to correcting it in my previous post, but for the record, Howie and I have known each other since 1961, not 1965. The date I erroneously pulled out of my head is the year we graduated high school, not the year we started, which is when we met.

HOW TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE INCONVENIENCE OF DEMOCRACY-- THAI STYLE

It looks like the Thai military, the royalist politicians and the rest of the anti-Thakson coalition have figured out how to get around the huge PPP victory Thaksin's allies won at the polls last week. Their Election Commission is disqualifying more and more of the winning PPP members for cheating and vote buying. The minor parties, which the PPP (or the Democrats) need to form a government, say they are waiting to see how many PPP winners get disqualified before deciding which way to jump. So far 6 have been barred from participating in Parliament, shrinking the PPP's seats down to 227.

Yesterday I saw Bush on TV talking about how the terrorists are trying to undermine Pakistan's "democracy." I think if he ever comes to trial some prosecutor needs to ask him to define democracy or ask him to explain how military juntas allied with his government qualify as democracies. Another rigged election this last week: Kenya.

Anyway, according to this morning's Bangkok Post, the head of the Election Commission, Sutthipol Thaweechaikan said three more PPP winners-- Pornchai Srisuthiyothin, Rungroj Thongsri and Prakit Poldej-- are also "banned from political activities for one year and were subject to criminal charges along with their canvassers for making financial promises to those who cast their ballots for them." They were found guilty of having promised incentives to eligible voters in Buri Ram. A new election will be held there January 13 and the 3 will have to pay the costs of the election while not be allowed to be on the ballot.

There is speculation in Bangkok that the Election Commission may be able to disqualify enough PPP winners to throw the election towards a Democratic Party-led coalition, a sure premise for political instability, especially up north where Thaksin is still immensely popular.


MORE NASTINESS THE THAIS MAY HAVE LEARNED FROM BUSHCO

Both the U.S. and hailand rate among the worst countries in the world when it comes to the government spying on its own ciizens.

I'm really sorry I can't actually share any of Richard's lamb curry (or Ronnie's risotto), or the tarte tatin--all made in the bread oven--with you

This is my hosts' border collie Dot, in a photo I found on this computer from when she was a puppy. She's not a puppy anymore, but those eyes have become even more powerful. She knows how to get what she wants.

I just wrote a note to the now "Out of Burma (Myanmar)" Howie, and I've decided there's no reason why I shouldn't bore other people as well with this mundane trivia--on this, the 10th consecutive day I haven't gone to work (with two days yet to go!), a feat I don't believe I've accomplished since, well, the last time I was unemployed. (Even when I was employed, I recall managing it once or twice way back in that old century we used to have. What was it called? The 20th?)

This meagerly precedented retreat was occasioned by my company's use-it-or-lose-it policy with regard to our PTO days. Like many people, I tend not to use those precious days too quickly, for fear of not having them later on, when perhaps I'll need them--and perhaps out of the vain hope that maybe this year I'll go someplace. It never happens, and eventually each year I'm faced with having to use up the remaining days. This year there were so few work days left that I didn't even try to use up my sick days.

(I once foolishly mentioned "using up" my sick days to my supervisor--while I was engaged in working out a plan to use up my vacation days--and got back a withering reply about how sick days aren't something we "use up" but are something we are given in case of need. It served me right for mentioning it. This year I had to give up even attempting to use up my sick days.)

I spent most of the early days of this "vacation" (that is what they call it, isn't it?) watching TV, including at least five or six movies I'd never seen, several of which I remember thinking were pretty good. When I noticed that my present hosts (see below) have the 2008 edition of Leonard Maltin's movie guide (this is not a plug--I have never bought it and don't intend to, but that doesn't stop my from using other people's copies), and decided it would be interesting to look up some of those movies I watched, I was able to come up with just one actual title, plus one other picture whose content I recall vaguely (but not the title). I can't remember anything at all about any of the others.

As noted below, I'm writing this from bed (!) at my friends Richard and Leo's house in upstate New York. I have known them since about 1970, and Howie since 1961, making them my oldest friends in terms of continuous service. Which means that for some 40 years they kept hearing about each other, but hadn't actually met until this year.

Richard and Leo moved upstate a few years ago, to a lovely little converted old farmhouse, which soon showed structural problems that required serious reconstruction, which segued into a massive rebuilding and expansion project that is still ongoing. (Richard found a brilliant contractor, who seems able to build anything, and is a stickler for doing every job right. Naturally they've become great friends. In fact, we're going to Nick and Judy's annual holiday party tonight.) This is the first visit I've paid where the bread oven referred to below--a massive construction project in its own right, involving not just building the immense stone oven, but making sure that the house supports it and that it's all up to building code, which meant among other things installing a new chimney.

I began my e-mail to Howie with a reference to his recent departure from Myanmar:

So they let you out, eh? I imagine they were happy to see you go. [The picture? That's Dot again, at only four weeks, I think.]

I've been up at Richard's since Friday--will stay for New Year's Eve then return home Tuesday. Using up all my remaining vacation days for 2007, I've now had some 9-10 days of relative peace. The effects won't last more than a minute or two into Jan. 2, but gee whiz, it's been nice.

Richard now has a spare laptop working, with wireless Net access throughout the house via satellite, so after a couple of days of wrangling with the usual technical issues--an unfamiliar computer (especially the keyboard), getting connected, working in Windows (but at least in Firefox), having to use MS Word since Windows doesn't seem to have an easy-to-use utility like Notepad--I'm finally getting accustomed to it. In fact, I'm reading and writing now IN BED! At least while I was struggling with all the technical issues, I was getting blog stuff written, and now it's coming easier.

One of Richard's major construction projects--by itself it almost entailed rebuilding the whole of the existing portion of the house--was having a wood-burning bread oven built. It's a massive thing of stone, and it took ages to complete, but he's finally been using it, or rather LEARNING how to use it. He started firing it up when we got here Friday night (it takes almost a day to get up to temperature), then had it ready to use yesterday for a whole bunch of stuff. (It starts up at about 700 degrees and then gradually drops, so you have to plan a sequence of "projects" that take advantage of the gradually lowering heat.) He did a whole bunch of breads and rolls, and then a lamb curry, and a tarte tatin (one of his longtime specialties, but it's actually SUPPOSED to be baked in a wood-burning oven), and then when his friend Ronnie arrived (they met cooking together in a restaurant, and are still fun to watch cooking together in a kitchen) he was able to do his risotto in the bread oven. It was all pretty splendid--the risotto and the curry sauce tasted like they had been made for each other.

And to top it off, I've got a cold.

Happy new year!

And to everyone else out there.--Ken

POLITICAL UNITY IN AMERICA? HOW ABOUT THE VOMIT/EXCREMENT TICKET?

Now Donald and Mickey, there would be a real unity ticket!
(No, not Goofy! That would be just, well, you know.)

Politically, the Insider Establishment is being challenged and people respond in various ways. My favorite is when far right Democrats and a smattering of dispossessed mainstream conservatives get together to "save" America from... the radical left. (Hillary? Obama? Edwards?). What a joke! They want a "unity government." Bloomberg/Hagel, McCain/Lieberman, Vomit/Excrement... just what the country needs! No one should even be considered for the presidency who isn't seriously contemplating unifying Bush, Cheney and their top 200 henchmen with prison cells. But it probably won't surprise you to know that the Beltway's worst insider hack journalist is pushing something far different today. Sam Nunn, David Boren, Chuck Robb... all you need is Zell Miller and John Breaux and we can get the Confederacy started again.

With ole Fred Thompson waking up long enough to tell folks “I’m not particularly interested in running for president," and with "None of the Above" the clear winner of every Republican Party poll, there's a real worry that an out of control outsider like Huckabee or a deranged neo-fascist like Ron Paul could grab the GOP nomination away from a reliable-- albeit sure loser-- Insider like Romney, Giuliani or McCain. The way things look now, that's like ceding the presidency to Hillary Clinton-- and the Insiders in our country are even less eager to seer her in power than their equivalents in Pakistan were to see Bhutto take over. Ironically, neither Clinton nor Bhutto was an actual threat to the Insider Establishment.

The voice of the Republican Party-- Fox News-- has been doing what it could to marginalize Huckabee and Scott. In fact, yesterday Scott claimed Fox-- and, by implication, the GOP hierarchy-- is so scared of him that they're going to keep him out of the final debate leading up to New Hampshire.

"They are scared of me and don't want my message to get out, but it will. They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative."

Today's NY Times describes the last days before the Iowa caucuses as a Republican slaughter house, with all the pygmies at each other's throats. In the last weekend before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican presidential candidates are bloodying the field with a blizzard of negative attacks, showing the strains of a wide-open and unpredictable race." Huckabee has proven himself unqualified to all but those who think that George Bush is qualified-- and that could mean a win in Iowa Republican caucuses. He's given up on reminding everyone in the state that Romney is a Satan worshipping cultist and is concentrating on Romney as compulsive liar.

But if Huckabee is counting on every single far right loon and imbecile in the country to rally to his banner, he was in for a great big disappointment. The man on whose knee Mel Gibson learned to be a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite and a right-wing extremist, dear ole crazy dad, has endorsed... well, Ron Paul of course.




IOWA STILL UP FOR GRABS AMONG DEMS BUT "NONE OF THE ABOVE" TROUNCES ALL REPUBLICANS

I almost wish I was flying to Des Moines with Jane to watch these crazy, some would say anti-democratic, caucuses up close. But I'm still here in Bangkok monitoring the Thai elections and getting ready to write by big story about Thai massages (at the AroundTheWorldBlog). I'm fascinated to see John Edwards moving up in the polls. I always thought he would win on the second round but now it looks like he could do it in the first. And Huckabee... looks like even Iowa Republicans figured out what a phony this turd is!

WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHO KILLED BHUTTO-- DESPITE WHAT BUSHARRAF CLAIMS

In the 5th grade my friend Larry Goldstein had a real dullard of a canary named Perry. Perry wasn't much but he certainly could have been as effective a CNN Pentagon correspondent as Barbara Starr, who's an excruciating embarrassment even to CNN-style pretend-journalism. Within minutes of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Starr was on CNN worldwide-- and in Myanmar where I was at the time, real news channels are banned and only CNN is allowed, so I had no choice-- spewing out the official Bush Regime line about how the bogeyman al-Qaeda killed her, with subtle implications that they'll kill you too if you don't elect an Insider Establishment hack as the next president of the U.S. Was it al-Qaeda? Maybe. Was it Musharraf? Just as likely-- if not more so. He certainly had the most to lose by what was shaping up as a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) landslide in the elections. Aside from his job and his status, Musharraf stands to lose the source of the immense wealth he has managed to amass as head of state, as well as his freedom and even his life. (Recall that several former Pakistani heads of state came to violent ends, not least of whom was Benazir's father, who was hung by the military.)

Do I know Musharraf had her killed? Of course not-- no more than Perry, CNN, Barbara Starr and the Bush Regime know Osama bin-Laden had her killed. [Factoid: a recent poll in Pakistan showed that 48% of the people there support bin-Laden; not sure what the margin of error is on that number.] Musharraf's regime sure is acting like they killed her! Within hours of the murder they had the site hosed down, destroying potential forensic evidence. There was no autopsy and the government is now claiming she died by hitting her head on the sunroof-- and discounting the eye-witness reports of bullets entering the neck and bullets exiting from the back of the skull... and all the blood. Must have been one nasty bump! Doctors at the hospital where she was taken are being told to keep their mouths shut.

Pakistan isn't exactly a country built on laws. It was created as a Muslim state and has been a hellhole ever since. Recently the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was arrested for being independent and all the Supreme Court judges were replaced by the military dictatorship. You want to believe anything these people say-- even if their pals in the Bush Regime and the corporate media demand we do?

At the urging of the Bush Regime-- apparently not distracted from it's simultaneous efforts to destabilize the recently elected actual democratic government of Bolivia, possibly even plunging that country into civil war (a hallmark of Bush Regime foreign policy)-- Musharraf says he's going to have the "elections" staged on schedule. Bush's spokesman says anything else will be a victory for terrorism and bin-Laden. Problem is, the next 10 days is unlikely to offer up a viable opponent to... Musharraf.

Now look, I have barely a jot of admiration for Benazir Bhutto. She was as corrupt as Musharraf-- if less brutal-- as much an American puppet, another collaborator with Islamic fundamentalist maniacs and completely ineffective as a leader-- speaking a populist game while playing a hierarchical/aristocratic/oligarchical one. Still, I'm not rejoicing at her death-- which serves the interests of all the bad guys. And the ideas of her 19 year old son taking over as head of the PPP would be nearly as absurd as Jenna Bush taking over as head of the GOP.

I just got back to Bangkok from Yangon. Myanmar's junta appears-- at least to westerners-- as clownish and heavy-handed in their propaganda, which seeks to connect those who espouse democracy and basic human rights to evil foreign powers existentially threatening all that the Burmese hold sacred and dear. They are a danger to the nation! Some buy the line-- although, according to the last discarded election, not that many. The U.S. government propaganda is far smoother, far more subtle and far more sophisticated... and far more successful. Pakistani propaganda lies somewhere in between. Authoritarian governments by their nature are never to be believed about anything. They shouldn't be tolerated-- not for a moment. When Bush stole the 2000 election and American citizens let it pass with barely a whimper from any quarter, we earned all that was to come. I hope we learned something-- but I doubt it, which is why Pelosi is a criminal for taking impeachment off the table.


UPDATE: MOTIVE?

Busharraf says there is "no need" for an international investigation into the assassination of Bhutto. According to one of her aides, she was planning to expose Muharraf's plans to use the Pakistani version of the KGB to rig the elections. That might have been a motive, no? Notice how many "democracies" have taken to vote rigging since Bush stole the 2000 presidential? Does Pelosi?

Coming soon to a large metropolitan op-ed page near you: the man who's proving you CAN TOO always be wrong

Bad news is bad news, right? You don't go shooting the messenger, right? And at the same time, if you happen not to know the bad news, that doesn't make it not so, right? You can always ignore it, or try, but in order to ignore it, you have to know what it is, don't you?

So, in case you hadn't heard, word coming out of a certain large, self-important metropolitan newspaper is that its latest op-ed coup, signing on as a weekly columnist starting, I don't know, sometime in 2008, is one of the dumbest, and surely one of the most obnoxious, persons on the planet . . .

WILLIAM "BILL" KRISTOL!

I know that a number of online and other media types--including TV's Bill Moyers--have explored the question of the "price" paid by the media thugs and hitmen, pimps and whores who helped drive the U.S. over the cliff of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The answer, usually, is that not only did they pay no price, but they were in fact rewarded, often spectacularly, for their spectacular wrongness. (Many of those same investigators looked at the parallel case: the fate of media and other people who stuck their necks way out trying to avert the disaster. And in general, correspondingly, they have been punished.)

Bill Kristol's career seems to be about disproving the shop-worn canard that nobody can always be wrong. If anybody can do it, our Bill can.

Coming soon to a certain large, self-important metropolitan newspaper near you.


THE GREAT TOM TOMORROW ON THE WAR PUNDITS

[click on it to enlarge]

UPDATE: NY TIMES CAN BE ALL-FORGIVING

Far right extremists like Kristol-- and Kristol in particular-- have attacked the credibility of the NY Times for years. Anything that deviates, even as occasionally as the Times does, from the official policy line of the regime, is not to be trusted. Now Kristol will be able to destroy their credibility from inside.--Howie

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Isn't it nice to know that in the end Harry Dent, architect of the GOP "Southern strategy," sort of took it back? Never mind, Harry!

I think we're all familiar with the "Southern strategy," the concept by which Republicans took full advantage of Southern white resentment at the civil rights revolution and the minimal empowerment of blacks. It's what got Richard Nixon the GOP nomination for president in 1968 and then put him in the White House, and it was then used to turn the South into the Republican bastion it remains to this day.

I think too that anyone with memories of the Nixon White House knows the name of Harry Dent (seen above in 1969 with President Nixon in the background, back to the camera, talking to Rep. George H. W. Bush), a key Nixon adviser. But I for one didn't appreciate how the South Carolinian Dent and the Southern strategy intersected. Harry Dent was, more or less, the architect and living embodiment of the Southern strategy.

In the New York Times Magazine's annual "The Lives They Lived" issue, out tomorrow, our friend Rick Perlstein has a terrific piece on Dent and his role as the chief conceptualist and enforcer of the Southern strategy--first as right-hand man to South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (he was, it seems, the man who persuaded Strom to bolt the Democratic Party for the GOP in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater's candidacy) and later as Nixon's "Southern strategist."

The funniest touch is Rick's tribute to Dent's "gift for soothing the egos of powerful men": "On the Nixon Oval Office tapes you can hear him agreeing with whatever the president says almost before he's through saying it." The rest isn't funny at all.

Of Dent's White House service, Rick writes:

Most of Dent's days were spent working the back channels, assuring Southerners that the administration would stonewall federal court desegregation decisions. After Nixon's first Supreme Court nominee, South Carolina's Clement Haynsworth, withdrew under a cloud of corruption allegations, the president ordered Dent to "find a good federal judge further South and further to the right." Dent obliged him with G. Harrold Carswell, who once campaigned for the Georgia State Legislature with the credo, "I believe that segregation of the races is proper and the ONLY practical and correct way of life in our states." Nixon, following Dent's example, argued that the opposition to Carswell's nomination was mere regional bigotry against the South. Liberals, not without reason, regarded Dent, Time reported, as "a Southern-fried Rasputin in the Nixon administration."

Dent was apparently touchy about charges that his career was built on race-baiting, cultivating and politically exploiting racial animus. He seems to have been capable of great indignation at such imputations. But in the end, in a twist that falls somewhere between touching and stomach-turning, "he came clean," as Rick puts it:

The lay preacher in Dent suffered from a guilty conscience. In his 1978 memoir, "The Prodigal South Returns to Power," Dent wrote that his politics were never racist. "The aim of the Southern strategy," he claimed, was merely "to have the South treated just like any other section of the U.S.A." Three years later, when he retired from law to preach the Gospel full time, he came clean. Yes, he admitted, of course he had exploited race to aggrandize Southern power. "When I look back," he said, "my biggest regret now is anything I did that stood in the way of the rights of black people."

Well, thanks for setting the record straight, Harry. I guess, sort of like the late Gilda Radner's SNL Emily Litella character and her addlepated "Never mind," that's supposed to make it all okay.

[P.S.: Would you believe that there's a Wikipedia entry for "Never mind"?]

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Today it's not just me fulminating about the Reverend Huckypoop's savage ignorance on immigration--I've shanghaied Pastor Dan as a guest fulminator

"The fact is the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds. It's about people that can come with a shoulder fired missile and can do serious damage and harm to us, and that's what we need to be worried about. And the unsecure borders that we have pose a real national security threat."
--"Mad Mike" Huckabee, ranting in Iowa, trying to show Republican single-issue psycho-voters that he isn't soft on immigration, no matter what those left-wing meanies say

"While privileged men work their games of power, it is the children of the poor and dispossessed who get stuck with the tab."
--Pastor Dan, in a Holy Innocents' Day post on Street Prophets

Poor Hucko was raving about 660 "illegal Pakistanis" crossing into the U.S., er, carrying shoulder-fired missiles, apparently. Of course what the Huckababy doesn't know about U.S. immigration can be summed up in a single word: everything. The missile-launching Pakistanis swimming across the Rio Grande exist nowhere except in the lurid psycho-instead-of-sexual fantasies of people like Minister Mike. (Don't you get the feeling sometimes that what wingnut loons need to knock the crap out of their brains is some decent, honest--i.e., non-Republican--sex?)

Of course the immigration issue is about people coming to pick lettuce and make beds and do all those other sub-minimum-wage jobs nobody else is willing to do. These people are so tightly woven into our economy that if they were suddenly deported en masse, in accord with the wishes of the loopiest anti-immigration loons, nobody would be more surprised than those loons to see hardly any sector of American life continue functioning intact.

At this point, since dishonesty and stupidity on this scale, especially unchallenged dishonesty and stupidity, make me kind of nuts, I'm going to turn the podium over to one of the sanest and most grounded people I know, Pastor Dan of the "Street Prophets" website, in this excerpt from a post he did for Holy Innocents' Day:

Just today, Mike Huckabee linked Benazir Bhutto's assassination to illegal immigration:

In his speech today, Huckabee said it should be of concern to Americans that 660 illegal Pakistanis crossed the American border last year.

One reporter asked if that was ethnic baiting?

"No, not at all. I'm just saying maybe that a lot of Americans who live in Pella, Iowa maybe look halfway around the world and say, how does that affect me?" said Huckabee.

"And the way it affects them is that we need to understand that violence and terror is significant when it happens in Pakistan, it's more significant when it happens in our own cities, and it happens if people can slip across our border and we have no control over it," he continued.

"The fact is the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds. It's about people that can come with a shoulder fired missile and can do serious damage and harm to us, and that's what we need to be worried about. And the unsecure borders that we have pose a real national security threat."

It's true that those 660 Pakistanis may have brought surface-to-air missiles with them. Given that most illegal immigrants overstay visas rather than swim the Rio Grande, it seems unlikely, but anything's possible.

Or they may have been like Joseph and Mary, frightened young parents fleeing a dangerous, chaotic situation to protect their lives and the life of their child. It may have even been that two of them were toting a new messiah with them.

Who knows? Anything's possible.

I want to be surprised that Huckabee, the Southern Baptist pastor, could miss such obvious symbolism. But I'm not, and for the very reason that underscores the importance of this lesson: while privileged men work their games of power, it is the children of the poor and dispossessed who get stuck with the tab.

If Mr. Huckabee were much of a Christian, he would have drawn the obvious line between anti-democratic violence in Pakistan and instability outside its borders. He could have articulated the faith claim that God has and does act decisively to establish peace and justice, and calls his disciples to do the same. He might even have said that stable, peaceful, democratic regimes around the globe are not only consistent with the Christian faith, but in the best interests of our own nation.

But apparently, that would have provoked a hostile response. He would have been deluged with accusations of being "soft" on illegal immigration and "not serious" on foreign policy. Both those charges seem to translate into being insufficiently bloodthirsty, or at the least not punitive enough to salve the hardened hearts of many Americans. Collateral damage be damned, we want to be safe at any cost, and if a few hundred brown children more or less get greased, well, it's their own fault for being born into such a f***ed-up part of the world. Which means, unfortunately, that Rachel will continue to weep for her children. Today - and every day - is Holy Innocents' day.

FINAL BIT OF FULMINATION: A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE

The last time I wrote about Itty-Bitty-Brained Mikie Huckababy, I was taken to task for having fun with his name and that of other famous far-right-wing sociopaths like Chimpy the Prez, the squatter in the White House who has spent seven years doing everything chimpanically possible to turn the U.S. into chimp poop.

Undoubtedly the complainer has finished reading the riot act to the lying scumbags of the Right-Wing Noise Machine like "OxyContin Rush" Limbaugh, who habitually traduce all manner of folk whose toes they aren't fit to lick.

I guess for me it comes down to a matter of respect. Lying, demagogic piles of filth like Chimpy the Prez and the Reverend Huckster have devoted their lives and diseased egos to trashing every shred of human sanity and decency.

Now we have the Reverend Huckypoop, of whom it could formerly be said that he had on occasion shown a glimmer of sanity on the immigration issue, showing that there are truly no depths of intellectual dishonesty and hate-mongering to which he won't sink if that's what he has to do to show that he's just as brain-damaged as any of the other Republican presidential hopefuls.


WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF NOMENCLATURE AND RESPECT

I hope it will be noted that I take care always to refer to ministers, even ones as debased as the Reverend Huckypoop, as the Reverend Huckypoop, rather than plain old Reverend Huckypoop. I was trained by a persnickety veteran copy editor to apprecdiate that "reverend" is a term of honor rather than a title. And so I extend the courtesy even to practitioners of the kind of junk Christianity peddled by Minister Huckster and his ilk, a bogus Christianity that would have shocked and appalled Jesus, who is ritually fetishized but has had his beliefs and teachings systematically expunged from the carnival.

My goodness, can you imagine how Jesus would have responded to the anti-immigrant hate-mongering being carried out even in his name? It would have left him with a lot of souls in need of saving.

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Yes, it's another installment of "Know Your U.S. Public Servants": "Ambassador" Sam Fox shares the spirit of Christmas with 1,700 of his best buds

As you sort through your Christmas loot, perhaps coming to grips with the wreck of a life you’ve led, to be filled with such a sad lot of cheap, thoughtless gift-givers, this little item from our pal Al Kamen’s last Washington Post column before taking off on vacation last week may bring a tear to your eye.

You remember "Ambassador" Sam Fox, right? You know, the Swiftboaters’ sugar daddy, who was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Belgium (and if financing a band of sociopathic liars to help steal an election doesn’t earn a fellow an ambassadorship, what does?), only his nomination couldn't get out of Senate committee and so had to be end-arounded with a recess appointment? In case you missed it, here’s how the "ambassador" sent greetings from Belgium to his 1,700 nearest-and-dearest:

Merry Xmas From Belgium

GOP mega-contributor Sam Fox, the Swift boat backer who received a controversial recess appointment to be ambassador to Belgium, has arranged for special, one-kilo (2.2-pound) bars of superb, dark Belgian chocolate, stamped with the State Department seal, to be given as Christmas presents.

The Belgians are speculating that President Bush, a renowned chocophile who shopped for chocolates on trips to Belgium in 2001 and 2005, will most surely find one of these under the tree Christmas morning.

That bar would be part of a 1,700-bar order that Fox placed with famed Antwerp chocolatier Erik Goossens, whose company specializes in high-end chocolates. Most likely, several other White House aides and administration officials will be getting the prized chocolates.

"It was quite difficult to do," Goossens told us, requiring "special molds and special boxes." It was all "very fancy. We did our best." That should be more than delicious.

How much would all this cost? Goossens wouldn't touch that one, though he noted that his 52-year-old family company considered it a "prestige project." That probably means Fox got something of a break on the price. And this is a nearly two-ton purchase.

Let's do some cogitating. Goossens's chocolates sell for a little more than $50 a pound in this country. So each bar would cost about $110.

Perhaps Fox could make such a bulk purchase for $150,000. Maybe he will send some chocolate to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democrats, who are still furious at the White House for pulling back his nomination at the last minute and giving him the ambassadorship?

AND IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO ENTER AL'S
"WHAT WAS IN THAT OFFICE, ANYWAY?" CONTEST

Did you hear about the fire in Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney's Eisenhower Executive Office Building lair a week ago Wednesday? "Naturally," says Al, it "has everyone in Washington speculating about its origin. Arson might seem a bit far-fetched to folks outside the Beltway, but it would not be the first time a small conflagration was planned by a White House official."

Which sends Al strolling down Memory Lane, to the crackpot plot hatched by G. Gordon Liddy to firebomb the Brookings Institution--

"as a diversion," he writes in his memoirs--to get into the security vault and steal Daniel Ellsberg's Vietnam War papers.

"We devised a plan that entailed buying a used but late-model fire engine of the kind used by the District of Columbia fire department," Liddy wrote, "and marking it appropriately." The plot included "uniforms for a squad of Cubans" and adequate "training so their performance would be believable."

The firebomb would go off at night "so as not to endanger lives needlessly," Liddy wrote. "The Cubans in the authentic-looking fire engine would 'respond' minutes [later] . . . hit the vault, and get themselves out in the confusion" as real fire equipment arrived. "The bogus engine would be abandoned at the scene."

The decision from higher-ups, Liddy wrote, "was swift. 'No.' Too expensive. The White House wouldn't spring for a fire engine." (Pikers!)

"And now," writes Al, "we have this curious, possibly successful fire Wednesday. So the obvious question is: What did they try to burn? [Emphasis added.] (We'll let the appropriate authorities find the perps.)"

Yes, it's the final In the Loop Contest for 2007. Simply guess what documents or other materials the arsonists were trying to destroy. Could it have been a secret legal opinion from Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington, giving the vice president the inherent authority to set the fire?

Send your entries to hitthevault@washpost.com. Winners will receive an In the Loop T-shirt. You must include your name and telephone number (home, work or cell) to be eligible. And of course, administration officials and Hill folks may opt to enter "on background." Deadline is Jan. 9. Don't delay.

Man, we'd love one of them T-shirts. If you've got any ideas that you'd like to have ripped off--I mean, that you'd like to share--just fire away.

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Reporters are starting to look into Rudy G's influence-peddling, which means that some reporters are starting to do their job

Yes, it's the famous Giuliani Partners, in 2004--with Rudy's right-hand guy Bernie (where else?) at his right, before moving on to his new career as a public embarrassment.

"It was all because of Giuliani. And he got to take the money."
--Ed Bisch, "whose son died of an OxyContin overdose," as reported by Barry Meier and Eric Lipton in today's New York Times, and who "said that he believed that [OxyContin maker] Purdue [Pharma] got a free pass for years thanks to Mr. Giuliani"

Okay, let's stipulate that the Mayor of 9/11 didn't do anything illegal, and possibly even--by prevailing standards--nothing egregiously unethical. There are even suggestions that in allowing his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to take on Purdeu Pharma as a client, and in playing an active role himself in pushing back against a rising tide of public outcry and legal jeopardy, was acting honorably.

"Everything I did with Giuliani Partners has been totally legal, totally ethical," Mr. Giuliani recently told The Associated Press. "There's nothing for me to explain about it. We've acted honorably, decently."

In the OxyContin case, Mr. Giuliani's supporters suggest that as a cancer survivor himself, he was driven by a noble goal: to keep the company's proven pain reliever available to the widest circle of sufferers.

"I understand the pain and distress that accompanies illness," Mr. Giuliani said at the time. "I know that proper medications are necessary for people to treat their sickness and improve their quality of life."

But the NYT reporters, in their extended look at Giuliani Partners' and Giuliani's hugely profitable involvement with Purdue Pharma, "the company's first and longest-running client," suggest that it "provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune."

A former top federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani participated in two meetings between Purdue officials and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency investigating the company. Giuliani Partners took on the job of monitoring security improvements at company facilities making OxyContin, an issue of concern to the D.E.A.

As a celebrity, Mr. Giuliani helped the company win several public relations battles, playing a role in an effort by Purdue to persuade an influential Pennsylvania congressman, Curt Weldon, not to blame it for OxyContin abuse.

Purdue turned to Giuliani Partners in 2002, six years into

what D.E.A. officials described as perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse.

As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead.

Complicating the company's problem was a rising tide of charges regarding not just its marketing of OxyContin but what the reporters describe as D.E.A.'s inspectors' finding of "widespread security and record-keeping problems at the company's manufacturing plants." Giuliani Partners "became involved in every aspect of the company's problem."

Of course, to deal with Purdue's plant security issues, Giuliani Partners could deploy its own Mr. Security, Bernie "Love Nest" Kerik, who of course hadn't yet become the public embarrassment we know and love. And Giuliani's own active participation--both publicly ("It is clear to us," Purdue lawyer Howard R. Udell was quoted as saying in a Giuliani Partners promotional brochure, "and we hope it is clear to the government, that Giuliani would not take an assignment with a company that he felt was acting in an improper way") and in the form of personal contact with government lawyers including D.E.A. chief Asa Hutchinson--seems to have been worth whatever Purdue paid, however much that was. "Giuliani Partners would not say how much Purdue had paid it, but one consultant to the drug maker estimated that Mr. Giuliani's firm had, in some years, earned several million dollars from the account."

The D.E.A. official in charge of the Purdue inquiry is said to have recommended a $20 million fine for the record-keeping problems. In 2004, two years into the Giuliani Partners pushback, the company paid a $2 million fine, naturally without admitting any wrongdoing.

About the one person the company couldn't neutralize was the fairly obscure U.S. attorney for western Virginia, John L. Brownlee.

For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse.

Clearly Giuliani and his clients expected Brownlee to be awed by Rudy's stature.

Between June and October 2006, Mr. Giuliani met or spoke with the prosecutor on six occasions. During those conversations, Mr. Giuliani was cordial but pointed in arguing against what he felt were flaws in the case.

Mr. Brownlee would not change course, though, even when the Purdue legal team appealed, unsuccessfully, at the 11th hour to his superiors at the Justice Department in Washington.

In October 2006, Mr. Brownlee told Mr. Giuliani and Purdue that he expected to ask for a grand jury indictment by the end of the month. Plea discussions ensued and Mr. Brownlee ultimately agreed that the three executives would not have to do jail time.

In the settlement, Purdue and the targeted executives agreed to pay $634.5 million, and the company "after years of denial and a high-profile public relations campaign, was forced to admit that it had misled doctors and patients.

Measured against Purdue's presumed billions in OxyContin profits, and especially in the absence of any jail time, a lot of people--including parents of children who had become casualties of OxyContin abuse--cried out that the company had bought its way out of much bigger trouble, with particular focus on the role of Giuliani, prompting this rather remarkable statement from U.S. District Court Judge James P. Jones: "It has been implied that because Mr. Giuliani is a prominent national politician, Purdue may have received a favorable deal from the government solely because of politics. I completely reject this claim."

Among those unpersuaded was Ed Bisch, whose son died of an OxyContin overdose. He's the fellow who said, "It was all because of Giuliani. And he got to take the money."

Indeed he did. As the Times reporters point out, growing attention has been paid recently to the clients serviced and services performed by Giuliani Partners:

Giuliani Partners carved out a lucrative niche in corporate consulting, crisis management and security.

In the process, Mr. Giuliani, a Brooklyn native whose legal career had largely been spent in government, became a corporate trouble-shooter with homes in the Hamptons and on the Upper East Side. According to financial disclosure forms filed in May, his net worth was more than $30 million.

Again, there may have been no illegal activity involved, and our Rudy insists there was nothing unethical either. But at the very least, it's unsavory. How many stories like the Purdue one await public airing? What it amounts to is the good old American practice of taking the money and running.

Well, maybe Rudy is entitled to cash in on his years of public service. It seems to me an appalling qualification for any future public office. Like the presidency, to pick a random example.

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In the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, maybe only one thing is clear: The mess in Pakistan has gotten messier

Buses burn in Hyderabad, in former Prime Minister Benazir

Bhutto's home province of Sindh, following her assassination

It's still unclear exactly how two-time Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was murdered today following a campaign rally stop in Rawalpindi. It appears that she was shot and her car was the target of a suicide bomber--after the car had pulled away

It's even less clear who is behind the assassination. If we set aside the possibility that President Pervez Musharraf--who is at once the U.S.'s best friend in Pakistan and no friend at all--was involved, and it's not at all clear that this possibility can be set aside, it seems likelier that the movers were supporters rather than opponents of the president. (U.S. policymakers have been trying to ram a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance down the throats of the Pakistanis.)

I've seen it suggested that Bhutto as a martyr may serve the democratic cause in Pakistan more than she ever did in her manipulative and corrupt political life. It's hard to see in the short term, though, where a meaningful pro-democracy movement might come from in Pakistan.

A few things seem relatively clear:

(1) The country was already both a human disaster zone and a powder keg--a nuclear powder keg at that.

(2) The mess is even worse today. The country was already in a state of emergency, and President Musharraf now has the perfect excuse clamp down even further. The scheduled election seems an all-but-certain casualty.

(3) It would be hard to imagine anyone less competent to have a positive influence on the situation than the babbling criminal psychopaths in charge of our foreign policy, who have done more to promote the cause of anti-American terrorism than Osama bin-Laden could ever have dreamed of. (Howie was just writing about the mess that the Bush regime has made of our policy toward Pakistan--dumping $5 billion in without achieving any result, unless you count deepening and hardening anti-Americanism.

Update to Howie's post from Myanmar: NO MORE POSTS FROM MYANMAR

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm in Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Rangoon, Burma). Internet access is next to impossible but people have ingenious ways of re-routing and a bunch of technological trickery to get around the junta's heavy-handed attempts to stifle communication with the outside world. This is a real Orwellian society; it's incredible. I hope to write about it when I get back but today I couldn't resist the temptation to write a very mild post at DownWithTyranny about the propaganda in the media. And that was the end of DownWithTyranny in Myanmar. They sure found it fast, decided they didn't like it and closed it down! I guess I should never have written about how the junta forced the rock band Iron Cross to change the name of their album from THE WILD WIND to more acceptable BREEZE.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT--DAMN, THOSE TYRANTS CAN BE TOUCHY!

Let's suppose you're a functionary working for a tinpot dictatorship, and you hear tell of a website called "DownWithTyranny." Do you:

(a) E-mail your friends saying, "Hmm, this sounds way cool"?

(b) Read some back posts, adding snarky comments reflecting the pro-tyrannical point of view?

(c) Block the shit out of the damn thing?

--Ken

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WHAT IF KARL ROVE WROTE THE NEW YORK TIMES?

I hope to write a more extensive analysis of the situation I've been experiencing here in Myanmar once I leave the country. But this morning at breakfast I came across the local English language newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar. It mostly extols the beauty, virtue and joys of all things Burmese and contains page after page of grief from everywhere else in the world-- from multi-car pile-ups in America, earthquakes in Russia and Indonesia, floods in Sri Lanka, trade deficits in South Korea, to a bus accident in Bolivia and a shooting in a Birmingham pub.

When the government of Myanmar hired some Bush-connected lobbyists to spruce up their image in Washington, DC, they apparently decided against having them help out with the New Light. The back page of the paper this morning is a little heavy-handed, even for the Bushies. It features some interesting points it asks all Burmese to keep in mind:

* Skyful liars attempting to destroy nation
* BBC lying
* VOA deceiving
* RFA settling up hostilities
* Beware! Don't be bought by those ill-wishers

No BBC here-- but they don't seem to have any problem with CNN. And readers won't be shocked or surprised by the Orwellian outburst on the last page. In fact, on page 2, The New Light lists 4 points at the top of te page, called "People's Desire:"

* Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, building negative views
* Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation
* Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State
* Crush all internal and external; elements as the common enemy

Myanmar seems in many ways like a place time has left behind-- and that isn't all bad by any means. No McDonald's, no Starbucks, no globalization... Of course filling up tin cans from a pond for drinking water might not be your cup of tea. But it's what you need to do if you want a cup of tea... just a mile from The Strand, the most luxurious hotel in the country. But, like I said, I'll try to work up a little analysis of this once I'm out of Myanmar.


UPDATE: AND NEWSPAPERS AREN'T ALL THAT THEY CENSOR

You've probably never heard of Nyi Pu-- he's one of the most popular blues singers in a country where blues is a natch. The government is so careful about mass media that when he tried releasing his new album, Everything's Gonna Be Good, they made him change the name to Everything is Good. A metal band, Iron Cross, was forced to change their album title from The Wild Wind to The Breeze. Our Founding Fathers knew what they were talking about when they put the 4th Amendment into the U.S. Constitution.

Special Christmas DWT News Quiz: Is it possible that, without knowing it, Mitt Romney didn't actually entirely lie?

"I saw the Patriots win the World Series--excuse me, the Super Bowl."
--former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, ripped out of context (it's actually even sillier in context, as you'll see)

Now it appears that then-Michigan Gov. George Romney actually did make what is described as a "surprise" appearance at a civil rights march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Grosse Pointe. The Politico has reported finding two witnesses to such an event, in 1963.

Fortunately for Willard "Mitt" Romney's reputation as someone who wouldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it, this doesn't really undiscredit his lie about seeing his father march with Dr. King in his Richie Rich hometown.

I admit it strikes me as intriguing that Mitt has chosen to resurrect a fable that made sense when he was peddling himself in liberal Massachusetts. But now, when he's pandering his butt off to the right-wing GOP base as the man who put the "big" in "bigot"?

The party I feel bad for here is Mitt's dad. George Romney was a pretty decent guy--an authentically moderate Republican who indeed had a commitment to civil rights, of a sort that would get him drummed out of the party today.

You'd think that Mitt has enough experience by now being caught in lies that he would hve developed better skills at covering over it. Maybe the fault lies with the docile press that up to now really hasn't held him to account for his nonstop whoppers. Meanwhile, what exactly has Mitt been saying about his peculiar story? Better to ask: What hasn't he been saying?

And that in fact is the question for our special Christmas Day DWT News Quiz:

Which of the following things did Mitt Romney NOT say about seeing his father march with Martin Luther King Jr.? (Thanks to Sam Stein and his timeline on Huffington Post the other day.)

(a) "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."

(b) "Actually, I have two dads, in the sense of 'having,' and they used to play pinochle together, Martin Luther King Jr. and, you know, my other dad George, at our house in Grosse Pointe, and they both liked Sousa marches, my two dads, and sometimes when Dr. King was at the house they would go out in the streets and march around while humming 'The Stars and Stripes Forever,' and they let me watch. Many's the time that me and David Broder and Stephen Hess would just stand out on the porch with binoculars watching them."

(c) "I speak in the sense of I saw my dad become president of American Motors. I wasn't actually there when he became president of American Motors, but I saw him in the figurative sense of he marched with Martin Luther King."

(d) "My brother also remembers him marching with Martin Luther King, and so in that sense I saw him march with Martin Luther King."

(e) "You know, I'm an English literature major as well. When we say, 'I saw the Patriots win the World Series,' it doesn't necessarily mean you were there--excuse me, the Super Bowl. I saw my dad become president of American Motors. Did that mean you were there for the ceremony? No, it's a figure of speech."

(f) "If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described. It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

(g) "The point we were making was that the issue of Mormonism had to do with its civil rights record. Did he walk with Martin Luther King? Today, I have no idea."


THE ANSWERS

Yes indeed, our Mitt said nearly all of these things--all, in fact, but (b) and (g), and (b) is just silly, unworthy of appearing in a serious News Quiz.

Come to think of it, (g) is kind of silly too but is relevant because it was said by an actual person, Stephen Hess, now Senior Fellow Emeritus, Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He was explaining recently what he and now-legendary pundit David S. Broder might have meant when they wrote, in their 1967 book The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the GOP that George Romney "has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit." It doesn't appear that either of them could, or can, source the story. Very likely it was just some story they heard--and repeated.

And on that note, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.

Special Last-Minute Christmas Shoppers' Bulletin: Rest easy, folks--many, many of those toys won't cause the kiddies serious permanent harm

I'm going to be trying to catch up on some items I've noted recently but never got around to writing about, starting with this special bulletin for DWT readers still frenziedly finishing work on your holiday shoppping list.

On Dec. 19, Public Citizen released an in-depth look at the current safety crisis in the U.S. toy market, "Santa's Sweatshop: Made in D.C., With Bad Trade Policy," prepared by its Global Trade Watch division. As division director Lori Wallach summed it up:

"Our children’s safety has been the price for soaring profits and CEO pay of major U.S. toy companies that have chosen to relocate their production to venues in which they cannot ensure the safety of their products.”

The Public Citizen press release about the report contains some eye-popping numbers:

In 1970, 86 percent of U.S. toys were produced domestically, employing 60,000 American workers; average U.S. toy firm profits were $50 million; CEOs made 58 times what their production workers made; and annual recalls never exceeded 12 per year. Today, 87 percent of U.S. toys are produced overseas, toy firm profits have soared 1,750 percent to $930 million annually, and CEOs make 500 times what the remaining 9,000 U.S. toy production workers make and more than 21,000 times the average 36 cent hourly wages earned by Chinese production workers, who produce 74 percent of U.S. toys while recalls have skyrocketed with 120 recalls in 2007 alone.

I was tempted to highlight some of those numbers, but then I realized I would have wound up boldfacing the entire paragraph. Which maybe wouldn't have been such a bad idea. Perhaps the most dramatic number, though, is 21,000, as in the multiple of U.S. toymaker CEO wages to those of their surrogate Chinese workers. Yes, twenty-one thousand!

Meanwhile, as the report points out, the ideologues and profiteers of the far right have enforced a loud "F.U." to America's children by effectively dismantling our product safety regulatory apparatus:

Despite non-stop media exposes about dangerous toy imports, little attention has been given to the underlying cause of the crisis. Nor have recent attempts by Congress to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) focused on import safety. While imports have soared more than 400 percent since 1980, pro-corporate legislators pushed by anti-government ideologues have cut the CPSC’s budget by a third in real terms. Meanwhile, the agency that is supposed to ensure our nation’s product safety has authorities and a structure that are based on the 1970s premise that U.S. toys are produced domestically. Recent CPSC bills fail to remedy this mismatch.

“It is outrageous that in the midst of this imported toy safety scandal, Congress is producing legislation that fails to deal with import safety while simultaneously passing more trade pacts that promote offshoring of production and expose U.S. safety standards and inspection improvements to attack as illegal trade barriers,” said [Global Trade Watch division director Lori] Wallach.

Presumably the industry calculation is that not enough children will be killed or disabled to seriously shrink the U.S. toy market and eat into those soaring profits.

Thai election update: Looks like billionaire former P.M. is headed back into the governing picture

As of the moment, there has been no coup in Thailand, a possibility Howie was discussing yesterday. Thai voters, with their principal choices between the right-wing prime minister who was deposed by the military and the mlitary deposers, voted decisively against the military, and strongly if not quite so decisively in favor of the former prime minister. The People's Power Party (P.P.P.), which Howie described as "a right-wing conglomerate of supporters of deposed billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra," won 232 seats in the 480-seat parliament.

Today Seth Mydans and Thomas Fuller are reporting on the NYT website that the P.P.P. is claiming it has enough seats to form a governing majority:

Thai Party Says It Can Form Coalition

BANGKOK — A party that backs former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Monday that it had made alliances with enough other parties following parliamentary elections Sunday to form a coalition government.

The secretary general of the winning party, the People Power Party, said he was not ready to name his allies, and an official of the second-place finisher, the Democrat Party, said he doubted the claim.

“After counting the number of parties that have responded and having more than half the seats, there is no problem in forming a government,” said the secretary general of the People Power Party, Surapong Suebwonglee.

In the election Sunday, the pro-Thaksin party, known as the P.P.P., won 232 seats in the 480-seat parliament, in a strong repudiation of the generals who ousted Mr. Thaksin in a coup 15 months ago.

The total fell short of a majority, and Monday has been a day of hard bargaining among the parties to form a coalition government.

The strong showing of the P.P.P. means that Mr. Thaksin and his supporters will remain a force in Thai politics whether or not they form a government, and insures that a struggle for power will continue in this deeply divided country.

“It’s quite clear that P.P.P. in the next few days will try to form a government,” said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “Their legitimacy will be challenged by the Democrats and other parties.”

The Democrats, who have the backing of the generals, won 161 seats. Political analysts said the smaller parties would come under strong pressure from the military and the political establishment not to join with the pro-Thaksin party.

In the silly season of "Shop till you drop or else we'll have to fight the terrorists at a mall near you," let's at least be grateful for Tom Tomorrow

All the while I was cobbling together the previous item about the Bush regime's persistent failure to heed warnings about the likely disastrous consequences of just about every action it has taken--or failed to take--a phrase kept running through my head which never found its way into the piece. Then a friend forwarded "Part the First" of the amazing Tom Tomorrow's annual "Year in Review," and son of a gun, there it is, what we might call the motto of the Bush administration (as always, click to enlarge):

Indeed, who could have ever seen THAT one coming?

Although I'd have to say that my favorite line here is Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales's "Sorry--what did you say my name was?"

Sorry, Al, we're trying to forget too.

#

Being the Bush regime means not just never saying "We wuz wrong" but always having had competent people pointing out that your head's up your butt

QUOTES OF THE DAY
as assembled by the Washington Post (click to enlarge)


In the famous cleaned-up version of Lyndon Johnson's, er, tribute, Gerald Ford couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. By implication, though, ol' Jerry could at least perform these functions separately.

Whereas the image forming of the livestock inhabiting the highest regions of the Bush regime, a latter-day Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, is a herd of critters--whether blinded by wacko ideology, a passion for pillage and profiteering, or outright mental defect--so bumblingly incompetent, you figure they must hire outside contractors to chew their gum for them.

Watching the regime unravel is a matter of perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. What we invariably learn is not just that the regimists were wrong about absolutely everything, from the largest matters to the smallest, but that at every step along the way there were sane, trustworthy people warning them, often in considerable detail, which has usually proved on the money.

Today's cautionary tale of ideologically bumbling ineptitude concerns the obsessive and critically dangerous reliance on private "security" firms, which turn out to be mostly crony-connected bands of high-paid characters playing cowboys-on-crack. You and I may not have known much Blackwater and their ilk until relatively recently, but it turns out--surprise!--that there were plenty of warnings available.

Chapter and verse come courtesy of Steve Fainaru in the report in today's Washington Post from which the above quotes were drawn:

The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.

The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.

Neither the Pentagon nor the State Department took substantive action to regulate private security companies until Blackwater guards opened fire Sept. 16 at a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and provoking protests over the role of security contractors in Iraq.

THE PAKISTANIS SAW THE BUBBLEHEAD FROM TEXAS COMING A MILE AWAY-- WILL BUSH BE FORCED TO PAY BACK THE $5 BILLION HE WASTED?

If you watched The Daily Show when John Stewart had the smooth and chatty military dictator Pervez Musharraf on as his guest, you probably got an inkling of the disdain, if not outright contempt-- in which he (Musharraf) holds Bush. He cracked up the audience by asserting that a Bush vs bin-Laden mayoral race in Karachi wouldn't leave the residents with any acceptable choices. But while Musharraf was cracking jokes at Bush's expense he was stealing billions of American taxpayer dollars from the clueless Texas clod. The Pakistanis ripped the Bush Regime every way from here to Sunday-- and then some.

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

One diplomat told the NY Times he wondered if the Americans hadn't been taken for a ride. You think? Is this another charge-- albeit a relatively minor one-- that can be added once Pelosi puts you-know-what back on the table? Sooner or later, it all catches up with you and I can't wait to watch it catch up with Bush and the disgraceful lot of rogues who peopled his illegitimate regime.

REPORT ON THE ELECTIONS IN THAILAND TODAY

The Wat Saket complex in central Bangkok

Since I got to Thailand I've been wondering if there is going to be another military coup. No one wanted to talk about it but the prospect has been hanging like a shroud over the city. This weekend, though, people are talking about it. Today is Sunday, election day. Exit polls confirm what pre-election surveys had been predicting, that the huge rural vote in the north would propel a victory for the P.P.P. (People's Power Party), a right-wing conglomerate of supporters of deposed billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Depending who you talk to, Thaksin and his supporters are best known for either massive corruption or for populist rhetoric. Not many people-- regardless of how they felt about Thaksin-- liked the idea of a military coup.

The P.P.P. doesn't deny they would welcome Thaksin back to Thailand and pardon him. It is also suggested that the military officers responsible are likely to be charged and tried by a P.P.P. government. It doesn't take much to figure this situation is ripe for a coup-- despite the fact that the military is claiming that will resist the temptation. People in Bangkok-- which is decidedly not P.P.P. or Thaksin territory-- are worried. No one wants violence or instability.

I've been to Thailand over a dozen times since the late 70s and I've never seen so few tourists here. It's the peak of the tourist season-- Christmas, warm, dry; and a dollar still goes very far here. But there are so few tourists that it is disconcerting. I've walked into clubs where I'm the only customer. You don't need reservations for even the best restaurants in town. Today Roland and I spent a couple of hours at Wat Saket (Golden Mount), a spectacular temple complex in the middle of town. I may have seen, at most, half a dozen European tourists the whole time; normally there would be scores. Maybe their travel agents warned them to stay away.

And Thailand isn't the only "democracy" with electoral problems lately. Tonight we found out that India's Gujurat state just re-elected a far right, nationalist, anti-Muslim bigot party, Modi's BJP, while last week South Koreans elected a blatantly corrupt rightist as president, a Bush-clone who wants to "get tough" with nuclear-armed North Korea. God only knows what's about to come down in Pakistan. Elections conforming corrupt, authoritarian rule in Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were as patently illegitimate as Bush's wins were in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Bush has made the very idea of democracy and fair elections are farce and a bad joke around the world. And now he's using a trillion or so taxpayer dollars to spread his vision of "democracy" to Iraq.

IF JOHN EDWARDS IS THE BEST, WHO IS THE WORST CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT?

The first time I met Howard Dean I didn't know much about him. Because a trade organization I was part of had once donated a great sum of money to some Democratic Party committee Clinton was hawking money for, most of the Democratic presidential candidates had been calling and asking for a meeting with me. Dick Gephart I asked to leave me the hell alone and stop bothering me. Dean I invited over for breakfast. But all I knew about him was that he opposed Bush's Iraq war. I was still leaning towards Edwards when Dean came over. When he left I was a 100% Howard Dean partisan. And it was his strong stance on health care and against the insurance companies that won me over.

The latest polling from Iowa shows that John Edwards could be on the verge of pulling off a stupendous upset, sending Lieberman's protege from Illinois back to learn how to be a halfway decent senator and pitting the ultimate insider, Clinton, against someone who has learned to embrace the aspirations of real Americans, Edwards.

And according to Aaron Lewis of CBS News, Edwards has promised to take on a far worse enemy of ordinary Americans than Osama bin-Laden-- Big Insurance. After telling a story about how an insurance company tried denying a claim-- causing the death of a young woman who was entitled to coverage-- he came right out and said something that-- if you believe him-- makes him the only candidate qualified to be the peoples' president:

Edwards also told the audience of about a hundred people at the Score Pavillion in Nevada, Iowa, that it will take a fighter (i.e. him)-- and not a negotiator (i.e. Obama)-- to take on large insurance companies like CIGNA.

"Anybody who thinks that we don't have a fight in front of us is living in Never-Never Land," he said.

And if Edwards is the best, as hard as it is to pick the absolute worst, today's Concord Monitor took a good shot and came up with... Willard.

In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America's moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he'd like to "double" the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture- unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it.

When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it.

Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.

DEMOCRATS vs REPUBLICANS IN 2008 IS TANTAMOUNT TO ANY OF THE ABOVE vs NONE OF THE ABOVE

As I've enjoyed pointing out over the past several months-- and as Republicans have lately come to admit in the face of incontrovertible evidence-- None of the Above is the choice of Republican primary voters. The party is in a pathological death spiral and none of the pathetic pygmies (as Newt Gingrich dubbed the clods seeking to embody a third George Bush term) can hope to arouse much enthusiasm beyond a narrow and shriveled piece of the crazed base he isn't hated by.

The situation among Democrats is pretty much the polar opposite. The dangers the GOP has demonstrably posed to our country's most cherished values trump any intra-party partisanship. Among Democrats, regardless of who their first choice is, everyone is just eager to beat back the far right. Even the worst Democrat-- and that varies among different people of course-- is far, far better than the least objectionable Republican.

Yesterday's Washington Blade, a respected gay newspaper, explained why the very concept of endorsing the overly compromised, distinctly uncourageous Clintons-- and then endorsed Hillary. Yes, they editorialize, the Clintons have proven themselves untrustworthy and just plain terrible for gay people but, according to the Blade, "Hillary Clinton, and most of her Democratic rivals, deserve much credit for evolving quickly on gay rights issues. Just four years ago, Kerry endorsed same-sex marriage bans. Today, all the Democratic candidates have backed some form of relationship recognition for gay couples... Clinton has demonstrated a mastery of detail during the campaign. Whatever you think of her, there’s no denying her intellect and willingness to work hard. She knows the issues, the history and players and has repeatedly pledged to work to restore the country’s reputation around the world. That’s a much-needed common sense perspective on where to start in 2009. And with an eight-year record of extensive globetrotting as first lady, she’s well positioned to serve as the diplomat the country needs."

So gay Democrats should support Hillary because she'll be good for foreign policy? Well, the Blade thinks she has the best chance to beat the Republicans and that's the reason they're asking their readers to back her.

Gay Americans cannot afford another four years of a Republican administration in the White House. Attacking gays and opposing even the most benign forms of incremental rights advances is now part of the GOP playbook, no matter the nominee. Bush has helped block ENDA and the hate crimes bill via veto threats. He has attacked our relationships in his State of the Union address, cruelly pushing for a federal ban on same-sex marriage. He — along with all the Republican candidates for president — supports the antiquated and reckless “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Many supporters of independent candidates argue that there is no longer a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. But on gay issues, that is simply not the case.

As gay Rep. Barney Frank told the Blade last summer, “all the Democrats are very good and all the Republicans are very terrible.” For sure, gay Americans will be vastly better served by any of the Democrats now in the running than any of the Republicans.

But in the end, Hillary Rodham Clinton stands the best chance of sending the Republicans into eight years of a well-deserved political wilderness. She’s smart, tenacious, hard working and willing to cede the spotlight in the interest of bipartisan cooperation. She has marched in our Pride parades, promised unprecedented access to her administration and backed nearly all of our issues.

Democrats are counting on anger and frustration with Republican partisanship and obstructionism to propel their party into the White House with substantially increased majorities in both houses of Congress. Harry Reid gave voice to this yesterday in an interview on Jim Lehrer's program. Bitterly he admits the Democratic Congress hasn't accomplished very much.

I'm kind of frustrated, like the American people. There are a lot of things that need to be done. We found a blockage on nearly everything we tried.


But in spite of that, in spite of the fact that in just a few short months, rather than two years, the Republicans blocked us 62 times. The record for two years was 61. So in just a few short months, they had more filibusters than in the history of the Congress before.

The Republicans have been busy turning themselves into a religion-obsessed, Southern based regional party. They're through as a national force. Their vision has strayed so far from the mainstream that their bizarre ideology would be all but unrecognizable not just by mainstream Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon but even by right-of-center conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater. It's time for a time-out, a long one.

John Sasso in today's Boston Globe also talks about electability as Clinton's ace in the hole when it comes not just to reluctant Democrats but to and all Americans who have grown sick and tired of Republican thuggery. He says he believes she will win the Democratic nomination and he believes she is "she is the most electable and least vulnerable Democratic candidate to face the Republicans."

I was more uncertain a year ago when she announced her candidacy. Then she had recognizable strengths but at the same time possessed familiar handicaps both political and personal. She was routinely portrayed as contrived, a woman whose high intelligence had an impersonal edge and whose real identity was difficult to locate.


That was then. Today Clinton has forged herself into a formidable political leader. She has undergone a remarkable journey. In the face of unending autopsies on her personal and political past, unrelieved targeting at both Democratic and Republican debates, the punishing demands imposed on a woman candidate, she is still standing unflinchingly in place.



This is the mark of thoroughbred candidates. They take the fire. They survive the wounds. And while voters relish the spectacle of office-seekers squirming under adversity, something else happens at the same moment. If candidates demonstrate they can bear that kind of public barrage with conviction and ready composure-- and Clinton has done that-- they cross a crucial threshold in the public mind. They are viewed as able to compete and win a national election and able thereafter to govern in perilous times.


Why the most electable Democrat? Because after a year of being tightly measured, Clinton has won a public acceptance that she has the intellect and inner confidence to do the job. She has reached beyond her political inheritance and shaped a political presence all her own. Hillary belittlers still abound, to be sure. She is still caricatured as calculating. But the senator has taken on some different markings. Gone is the defensive bite, on hand is a new openness to concede mistakes, often with glints of humor.

With Holy Joe cozily lodged in all but name in the bowels of the War Party, Senate and other Dems face a gut check. Ah, quit kidding--a GUT check?

The first Democratic mouth most of us heard belonged to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, responding to John King of CNN about "Holy Joe" Lieberman's endorsement of John McCain for president:

Let me say that I'm sorry that Joe felt called upon to do what he did, but our Democratic candidate, as we have done in the Congress -- the first bill that we passed through this House of Representatives was the 9/11 Commission recommendation bill to keep our country safe. Last night we passed $31 billion in additional funding so that we could confront terrorism and defeat the Taliban, which was, after all, the site from which this country was attacked and which, frankly, we have distracted our attention from.

And as far as Iraq goes, we need to defeat terrorists. When we've said we ought to redeploy, we have made the caveat that we ought to make sure that we continue to confront and defeat terrorism. So I think Senator Lieberman, who I -- is a good friend of mine, I respect him-- but I think in this instance he is wrong. And our Democratic candidate is going to make sure that the American public knows that we are going to be committed to the safety of this country, to the safety of our people, and to the defeat of terrorists.

Whoa there, Steny, don't get carried away!

Leader Hoyer was referring, of course, to His Holiness's claim that no Democrat could be trusted to continue the unmitigatedly catastrophic bungling in Iraq to which Holy Joe has from the outset committed his sclerotic heart and putrid soul. Myself, I'm more inclined to credit the other reason His Holiness let slip: that none of the Democratic presidential candidates wanted his endorsement.

Which by itself gives us reason to feel a little better about all the Democratic presidential candidates.

Now I don't know about you, but I would have figured that after a betrayal of his party of this magnitude, Holy Joe would have Democratic blood boiling. Accordingly, a friend gathered this sampling of quotes from prominent Dems:

"I have the greatest respect for Joe, but I simply have to disagree with his decision to endorse Senator McCain."
--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada

"Everyone has the right to make their own decisions.... I wish he hadn't done what he did, but he's a friend of mine."
--Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota

"Joe has voted with us on most domestic issues."
--Sen. Charles Schumer of New York

"I respect Senator McCain for being a great patriot ... but so many of the issues that matter to Connecticut voters ... are all issues that Senator Lieberman has supported and McCain hasn't."
--Connecticut Democratic chair Nancy DiNardo

"It doesn't surprise me at all--I've known him 30 years. It doesn't surprise me."
--former President Bill Clinton

"Oh my God, no. Really?"
--anonymous Lieberman staffer, CNN.com, December 17th

Sen. Joe Lieberman's endorsement of Republican Sen. John McCain for president earlier this week rattled some of his Democratic colleagues, one of whom said he was "speechless" after his conference mate announced his choice.
--anonymous Democratic Senator

"I am very saddened by Senator Lieberman's choice, and profoundly disagree with it.... We need to elect a Democratic president in 2008."
--DLC founder-CEO and legendary centrist Al From [right]

And (says our friend) the best for last--

"Joe described his role in the party as that of an eccentric uncle, but I think it's more like having an uncle in the mob.... People are ashamed, but they're also afraid. It's not a happy thing for the family. His fellow senators are like volcano worshipers. They just know if he blows, then there's really trouble."
--former Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Curry

Fer cripes' sake, freakin' Al From? A man who travels with compass and protractor to make sure that he's always at dead center (on a spectrum that often seems to range from Tom Tancredo on the right to, oh, Wile E. Coyote on the left)? The only Democrat in sight with the balls to say the simple truth about the Holy One?

IF BUSH LOOTED FORT KNOX AND FLEW TO HIS ESTATE IN PARAGUAY, WOULD PELOSI PUT IMPEACHMENT BACK ON THE TABLE? MAYBE

It was all over the BBC World Service today, and all over CNN International. The pompous airhead whom conspirators and the mentally challenged call the president said he is "reserving judgment" on the destroyed CIA tapes. Does it strike anyone as odd-- like how about Bush-protector Nancy Pelosi for starters-- that he who should be judged thinks to puff himself up into some kind of pose of dignity and tell the media (with a straight face) that he is reserving judgment. Who buys this crap?

South Koreans just elected a right-wing crook. We taught them democracy real good. Putin learned from our political establishment too. He is reputed to have amassed a $40 billion fortune-- and the Russians, not exactly a democracy-loving lot, just worship him. He's in the same league as Bush and Cheney.

Well, at least the Washington Post has a columnist pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. "At a year-end press conference this morning, President Bush staved off questions about White House complicity in the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, refusing even to flatly deny that he was personally involved. Bush also declined to say whether he thought the destruction of the tapes was right or wrong."

The quote by Bush that is all over Thai TV today: "I'm going to reserve judgment until I find out the full facts." Will he then have himself arrested? The Post's Dan Froomkin suspects it is more likely to lead to the malevolent Cheney than to the hapless Bush. We'll see.

It's all highly reminiscent of Bush's no-comment strategy during the investigation of the White House role in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. Then, as now, Bush could have demanded that his aides tell him what they had done. But he obviously didn't want to hear it.

And now, as then, Bush can insist that he wants to wait for others to determine the facts, and then refuse to comment while an investigation is ongoing-- until the press corps loses interest in the matter.

Today, since former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby has dropped his appeal in the Plame case, the coast was clear for reporters to ask Bush any of the many important, unanswered questions about that case. But nobody did.

There's plenty of guilt, in the upper reaches of the regime, to go around starting with corrupt regime lawyers David Addington, John Bellinger III, and, of course, Alberto Gonzales. Yesterday's NY Times started the ball rolling. Destroying evidence is a serious matter and the media should be howling. Too bad we have a thoroughly politicized and utterly compromised Department of Justice. Let's try to keep in mind which collaborationist Democrats voted to approve this band of crooks as it all unfolds. This is at least as serious as Watergate. At least.

UPDATE FROM A DEMOCRATIC PARTY OUTSIDER-- A QUALIFIED PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE WITH GRASSROOTS SUPPORT WHO WON'T PANDER

I asked our Blue America-endorsed candidate from Arizona's first CD, Howard Shanker, to give us a little update on his campaign. As you probably know, there is a hot primary in the district, pitting Howard against a Democratic insider favored by the establishment and by Inside the Beltway hacks. This is what Howard sent to Bangkok from Flagstaff this evening:

The seat is being vacated by the Republican incumbent Rick Renzi, who has run into some legal difficulties. A couple of months ago I had the honor of blogging at Firedoglake. At the time I promised to provide some periodic updates. Since we last communicated, I helped prepare and represent a delegation of Navajo who testified in front of Congress on uranium contamination issues (the Navajo Nation is part of the Congressional District). I argued an historic case on behalf of the Navajo Nation, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the Havasupai Tribe, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Flagstaff Activist Network, and others, in front of an en banc court of the Ninth Circuit -- to stop the federal government from allowing the use of reclaimed sewer water on the San Francisco Peaks to make snow. The Peaks are environmentally sensitive and sacred to 13 of the tribes in the southwestern United States. I received endorsements from the Navajo Western Agency, as well as the Colorado River Indian Tribes. I was the Grand Marshall in the Western Navajo fair/parade. My float included, in part, four Navajo Code Talkers, the Attorney General for the Navajo Nation, Chapter officials, Navajo Medicine Men, members of the Native American Church, grass roots activists, and members of the band "Blackfire." I participated in a motorcycle run on the San Carlos Apache reservation (also in the District) as well as in the San Carlos parade, and had dinner with the Chairman and Tribal Council after the parade. I celebrated Shabbat at Northern Arizona University with Chabad of Northern Arizona and the Hillel at NAU. I was a guest speaker at Berkeley, Boalt Hall, published an article on "Hormesis in Toxic Tort Litigation," and made numerous campaign appearances.

My campaign is generating tremendous grass roots support from concerned citizens across the country. With wage earners and laborers digging into their pockets to donate $15-$50 during tough economic times and a holiday season. The fact is, the people need a voice in Congress. My goal is to be that voice. My only agenda is to do what is best for the Country and the District. My agenda, however, does not appear to be in line with the plans of Democratic party insiders who have "anointed" an "insider" candidate for the seat. The "anointed" candidate was a state legislator who apparently "paid her dues to the Party." I invite readers to review this former state legislator's record and compare it to my accomplishments as a private attorney. She quit mid-term to run for Congress. She has yet to provide any substantive positions on important issues -- her people are "working on her policy statements." I have clear positions posted on my website. If there is an issue not addressed call or email me and I will address it. Even without substance, however, the Party's heir apparent has raised approximately $400,000. My goal is not to bad mouth or demean my opponent. Indeed, she appears to be very pleasant. I do, however, question the very fundamentals of our Party and our processes. These times call for candidates with vision, as well as the ability and willingness to oppose the status quo. Yet we elect good fund raisers, not leaders. We complain when our elected officials pander to deep pockets. Both the Republican and the Democratic parties understand this lapse in our collective sanity and take full advantage of it to promote their own. Whether out of some misguided sense of loyalty or simply political sinecure, make no mistake, they do have "their own."

We are mired in an unjust war of our own making with no concerted effort to implement an exit strategy. As a nation, we are borrowing money from Saudi Arabia so we can buy oil from, for example, Saudi Arabia. We are faced with a national health care crises -- we don't have coverage. Our population is aging without adequate savings at the same time we have floundering Social Security and Medicare systems. Our government is rife with corruption -- already infamous for selling off essential government functions on a no bid contract basis. We do not have adequate infrastructure or services in place to meet the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Our elected officials continue to talk about global warming as if it is a political issue, rather than a scientific fact. We even have a viable Presidential candidate who rejects the theory of evolution. The list goes on. The system is broken. We need people to fix it, not to be part of it.

The question is, "Do the political insiders have a strangle hold on power?" The answer is, "Only if we let them." The problems facing our country are too important to hand off to political machines whose wheels are greased by cronyism. We need leaders with vision and the ability to stand up for what is right in the face of overwhelming odds. That is what I have to offer. Help me bring democracy back to the Democratic party. If you have read all the way through this message -- Thank you. I invite you to Google me, "Howard Shanker". Even better, check out my website. Please contact me with your suggestions and thoughts. I have a proven track record of standing up against the federal government and big corporate interests to protect communities, families, the environment, and the freedoms we all hold dear. Help me give the people a voice that doesn't march in lock step with party politics as usual. I hope you all have a good holiday season.

Howard Shanker

www.Shanker2008.com

Howard Shanker
Candidate, Congressional District 1
P.O. Box 160
Flagstaff, AZ 86002-0160

Please consider going over to our Blue America ActBlue page and making a contribution to Howard's campaign and also consider voting for Howard in the DFA poll.--Howie

AREN'T MORMONS JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE? GEE-- YOU'D HAVE TO ASK ONE-- OR ONE WHO ESCAPED FROM THE CULT... AND LIVED TO TELL

The first Mormon I ever heard of when I was a kid was Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994), a far right lunatic who was Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture and later head of the "strange" Utah-based Mormon cult. Like most Americans, I didn't think too much about Benson or Mormons at the time. Yesterday, Benson's grandson, cartoonist Steve Benson, an ex-Mormon, warned America about a real Mormon threat to America-- that's right, Willard.

Benson claims Willard is, as everyone who has been paying attention already knows, a liar and specifically a liar when it comes to Mormonism. Willard Romney has learned how to suavely never tell the truth about anything. (He's as big a liar as the notorious and shameless hypocrite John McCain.)

Benson explained to Editor and Publisher why Romney's recent speech on his faith (his pale imitation of the "Kennedy speech") "should not be trusted by media people and other Americans."

In his talk, Romney said "I believe in my Mormon faith" while also noting that the church's "teachings" would not influence his decisions if elected president.

"Yeah, right," responded Benson, adding that "Romney also believes in misrepresenting what his Mormon Church actually espouses."

He told E&P that, in his view, a Mormon believer is required by church doctrine (as dictated by the church's "living prophet") to "obey God's commands" over anything else. He said "Romney, like all 'temple Mormons,' made his secret vows using Masonic-derived handshakes, passwords, and symbolic death oaths that he promised in the temple never to reveal to the outside world"-- and that Romney also secretly vowed to devote his "time, talents" and more "to the building of the Mormon religion on earth."

So, said Benson, the only way Romney could be truly independent of the church as U.S. president would be to disavow Mormon doctrine. "He hasn't done that," said the Creators Syndicate-distributed cartoonist.

"When Mitt says he belongs to a church that doesn't tell him what to do, that's false; it's a 24/7, do-what-you're-told-to-do church," asserted Benson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1993.

That was the year Benson left what he calls the "Mormon cult." One reason for his decision was disgust with the way Mormon officials tried to fool church members and the general public into believing that Ezra Taft Benson-- Steve's then-94-year-old grandfather and church president-- was still capable of leading the church. "He was not mentally or physically in a place where he could make any meaningful decisions," recalled Benson. "I know it because I saw his condition with my own eyes."

Benson-- who was contacted by E&P for this story-- said journalists have basically given Romney a free pass on the "fundamental contradiction" between being an observant Mormon and a U.S. president. "Most journalists don't know about actual Mormon teachings and practices," noted the cartoonist, adding that they instead see the religion as perhaps "strange" but "rather benign."

Romney "needs to face an informed member of the media with 'cojones' who has a working and perhaps personal experience with Mormonism," said Benson. "It would be harder for Romney to do his well-practiced duck and dodge."...

Another reason Benson distrusts the words in Romney's speech is because the candidate has changed his public positions on issues such as abortion and gay rights to woo conservative GOP voters in states like Iowa rather than the more liberal voters he once courted to become governor of Massachusetts. "He flips and flops like Jesus is coming tomorrow," said the cartoonist. "It's like Romney is reading from the Mormon Church playbook."

Benson explained his last comment by noting that the Mormon Church has also "publicly flipped 180 degrees when it feels it's necessary for its image, for its financial solvency, and for political expediency."

He mentioned, by way of example, that black Mormons weren't allowed into the priesthood until 1978. And while polygamy has been publicly disavowed by the Mormon Church, Benson said "the church still holds that it will be practiced as a matter of eternal doctrine in heaven. The church also currently performs polygamist marriage 'sealings' in its temples around the world."

Benson predicted that Romney will not win the Republican presidential nomination. If Romney is nominated, added the cartoonist, he will not defeat his Democratic opponent.

Voters, said Benson, "are not ready for someone in the Oval Office who has committed to absolute obedience to a religion they feel is extremely odd and not in the American mainstream. I trust the rational U.S. electorate, not the weird Mormon God."

As ugly as it is, maybe Huckabee's anti-Mormon rhetoric is based on something besides pure bigotry after all. Although to me all these religionist fanatics, whether a crazy greed-and-power-obsessed Mormon cultist like Willard or fundamentalist nutcases like Huckabee or Lieberman, who justify their politics with the "God is on my side" bullshit, and all religionist fanaticism, should be kept out of politics-- way out.

ONE BIG UNION-- SOMETHING WE NEED NOT JUST IN AMERICA, BUT EVERYWHERE

My grandfather was a socialist who owned his own business and employed a couple dozen workers. He taught me that the labor movement was a crucial component-- if not the crucial component-- of American democracy. Labor unions are the only countervailing force the American people can count on against the greed and avarice of the wealthy who own the media and both political parties-- the Republicans 100% and the Democrats... to a great extent.

Adam from Traveling Light has put together an inspiring and inspired video for the song "One Big Union" by Iowa rockers Red Smear. It's my favorite song and I can't stop listening to it and watching the video:



A few days ago I mentioned how I couldn't quite get my head around the Thai elections (which culminate on Sunday). I'm understanding them better now. In the past I've written about Thailand's now-ousted and exiled corrupt billionaire prime minister Thaksin. His party is no more but the front runner in this week's election, the PPP, is just another version of the same corrupt crew. The primary opposition, the Democratic Party, claims to be battling the forces of entrenched corruption. The PPP-- like Thaksin-- takes a populist stance (while lining the pockets of their supporters) and have great appeal in the less educated countryside-- where most of the voters live.

When I embarked on this trip, all my friends warned me about Burma and their violent military junta. Sunday the PPP will probably win the elections here. They are threatening to re-write the Constitution (again) and the military, which overthrew Thaksin, may well move against them. Damn, do they need one big union here! South Korea too-- where they just elected a corrupt, right-wing vulture capitalist as president.

The Bush Crime Family presses its unprecedented rampage of law-breaking, strong-arming the U.N. into further fig-leafing of the Iraq occupation

Man, when these guys put their heads

together, watch out for flying sawdust.

Even once you think you've accustomed yourself to the reality that every word that comes out of every mouth fronting for the Bush regime will be a lie, and that every deed done by a regime deed-doer will break every law the scumbag can manage to trample, the capacity for astonishment is never lessened.

Nobody else seems to care, but over at AlterNet, Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland are jumping up and down trying to get us to notice that:

On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year.

The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament -- the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 -- and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population.

It seems that "a group representing a majority of lawmakers in Iraq's parliament -- a group made up of Sunni, Shiite and secular leaders" wrote a letter to the Security Council objecting in the strongest possible terms to "unconditional renewal of the mandate" and seeking "clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable."

We don't know if [the letter] was even read by members of the Security Council, but we do know that it, like previous communications from the Iraqi legislature, was completely ignored.

James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, which follows the United Nations' intrigues, said that while "there's concern in many delegations at the United Nations about what is going on," Security Council delegates "are under instructions from their governments to lay low and pass the U.S. resolution." According to Paul, the move "shows the despotic power of the U.S. government to force everyone to knuckle under, no matter how much the law is violated."

It was an egregious assault on Iraq's nascent democracy, as well as its supposed "sovereignty," and can only encourage more bloodshed. Yet the commercial media has so far ignored the story entirely, reporting only that "Iraq" had requested that the mandate be renewed.

The real picture is dramatically different. Just as some congressional Democrats in Washington have tried desperately to limit Bush's ability to maintain troops in Iraq forever -- inserting various conditions into the endless series of supplemental spending bills that have financed the occupation -- and been thwarted by the administration, so too has a majority of Iraq's parliament come out against renewing the mandate without attaching conditions to it, including a requirement that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal.

Oh, there's lots more to the story, if you've got the stomach. It hardly seems to matter, though. Once again the lying thugs of the Bush regime present us with a fait accompli, and it never seems to matter that they're always wrong. Of course being a Bush supporter means being at all times at war with every facet of reality, not to mention humanity, decency, and sanity. Lie, thuggify, obfuscate, Liebermanitize, and when all else fails, its just bombs away!

I understand that the Bush regimists probably all have unassailable insanity defenses to present. Is there a chance that any court, any jury, any sentient being, would seriously entertain the crackpot notion that "Big Dick" Cheney or Chimpy the Prez harbors even a single cell of sanity anywhere in his toxic carcass?

But insanity defenses are presented in court, in response to appropriate criminal charges. Isn't it about time to get these thugs into court and out of running the country--or the world?

#

IT LOOKS LIKE THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH GIULIANI

"To be on the safe side," said Giuliani spokesperson Katie Levinson, "the mayor consulted with his personal physician in New York and made the decision to go to the Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for routine tests." Barnes Jewish Hospital? Have Hucko and Willard heard about this?

Here in Bangkok it's 7pm on Thursday evening. Back in L.A. it's 4am Thursday morning (still Wednesday night for most Americans). I wonder how many people even know the big news that just flashed across TV screens here-- that the man who was once the frontrunner for the (worthless) Republican presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani, was admitted to a St Louis hospital... with "flu-like symptoms." He turned his private jet around and flew back to St Louis because he had these "flu-like symptoms." A few weeks ago I got on a plane with flu-like symptoms, a plane to New Delhi. I got over it.

I'm not suggesting he left one of his favorite drag outfits in St Louis and that's the real reason he turned around his private jet. But come on: "flu-like symptoms"? Who is he kidding? Is he that much of a woos? Or is there something they're not telling us about the flu-like symptoms?

Or is he getting ready to bow out of a race he now knows he can't win-- and planning to use "health reasons" as the excuse, just like he did when he realized Hillary was going to clean his clock when he tried running for the U.S. Senate, only to see the futility of that race and duck the ignominy of losing to her.

RIGHT-WINGERS ARE GETTING HYSTERICAL OVER HUCKABEE

Mike and Willard (with Mrs. Willard looking on) after
the Drake University debate in Des Moines in August

Republicans know Mike Huckabee has as much a chance of becoming president (of the United States) as do Tom Tancredo or Ron Paul. But he's obliterating one of their favored insider Establishment candidates, the anything-but-authentic Willard Romney (aka- Mitt), and he's set to win the Iowa caucuses. Many fear he'll wind up as the vice presidential nominee on a Giuliani ticket, a ticket plenty of serious Republicans would never bother voting for, not even to stop Hillary Clinton.

Republican insiders are revolted by Huckabee's pseudo-populism (which they confuse with "liberalism"), his blatant appeal to primitive religionist prejudices and his dangerous divisiveness.

Now, unlike the slick, pre-packaged Willard, Huckabee does come across as authentic and folksy. But a lot of his popularity is tied up with his claims to have used hard work, will power and lots of effort to shed 100 pounds or so. But how authentic are those claims? Jane suggests Huckabee may be to dieting what Romney is to hunting.

A friend of mine is one of the foremost bariatric specialists in the world. I sent him the information about Huckabee and the claims that he had the 100 pounds of fat sliced off, his tummy stapled, and that will power and effort-- except on the part of his surgeon-- weren't part of his makeover. He went over the info and he isn't convinced-- nor will he rule it out. "The 'facts' on the site are questionable. But it's certainly possible for Huckabee to have had GBP."

Is this all a sham?




UPDATE: EVEN A GOP HACK LIKE PEGGY NOONAN IS EMBARRASSED

Huckabee's team denies there ever was a cross. And I suppose there are some stupid enough-- we are, after all, talking about Republicans in Iowa-- who will agree it never existed and go vote for him anyway. But even former Reagan speech writer and GOP propagandist Peggy Noonan is offended-- if not mortified. Actually,the word she used was "appalled."

I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, and it has served us well, in which we are happy to profess our faith but don't really hit people over the head with its symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee's ad was.

I wound up thinking this: That guy is using the cross so I'll like him. That doesn't tell me what he thinks of Jesus, but it does tell me what he thinks of me. He thinks I'm dim. He thinks I will associate my savior with his candidacy. Bleh.

Bleh? That barely begins to describe how Americans feel about Huckabee, Noonan and their perverted political party that has turned everything good and decent about our country on its head.

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN PARTY ON A SUICIDE MISSION-- HOPEFULLY THEY WON'T TAKE THE REST OF US WITH THEM

The Republican melee that will determine which one of the pathetic pygmies gets to ask Americans if they want a third term for George Bush has degenerated into a battle about religionism, a clear example of why the Republicans Party is destined to become a small, extremist regional political party for crackpots and loons. As ABC News reports today, "Religion is driving the Republican presidential race in Iowa, with Mike Huckabee taking the lead on the strength of overwhelming support from evangelical voters-- and Mitt Romney falling behind over concerns about his Mormon faith."

Mitt Romney is certainly unfit for high office-- no arguments there-- but the pathetic beings who dominate the Republican caucuses in Iowa certainly are rejecting him for the wrong reasons. None of the Above, which has dominated the race from Day One and becomes stronger and stronger the better the voters get to know their candidates, can't win. It isn't allowed. It is more likely that Republican voters will opt for the tired old man they know best, John McCain. Huckabee's insane religionist psychosis will play well among Republicans in the South and in other backward areas, but even Republicans in most places feel uncomfortable with wild statements like "The war on terror is a theological war," standard fare in the Huckabee campaign.

No one's polling numbers will be impacted by racist xenophobe Tom Tancredo's decision to withdraw from the race today after finding out that the one straw he was grasping at-- an endorsement from psychotic Iowa Congressman Steve King (one of the only members of Congress as racist and bigoted as himself)-- will not be forthcoming. The King endorsement was his entire Iowa game-plan-- outside of the Know Nothing fear mongering. King endorsed another loser, who will also be withdrawing soon, the lazy old man with the devastatingly ambitious young wife, Fred Thompson. As for Ron Paul, the candidate of UFO enthusiasts, the KKK, neo-fascists and conspiracy nuts, he's made a big decision-- he's keeping the $500 donation from neo-Nazi Stormfront founder Don Black whose motto is "White Pride World Wide." Catchy. Even some of the most extreme of the far right kooks and loons think Ron Paul is off his rocker and feel uncomfortable that the Republican Party is being publicly identified with Nazis.

If the Huckaroo wanted to send an actual, nonpandering Christmas message, might he not have spoken out on behalf of the Prince of Peace?

I suppose we should take note of the repulsive ad with which "God's Own" Mike Huckabee is polluting selected airwaves--more even than they're already polluted. You know, the one where he's positioned strategically in front of bookshelves oh-so-cunningly dressed to create a background crucifix.

Cenk Uygur's got a good post, complete with video. I suppose everyone who sees this woeful spectacle will have his/her own idea of what's most pathetic about it. Here's Cenk's take:

The worst part is that it is wrapped in a sugar-coated, sickeningly saccharine coating (you can watch the whole ad and Ron Paul's fantastic response to it here). Are Americans still this naive that they're going to fall for this cheesy dude in the red sweater pretending he cares more about you because he is with Jesus Christ?

I'm afraid of the answer to that question.

To me, the worst thing about this sad spectacle is the Huckster's adolescent fantasy that he's really pulling a fast one here, by golly sneaking a cross into his ad while claiming that any cross you may see is purely accidental if not actually hallucinatory.

Now all you have to do is take the most casual look at the video to see that the bookshelves-masquerading-as-rood is 100 percent intentional. There isn't a chance in a gajillion that it's the tiniest bit accidental. And yet Huckyboy thinks he's cleverly cloaked himself with "plausible deniability."

Just think about it. Here's this poor sod sweating off another 100 pounds in his desperation to pander to brain-challenged religious wackos, and yet the gutless turd can't even admit that he's proudly flaunting his phony religion.

Of course if the Reverend Hockeypuck were, say, a Jew in Nazi Germany surreptitiously proclaiming his enduring faith while waiting for all the lights to go out, one could see the logic. But he's just a dumb, dishonest, pandering schmuck in a country where faux Christians routinely flaunt their phony Christianity and have no compunctions about trying to bully into submission anyone who dares to question their counter-constitutional religious tyranny.

Good one, Hucko. Oh yeah, you da man.

The country's hardy band of remaining true Christians will probably be praying for your troubled soul.

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Hey, Tim, Bob, Chris, George, and Wolf: Sure, science stuff is a bummer, but shouldn't we know a bit about our next president's thinking on climate?

Our energy-and-environment guru A Siegel tips us off to a call to action by the League of Conservation Voters, focusing on the Sunday gabfests' attention to climate issues, which is even more pathetic than you probably supposed:

The climate crisis will be the biggest
challenge facing the next president.

But the top Sunday hosts
don't seem to think so.

In 2007, they have asked:

2275 Questions

3 mentioned global warming

What are they waiting for?

Hmm. What are they waiting for? Well, a climate-change-related sex scandal might get their attention.

(On this LCV webpage there's a petition you can sign, if that sort of thing excites you.)

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Looking for the perfect holiday gift? Something nobody else will give him/her? Al Kamen's got just the thing--all you have to do is get hold of one

"The Gift That Keeps On Giving," our pal Al calls it in today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column.

Yes, it's the new, better-than-ever National Counterterrorism Center's 2008 weekly planner, out just in time for Christmas.

Where else can you discover that nine years ago today, on Dec. 19, Libyan-trained Abu Sayyaf Group leader Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani died in a gunfight with Philippine authorities on Basilan island? Or that it's 20 Dhu al-Hijjah in the Arabic calendar?

Or let's say it's July 30, and you spot a tall, thin, bearded guy eating chocolate cake with candles on it while schlepping around a dialysis machine. Your NCTC planner will tell you that it's Osama bin Laden's birthday, and you can collect a cool $27 million "for information leading directly to [his] apprehension and/or conviction."

Just call the FBI or the nearest embassy. Telephone and e-mail options are provided.

Bin Laden, in years past, had been listed as likely to be in Afghanistan and, more recently, Pakistan. This year's calendar -- which says he has somehow maintained his girlish 160-pound figure all these years -- has him "in the wind," as the spooks say, with no location mentioned.

Early this year, there were reports that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, wanted for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, might have been killed by U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. Apparently not, because the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program still has a $5 million price tag on his head.

The calendar's most-wanted group includes many of our favorites from years past, most with a $5 million bounty. Our longtime favorite, Faker Ben Abdelazziz Boussora, a Canadian, still has those "prominently protruding ears and is believed to have a serious pituitary gland illness."

One newcomer in 2008 is Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, secretary general of the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad, which the State Department lists as a terrorist group. The 2008 planner has more realistic color photos of Shallah and many of the most-wanted, including Taliban chief Mullah Omar, which should help sightings.

For example, there are three candid photos of Jaber Elbaneh of that famed terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.

The left-hand page has the customary helpful information about terrorist groups, safety tips for chemical and biological weapons, and safe distances from various types of explosives. (You'll want to be at least 500 yards from the typical car bomb, we're advised.) So you think that runny nose and shortness of breath are just a cold? Maybe. Or maybe you've got symptoms of exposure to VX, a deadly nerve gas, the planner says. If you start to twitch, pull out your atropine syringe or high-tail it to your doctor. But it might only be anthrax.

Other new features include a page that rebuts such notions as poverty breeds terrorists. Not so. Another myth is that you can spot a radical because of certain "signs," such as a beard, beady eyes, a crazed expression or manic behavior. (In fact, it could be just a reporter on deadline.) The NCTC notes that this year's splendid edition is "the largest since the calendar first appeared in a daily planner format in 2003." (It began in the '90s as a wall calendar put out by the CIA with no mention of a publisher. The NCTC started publishing it in 2005.) The calendars are popular gifts for anti-terrorism officials in other countries and are highly prized as Christmas gifts within the counterterrorism community, we are told. "People are begging for this thing," a source said. And this year's -- with maybe 40,000 in print, up substantially from last year's output -- is exceptional.

But forget Wal-Mart or Target. There are no operators standing by to take your call. These calendars are available only to folks inside the anti-terrorism community. As always, in this town, it's who you know.

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Fort Worth voters pick the best candidate to fill their City Council vacancy, and it doesn't seem to matter that he's gay

“Joel’s election proves that leadership and experience are more important to voters than sexual orientation. The people of Fort Worth rewarded Joel’s obvious dedication to his city, and ignored the tired politics of division.”
--Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the Victory Fund ("the only national organization dedicated to increasing the number of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elected officials at all levels of government"), after yesterday's runoff election

There seems to have been a fair amount of nastiness regarding Fort Worth real estate agent Joel Burns's sexual orientation (he's gay), but in the end the voters in City Council District 9 seem to have gotten beyond it.

In the November general election Burns finished at the head of the field of six candidates, having been endorsed by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which praised his knowledge of city issues and the wisdom of his positions. ("Burns champions intelligent, sustainable economic development; a more advanced urban transportation system that would include expanded rail transit; continued central-city redevelopment that further revitalizes older neighborhoods; quality affordable housing for low- and moderate-income residents; strong code enforcement; and well-equipped, well-paid police and firefighters.") That set the stage for yesterday's runoff, which he won with 54 percent of the vote.


UPDATE: MORE GOOD NEWS FROM FT. WORTH

Apparently all these years of Republican rule have started sinking in-- even in Texas, where progressive Democrat Dan Barrett won a special election yesterday for an open State House seat in an overwhelmingly (once overwhelmingly) Republican district. Texas bloggers, who helped finance Barrett's candidacy, have reports at the Burnt Orange Report here and here. Blue America-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Rick Noriega campaigned for Barrett and helped with his get out the vote effort. Rick's statement:

"Yesterday, Texans voted for change. They stood up for Texas values and said no to business as usual. They said no to the politics of division. They said yes to an independent voice who will put Texas families and children first.

"Dan Barrett's win in the Texas State House is about change for Texas, but it's also about a change in how campaigns are won. We wouldn't have narrowed the Republican majority from 26 seats to 8 seats over the last five years without the work of Texas netroots. That's why your actions online-- from raising attention to raising money-- are so important."

WHY SHOULD THE CITIZENS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT NOVEMBER FOR JOHN SUNUNU TO BE REMOVED FROM THE SENATE? AND WHY ISN'T ROVE IN PRISON?

For several years now DWT has been following the case of New Hampshire's stolen U.S. Senate election of 2002, when John Sununu managed to slip into office the same way Bush did two years earlier-- by cheating. Several of the Republican operatives involved in stealing the election were charged, convicted and imprisoned. But they were low-level Republican slime-for-hire, and no real investigation of the people from whom they took their orders, or who paid them, was ever undertaken. Mehlman, Rove and, of course, Sununu were the ones who should have been in prison. Instead they all got away scot-free... until now.

One of the perps, Allen Raymond, has written a book about how the GOP stole a U.S. Senate seat, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, due out from Simon & Schuster in January. Raymond explains the cover-up and "offers a raw, inside glimpse of the phone scandal as it unraveled and of a ruthless world in which political operatives seek to win at all costs."

Next year Sununu will face the woman, (now former Gov.) Jeanne Shaheen, he stole the 2002 election from once again, and every poll shows him trailing badly. That's good, but not nearly enough. He should be tried for a very grave crime, along with the Republican Party officials who enabled and him and their party, starting with Rove and Mehlman.


UPDATE ON GOP ELECTION STEALING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Will it surprise you to read that successful attempts to steal a desperately needed U.S. Senate in New Hampshire went beyond Republican Party officials and right into the heart of the Bush Regime? Today the McClatchy newspapers are reporting that "the Justice Department delayed prosecuting a key Republican official [subsequently convicted Karl Rove stooge James Tobin] for jamming the phones of New Hampshire Democrats until after the 2004 election, protecting top GOP officials from the scandal until the voting was over... [T]he official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told McClatchy that senior Justice Department officials slowed the inquiry. The official didn't know whether top department officials ordered the delays or what motivated those decisions." Who would like to venture a guess?

WILLARD ROMNEY-- UGLY IN PINK?

The game room at Mitt's house? Like, where he has "the
boys" over for, you know, poker--yeah, that's it, poker.

All last week almost everyone in Bangkok-- not counting tourists-- wore a pale yellow polo shirt with a royal insignia on it. It was in celebration of the king's birthday. It was really incredible seeing whole busloads of men, women and children of all ages and classes all wearing the same shirt. This week they're all wearing an almost identical shirt-- celebrating the king's good health-- and the color of the week is the color of luck: pink.

This would be a bad week for Willard Romney to visit Thailand. It isn't only because luck has turned against the flip-flopping Mormon bishop who would be his party's presidential nominee; it is because apparently Willard just hates pink! Hates it. In between a spate of recent public sobbing bouts, the GOP's most effeminate candidate was interviewed on Meet the Press. When questioned about the charges-- in more depth and with more serious research than his GOP opponents had tried at a recent debate-- that he had hired (and re-hired after being unambiguously informed about the immigration status of his low wage employees) undocumented workers to do yard work at his pink mansion, Romney got a weird look in his beady eyes.

Willard got in a huff but not really over the charges of hiring undocumented laborers. Republicans, after all, may hate foreigners and immigrants but they love slavery and cheap labor. No, what Willard got in a tizzy over was the charge that he lived in a pink house. He looked straight at the camera, jaw thrust out, anus clamped tightly shut, and with practised decisiveness told the American people, "I would not have a pink house."

I have no way of knowing if Willard Romney has ever had sex with another male-- he was quite a looker when he was younger, particularly when he was prancing around France trying to entice Frenchmen to join his cult-- but I do know he is the biggest fag the Republicans have ever put up for presidential consideration-- and considering the present doofus they've installed in the White House, that is saying a lot. I'd say Hillary is about 20 times butcher than Willard and not even nearly as pathetic. Huckabee has his own weird gay problems-- among his myriad of problems-- and Rudy Giuliani is a drag queen, but no one is such an out and out simpering freak as Willard. I can't even imagine they'd allow him in any self-respecting gay bar! The entire party is pathological and as today's Washington Post points out, the hypocrisy is nothing short of startling.

The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week. And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.

This clip is for Bishop Willard Romney who may or may not ever live in a pink house but will certainly never live in the White House:

Ah, the "intelligentsia" of the Right-Wing Noise Machine pipes up in full, deafening screech, and then doesn't even bother to say, "Never mind"

What? Condoms? At Princeton? Damn liberals!

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the sad clowns who pass for an "intelligentsia" of the New Right. After all, are the mere 24 hours allotted by each day enough to crowd in the proper amount worth of lies, stupidification, obfuscation, and general pollution of the human spirit?

Today's cautionary tale is told by Max Blumenthal on The Nation's website. It's the story of a loony-right Princeton student, one Francisco Nava, "a sad young person with a history of self-injuring behavior," who perpetrated a preposterous hoax, claiming to have been not only widely reviled and wickedly threatened but actually beaten up for his outspoken right-wing-itude--in this case denouncing the university's shocking championing of condom usage! Damn liberals!

Once the case landed in the laps of the local gendarmerie, the cops seem to have figured out in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, that the kid had made the whole thing up, that his injuries were all self-inflicted, that the whole thing was pure bullshit. But by that time, from all over the land the heavy hitters of what passes for right-wing "intelligence" had piped up in full, deafening screech to denounce the liberal Sodom of New Jersey.

Movement icons from Robby George of Princeton to Harvey Mansfield of Harvard, from David Horowitz to Brit Hume, raised howls of persecution when they heard reports that two masked men allegedly attacked a conservative Princeton University student. They insisted that the right-wing acolyte was beaten up "for his conservative views," as Horowitz put it. And they accused Princeton of failing to protect conservatives and upholding a hypocritical liberal double standard.

From the outset all the signs of fabrication were there, Max notes. Naturally, though, when the hoax finally unraveled, the right-wing noise machinists couldn't run for cover fast enough:

When Nava was exposed as a fabricator, his defenders disappeared almost as quickly as they had mobilized. Rather than issue a correction or update, Horowitz scrubbed all accounts of the bogus attack from his website. Fox's Brit Hume, meanwhile, has yet to amend his terse online report of student apathy toward Nava.

Robby George, who had been quick to condemn the university, now praised Princeton for its measured response to the Nava affair. "Princeton, all the way from the administrators down, had the good sense to hold their fire, get the facts first, before drawing conclusions," he told the Princetonian.

George also congratulated himself for his own calmness in the crisis and sharp-wittedness in uncovering the fraud. "Within seventy-two hours," he said, "we were able to expose this as a hoax."

But of course, Nava's claims were never "exposed" by George or his conservative campus allies. Nava had reportedly confessed to his lying under police questioning. Only hours before George celebrated the "good sense" he and university administrators displayed, he had accused Princeton of upholding a liberal double standard. And while Princeton police investigated dubious details of the alleged assault, George broadcast his confidence in Nava's melodramatic account.

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DO WE EVEN DESERVE TO HAVE GOD ON OUR SIDE?

If "God" existed, the answer to that question would be, a priori, unknowable-- so let's not dwell on it. Instead let's dwell on two other things. First, the best of the three top-tier Democrats, John Edwards, just pulled ahead in Iowa polling-- and pulled ahead very strongly. At this point you would have to say he is the favorite to win the caucuses.

And second, at the same time that Edwards is surging, the pathetic pygmies, as Gingrich termed the GOP candidates for president, have been cannibalizing each other on their arcane religionist doctrines, turning off normal Americans who are aghast that the Republican battle for the right to personify a third George Bush term has degenerated into some kind of a battle defining who is more of a religionist nutcase.

Few Democrats are attacking Mike Huckabee, silently praying that the GOP nominates him, since he is clearly the least fit among the breathtakingly unfit for the presidency. And their prayers seem to be working. After questioning the appropriateness of nominating a cult member (Mormon Mitt)-- and then apologizing after the damage was done-- Huckabee has taken to sending not-so-subliminal messages to the bizarre and backward religionist fanatics in Iowa who support him.

The worthless Republican nomination is a complete and utter mess, and even far-right partisans and extremists are finally admitting that there is a good reason why "None of the Above" wins every single preference poll among registered Republicans. "None of the Above" wins because none of the GOP's potential nominees is fit to get anywhere near the White House-- and even the deranged 25% of Americans who still think Bush is doing a good job have come to realize that. The campaign has brought that into clearer and clearer focus, and as each presidential wannabe gets better-known to the public, he is rejected. Huckabee is just the latest to make Republicans want to puke. In the end they may well just shrug their shoulders, hold their noses, convince themselves that the one who disagrees with the GOP on almost everything may be electable-- he isn't-- and just allow Giuliani to ooze into the nomination.


UPDATE: THE NONE OF THE ABOVE MEME HAS TAKEN HOLD in GOPLAND

Longtime Republican Party propagandist Tony Blankley agrees that Republican voters won't be able to settle on which pygmy to make the sacrificial lamb.

Quote of the day: To really fix FISA, "It is time to stop giving in to an administration that does not respect the rule of law," says Russ Feingold

"It is important not to let the excitement of yesterday’s success obscure the really difficult challenge ahead. . . . It is time to stop giving in to an administration that does not respect the rule of law. "
--Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), in a TPMCafe guest blog

Perhaps the most under-sung hero of yesterday's triumph--or "temporary success," as he calls it--in the Senate, the talkathon led by Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd which ended in the shelving of the proposed FISA-replacement legislation until January, is Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to fix the system of intelligence oversight in a way that enables the collection of useful information while respecting Americans' basic civil liberties.

"We made it clear that we will do everything we can to stop this bad bill from being jammed through," says Senator Feingold. "One issue that was given a good airing yesterday," he adds, "is that the Senate is being asked to legislate in the dark, particularly on the immunity issue."

Above all, he stresses that the battle for a better intelligence-oversight bill is just beginning. He lays out what's wrong with the Senate Intelligence Committee bill that was taken off the table yesterday, and in particular what's wrong with the process that produced it, including a campaign of misrepresentation by the administration: "I was pleased to be part of yesterday’s success, but we have earned only a temporary respite. We must not squander the extra time we’ve been given. We must keep the pressure on and fight back against the administration’s fear-mongering."

Temporary Success in the Senate
By Senator Russ Feingold

As you all know by now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided last night to pull the deeply flawed Intelligence Committee FISA bill from the floor. He announced that we would return to the bill in January. Senator Chris Dodd did a great job controlling the floor for much of yesterday, insisting on full debate of the motion to proceed after cloture was invoked. We made it clear that we will do everything we can to stop this bad bill from being jammed through. Other Senators, including Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Ron Wyden, Sherrod Brown, and Ben Cardin, eloquently laid out many of the problems with this bill. And even Senators who supported the bill in the Intelligence Committee, such as Sheldon Whitehouse and Dianne Feinstein, made valuable contributions to the debate.

One issue that was given a good airing yesterday is that the Senate is being asked to legislate in the dark, particularly on the immunity issue.

Only members of the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have been permitted to learn about the warrantless wiretapping program in enough detail to make an informed decision about whether retroactive immunity is warranted. To his credit, Senator Reid has now called on the White House to make information available to all Senators who are being asked to vote on this crucial question.

But it is important not to let the excitement of yesterday’s success obscure the really difficult challenge ahead. The Senate will once again take up FISA legislation in January. Our efforts need to be focused not only on stripping out the immunity provision, but also on incorporating greater protections for the privacy of innocent Americans. We now have more time to convince the Senate of several key points:

* Perfectly innocent international communications between Americans in the United States and foreigners overseas, whether by phone or email, are now commonplace. Business people talk with clients or colleagues overseas, students email friends they met while studying abroad, families communicate with loved ones living overseas. Under the broad surveillance authorized by the Intelligence Committee bill, their communications can be swept up. We need to do a better job of imposing limits, safeguards and oversight to protect the privacy of those Americans. The Senate Judiciary Committee bill was a good start, although more needs to be done.

* It’s completely unjustified to grant retroactive immunity to telecom companies that allegedly participated in the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Companies already have immunity from civil liability when they cooperate with a government request for assistance--as long as they receive a court order, or the Attorney General certifies that a court order is not required and all statutory requirements have been met. This argument isn’t about whether companies acted in good faith, it’s about requiring that companies, and the government, follow a law that has been on the books for 30 years.

* If we grant retroactive immunity, the courts will likely be unable to rule on the legality of the NSA wiretapping program. The administration would love that because it would effectively get them off the hook. For those of us who actually respect and believe in three co-equal branches of government as our founders did, immunity would be a disaster.

* The arguments offered by the administration in support of the flawed Intelligence Committee version of the bill are incredibly misleading. I told my colleagues that I’d be happy to talk with them in a classified setting to explain why I am so concerned about these broad new authorities and why some of the examples that have been given by the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence are simply wrong.

The grassroots involvement on this issue has been nothing short of amazing. I was pleased to be part of yesterday’s success, but we have earned only a temporary respite. We must not squander the extra time we’ve been given. We must keep the pressure on and fight back against the administration’s fear-mongering. The Senate made a mistake when it failed to protect the rights and freedoms of the American people in the Patriot Act in 2001 and again during the reauthorization of that law two years ago. It compounded those mistakes many times over in the so-called Protect America Act. It is time to stop giving in to an administration that does not respect the rule of law.

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How do you push back against Bush regime bullies? Well, you can start by standing up to the SOBs

1. THE BUSH REGIME'S INFORMATION SUPPRESSORS RUN INTO A "STRAIGHT-TALKING TEXAN" JUDGE WHO BELIEVES IN THE LAW

We know, of course, that there's practically nothing the Bush regimists hate more than facts. In that gorgeous Daily Show phrase, "The facts are biased." One thing they definitely hate more than facts themselves is those facts' escaping their vault-tight containment. Regimists' basic attitude toward letting go of information--of just about any kind--is approximately:

For us to know,
for you to go fuck yourselves.

Nobody has fought the regime's stranglehold on information--information that by rights belongs to us, the people who employ those criminal scumbags--more stalwartly than CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). And yesterday U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth (who, it might be noted, headed the FISA court from 1995 to 2002--in which connection he was described by CNN's Henry Schuster as "a straight-talking Texan") ruled in favor of CREW, handing the Bush regime a notable setback with a common-sense judgment that the Secret Service's White House visitor logs are public records subject to the Freedom of Information Act--just as they have always been considered to be.

As Michael Abramowitz reports in today's Washington Post:

A federal judge ruled yesterday that White House visitor logs created by the Secret Service are public records, and he ordered information involving the visits of nine conservative Christian leaders with Bush administration officials to be released to an advocacy group.

The dispute involved an effort by the administration to keep secret the records, which have traditionally allowed the news media and Congress to keep tabs on who has visited the White House or the vice president's residence. Administration lawyers have taken the position that the logs are presidential records, outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth rejected this argument, saying the records qualify as "agency records" subject to disclosure. He also rejected the claim that the records should be kept secret to preserve the confidentiality of presidential and vice presidential deliberations, noting that even a Cheney aide testified that the purpose of the visits is not apparent from the documents.

"Knowledge of these visitors would not disclose presidential communications or shine a light on the President's or Vice President's policy deliberations," Lamberth wrote in his opinion.

Officials with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued to obtain the records, expressed satisfaction. "CREW is pleased that the judge saw through the White House's transparent attempts to hide public documents from the American people. We look forward to sharing the documents we obtain through this lawsuit," said Executive Director Melanie Sloan.

2. MAYBE FINAL CONSOLIDATION OF THE CORPORATE CHOKEHOLD ON U.S. MEDIA WON'T BE SUCH A CAKEWALK AFTER ALL

With the clock possibly ticking on Republican control of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it becomes increasingly important for superstooge FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to ram through new rules accomplishing the Bush regime's desired acceleration of the consolidation of American media in the hands of a few right-wing propaganda (and money-minting) titans like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and radio monopolist Clear Channel. Today's news is the stirring of some organized pushback.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) had a big day yesterday. In addition to joining nine Senate colleagues in voting against cloture of debate on proposed extension of the Protect America Act, she sent a stern letter to Chairman Martin, cosigned by a bipartisan group of 24 other senators, warning of congressional readiness to step in. Her office issued this press release:

WASHINGTON, DC--Monday, U.S. Senator Cantwell (D-WA) and a bipartisan group of senators wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin telling him that if the FCC proceeds to take final action on his proposed media ownership rules on December 18 without giving the public enough time to comment, she will immediately introduce and move legislation to revoke and nullify the December 18, 2007 rule. At a Commerce Committee Hearing last Thursday, Cantwell expressed to Martin her concern that the FCC’s proposed new rules will increase media consolidation and hurt competition, diversity, and localism.

“Congress is certainly not afraid to take action against the FCC,” said Cantwell. “Time and again we’ve told the FCC that if it moves forward without adequate feedback from the public, there will be consequences. There are consequences to ignoring the American public’s right to participate fully in the rule making process. In the Senate, we’re going to make sure that if we have to pass legislation stopping the FCC, we will.”

Martin introduced his proposed rules to eliminate the longstanding prohibition of common ownership between a daily newspaper and a television or radio station on November 13, 2007, four days after the FCC held a public hearing on media ownership in Seattle. At the hearing, nearly 800 Washingtonians spent nine hours sharing their viewpoints with the FCC-- the vast majority in strong opposition to increasing media concentration. Martin plans to bring the proposed rule up for a vote on December 18, 2007, even though the public has had only three weeks to comment on the proposed rule, and the FCC has had one week to review those comments.

Cantwell will also continue her work with Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and others on the Media Ownership Act of 2007 to restore a deliberative process to the FCC’s rulemakings on localism and media ownership. A major piece of the Act strengthens the public’s ability to comment on proposed rules.

Cosigning the letter with Senator Cantwell were 20 Democrats, 1 Independent (no, not Holy Joe--don't be ridiculous), and 4 Republicans:

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Trent Lott (R-Mississippi)
Hillary Clinton (D-New York)
Barack Obama (D-Illinois)
John Kerry (D-Massachusetts)
Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
Kent Conrad (D-South Dakota)
Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri)
Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas)
Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas)
Robert Casey (D-Pennsylvania)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island)
Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont)
Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin)
Bill Nelson (D-Florida)
Joe Biden (D-Delaware)
Jon Tester (D-Montana)
Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut)
Larry Craig (R-Idaho)
Barbara Boxer (D-California)
Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey)

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WAIT, WAIT! CAN'T WE ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY AFTER THE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS?

After all, we do know how to do war-crimes trials. That's Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor at Nuremberg in 1945.

Most of my friends are probably admiring New Jersey and its Democratic governor and state legislature today. Even here in Asia people are aware-- and heartily approve-- of Governor Corzine signing a bill abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey. Back when I was at PS 197 in Brooklyn I won a U.N. scholarship for an essay I wrote defending the death penalty. I've moderated my bloodthirsty tendencies a bit since then... but just a bit.

To me the only thing that's inherently wrong with the death penalty is how dependably imperfect our justice system is in figuring out who should get it and who shouldn't. The justice system is fatally biased against minorities and against poor people. So, although I still consider myself a proponent of the death penalty, I don't think it should be implemented-- except in special cases.

Right now I'm reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran's stupendous best seller, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Anyone who needs a reason for exceptions to banning the death penalty need spend only a few hours contemplating the egregious war crimes committed by the Bush Regime and its lackeys in Iraq. For example, the Geneva Convention (and its predecessor, the Hague Convention of 1899; Article 43)-- as Bush Regime attorneys never tired of pointing out-- "required an occupying power to respect all the laws of the occupied country except when it is necessary to promote public order and safety." But right-wing ideologues the Bush Regime installed to run Iraq couldn't wait to impose the kind of vulture capitalism in Iraq they have been slowly imposing on America under the administrations of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. One dangerous nutcase Republican hack, Peter McPherson, immediately "slashed Iraq's top tax rate for individuals and businesses from 45% to a flat 15%. It was the sort of tax overhaul that fiscal conservatives long dreamed of implementing in the United States... The centerpiece of McPherson's agenda was a new foreign-investment law" whereby foreign companies could gobble up all of Iraq's natural resources and industries.

And there were far worse culprits than McPherson. He was replaced by Bush crony Thomas Foley, "an investment banker and a major Republican Party donor who had been President Bush's classmate at Harvard Business School."

A month after arriving, Foley [right] told a contractor from Bearing Point [a GOP-connected criminal consulting firm] that he intended to privatize all of Iraq's state-owned enterprises within thirty days.

"Tom, there are a couple of problems with that," the contractor said. "The first is an international law that prevents the sale of assets by an occupation government."

"I don't care about any of that stuff," Foley told the contractor, according to her recollection of the conversation. "I don't give a shit about international law. I made a commitment to the president that I'd privatize Iraq's businesses."

Imperial Life in the Emerald City reads like a blueprint for dismal and tragic failure in Iraq-- as though it was a premeditated objective. It is also a blueprint for how a Giuliani government would run-- I'll get more into that anon-- and it should be a blueprint for a thorough investigation by Congress. Hopefully, the worst of the criminals won't be indicted in New Jersey but in a state that knows how to punish real criminals... like Texas or Utah. Because despite the crocodile tears shed by the Republican Party's most effeminate presidential candidate, Mitt "I would never live in a pink house" Romney, these Republicans really do need to be punished for what they've done in Iraq-- for the sake of our national soul.


P.S.: KNOW YOUR U.S. PUBLIC SERVANTS--

THOMAS C. FOLEY

In June 2004, our Tom received the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award for his service as director of private-sector development for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. In 2006 he became U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

So that'll be "Mr. Ambassador" to you, girls and boys. Whatta guy!--Ken

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"Today we have sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy"--Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT)

"Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy. The President should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens. I want to thank the thousands of Americans throughout the country that stood with me to get this done for our country."
--Sen. Chris Dodd, after his Senate-floor talkathon against telecom immunity, abetted by a handful of stalwart colleagues, induced Majority Leader Harry Reid to yank the FISA extension act and hold it over till January (check out the senator's blog, and Crooks and Liars has video)

Howie was wondering earlier whether Senator Dodd was going to save the republic, and tonight the answer is: YES! It wasn't a filibuster, technically. In fact, only 10 senators voted against cloture. But that left 30 hours of talk time available, and Dodd and his cohorts made it clear that they were prepared to fill that time--and each additional 30-hour bloc that opened up in the course of the debate on amendments to the wretchedly misnamed Protect America Act. (As with most everything in the Age of Bush, the name is the exact opposite of the intent, or at any rate the likely outcome. Endanger America Act would be a far more appropriate name.)

At the risk of sprinkling some cold water on the celebration, it's kind of a minor victory: a mere delay rather than defeat of a point that is ultimately going to be legally insignificant anyway. I mean, even in the event that the final PAA fails to provide the Bush regime-demanded retroactive legal shield for telecom companies that broke the law in complying with the regime's squeeze for data, does anyone really believe that any such company will ever face prosecution? At the hands of the very regime they played footsie with?

Still, a victory is a victory. And I love the spin put on it by the Young Turks' Cenk Uygur:

"It turns out it's not so hard to stand up to them. All it took was one senator, and we stopped them cold in their tracks. Imagine if the Democrats united to fight the Bush administration together.

"Then, they just might be able to beat the most unpopular president of all time."

Now if some Senate Democrats--other than the Faithful 10 who "got it" and voted against cloture today--were to get this message, they might start behaving as if they had some say in Senate proceedings.

And is anyone else thinking, "Dodd for president"?


OH YES, WHO ARE THE SENATE'S "FAITHFUL-TO-DEMOCRACY 10"?

A bunch of the Senate presidential wannabes currently haunting Iowa declared themselves against the cloture motion that prevented a filibuster of the Protect America Act extension, but only Senator Dodd showed up on Capitol Hill. Here's the roster of the faithful senators who made up the losing bloc in the 76-10 vote:

Barbara Boxer of California
Sherrod Brown of Ohio
Maria Cantwell of Washington State
Ben Cardin of Maryland
Chris Dodd of Connecticut
Russ Feingold of Wisconsin
Tom Harkin of Iowa
John Kerry of Massachusetts
Bob Menendez of New Jersey
Ron Wyden of Oregon

Is it necessary to add that all 10 are Democrats?

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Apparently, being "Holy Joe" Lieberman means you can say any fool thing you feel like, anytime, and it doesn't matter that it's all on videotape

Nobody likes an "I told you so"-er, but at a time when truth is at a premium, and memory all but forgotten, three cheers to Ned Lamont for pointing out one obvious problem with His Holiness Sen. Joe Lieberman's endorsement of conservative Republican John McCain for president, in this statement he issued today:

During our debate last year, Senator Lieberman intoned that he wanted to “elect a Democratic President in 2008,” and that my election would “frustrate and defeat our hope of doing that.” With his endorsement of John McCain today, it is now clear that Joe Lieberman is the one working to defeat our hopes.

Last year, Senator Lieberman pleaded with voters to consider his full throated support for the invasion of Iraq as merely a “single issue” in the context of an otherwise progressive agenda. His endorsement of Senator McCain reminds us that the war in Iraq is actually Lieberman’s predominant issue, trumping all else--or maybe he is looking forward to joining Sen. McCain in a duet rendition of “Bomb, Bomb, Iran.”

A McCain presidency would make privatizing social security more likely, investing in our middle class less likely, and tipping the balance of the Supreme Court for decades a near-certainty. The court is one vote away from overturning Roe v. Wade and further expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of our civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. It is ironic that Lieberman’s fellow Connecticut senator, Chris Dodd, is today courageously leading the congressional charge against illegal wiretaps, not to mention bringing America’s combat role in the Bush-McCain-Lieberman war to an end.

With voters just weeks away from making their first decisions, Democrats are lucky to have many extraordinary candidates running for President. I am disappointed that Senator Lieberman does not feel the same way.

Frankly, Ned, we couldn't have said it better ourselves. And to think, if Holy Joe hadn't spent the whole Senate campaign lying his head off, this voice of sanity would be speaking to us from the U.S. Senate. What a change from the war-mongering right-wing pandering and lies we hear instead from the thug who has truly earned the monker Shame of the Nutmeg State.

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A POLITICAL PRISONER IN THE FIRST WORLD: THE STRANGE CASE OF FORMER GOV. DON SIEGELMAN

By Noah

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman is not a perfect person. He is a politician after all. I have often felt that most politicians that get to his level have a skeleton of some sort in the closet. It may be a big skeleton or it may be a little skeleton. More often than not, that skeleton gets deliberately overlooked and filed away, but, it's still there if someone wants to go out of their way to use it someday. That day came for Don Siegelman when he decided to run again for Governor of Alabama. Don Siegelman is a way too popular Democrat in George Dubya Bush's America. Don Siegelman is in jail.

If Don Siegelman was a Republican, his skeleton would have been allowed to rest in the closet and Don Siegelman would not only be a free man, he might be the sitting Governor of Alabama. Years of hounding him wouldn't have even happened. A case can be made that the skeleton didn't even exist. What has happened to Don Siegelman is called Selective Prosecution and the ties in the case go all the way to the White House. It was a political hit job designed to take out Alabama's leading Democrat.

How did this come about? First, for background, let's put the whole thing in some perspective. Remember the U. S. Attorneys scandal that made some headlines earlier in the year? The corporate media made a big splash about 7 attorneys who were fired. At the time, it became apparent that Dubya's Political Director, Karl Rove had his grubby, sticky little puppet master hands involved in the firings. The media also focused, a little, on what the fired attorneys did that so incensed Bush's little mini-me political director. For instance, a New Mexico U.S. Attorney, David Iglesias (above), failed to hurry a case against a Democratic State Senator before the 2004 election when a case couldn't be made. Don't let reality stop ya! The Bush White House is never a place where reality or the law of the land is respected, anyway. What the media DID NOT ask is what did the attorneys who did NOT get fired do to keep their jobs, especially in remarkably similar circumstances.

The Siegelman case is a perfect example of what some attorneys were keen to do. It is also a perfect example of how justice has become politicized in Bush's warped America. We no longer have a U.S. Justice Department. We have a Bush Justice Department. Many lifers in the department, of both major parties, have left in frustration and in order to maintain their integrity. The current Justice Department is one one that suits Dubya's inner child wild west fantasies, or his fantasies of being just like a third world or eastern European dictator, able to use attorneys and the courts to eliminate potential opponents, or, hey, maybe even get in power in the first place!

Now, back to Alabama. Alabama is one of our reddest states. Imagine the chagrin among Repugs when Siegelman won the governor's office in 1998 with an impressive 57% of the vote. Note that this was before the vote stealing and vote shifting expertise and Rovian electronic know how had entered the national picture on behalf of Repugs everywhere. This is pre-2000. An honest count was still possible if not always provided. Four years later, in 2002, Governor Siegelman was defeated for re-election by Repug Bob Riley. Siegelman went to bed knowing he had won and he woke up finding he had lost after an incredible 6300 votes for his opponent, still current governor, Bob Riley magically appeared in the wee hours.

It's a miracle!

Just like in the last two Presidential elections, professional statisticians have analyzed the returns and found that the final result could only be laid to nefarious activities conducted on behalf of Riley. Late night "computer glitches" have been alleged. Rove didn't even need to plant one of Dubya's cousins in a local CNN or FOX newsroom to call the election for his guy. Attorney General William Pryor would not OK a recount. Almost sounds like Ohio in 2004, doesn't it? Less than four months later, George W. Bush appointed Pryor to a federal judgeship via recess appointment, not unlike he appointed his 2000 Florida "recount" counsel, Kevin Martin to the head of the FCC. You see, this pattern of machinations weaves like a DNA double helix back through time. Take a look at people like Michael Chertoff and John Bolton and you'll find similar things.

Don Siegelman's big mistake was that he didn't go quietly into the night. He had been charged in a case of attempted bid rigging in 2004, but the case was tossed by an incredulous judge who sited an Assistant U.S. Attorney and an Assistant Alabama Attorney General for contempt along the way. Siegelman didn't take the hint. Instead, he announced he would run for governor again in 2006. He stood a very good chance of winning. It was only then that he was indicted, at the direction of U.S. Attorney Leura Canary (more on her later; no David Iglesias she!). There went Siegelman's chances, and there came the travesty of justice as his case was assigned to Bush federal judgeship appointee Mark Fuller, who refused to recuse himself in spite of years of what many rational folks might call personal animosity against the defendant.

Don Siegelman was convicted of naming an Alabama businessman, Richard Scrushy, who had contributed money to a state lottery campaign fund, to a state hospital board. Siegelman supported the lottery as Governor because it served to raise money for public schools in the state. He campaigned and won on it. Anyone out there think Alabama's educational system, like any state, couldn't use the money? They aren't about to get much from the feds. With all of the tax cuts and the wasted money in Iraq that's gone to companies like Cheney's Halliburton, the money just isn't there, and don't bother asking the rich white folk. They've shifted their tax-cut dollars right out of the country and converted them to euros. How American! Trickle down? Nah!

The bottom line is that Seligman never took any money for himself. Perhaps that meant he couldn't be trusted. Ask yourself, has any President ever handed out an Ambassadorship for the same thing? It was a weak case. All but a very few counts just got laughed at. In fact, the case was so weak that a Republican judge and a Republican senator involved in the case with Siegelman were not prosecuted. Go figure. Like I said, if Siegelman was a Republican... Selective Prosecution, times two! It gets worse. Siegelman was convicted on the word of two dubious witnesses, one of whom changed his story three times! Recollections cut to fit! The same witness also testified against two Repugs, but for some reason--hmmm--that was not followed up on.

Remember who appointed the judge. Remember who helps make up the lists of potential appointees. The Political Director? Emphasis political. Selective Prosecution. times three. Can you spell railroaded? I hope you, the reader, and I, are not losing count here. One more thing, a guy named Jack Abramoff, remember him? The lobby guy? He opposed the whole lottery idea allegedly because Siegelman also wanted to draw money for education from Abramoff's casino clients. Powerful forces were aligned against the Governor. Abramoff had steered millions of dollars into the race against Siegelman.

Where does Karl Rove come in? Well, his ties to fights against Siegelman go way back to several years before Siegelman was even first elected. Once Siegelman was elected, Repug Attorney General Pryor, whose campaign was coincidentally run by Rove, waited about a whole minute before he started investigating and hounding his own newly elected governor in early 1999.

But let's just cut to the chase, and you can dig further on your own if you desire. It seems now that a Republican with a conscience (yes, they do still exist, even if they have endangered species status), Dana Jill Simpson, has come forward and stated in a sworn statement (Republikooks can stop reading now--the reality of a sworn statement is about to smack you upside the head) that she witnessed a longtime Rove protege and associate, Alabama Repug Bill Canary, say that his wife, the aforementioned Leura Canary (above), and Alice Martin, both U. S. Attorneys in Alabama, would "take care" of Siegelman. Rove has worked with Bill Canary since 1994.

Alice Martin's case fell apart when a Federal Judge became skeptical of the charges. Leura Canary, who had conveniently federalized the case in 2001, almost as soon as she was appointed by George W. Bush, then picked up the case and, as mentioned before, had Siegelman indicted just in time for the primary. She eventually recused herself, but that depends on what the word recuse means. With Siegelman out of the way, Bob Riley had clear sailing. Mr. Canary is also reported to have said that Karl Rove was involved. There's your White House connection.

As this bit of intrigue unfolds for the public eye, it may just be one the reasons that Karl Rove is no longer working in the White House, even though he is probably still working for the White House. All of this effort and money, spent to get one guy out of the way. All of this money and effort to put a political opponent in jail. Siegelman isn't even the only current victim of this kind of thing. There are others, but that's for another post some other day. Selective Prosecution. Selective Persecution. Political prisoner. Might as well be Cuba.

WILL DODD SAVE THE REPUBLIC-- AND WHO WILL HELP?

Jane's got all the details at Firedoglake, but what it comes down to is that Chris Dodd is ready to filibuster Bush's FISA legislation today. Harry Reid is nervous and there's no telling what he will do. He's been conspiring with the Bush Regime on this and he's rumored to be warning other Democrats not to back Dodd. Dodd can't do it alone. It will be interesting to see if Feingold and Kennedy are the only Democrats with the balls to join him. Barbara Boxer, who is probably sorry she ever campaigned for Joe Lieberman and against Ned Lamont in Connecticut-- and who will face the re-election of her life in 3 years-- should take this opportunity to show which side she's on.

Glenn Greenwald is covering this too and he says that none of the senators running for president-- Clinton, Obama (and Biden)-- are backing Dodd, which means, in effect, they all back retroactive immunity for lawless telecom corporations and spying on Americans, making them, in my mind, unfit candidates for the Democratic nomination. Like I said yesterday, it looks like there is no real alternative left for progressives but to vote for John Edwards for president.


UPDATE: ONLY TEN SENATORS STOOD WITH THE PEOPLE AND THE CONSTITUTION

The other 90 seantors are unworthy of high public office. These are the ones-- the only ones-- who voted against spying on Americans and against retroactive immunity for Bush's cronies:

Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Wyden (D-OR)

Fury from the grassroots forced Reid to pull the bill... for now. Here's his statement:

"The Senate is committed to improving our nation's intelligence laws to fight terrorism while protecting Americans' civil liberties. We need to take the time necessary to debate a bill that does just that, rather than rushing one through the legislative process. While we had hoped to complete the FISA bill this week, it is clear that is not possible. With more than a dozen amendments to this complex and controversial bill, this legislation deserves time for thorough discussion on the floor.

"We will consider this bill when we return in January. In the meantime, I again encourage the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to make available to all Senators the relevant documents on retroactive immunity, so that each may reach an informed decision on how to proceed on this provision. I oppose retroactive immunity, but believe every Senator must have access to the information to make this important decision."

It's probably just a little coincidence but the bribes (that the Congress has legalized) paid by the giant telecoms went in great part to Bush and the presidential candidates who didn't back Dodd-- in order of bribe-taking: McCain, Clinton and Obama. But, like I said, I'm sure that's just a coincidence and that these three corrupt senators were willing to sell out the American people just because they believe in destroying the Consititution, not because they were being paid to do it.

LIEBERMAN COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET

But, "Lieberman will continue to caucus with the Democrats"

Normally at home I wake before sunrise and now 6AM I'm swimming and I've got my first post for DWT ready to go. But I'm on vacation now and I'm sleeping late. This morning it was nearly 9 when I woke up; what a luxury! And the first thing I saw on the BBC World News was that corporate shill and Bush-backer Joe Lieberman is endorsing his best boyfriend, another corporate shill and Bush-backer, John McCain. Despite Lieberman's pledge to Connecticut voters-- before the less aware among them were suckered into voting for him-- that he would work hard to take the White House back from the Republicans, harder, he claimed, disingenuously, than Ned Lamont would, anyone paying any attention would have figured that America's worst political opportunist and traitor had every intention of endorsing McCain all along.

An aide to Lieberman tells CNN he decided to endorse McCain because he considers him "the most capable to be commander in chief on day one of his administration, and the most capable of uniting the country so that we can prevail against Islamic extremism."

The Lieberman aide insists the senator does not see this as a "commentary on or an endorsement of the Republican party, only the person."

Lieberman had not planned to endorse anyone until after the primary season, but McCain asked Lieberman for his endorsement a few days after the two men returned from a Thanksgiving trip to Iraq together, and Lieberman decided to do it, according to the same Lieberman aide.

Lieberman will continue to caucus with the Democrats.

Sometimes some of the candidates Blue America endorses ask me how we managed to raise so much money for Donna Edwards, Darcy Burner and Tom Allen (and, last year, for Ned Lamont-- over $70,000). All of our endorsees stand for the same progressive values and principles so why do some inspire so much generosity from our community? I often tell them they need an arch-villain-- an arch villain more than just the right-wing Republican incumbent. Occasionally the right-wing incumbent is so villainous, like Mean Jean Schmidt in OH-02, that not much else is needed other than a courageous and aggressive campaign-- which explains why Victoria Wulsin has been a favorite of so many in our community.

But a real arch-villain, a Lex Luthor or Attila the Hun... that's what Darcy, Tom, Ned, and Donna had. Darcy knew immediately that when Bush limped into her suburban Seattle district to make an ineffectual plea for support for his rubber stamp toady, Dave Reichert, the benefits accruing to Darcy would be far greater in every way than the benefits Bush was feebly trying to drum up for his walking dead congressional puppet. Similarly, when Madam Impeachment-is-off-the-table, descended on MD-04 to campaign for the corrupt corporate pawn and political hack Al Wynn, it was a godsend for his opponent, Donna Edwards. Pelosi showed which side she was on and grassroots Democrats saw to it that Donna outraised Wynn-Pelosi. Every progressive candidate is hoping that Cheney or Bush or Rahm Emanuel comes to his district to campaign for his opponent. These are the symbols of everything that is wrong with America's political establishment. Oh-- and Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman was bankrolled by Republican big money and by the big corporate interests he has supported for decades but when Ned Lamont ran against him thousands of grassroots progressives from across Connecticut and across America got behind Ned. And, with every rotten Establishment hack in America-- from Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Bush, Cheney, et al-- supporting Lieberman-- as well as the entire Neocon establishment-- Lamont still beat him in the Democratic primary. He managed to win the general election by flat out lying about how he had changed his pro-war stand and by Rove, Cheney and Bush encouraging Republicans to abandon the GOP nominee and to cast their votes for Lieberman instead.

This year even a hint of Lieberman's poisonous endorsement was enough to drive one DLC hack, Swett, out of the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire. Democrats realize he is toxic. But not Republicans. They love him. He is, after all, a traitor who has come over to their side. So Susan Collins in Maine embraced him-- and her opponent, Rep. Tom Allen, raised a ton of cash to counteract an Inside the Beltway Lieberman fundraiser.

So will Lieberman's endorsement be the kiss of death for McCain's struggling campaign? Connecticut independents have turned against Lieberman and have seen him the liar he is, but what about the New Hampshire independents McCain is so desperate to woo? Ari Melber at The Nation posits that Lieberman's endorsement may hurt McCain more than help him. "[I]t does not make sense for McCain because it will only remind core Republicans why they distrust him."

Personally I love the sweet irony of how Lieberman has stabbed the Clinton's-- who certainly deserved it-- in the back not once, but twice. I also love how he has given the Democratic Insider Establishment the finger-- they deserve it too-- and how he's even turned on his hapless protegee Obama. When will voters realize Joe Lieberman is the worst arch-villain in all of American politics-- or at least as arch as Cheney, Bush and Rove?


UPDATE: NOT ALL TREACHEROUS DEMOCRATS ARE ENDORSING REPUBLICANS THIS YEAR

Bob Kerrey may not be quite as bad as Lieberman or Zell Miller-- or even as bad as fellow Nebraska Republicrat Ben Nelson-- but is is very, very bad, the worst kind of "Democrat, always eager to sell out progressive values and principles at the drop of a hat Benjamin. He didn't endorse his old pal McCain today. Instead he endorsed his Insider soulmate Hillary Clinton. Makes perfect sense to me. Birds of a feather...

JOHN EDWARDS WOULD PROBABLY MAKE THE BEST PRESIDENT. DOES HE HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE NOMINATION?

In the 2004 California primary I voted for John Edwards. I had met him almost a year before that day-- my friend Casey worked for his campaign and he introduced us and I had been very impressed-- but I voted for him because the corporately-controlled mass media had already destroyed the only Democrat they truly feared, the only Democrat preaching earth-shattering change, my candidate, Howard Dean. This year, it is Edwards who is the candidate of real change. Everyone I know seems to think he'd make the best president but they all feel his quest for the White House is hopeless and that it is either the hideously flawed Hillary Clinton or the slightly less flawed Barack Obama who is destined to do battle with whichever one of the evil and pathetic pygmies Republican extremists who participate in their party's primaries decide is more tolerable than None of the Above.

The perspective I've gained from my trip through south Asia and my ability to spend hours that are normally spent at the keyboard just meditating, has made it clearer and clearer to me that John Edwards is the only person remotely able to win the nomination who would be the best and most courageous and unbought president. I've disagreed with him on plenty but he's grown tremendously since I me him in person 4 years ago. He's a long shot but if I were a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, I'd be doing all I could to help create the momentum that will save our country from more years of, at best, compromised mediocrity of leadership.

This week's Newsweek features Edwards on the cover, like a beacon of hope. But Newsweek isn't sugar-coating anything. Things look bleak for Edwards right now and it will take a great deal to turn things around at this point, things his campaign have been working on very diligently for a long time.

Things haven't worked out quite the way he planned. He'd envisioned the campaign coming down to a two-person race between him and Hillary Clinton—- a match-up he thought he could win by exploiting her divisiveness and high negatives. Barack Obama spoiled that by rivaling Edwards in charisma and optimism, siphoning away money and attention. And early missteps—the $400 haircut, the 25,000-square-foot mansion, the job at a hedge fund—raised questions about his authenticity and fed an impression among some voters that his common-man populism was more conceit than conviction. Now, with the Iowa caucuses just a few weeks away, he finds himself trying to talk his way up from third place.

...On the stump, Edwards campaigns with the urgency of a man who is running out of time. He might be. A third-place showing in Iowa would likely spell the end of his campaign, and his presidential ambitions, for good. Yet Edwards believes he can still come from behind for an upset win. Political reporters may like the story line (and simplicity) of depicting Iowa as a Clinton-Obama smackdown, but Edwards's strategists say that the media and pollsters are overlooking a more important, if less glamorous, story.

For months, Edwards has been rounding up support in the state's rural precincts where the front runners have paid less attention. While Obama and Clinton have drawn crowds in the thousands in places like Des Moines and Ames, Edwards has been winning over people in tiny towns like Sac City (population: 2,189). That's important, the strategists say, because under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500. In other words, even if he loses to Obama and Clinton in the state's bigger cities, he can still win by wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts that other candidates have ignored. "The bulk of our support is in small and medium counties," says Jennifer O'Malley, Edwards's Iowa state director. O'Malley says Edwards has visited all 99 counties in the state; the campaign has so far trained captains covering 90 percent of all 1,781 precincts. Rural voters are sometimes reluctant to caucus, so the campaign has been enlisting respected community leaders to encourage first-timers to get past their apathy or fear.

The rest of the Newsweek story is a shallow, second-rate bio but worth reading through for a feel for what makes Edwards tick-- and why a leader like him would be preferable to any of the Establishment shills more likely to wind up with the nomination. He's also got a wife I'd love to see as first lady. And wouldn't it be completely sickening if the Democrats offer some corporate-friendly, cautious Insider hack, like Clinton or Obama, and the Republicans end up with a pseudo-populist?

EVERYONE IN BANGKOK KNOWS ABOUT IOWA TODAY-- REALLY

Here in Bangkok, we're in the midst of a huge national election campaign. I've been trying to figure it out. My friend Paul, a Thai who spent two years at Sacramento State University studying mass communication and knows far more than the typical American about the subtilties of U.S. politics, waxed eloquently about the reasons Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be corporate pawns with more in common with Bush and any of the GOP hopefuls than with the aspirations and dreams of ordinary Americans. But Paul couldn't help me understand the intricacies of the Thai elections. He dismissed both major parties, the PPP and the Democrats. "They both suck."

Today's Bangkok Post on the other hand, features a major piece on how overseas Thais look at the election. It was instructive-- and for more than just the ins and outs of the election here. It starts in, of all places, Iowa-- with a great big color picture of Obama. (In India, Hillary is the clear favorite; here they like Obama.) Now, despite today's Des Moines Register endorsements of McCain and Clinton, the thriving Thai communities in Ames and Iowa City, while completely interested in the U.S. elections-- more, I'm guessing than many Americans-- are even more concerned about the elections in their homeland.

Over the past few months, Nittaya Burnham has met Bill Richardson and John Edwards. She's seen Obama, watched Chris Dodd stump and was left at least mildly impressed ("they were good") by a rally with America's political power couple, Hillary and Bill Clinton. While she's still hoping to catch Mike Huckabee and some of the Republicans, there's a decent chance she's already seen the next president of the United States.

Like others living in Iowa, where the US political season is in full swing and the nation's first presidential political caucus will take place on January 3, Nittaya has had plenty of opportunity to get up close and personal with America's presidential hopefuls.

Yet, for this 12-year Thai resident of Iowa and a native of Nakhon Pathom in Thailand, the next ballot she will cast will be in a Thai election and for parties that she has had considerably less exposure to.

She plans to vote in the December 23 general election, and though she regularly follows news coming out of Thailand through online sites and her Thai satellite TV and she's already been sent her ballot by the Chicago consulate, she's not yet sure how she is going to cast it.

Though unadulterated by whatever vote-buying antics that may be going down in their homeland, Nittaya and other Thais living in Iowa nonetheless struggle with their vote. It is an effort to sort out basic information about the choice of parties, potential prime ministers, and sometimes, even the voting process.

While she plans to turn to Internet research and friends back home for help, she notes that even her mother in Nakhon Pathom is struggling with information and a decision this election.

"It's hard, whether in Thailand or here, to know who is a good candidate. They all have similar messages, and after elections, you never hear anything again about what they do or if they've made any progress. You just see them on billboards," says Nittaya.

In his new book, which you may have noticed I keep referring to-- Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party-- Glenn Hurowitz shows that party affiliation is the surest predictor of how someone will vote. It means far less in Thailand, where parties come and go and partisan alliances are temporary, expedient and career-oriented. Nittaya in today's Post story is looking for a way to figure out who to vote for. She is leaning towards a third party, the Farmer Network of Thailand Party, which is polling in the lowsingle digits. "They are not highly educated, but their representation comes from the people. I think this is important. Lots of Thai people will look for qualities like good education and career and assume these will make good leaders-- but this has not always worked out for us in the past."

When asked what qualities she wants in Thailand's next leader, she returns to the idea of change.

"Honestly, I want candidates who will get something done, and respect human rights and help poor people more. I don't want a party or a prime minister that will go in and commit corruption and lie to people as has happened in the past. We need someone that will look out for poor people."

While she identified fighting corruption and helping the poor as key issues, she also hopes the next leaders will improve the situation in the Deep South [Muslim seperatists] by promoting understanding from both sides, and also end the human rights abuses that she has heard go on in Thailand's refugee camps.

"I hope with our new election, we have new faces who will get more work done and move in the right direction," she added.

Nittaya sounds like many Iowa voters. Another Thai living in Ames, a PhD at the university there, explains to the Post how he's going to pick his candidate, a process that validates much of Hurowitz's research.

He based his decision on party backgrounds and personal qualities, rather than their policy, which he says are rarely accomplished anyway. "Politicians just keep saying good things as they want to convince you," he added.

Even with such cynicism towards the parties, he believes this election is critical for he country: "It will determine our country's future. I don't want to see a [civil] war and hopefully it won't happen. I feel if the old government team comes back, there will be a number of people that strike and it will be a major cause of economic crisis."

If Indians have convinced themselves that Bill and Hillary is what the world needs now and if Thais are falling for Obama's snakeoil charisma-- hey, no offense meant; I once did too-- this week people in both countries and all over the world, have been celebrating another American political figure, one who isn't running for anything. Jimmy Carter has been widely quoted outside of the U.S.-- I'm betting this got little if any coverage on corporately-controlled U.S. media-- slamming Bush Regime torture policies, and the complicity of the entire Republican Party. "The administration and the Congress have become immune to the tragedy of human rights violations under the aegis of security. We say in order for us rich folks to be secure, we can deprive others of their civil rights."

PUTTING IMPEACHMENT BACK ON THE TABLE

By Noah

Rep. Robert Wexler (FL-19), along with fellow Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL-4) and Tammy Baldwin (WI-2), has created a website for all true patriots. The site is wexlerwantshearings.com. I urge all those who love America, regardless of party affiliation, go and sign the petition at the site. In an ideal world, it just might lead to our country repairing itself after the damage wrecked upon it by the biggest, vilest mafia it has ever had to endure. Logically, Wexler and his associates are calling for hearings on the behavior of Dick Cheney, currently masquerading as Vice President of the United States.

Wexler is calling for a fair look into "credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors". The charges relate to Cheney's actions in leading us into stopping the hunt for Bin Laden in order to unnecessarily invade and occupy Iraq, illegal wiretapping of American citizens, and his actions in the revealing of the identity of a covert U.S. agent for political purposes, thus endangering not only the agent, but the agent's contacts whose fate is unknown, and our country's intelligence web of security. The later charge is something that even former President George H. W. Bush has said is an act of TREASON. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has indicated that Cheney and his staff deliberately gave him false information about the matter. We may not have heard the last about the Valerie Plame Wilson affair after all. Wexler wants to call McClellan and other administration officials to Congress to testify.

Recent revelations about the N.I.E. and their conclusions on Iran's nuke capabilities indicate that the administration has yet again cooked up evidence of WMDs to suit their oily agenda. Many in the corporate media are, of course, promoting the absurd Repug talking point that all sixteen of our nations' intelligence agencies are somehow lying, together, in some sort of nefarious cahoots on the subject, when we know, sadly, that any two of them have trouble even communicating with each other on even more urgent matters like terrorists taking flying lessons right here in the U.S.

Back on November 7th, the House Of Representatives (the whole House, not just a committee) voted to send a resolution of impeachment of Darth Cheney to the House Judiciary Committee. Wexler, Gutierrez, and Baldwin are urging that the hearings begin now. You can help buttress their argument by signing their petition. They need our support in order to convince the cowardly among them, including their so-called leader and Bush/Cheney protector, Nancy Pelosi. Needless to say, both Republicans and Democrats voted to send the resolution to committee, even if for different reasons. Some disingenuous Republicans may live to regret their actions. Too bad. You see, honesty should be the best policy. Sure, that would be a new concept in Congress, but there's certainly room for improvement.

This is no blow job in the Oval Office. This is about murder, maiming, mayhem, war profiteering, AND the creation of new generations of terrorists that we will have to deal with for years to come. Sure Bush and Cheney and the puppet masters that program the thoughts of their none so blind as those who will not see followers don't care and don't have the empathy for us ordinary citizens to give a rat's ass. To them, it's "I got mine, Jack, and I want more, more, more. Then, give me more tax breaks so I can keep more, more, more while the peons die, for all we care."

Once more, here's the site. Thousands have already signed since yesterday. At the site, you can even link to Rep. Wexler's very articulate, well-reasoned Op-Ed piece that has been offered to the nation's "news"papers. So far, they have all refused to run it. No surprise there! Sign the petition. Start with Cheney. Then on to Bush. Remember, what's left of our Constitution still provides for the Impeachment, Conviction, and Imprisonment of people like Bush and Cheney, even after their terms are up. According to a November 13 poll done by American Research Group, a majority, 70%, of the American people feel that Cheney has abused his power. 43% say he should be removed from office right now and that's without impeachment even being on the front pages. Congress is always the last to know what's going on out in America. Let them know! Let them have it! Sure, it's a dream. Sure it's an ideal. But, it's a dream and ideal that this country was founded upon. The fish rots from the head. Nothing in our culture will get fixed until we fix this. We also need to do this to set an example for future clowns in government. I have always felt that letting Nixon off the hook in 1974 was a mistake and that someday it would lead to something even worse than Nixon. That day has come. That day is NOW.

TOM SELLECK, HILLARY CLINTON AND THE LITTLE INVISIBLE PEOPLE

I guess they're so small because they don't eat any protein-- or much of anything-- and neither did their parents, grandparents or ancestors. I'm not in India anymore; I'm in Thailand. You don't see much of that kind of grinding, horrific poverty in Bangkok. Nor do you see the levels of garish displays of conspicuous consumption like you see in Delhi. You see some and you do see some people in appalling poverty. But it isn't anything like the extremes you see in India. In Delhi wherever I went on the streets there were always clusters of small, very dark, very skinny people. They're everywhere, not no one seems to notice. There are hundreds of millions of them-- more of them in India than the entire population of the United States! And no one seems to notice them. They don't own anything but the rags on their backs and I've never been able to figure out how they exist. The begging can't possibly support them, even if every tourist and every trendy call center-walla give (far from the case; no one notices them).

I didn't cry the whole time I was in India It was simply to horrible to fathom. Families laying the the filth and dust with stray dogs night after night, wrapped in their rags, bundled around a little fire burning garbage. Delhi's cold. I've being see it since I started coming to India in 1969. It's just unfathomable. Has anyone cared about these millions and millions of people since a right-wing religious fanatic assassinated their champion, Mahatma Gandhi 60 years ago?

I cried tonight though, here in happy, happy Bangkok. In retrospect I think the reality of India caught up with me. But what set me off was a speech on TV, a speech by Tom Selleck, playing fictional Michigan Governor Jim Pryce who had just won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidency in a 2000 film I had never heard of, Running Mates. What set me off was the juxtaposition of "Pryce's" spontaneous, inspiring, courageous acceptance speech at the end of the film with my own musings about the unlikelihood that Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama) could ever be moved to give such a heartfelt and edgy, populist speech.

The movie paints a realistically tawdry picture of U.S. politics. The big money interests, it is asserted, control it all. Pryce, acting out of his basest instincts-- like too many Insider Democrats do, substituting fear and ambition for courage and the public interest-- decides to throw his lot in with the Establishment Insiders who haven't been able to prevent his nomination but are willing to donate $100,000,000 towards his campaign for a piece of the action. At the last minute-- on the podium of the Convention-- he tosses away the second half of his prepared speech and reneges, reverting to form as a populist and reformer, denouncing the plutocrats and their stranglehold on the American political system. He tells the whole nation that "The government of the United States is not on the auction block and America is not for sale."

It was thrilling and depressing at the same time-- inspiring in terms of what could be, disheartening in what really is. I have a stronger and stronger feeling that I will kick myself for not having jumped in and gotten behind John Edwards' campaign months ago.

Not Tom Selleck:

CAN WE EXPECT DEMOCRATS TO REDEEM OUR COUNTRY'S ENVIRONMENTAL DISGRACE? DON'T BET ON IT

After completely alienating public opinion in every country in the world and after threats from America's closest allies in Europe, the Bush Regime-- blaming, of all things, election year sentiment in the U.S.-- has forced the international community to drastically tamp down cooperative efforts to make greenhouse gas emissions/global warming a top international priority. The conference that just ended in Bali a couple of hours ago-- the #1 story everywhere in the world except in the U.S., where corporate media has drastically downplayed its importance-- was merely a baby-step, a road map to move from "discussions to negotiations," but the Bush Regime dug in its reactionary heels and adamantly refused to allow specific targets into the draft agreement that just lays out future negotiations.

At the last minute, with barely an hour to go before the end of the conference, a compromise, of sorts, was reached, one that serves the best interests of no one except GOP big corporate campaign contributors. Pure Beltway obfuscation and old fashioned sabotage is how the Bush Regime approached the world community; the draft agreement doesn't mention specific targets but includes a footnote referring to a separate paper which does include the target numbers Bush so opposes.

Every interview I've seen on Asian and European TV mentions that in a year Bush will be out of office and it will be possible for mankind to move forward in a serious manner against the greatest threat to our well-being. A Bush Regime apologist actually claimed on the BBC today that it's impossible to move forward aggressively this year because it's an election year, implying, falsely, that American voters don't want serious movement in the area of global warming. American voters do want action-- but Republican corporate campaign contributors don't. They won.

But let's look forward-- as the whole world does-- to the end of Bush's reactionary tyranny and even to across the board defeats for Republicans running not just for the presidency-- and let's face it, Huckabee, once voters get to see what he's really all about, will not find him to be a viable alternative to None of the Above-- but for the Senate and House as well. The Democratic candidates are, by and large, supporters, at least on paper, of many of the issues involved in climate change. But there is a wide gap between theory and solid action and when it comes to making the painful decisions, the ones that will make corporations (and even some labor unions) scream, Democrats may well prove to be nearly as reactionary and problematic as Republicans.

Yesterday I got into an argument with my friend Jamil, a huge Obama enthusiast, about Obama's fitness to lead America. Jamil and I both agree that Hillary would be scant improvement over any of the pathetic pygmies seeking to personify a third Bush term. But before getting to Obama, let me quote Glenn Hurowitz's book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, about Hillary and environmentalism and what happens when push really comes to shove in the mind of an Inside the Beltway hack.

You could see the deadly consequences of Clinton's Politics of Fear at work on November 15, 2006, when workers at the Ticonderoga, New York plant of International Paper started feeding old shredded tires into their massive incinerator-- sending an acrid cloud loaded with deadly chemicals and heavy metals like mercury and cadmium into the air. It was the culmination of a three year battle between timber executive and Vermonters downwind from the plant worried about the health and environmental impacts of the toxic brew (the International Paper facility lies just a few miles across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont), a battle in which Clinton weighed in decisively for the timber company. Tires are just about the most poisonous fuel known to man. They're particularly dangerous for children whose developing brains and immune systems are hypersensitive to pollutants like mercury and benzene. Exposure to burning tires can cut years off a child's life, according to the American Lung Association. But IP wanted to cut costs for running its mill (which already produced more pollution than the entire state of Vermont-- including Vermonters vehicles) and came up with the idea of saving money by cutting up old tires and burning them for energy.

Of course it was immediately controversial-- more than 5 million people would be downwind of the burning tires. Even Vermont's Republican governor was working to stop the tire burn. But IP had an ace up its sleeve with Hillary Clinton. Although Clinton had been chairman of the Children's Defense Fund and had made a huge issue out of the Bush administration falsely claiming that the Ground Zero site was safe enough for workers, she wanted to do anything she could to boost her margin of victory in upstate New York. The facts that she was pretty much guaranteed a landslide, outspending her opponent $41 million to $5 million in the most expensive Senate race in the country, and that burning tires would seriously jeopardize children's health, were secondary to the few hundred votes she might pick up from factory workers and others willing to do anything to keep IP's profits high. And so she lobbied to allow the tire burning. Given the choice between a few hundred additional votes and children's health, Clinton chose the votes... In the event, the burning tires turned out to be so polluting that the emissions exceeded even IP's extremely lax permit. IP was forced to suspend its test just three days after it had started the burning. They didn't go out of business, but Hillary Clinton had racked up another example of the Politics of Fear-- putting political expedience ahead of what was supposed to be her most cherished value-- children's welfare.

Sounds horrible, right? It should; it is. Instead of contemplating voting Hillary into the presidency, New York voters should be working to remove her from office. But Obama isn't much better. A consistent and craven compromiser on almost every progressive value or principle he's had to confront since being elected to the Senate (from Republican "tort reform" to legalizing credit card usury), Obama's environmental record has clearly been "one of accommodation to big corporate interests" and "his 'new kind of politics'" is nothing more than a charismatically delivered sham: "the old kind of influence peddling, caution, and smallness that most Democrats [at the grassroots level] reject." His environmental record is nothing Bush Republicans need to fear.

He is the Senate's leading Democratic supporter of "coal to liquid," a technology that can make gasoline out of coal. Only problem: it produces double the global warming pollution that regular old dirty oil does. As if that wasn't bad enough, Obama actually voted for George Bush's energy bill despite more than $27 billion in subsidies for the oil, nuclear and coal industries, its weakening of clean air and water laws, and the fact that it gave electric companies the power to charge consumers high rates while doing almost nothing to tackle global warming or increase consumer protections.

Why is Obama so willing to "trim his sails" so often-- despite the consequences to working and middle class Americans and the environment? It's not just that he apparently believes accommodation-- even of right-wing extremists-- can be both right and politically useful. It's something deeper. In his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama admits he has a hard time feeling a truly pressing sense of urgency about the great issues of the day.

He's not the leader America so desperately needs to clean up after the worst presidential regime in history, no more than Hillary Clinton is. It's not enough to drive Republicans out of government, even if that is a well-deserved and worthwhile first step. It's just as important to find BETTER Democrats. Substituting horrible, compromised Republicans with horrible compromised Democrats, symbolised by Insider hacks like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer, who control the Democratic House caucus, will solve little if anything. Electing courageous and independent fighters like John Laesch, Andrew Rice, Darcy Burner, Donna Edwards, Ron Shepston and Dennis Shulman is worth the time, effort and resources. We need real leaders, not just hacks who aren't as bad as Bush and Cheney.

IT'S GEORGE W. BUSH AGAINST HUMANITY

Since the beginning of the month I've been in India and Thailand, reading local newspapers, talking with people and watching local TV (in India, where it's in English), as well as the BBC World Report. I'm not sure how U.S. mass media is covering the Bali conference on global warming that is seeking an international blueprint for a post-Kyoto way forward. Remember, Kyoto was the first, though no no means the last, treaty unilaterally trashed by the illegitimate Bush Regime as soon as it was installed by the partisan Supreme Court. Relative to the rest of the world, coverage of global warming as a crisis has been very, very muted in the U.S. Corporately-owned media has gone right along with the Bush Regime and the Republican Party in playing it down and deluding Americans into thinking everything was still being debated by scientists. I suspect-- and I would wager-- that coverage is extremely modest-- at best. If India, Thailand and the BBC are any indication, however, it is far and away the #1 story of the month in the rest of the world-- bigger than Iraq, Afghanistan, Islamic terrorism, the subprime mortgage meltdown, impending recession, rising inflation or American sports figures on dope. And the subtext is bad... for America.

A simple version of the story is that the rest of the world realizes mankind is nearing an existential tipping point and that if really serious measures aren't taken to combat man made global warming, humanity itself will be in jeopardy-- facing the most difficult challenges it's faced since Adam and Eve first encountered Dick Cheney in the Garden of Eden.

Meanwhile, other countries have been taking all this far more seriously than the U.S. While American students and a handful of environmentalists and hipsters on the American East and West coasts buy more (over-priced) hybrids and try to remember to use energy-saving light-bulbs, I noticed, somewhat shockingly, that New Delhi has gone from a nearly uninhabitable stinking hellhole of filthy, cancerous pollution to a city with virtually none of the noxious black emissions that used to make we want to wear a gas mask there-- and this despite massive growth in traffic volume since my last visit. No more black emissions belching out of vehicles. Even the buses, taxis and tuk-tuks us clean-burning gas and although noise pollution is still deafening, everyone has a CNG sticker on his vehicle indicating that they are using clean-burning gas. While this was happening in India, toxic emissions in the U.S. have risen by 20%! The news out of Bali reads like this: the whole world has come together to collectively try to solve mankind's biggest looming problem while the most selfish, greedy power on the globe, the U.S., sabotages every effort. The hatred being generated towards America is unlike anything I have ever seen in my travels, which started in 1969 and have included 4 filled-up passports, almost 100 countries, and over 6 years of living abroad. I'm actually meeting people in India and Thailand who know who James Inhofe is and who identify him as an enemy of mankind's survival! I bet that outside of Oklahoma and the Beltway, there are very few Americans who have ever heard of him!

Today's Bangkok Post highlights the absolute fury Europeans are expressing towards the Bush Regime's foot dragging and sabotage. The E.U. has declared that if Bush and his lackeys don't shape up on climate issues immediately, they will boycott the face-saving environmental Bush is convening in Honolulu in January. Portugal holds the rotating E.U. presidency right now and Humberto Rosa, Portugal's chief environmental negotiator, spoke for all of Europe when he said, "If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies' meeting [Bush's MEM] in the U.S... We're not blackmailing. If no Bali, no MEM."

The Bush Regime, which has been on the defensive all week and is severely alienated from the rest of the world, reacted predictably. A White House flack: "We don't feel that comments like that are very constructive when we are working so hard to find common ground on a way forward."

Anyone who has followed the Bush Regime's policies and tactics in the past 7 years well knows that "working so hard to find common ground" means threatening and bribing everyone else to accept its reactionary positions. The biggest applause at the Bali conference came when Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore stood up and said aloud what everyone has been whispering: that Bush is intentionally wrecking the conference's goals of capping greenhouse gas emissions.

The pompous, even contemptuous, Bush Regime response to the criticism leveled against it is nothing short of galling to the rest of the world. "We will lead," Bush's delegate blustered, "we will continue to lead. But leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow." But following a self-proclaimed "leader" more concerned with the ideological imperative of massive profits for its campaign donors isn't something anyone else is buying right now.

In his new book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, Glenn Hurowitz touches, if only tangentially, on how Bush and the GOP have led America down the wrong path on global warming and how the Democratic Party has by and large failed-- especially when it comes to fear-based opportunists like Clinton and Obama-- to take strong and courageous stands against the Republican agenda of greed, blind selfishness and death.

A study by Mark Lubell, Sammy Zahran, and Arnold Vedlitz in the September issue of the journal Political Behavior found that people's perception of how great a risk global warming is, was the second biggest determinant whether they would support pro-environmental policies and take political action in support of those policies... Their risk perception, or to put it in emotional terms, their fear trumped all other factors measured in the study, like their level of knowledge about the issue, how much they thought they could influence the problem (their hope), or their level of education.

Although Republicans routinely and brazenly (and effectively) uis fear as their #1 tool in winning elections at every level, most Democrats are afraid to go anywhere near that tool. That's one of the reasons they keep losing elections. I've watched some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates (and, now, officeholders) use fear of environmental catastrophe successfully in their appeals to voters, including Hilda Solis (CA), John Hall (NY), Jerry McNerney (CA), and, this year, Andrew Rice. It cane be done and it can be done to clobber reactionaries. If Andrew Rice unseats James Inhofe (R-OK), America's #1 anti-environment politic extremist, the message will reverberate across the country-- a message that not a single Republican elected official will fail to understand. All the worst Inside the Beltway pundits are writing Oklahoma off as a lost cause. They're wrong. And climate change could make the difference... yes, even in Oklahoma, where the dust bowl isn't just something from dusty history books.

TODAY INDIANS ARE LOOKING AT MIKE HUCKABEE THROUGH A NARENDRA MODI PRISM

Indian media is far more informative about U.S. politics than American media is about Indian politics, or, for that matter, about India in general. The big political news in India right now is about what we would call a midterm election in the U.S., involving the state of Gujarat, and pitting an extreme right-wing incumbent-- a violent xenophobe and religionist hypocrite, Chief Minister Narendra Modi-- against the very concept of a secular and unified nation. Yesterday was day one of actual voting as 87 constituencies (think Assembly districts) in the southern part of Gujarat went to the polls. The second round takes place next week and then the results will be announced the week after. 60% of the voters turned out, not bad for a midterm. (I'm really eager to see how many voters turned out in OH-05 today, where a feisty Democrat was able to force the NRCC to spend 20% of it's entire bankroll to defend a deeply red congressional district.) Indian media's exit polls yesterday all agree that Modi's NJP lost seats. The conclusions and specifics, though, vary widely. Star News shows the BJP losing 5 seats but retaining a lead with 48 seats over the Congress Party's 37 (a gain for Congress of 7 seats). But NDTV shows the BJP down by 13 seats to a total of 40, with Congress picking up 13 for a total of 43. The 3 areas that voted yesterday, Saurashtra, Kutch, and South Gujarat, have been BJP territory and if voters here are turning against Modi's naked appeal to communalism, divisiveness and religionist bigotry,it bodes very badly for his chances to retain power.

And in the midst of wall to wall Modi coverage here, Indians have been introduced to an American political "rising star" of a similar stripe: Mike Huckabee. Indians don't know he has a funny-sounding name but today they found out about his not so funny views on important social policies courtesy of a Hindustan Times story by Kira Cochrane, Mike Huckabee's Antiquated Views Are Frightening For Women. Acknowledging him as a "folksy charmer," and noting his accomplishments-- losing over 100 pounds, helping the children of undocumented immigrants get taxpayer-funded scholarships, and being a rock music fan-- the article posits that if an observer were to "squint a little... this guy looks great. A clear eyed view of Huckabee's candidacy, though, reveals that this ordained Southern Baptist minister is not just offbeat (he doesn't believe in evolution), but frightening. In fact, when it comes to women's rights, he ranks as one of the most terrifying presidential candidates in memory.

Huckabee's conservative politics contain plenty of subtle threat to women... [W]hen he was governor of Arkansas in the 90's, Huckabee pushed for the release of Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist. This was despite a number of Dumond's victims writing to him personally-- including one who had been raped at knife point while her three year old daughter slept beside her.

Huckabee was apparently more moved by the right-wing tabloid campaign waged in Dumond's favour, and his influence helped to release the rapist 25 years early. Dumond went on to rape and murder one woman, and died in prison as charges were being brought against him for the rape and murder of yet another.

Staunchly opposed to abortion (which he has compared to the Holocaust), one of Huckabee's first acts as governor was to block Medicaid, the health scheme for people on low incomes, from funding an abortion for a 15 year old with learning disabilities who had been raped by her stepfather. This went directly against federal law, which requires states to fund abortions in cases of rape.

It is the sheer, unbridled cruelty of this decision that gives the lie to Huckabee's claims that he cares for the vulnerable.

The article concludes that only a fool or a misogynist could possibly support Huckabee. Presumably the writer doesn't support Narendra Modi either.

PICK THE CHARACTERISTIC YOU'D LIKE MOST IN YOUR POLITICAL LEADERS: FEAR OR COURAGE

One of the premises of Glenn Hurowitz's brilliant new book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, is that voters are attracted to-- even crave-- strong and resolute leadership, even above and beyond issue agreement. "Voters," writes Hurowitz, "continue to look for candidates who will stand up and fight for their principles-- even if they happen to disagree with those principles."

He points to how this resolute image helped a progressive hero like Paul Wellstone, who was widely admired for voting his convictions-- sometimes less than popular convictions-- as well as arch-villain George Bush, who has successfully employed a 7 year multimillion dollar P.R. effort to portray himself as a strong leader even while he is a cowardly, vacillating and weak individual... pigheaded and stubborn but neither strong nor anchored in principle.

Throughout his book, Hurowitz points out how shallow, shifting, fearful Democrats have suffered at the polls by listening to the valueless consultants urging them to abandon progressive principles in a quest or the ever-shifting quicksands of an illusory "middle ground."

Less than half the voters even know where candidates stand on the most crucial issues of the day, and when politicians "seem to be shifting their agenda out of political expediency and not out of conviction, it hurts them when voters are considering whether or not Democrats are 'strong leaders' or 'have integrity, two measures that matter far more than a candidate's issue positions."

This is Hillary Clinton's fatal flaw. Shifting is the exact prescription the corporately-funded DLC is always urging Democrats to do to survive and it is why Democrats have fared so poorly in the last decade.

This week's Time includes a piece by Mark Halperin and Amy Sullivan, "How America Decides," that confirms much of Hurowitz's thesis but points out significant differences between the ways Democratic voters and Republican voters see politics.

As Hurowitz's research proves, both Democrats and Republicans are looking for strong leadership, although Republicans are far more concerned with "strong moral character" than are Democrats, while Democrats are far more concerned with good judgment and in finding politicians who care about people than Republican voters are.

Halperin and Sullivan claim that just over half of Republican voters consider issue agreement the #1 factor in backing a candidate, while they claim-- in direct contrast to Hurowitz's more rigorous and better analyzed research-- that 71% of Democrats are issue-oriented when it comes to deciding on a candidate. Hurowitz shows that voters actually use party identification more than actual detailed knowledge of issue stands.

The Time article claims economic issues are more important to Democrats than to Republicans (46% to 25%) and national security is more important to Republicans (47% to 23%). Democrats care far more about health care, the environment, the Iraq war, employment issues, and our nation's image and influence abroad. Republicans care much more than Democrats about same sex marriage, future terrorist attacks and illegal aliens. (It's very ugly being a Republican.)

IF YOU THINK ONLY U.S. HAS HATE-SPEWING POLS LIKE TANCREDO, YOU HAVEN'T MET NARENDRA MODI... YET

Since I got to India a week ago, it has been impossible to ignore that a bitterly contested election in Gujarat state is coming to a head. Voting starts today and will be completed and counted by Dec. 23. The main issue seems to be the controversial incumbent chief minister, Narendra Modi, of the far-right nationalistic party BJP.

The BJP is a classic right-wing political party, representing the status quo interests of the exploitative/owner class. In a thriving democracy like India, how does a party concerned exclusively with the welfare and prerogatives of .001 percent of the population, and espousing one prepackaged conservative nostrum after another, even hope to win votes? The BJP never needed Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove or the Southern Strategy to succumb to the siren song of the Dark Side's exploitation of social tensions, racism, xenophobia, religionist hatreds and-- it being, even here, a George Bush world-- fear of "Islamofascist terrorism."

Except here in India, that kind of talk can-- and has-- turned very, very deadly. In Gujarat over a thousand Muslims-- men, women and children-- have been brutally murdered, their homes and businesses burned and looted, just five years ago as a step on the ladder to Modi-power. This is called BJP-inspired Hindutva, sometimes called Moditva, in honor of his George Wallace-like encouragement for the mayhem.

Just last week Chief Minister Modi bragged about having suspected Muslim "terrorists" dealt with extra-judicially-- by having them killed. Sobrabuddin Sheik's wife was also hunted down and murdered after Modi disposed of the husband.

Last week, a day after Modi's outrageous justification of the murder of Sobrabuddin, I spent an afternoon at the home, now a revered national shrine, where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. He spent his last years, days and hours trying to tamp down communal violence between Muslims and Hindus as the British were forced, primarily through his own nonviolent leadership, to give up their colonial crown jewel. He watched in profound sadness as his beloved India was split apart. Meditating at the spot where the greatest man of peace the contemporary world has had was gunned down by a Hindu religionist fanatic, it was difficult not to realize that symbolically Narendra Modi is assassinating Mahatma Gandhi all over again as he spits on the universal ideals he promoted and on his life's work.

Even after the formation of Pakistan, India-- whose founding fathers were secular and enthusiastically embraced separation of church and state-- was left with the third biggest Muslim population of any country in the world. I'm guessing Modi is at least as interested in his party's vision of a "free market" development model as he is in stoking the flames of always tragic-- if politically profitable-- communal violence. But in a nation with as many desperately poor people as India, the political right can only win by playing divisive politics.

Gujarat is one of the poorest and most backward states in India-- think Mississippi-- in a country where over 2 million children under the age of five died in 2006 and where seven hundred million (700,000,000) people do not have access to sanitation. Muslims are Modi's and the BJP's scapegoats of choice; there are too few Jews left in India.

Let me get back to the social problems the BJP exploits to win elections in a moment and move to the heart of the party's agenda: unbridled vulture capitalism. All of India's robber barons back Modi. It is claimed he has created a development-friendly climate that vulture capitalists just eat up. And he has delivered electricity-- for those rich enough to afford it. Most cannot. "Development" for Modi and his party means Raj-level opportunities for the already rich and powerful and a slim-- very slim-- chance that there might someday be some trickle down for everyone else. Not much has trickled down so far.

Modi seemed intent to try fighting for reelection based on his development record, but most Gujaratis weren't buying it, because they aren't feeling it or seeing it. So like any right-winger worth his political salt, he turned to divisiveness and mud-slinging. (Headlines today were all about a Congress Party politician in Gujarat caught on tape in a compromising position with a woman he isn't married to. CDs were provided to all the media outlets in the state and in Delhi.)

But playing the religionist card is Modi's time-tested specialty. "The Congress [Party] questioned Lord Ram's existence in an affidavit submitted in court," he brayed to a small crowd of tribal Gujaratis yesterday. But if Modi sounds even more like a reckless religionist crackpot than Mike Huckabee or Bishop Willard Romney, he's as slick a politico as either of them. After making his emotional appeal to defend the veracity of Lord Ram's existence, he didn't hesitate to remind the audience to get their butts to the polls. "Please don't think I will become chief minister if you set out on a padayatra to Ambaji temple," unconsciously showing his own hypocrisy and contempt for religion. "I will not come to power if you recite my name 108 times a day. It will only happen if you come out of your homes to cast your votes for the GOP BJP."

Looks like Irving "Lewis" Libby plans to twiddle his thumbs till he gets an outright pardon--as Chimpy the Prez makes his White House final exit?

"We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence," attorney Theodore Wells said Monday. "However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear."
--from Matt Apuzzo's AP report, "Libby to Drop Appeal in CIA Leak Case"

Well, that's one way of looking at it, but the reality seems to be more that the most our Irving could have gotten out of an appeal was a new trial for his role in blocking the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, which after another extended period was unlikely to result in a cushier sentence than the $250K fine already paid for him by Republican Friends of Crime Inc. and the 30-month prison sentence that Chimpy the Prez commuted in July. In fact, by the time of Irving's next sentencing Chimpy would likely be out of the White House, with any luck facing a lifetime's worth of criminal charges for a tiny portion of the murder and mayhem perpetrated by his regime, and a likely Democratic successor would be most unlikely to sign onto the GOP's Coddle Our Favorite Felons (COFF) program.

Which means that, legally speaking, it's all over now except the inevitable pardon from Chimpy the Prez which was presumably the price of our Irving's silence regarding all he knew about the Bush regime's criminal rampages.

The bright spot is that once the paperwork is properly shuffled, there will no longer be any ongoing legal proceedings to provide cover for the felonious overlords of the Bush regime to withhold comment on the entire shameful episode of their punitive partisan political outing of an American undercover agent. (Does anyone doubt that if the affiliations had been reversed, the Democratic perpetrators would by now be on Death Row, if not already executed?)

In other words, as an e-correspondent put it today, from this point on:

"Any journalist interview with any White House witness in the Plame matter needs to lead front and center with questions about Plamegate."

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Chris Dodd on the Bushfolks' "sad pattern" of trying "to convince the public that we must abandon the rule of law to protect" telecom law-breakers

"To suggest that the telecoms are being sued 'only' because they assisted the government after September 11th is disingenuous at best. Companies like AT&T and Verizon find themselves in court today not because they assisted the government by handing over their customers' personal and private information - but because they appear to have broken the law by doing so."
--Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), in a HuffPost response to a NYT op-ed piece today by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell

Senator Dodd's post speaks for itself:

Mike McConnell Is Flat Wrong

Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, has written a misleading op-ed in today's New York Times. Mr. McConnell's piece is a plea for Congress to renew the Protect America Act. I and other Democrats in Congress have been working to correct problems with the law as currently written, so that we can provide our intelligence community with the tools they need to ensure the security of our country needs, while upholding the rule of law that acts as the foundation for that security.

In what has become a sad pattern, Mr. McConnell, like many in this Administration past and present, tries to convince the public that we must abandon the rule of law to protect the telecom industry from being held accountable if they broke any laws. He writes, "[I]t is critical for the intelligence community to have liability protection for private parties that are sued only because they are believed to have assisted us after Sept. 11, 2001."

Mr. McConnell is flat wrong.

To suggest that the telecoms are being sued "only" because they assisted the government after September 11th is disingenuous at best. Companies like AT&T and Verizon find themselves in court today not because they assisted the government by handing over their customers' personal and private information - but because they appear to have broken the law by doing so. The telecoms are being sued because they did not receive a warrant - yet they went ahead and helped the Administration anyway.

This belief that the Administration and anyone who helps them is above the law is on display throughout his NYT piece. Mr. McConnell writes, "Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits," suggesting these companies acted out of love of country. They may well have - but we can no more project a motive of patriotism onto the telecoms' illegal actions than greed or fear.

Why not? Because the Administration has forbidden the American people from learning exactly what happened when this information was handed over without warrant. That is in part why the continuation of these cases is so important. By granting telecoms retroactive immunity, as Mr. McConnell advocates, and allowing for warrantless surveillance, we would essentially be saying that when it comes to intelligence gathering, there is no need for anyone in any circumstance to follow any law or even the Constitution so long as it is broadly defined as a matter of "national security."

That's ridiculous - and if anything, it puts our national security further at risk.

Clearly, I don't think we should insist on a warrant in order to monitor entirely foreign communications passing through the U.S. - between, say, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Current law already reflects that and should continue to. But in the instances when we are talking about spying on Americans to protect national security--and those instances do exist--we must continue to demand a warrant, as proscribed by the Fourth Amendment and followed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), even if it is issued after-the-fact.

That is why I've placed a hold on any FISA legislation that includes retroactive immunity. No person, company or Administration is above the law - no one. And if my hold is not honored, I will filibuster to stop retroactive immunity from becoming law.

I believe we can't protect our country if we fail to protect our Constitution and the rule of law. It is precisely by upholding our rights that we become safer and more secure at home. The opposite path is fundamentally flawed, inherently dangerous, and, apparently, embraced by our Director of National Intelligence. Given all that this Administration has done to trample our Constitution, it may not be surprising - but it remains disappointing.

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So for once the Bush regime has taken the lead in dealing with a major social issue? Nah, they're just trying to preempt real efforts to deal with it

"You might say that the Paulson plan is better than nothing. But the relevant alternative isn't nothing; it's a plan that--like Barney Frank's proposal--would actually help working families. And that's what the administration is trying to avoid."
--Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today, "Henry Paulson's Priorities"

You might think that for once the Bush regime, in pushing through Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to deal with the foreclosure crisis resulting from the collapse of the subprime loan market, is actually trying to cope with a pressing social problem. In which case you would be just about 100 percent wrong, but you would be thinking just what the regime finaglers hope.

As Paul Krugman writes today:

In fact, there's a growing consensus among financial observers that the Paulson plan isn't mainly intended to achieve real results. The point is, instead, to create the appearance of action, thereby undercutting political support for actual attempts to help families in trouble.

In particular, the Paulson plan is probably an attempt to take the wind out of Barney Frank's sails. Mr. Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has sponsored legislation that would give judges in bankruptcy cases the ability to rewrite mortgage loan terms. But "Bankers Hope Bush Subprime Plan Will Scuttle House Bill," as a headline in CongressDaily put it.

Krugman quotes Elizabeth Warren of Harvard saying, "The administration's subprime mortgage plan is the bank lobby's dream." "Given the Bush record," he adds, "that should come as no surprise.

He argues that the regime scheme will do nothing to restore the country's financial stability, which has taken such a hit from the crisis. And in practical terms, the scheme is designed to provide a modicum of relief to investors and virtually none to actual mortgage borrowers in danger of losing their homes.

Shut out in particular are the large number of borrowers victimized by the predatory lending practices that flourished in the now-burst housing bubble.

And what about people with good credit who were misled into bad mortgage deals, who should have been steered to loans with better terms? They get nothing: the Paulson plan specifically excludes borrowers with good credit scores. In fact, the plan actually provides an incentive for some people to miss debt payments, because that would make them look like bad credit risks and eligible for relief.

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Quote of the day: Rudy makes it clear for the record that he doesn't think homosexuality is sinful unless (yikes!) you actually, you know, DO it

Sinful or not sinful? Quick, somebody call the pope!

"I believe that, um, homosexuality, heterosexuality as a, as a way somebody leads their life, is not, isn't sinful. It's the acts, the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have."
--Rudy Giuliani, yesterday on Meet the Press, as transcribed by Alex Blaze on Bilerico

Rudy was responding to Tim Russert's question, "You don't think homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural, or sinful?" He noted, "My moral views on this come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church," and we know that this is indeed the official Church position, though we don't hear it trumpeted so much these days.

PARENTHETICAL QUESTION
Is Rudy subscribing to the Mitt Romney Doctrine of the Separation of Church and State? It's not clear, since it's not quite clear what the MRDSCS is. And anyway, Rudy doesn't say here exactly what policy implications his clarified view on homosexuality would have if he were actually elected president. But if the pandered-to homophobic Republican base gets its hopes up, that seems the intended effect.

Rudy apparently wasn't asked whether he pointed out this distinction to the gay couple who hosted him when his now ex-wife Donna Hanover invited him to move his cheating carcass out of Gracie Mansion, the New York City mayoral residence. That would have made for some cheery breakfast conversation, don't you think?

In, um, fairness (?) to Rudy, he was quick to do his own strange mea culpa: "Which includes me, by the way. Unfortunately I've had my own sins that I've had to confess and deal with and try to overcome, and so I'm very, very empathetic with people. We're all, we're all imperfect human beings struggling to, uh, to try to be better."

So Rudy will "try to be better" by, apparently, no longer cheating on and publicly humiliating his wives, or having government pay for his cheating expenses and private security, and perhaps even reexamining his association with the nation's worth of weirdos and pervs who seem to be manning his campaign. (I guess we would have to check with his spokespeople to find out just which of his potential sins are covered by this "confession" to Father Tim.) Whereas homos get to be better by stopping having all that sinful sex.

SLIGHTLY OFF-TOPIC QUESTION
What goes through your head when you're forced to think of Rudy having sex? I mean, with anyone or anything? Oh, the horror!

Alex explains in his account that he's tired of hearing that Rudy is "moderate on gay issues." "Maybe," he concludes, "this will end the media's myth that Rudy's the pro-gay Republican. But I'm not holding my breath."

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A BONUS QUOTE OF THE DAY-- FROM INDIA

"This administration cannot be trusted to investigate itself."
--Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes

I suspect that not many Americans-- let alone Indians-- had ever heard, at least until this morning, of conservative Texas Democratic Congressman Silvestre Reyes. But this morning Representative Reyes was the toast of New Delhi when the Hindustan Times featured his announcement that, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he would initiate an independent investigation into the little matter of the destruction by the Bush Regime of the torture tapes.

The Bush Regime war criminals and traitors were, of course, hoping to sweep the whole thing under the carpet by (a) blaming Nancy Pelosi, and (b) having a bogus investigation whitewash conducted by its own lackeys. Reyes, who for years has tended to rubber-stamp much of Bush's agenda, announced: "This administration cannot be trusted to investigate itself." Well . . . better late than never, I guess.

REPUBLICAN CLOSET CASE JIM McCRERY UNEXPECTEDLY ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT... HMMMM...

When homophobic Louisiana Republican Jim McCrery was first exposed as a closet queen some years ago, his first instinct-- like that of Wide Stance Larry Craig-- was to find some woman to marry him. Instead of making a business arrangement for a ready-made family the way his then House colleague from Idaho did, McCrery married his secretary. Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds like a cliche but . . . it worked. First elected in 1988, McCrery has been elected again and again, as an extreme right-winger, in a backward north Louisiana district (LA-04). And he's risen in the Republican caucus to a position of some power and influence.

He just announced, quite suddenly, that he's giving it all up. A lot of water under the bridge since he was first outed and responded-- before marrying the secretary-- by getting drunk at a stripper (females) bar on the Carolina coast and dancing with a woman's panties on his head while a staffer anonymously alerted the media. I suppose in Shreveport that proved . . . something.

Speculation is that someone has something on Rep. McCrery and that another shoe will soon be dropping. His district is pretty red, but Democrats have been winning in much worse CDs. Louisiana, on the other hand, has a political system only tangentially related to the rest of America's.

After 25 years, Tom Stoppard's remarkable play "The Real Thing" still raises vital questions about the way we argue for political and social reform

The "cricket bat scene" with Albert Schultz
and Megan Follows in Toronto last year

"I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve . . . respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."
--Henry, a playwright, in the opening scene of Act II of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing