Being a 21st Century Veep

A recent NYT article "Vice President: The Heartbeat Job" is about what it means to be a Veep today. Not enough has been made of the VP debate when Palin interpreted her potential future job's role & responsibilities or the "Article One Smackdown" that Biden laid on her when he said that Cheney has been “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.”

In the article, Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and author of The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution says,

"There are so many incoming missiles that the president is really going to need help no matter how he structures his presidency. Yes, we need to know whether the vice president is ready to occupy the highest office, can handle a crisis and be trusted with the nuclear codes. But, equally important, do they have something to offer that will be meaningful in helping the next administration succeed?"

I think (hope - pray) it's pretty clear that Biden has a lot to offer Obama while Palin has very little to offer McCain. Score one to the O ticket.

The NYT also feels that not enough has been made of how Palin responded to the Veep question in the debate. Their opinion piece Dick Cheney, Role Model is a nice read as well.

Wanna Talk About It?

Did you watch the debate tonight? I did. I watched it on CNN's HD channel and got to see six analyst scorecards on the side of my screen scoring the "fight." Five out of six thought Biden had more positive points than Palin. I was also emailing back and forth with my buddy who is involved with the Obama campaign throughout and followed the live blogging on both the NYT site and Andrew Sullivan's site. Surround sound!

Overall, I agree with everyone's (i.e. NYT, MSNBC, Andrew Sullivan, NYT and CNN) reaction. Palin did a decent job. Biden did a better one.

There were no game changers tonight. Overall, Biden did not make any gaffes and had the emotional moment of the evening when he choked up about being a single parent. Palin helped herself more than John McCain. While no Republican now wants to kick her off the ticket, she definitely did not convince America that McCain is the better choice than Obama. In fact, everyone will be talking about the bailout tomorrow and not even this debate. Not good for McCain's chances.

Election Day is now almost one month away and one cool election related web site is FiveThirtyEight which is run by Nate Silver, a super stats guru. 538 equals the number of electoral votes that are up for grabs and right now Nate is calling it 331 - 206 for Obama.

I think the best moment of the night was when Biden schooled Palin on the Constitution. He gave her the "Article One Smackdown" and invoked the dreaded word "Cheney" when the Veep question came up which really will resonate with a lot of people. Her response was wishy washy. Biden's was fast and firm.

Bail Out!

Last week I was too busy praying for our entire financial system not to collapse to even think about posting about the debacle that was unfolding on Wall Street. In case you still do not know, the system is completely broken and it started to fall apart last week. Banks: Where The Money's Not neatly acts as a refresher course on how everything "works" today and in the end sums up why I have been thinking of taking all my investments (currently sitting mostly in cash) and buying hard gold bullion. It is very possible that the dollar is going to be seriously devalued as this plays out over the next 3-10 years. When a plain slice of pizza costs $8, don't say nobody warned you.

Many of the Fed's recent actions literally reverse hundreds of years of previous economic policies. They have turned the US into a walking economic hypocrite. For example, the US is doing exactly what we told South Korea they could not do during the late 90's Asian financial crisis. We, the US, made the IMF put certain restrictions on the aid that was given to South Korea and these restrictions are being flat out ignored right now (i.e. government interfering with markets to prevent certain companies from failing) and South Korea is probably more than a little pissed at us. I'll try to cover all of the things that fly in the face of convention (i.e. now French protectionist economists are praising how much the Fed has gotten involved) in a future post.

For now, let's focus on how our fearless leaders are jamming a "solution" down the throats of all Americans without a proper review process taking place. Let's concentrate on how our lovely President all but said that Congress is unpatriotic if they do not pass his bailout package in one week's time. Does this sound familiar? It should.

There are echoes of Iraq in the way Bush is handling the mortgage crisis. The analysis is that another 'trust me' remedy is getting rushed before lawmakers. Tom Schlesinger, head of the nonprofit research group Financial Markets Center in Howardsville, Va. boils down to "give me the money and trust me."

One issue is that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came up with a three-page plan to spend $700 billion on toxic mortgage debt that was very spare on key details. James Angel, a professor of finance at Georgetown University, said the White House appears to be "flying by the seat of their pants." Doesn't that inspire confidence?

The WSJ Marketwatch article goes on to say that,

Economists said there was a central problem to the Paulson plan. Most of the toxic waste in question does have some price, but it has been too low for the financial institution holding them to accept. So the government buyout would only work if taxpayers overpay for the assets.

Who doesn't like to overpay right? You have a policy that automatically adds a 25% gratuity for parties bigger than 6 that I cannot do anything about even though your service sucked? Sure! At least in that instance you have the option of never eating in that restaurant again. Here, we have no option except to either become a citizen of another country or to not pay taxes and as Wesley Snipes has shown, if you don't pay taxes, the Man will eventually bring you down to Chinatown.

One link via Neu

O'Reilly interviews Obama

Bill O'Reilly, everyone's favorite person to either love or hate, recently interviewed Barack Obama and the interview is posted in four parts on the Fox News site.

I've been debating my brother-in-law for the past two weeks on the merits of Obama's platform versus McCain's platform and it was interesting to watch this exchange because Bill was asking many of the same questions that my BIL did. I find the way that Barack answered O'Reilly enlightening.

Part 1 is about security and the wars we are fighting. Part 2 is about the economy. Part 3 is about his dubious connections to people like Reverend Wright. Part 4 is about drilling.

Overall, I think Barack did a fine job answering Blowhard O'Reilly. Check it out yourself.

Stop the Fiscal Insanity

"This election is not about issues" so much as the candidates' images, said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Sadly, no truer words have been spoken.

As I've watched everyone focus on Sarah Palin's babies and hunting prowess, I've been especially frustrated that the real issues that we should be taking about, like the economy, the environment and health care, are being virtually ignored. I feel like we are witnessing a reality television-like election where the winner, instead of taking home a cool million, gets to be President of the United States.

The issue of paramount importance, the one that is being paid lip service but is not being thoroughly examined, is how can we possibly get out of the massive monetary mess that we are in. What mess you ask? Let us see what has happened over the past few years shall we?

First off, in case you forgot, we are a nation at war. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 7 years and invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks - remember, we went to war on stove piped and completely false intelligence - over 5 years ago.

How much has this cost? Good question - one that almost no one ever asks. With enactment of the FY2008 Supplemental and FY2009 Bridge Fund (H.R.2642P.L.110-252) on June 30, 2008, Congress has approved a total of about $859 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attack.:

Yup, we're about to hit $1 trillion. Can you hear Dr. Evil in your head saying that number? I can. Unfortunately, it's not as funny as it was when I first heard him saying it in 1998. Back then, I saw the movie before I moved to Europe for six months. While there I traveled the continent and paid in Lira while in Italy, Guiders while in Holland and Francs while in France. More about the Euro in a bit though - I'm getting ahead of myself.

More recently, say over the past two years, we've witnessed the painful near collapse of our nation's housing market. This collapse was driven in large part by the U.S.'s addiction with debt. We espouse a "live for today / not for tomorrow" mentality that has strongly taken root in this great land of ours. Savings accounts have gone the way of the Dodo, instead we now have been charge cards that incur a debt that will be paid off "some day."

Then, for some mysterious reason, debt addicts were allowed to upgrade from charge cards to mortgages. People were given loans that they could never repay to buy homes they could never afford in a short sighted rush by banks to increase corporate profits.

Why were these banks so willing to make these risky loans? Simply put, because they were flush with cash and were able to polish a turd. China was buying up trillions of 20 year Treasury Notes which allowed the Federal Reserve to loan money to private banks at astonishingly low rates. These banks then just gave the money away because they were able to hide the fact that they were loaning money to losers with new magic trick - "safe" debt instruments created out of the broken apart bits of the risky mortgages. They said "Well, we know a few of these people are going to default but overall most won't [wrong]. So, what we'll do is break down all of these shit loans into tiny bits and then group the bits based on likelihood to default. Voila! A polished turd!

Well, as one foreclosure led to the next, those "safe" debt instruments lost all their value and mostly everyone got pretty hurt in the resulting crash, rich and poor alike. Don't believe me? Just check out what happened to Bear Sterns. Somewhere, a managing director is crying over a lost Ferrari. Trust me.

So far, as a direct result, 11 banks have failed in 2008 alone and we've probably not yet seen the bottom either. By the end of 2009, Moody's predicts that nearly 2.8 million U.S. households will either face foreclosure, turn over their homes to their lender or sell the properties for less than their mortgage's value.

To prevent further mortgage related problems, our government has been forced to initiate a bailout of Freddy Mac and Fanie Mae. Yes, they have dumb names but they guarantee half of the $12 trillion (there's that trillion word again) mortgage market. In essence, they are too big too fail because if they fail, possibly the entire US housing market could collapse and then we might as well go back to the gold standard.

Are you wondering what this will bailout will cost? It could cost tax payers anywhere from $25 to $100 billion. Compared to the war cost though this is not that much.

Since we're just throwing money around, we might as give Georgia (the nation, not the state) $1 billion in aid as a reward for provoking Russia into a war and losing two of their territories in the process. I mean come on! Georgia had to have known that Russia was going to go ape when it attacked those two terroritories. I am definitely not defending Russia's actions - they brought a bazooka to a knife fight - but why are we rewarding Georgia for their stupidity? Still, $1 billion is chump change compared to the war cost and the Freddy & Fannie bailout.

Last but certainly not least, have you either walked through SoHo and gotten hit by a European carrying 17 shopping bags? No? Okay then, have you traveled abroad lately or decided against it when you saw how much everything costs? The dollar's slide, more like free fall, is more than annoying, it's a very troubling sign that all is not right in our economy. In the past decade , the Euro has come from nowhere to become a serious currency that is used by individuals for commerce and by governments for their reserves. It is worth a lot more than the dollar though still less than the British Pound. If I still lived in abroad, I would definitely hop across the pond right now to do some shopping. It's like America is on sale.

So, the overall question is "From where do all of these problems stem?" I posit that they can be traced back to the single greatest failure of the Bush Presidency - the failure to use the human capital that was spontaneously raised after the 9/11 attacks.

At the end of 2001, our entire nation was motivated to sacrifice and start "rebuilding" America. We wanted to flex our freedom loving muscles to serve our communities and show the world what it meant to be an "American." We reflexively and defiantly wanted to live up our "shining city on the hill" ideal. Organizations like Citizen Corps and Freedom Corps were formed and existing ones like AmeriCorp and the Peace Corps saw huge increases in the amount of applications they received. Many other similarly themed institutions, ones intent on helping local communities whether domestic or abroad, received extraordinarily large amounts interest. In the end, where did all of this energy and interest go? To the mall to go shopping. Who told them to go there? Their fearless [cheer] leader President Bush.

Bush sadly chose to focus on the wrong capital. He thought that keeping monetary capital flowing through this nation's economy was more important than harnessing the human capital that had presented itself before him. This decision to waste this country's motivation sent the absolute wrong message to the American public: you don't need to spend your time and energy, just simply spend your cold hard cash. We've unfortunately been living its result.

Extraordinary deficit spending, the irrational housing market, the funky debt instruments that were developed to fuel it, the past decade's hedge fund largess, the highly leveraged private equity deals that have saddled so many companies with unnecessary debt - all of these stem from the present not being grounded in reality. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream" goes the song, right?

Who needs to sacrifice? Who needs to save? Me? Hell no - I'm going to get rich or die trying. I'm going to get onto reality TV, grab my 15 minutes of fame and then never let go as I fade into D list celebritydom. That is what it means to be an American. It means to be a child always and forever. It means that responsibility is overrated.

Now, every party has a bill at the end. If you're at a wedding, while you always should try to "cover your plate" it's either the parents or the kids are paying for the caterer & band so who is fronting tab for our American misadventures? While America institution sell major stakes to keep themselves solvent (i.e. JPMorganChase sold a 10% stake to the UAE), from the average citizen's standpoint, everyone is on the hook for the Freddy & Fannie mess. As for the war, who do you think is paying for the $1 trillion bill?

Well, since we've been at war, have you been asked to ration your food purchases? Has anyone ask you to buy a victory bond? I mean, how quaint and World War II-ish does that sound? Have you seen a major fund drive on TV to buy snacks, phone cards or even body armor for our troops? No? Me neither.

This is not a small problem. This is the hidden cancer that is destroying our nation. We have the dubious and disgusting distinction of living through the first time in our nation's history where a war was fully funded by the next generation. You read that right. Read it again in case you just learned this fact. My daughter and my grand kids are the ones who will be paying for our Afghan and Iraqi adventures. Not you and not me. The only ones who are paying right now, and theirs is more of an emotional cost, are the 1.3 million men and women on active duty along with the 669,281 civilian personnel and the 1.1 million National Guard and Reserve members. These 3 million people represent 1% of America's population. The other 99% are getting away scott free, that is unless they have kids and care about their children's future.

America's first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, identified the Revolutionary War debt as a threat to the nation's very existence. Ever since, Hamilton's principles for securing the country through sound finances have guided leaders from Madison and Lincoln to FDR and George H. W. Bush as they have fought to protect the United States — with the invention of the greenback, a progressive income tax, Victory Bond campaigns, and cost-sharing with allies.

Robert D. Hormats's recent book titled The Price of Liberty strongly criticizes the Bush administration for failing to adhere to the principles that have paid for 230 years of American liberty. The author isn't some tree hugging Suburu driver, rather he is the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) and a managing director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. He has served in numerous presidential administrations and is a former member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He actually sounds pretty conservative. I think the problem is even worse than we thought.

So, back to the present and the campaign that has less than 60 days to go. The campaign has definitely become more US Weekly than US News and World Report and that really troubles Frank Rich who wrote in his 9/6 column that:

America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.

What he finds frightening is that McCain's "decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless." McCain's gut didn't tell him to stay from the Keating 5. If we start to focus on the issues, namely the fiscal insanity of the last 7 years, I think that electing Barack Obama President is the last best hope for my daughter's and my country's future.

The Cadavrick Needs to Work on His Microphone Placement

John McCain, affectionately known to me as "The Cadavrick," needs to work on this microphone placement. There are some great photos from the recent RNC convention on the BuzzFeed site which should make you laugh.

Via Jeremy

Michael Palin Would Have Been a Much Better Choice

When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP choice, it sent everyone, me included, into a tizzy.

On the issues, she is against abortion, does not believe in the whole "global warming" thing, is a member of the NRA, believes that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and even sued the US government for putting the Polar Bear on the endangered species list because it prevented her from drilling for oil wherever she wanted. She is an arch Conservative, not just a Republican, pure and simple.

One of my favorite Republican talking points is that since Russia is next to Alaska, Palin is the most qualified to be Commander in Chief because she runs the Alaskan National Guard and as we've seen in Georgia, Russia is ornery these days and heck, they might just try to take Seward's Folly back. Love it! Fear mongering at its finest.

While Palin's personal story is being bandied about quite a lot, something that has not gained that much traction as of yet is the possibility that she's a big fat liar.

First, while Palin is being pegged a maverick because she passed all of these ethics reform laws and canceled Ted Steven's Bridge to Nowhere, she is being investigated by her state legislature for lying about how she pressured a lot of people to fire her ex-Brother-in-law from his state job. A Troopergate scandal didn't play well in NY and it isn't playing well in Alaska either. Plus, a person who is vindicative towards someone who wronged his or her family is the wrong person to be President. Just look at what W did to Saddam because Saddam threatened his daddy. 'Nuff said.

Second, (though first in how weird and damaging it would be to the campaign), is that maybe Sarah Palin is not the mother of the 4 month old she claims is her son and that she is actually the grandmother. If that is the case, then Palin decided to lie to the world to hide the "shame" of her oldest daughter's unwed pregnancy.

To stoke these flames, it seems that Palin never told anyone she was pregnant until she was 7 months along, that she was never showing beforehand and didn't really show at the end either, and then did something absurd when she went into labor, especially absurd considering she knew the child to be developmentally disabled. This burgeoning scandal is being dubbed Waterbreak (love it!) because, as a forum poster put it, "on a list of things I would be doing if my waters had broken, staying to give a conference speech and then flying 3000 miles probably wouldn't be that high. Seems strange." As a new father who was very close to his wife during her pregnancy, I 150% agree that the pictures of Palin at public appearances over the course of her "pregnancy" are crazy.

If either of the above is true, then Sarah Palin is a big, fat liar and the last person we need to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Oh, Man!

What a week it's been if you care about American politics. The Democrats ran a mile wide love fest in the Mile High City which had me tuning in to CNN for four nights in a row. Each speech was a little better than the last and then when all the newspaper's had Obama's historic moment on Friday's front page, those cheeky strategic Republican bastards knocked it right into the back pages by announcing Sarah Palin (who?) as the VP choice. Whoa! Oh baby, what a week...

On Thursday night, in front of 80k plus who turned out on a better summer night, the words, "America we are better than these last eights years. We are a better country than this. Tonight I say to the people of America, to the Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this land ENOUGH. This moment, this moment, this election, is our chance to keep in the 21st century the American promise alive," rang out in the Rockies. It was powerful, it was necessary and it was motivating.

Two co-workers watched a stream of Barack's speech yesterda, one at work and one after, and both basically said to me "Fuck that was a good speech." I am now re-listening to Barack's 42 min totally kick ass speech and cannot wait until September 26th when he debates John McCain for the first time. I think he'll clean McCain's clock and when you see the two of them side by side, oh baby, what a difference. It'll be Kennedy versus Nixon all over again.

In the speech, Obama impressively rebutted point by point all of the arguments that have been lobbed against his candidacy. He was specific about his domestic programs and how he would fund what he wants to do. He was specific about the current state of foreign affairs and clearly laid out the case for he can be a great Commander in Chief and why he should be President. He laid out a ten year challenge a la Kennedy for energy independence. He mentioned nuclear power, which many dismiss as a horror but in actuality is one of the best green options on the table. He was precise, like a surgeon, with his concerns about McCain and soaring with his rhetoric about what this country can be. Once again, I'm inspired and if you didn't listen to the speech, find the time and do so.

In the end, this election is simply a battle between the present and the future. Barack, despite his VP Biden being a 35 veteran in the Senate, is the future. The Grateful Dead's "The Wheel" is one of favorite songs right now and its lyrics are apt for the situation we are in:

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down You can't let go and you can't hold on You can't go back and you can't stand still If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

I feel as if the Republicans are either ignoring or trying to stop that the great big wheel from turning but our nation's debt keeps rising, the Earth's sea levels are rising, the troubles in Afghanistan keep rising, the East's power again is rising and we can't go back, we can't stand still: we are in the 21st Century and we need to keep moving forward. I think that Barack can lead the way.

How Fox News Smears Obama

Fox is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Watch the clip below: they reported, its now time for you to decide.

Via Brian.

Left versus Right

Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, has a great article in the Guardian about how in contrast to the right, the left has a coherent agenda. It's one that offers not only higher growth, but also social justice.

One part that I found damning was that it is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education and a year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard.

That is one scary stat but the article overall isn't a scary one, rather it is a very good argument for the left's agenda.

Via Neu

Gasoline is an addiction

The first gas crisis happened before I was born but cars today are less fuel efficient than they were in the 70's. I usually try not to curse on my blog but seriously what the fuck?! We as a nation have done a lot of amazing things: put a man on the moon with less computer memory (64k) than is in your current mobile phone, invented the Internet, sequenced the human genome - I can go on and on - but some how a fuel efficient car escapes us. Seriously?

Ten years ago in 1998, I lived in England and gas was the equivalent of $8 a gallon. Some of my classmates had cars and their response wasn't a huge public outcry. They simply made sure that they bought smaller, more fuel efficient cars! Whoa. A mind shattering idea, right? Since i got back, I have been in the minority in believing that gas should cost more that it does now. I had a car from 1999 - 2000 and felt that way when I was paying $1.20 a gallon even though I was a poor college student. I am not Casandra but the handwriting on this wall was pretty clear to me then and it still is now: the problem we have isn't with the price of gas. The problem is gas, period.

As Thomas Friedman puts it in his recent op-ed piece, "When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up.His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.

To that I say "Amen!" I wrote about this topic in 2005 and so did Mr. Friedman but 3 years later we are still in the same stupid place: buying oil from dictators and/or Russia with no better plan in place. What a lovely situation to be in.

Sure, you may say that as a walker, subway and train rider and cab passenger living in Manhattan I never have known what it was like to own and operate a car. Well, I just joined the car class - I have an 09 Matrix that gets 21 city and 29 highway which still isn't good enough for me but unfortunately, a hybrid is super expensive and leasing one really isn't an option.

To be honest, I wish I was paying $6 - $8 a gallon for gas as it would be better for the planet that my daughter is inheriting from me one day.

From the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me" Department

One thing that really bothered me about Hilary's campaign was how time and time again it did not pay for the goods and services it used from very same people it supposedly was "fighting for" - small business owners. Here is just one example:

Dakota Pizza, a restaurant owned by Stephen Bledsoe in Wynnewood, PA, fed Clinton, her campaign and the press corps that traveled with her more than $11,000 worth of grilled shrimp, sandwiches, "hand-crafted" pizza and salads leading up to the April 22 primary. He received a partial payment, but is still owned $5,933. "I can't believe that someone of her stature will not have the ability to repay what they owe," he said.

I have been following this trail of unpaid bills all over the country and always figured that Bill would just have to give a weeks worth of speeches once she dropped out to handle the damage. Therefore, I almost spit up the coffee I was drinking when I read an email from the Clinton campaign which featured the subject line, "Keeping my promise." In this missive, Hilary had, to borrow one of Obama's words, the audacity to ask and expect her supporters to help her resolve her campaign debts. I mean, for fuck's sake she raised $237 million (!) yet still had more than $22.5 million in debts as of the end of May. That includes $12 million that the New York senator loaned her campaign.

Is this the person we want trying to balance the budget?! If anyone has a debt after raising almost $240 million, it because of one simple reason: grossly negligent financial management. I for one never reward anyone for that type of behavior, least of all a former first lady and current U.S. Senator.

If you you think I'm kidding unfortunately I am not - please see the image below that I grabbed from the email:

After getting sufficiently angry, I have started to think differently about this situation and have sort of come full circle because Hilary has truly inspired me in my approach towards my household finances. I think I'm going to send an email to all my friends and family asking them to help me "retire my debt" (aka pay off my mortgage) so that "we can keep fighting together" (whatever the hell that means - it sure does sound good though). In fact, I might actually carry a balance forward on my credit cards starting now. Who cares that I'll get hit with 22% a month in finance charges: I can just get my "supporters" to retire my debt for me! Thanks for the swell idea HRC!

Terrorist Chic

For the past few months I have seen a very noticeable up-tick in the amount of Arab keffiyehs being worn, especially the white and black style worn by so many Palestinians. While there are tons of Europeans walking the streets of NYC these days due to the weak dollar (and Europeans tend to support the Palestinian cause much more than Americans), that doesn't totally explain the phenomenon.

It turns out that one of "the" fashion looks this season is to wear a scarf around your neck in a fashion that will make you look to many people either like a Palestinian, a Terrorist, or potentially both. Rachel Ray wore one of these scarves in a Dunkin Donuts ad and now there are lots people who now think that both Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts support terrorists.

I know one could consider "Don't Mess with the Zohan" the first "Terrorist comedy" but does this scarf / keffiyeh look make terrorism "the new black" of the fashion world? And if so, more importantly, why is this cool?

UPDATED ON 5/29: DD has pulled the ad and Amahl Bishara, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East, said "complaints about the scarf's use in the ad demonstrate misunderstandings of Arab culture and the multiple meanings that symbols can take on depending on someone's perspective" and "to reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it."

As "Avenue Q" sang, everyone's a little bit racist sometimes. Did I just prove that point? I'm not so sure. I feel pretty strongly that at least in the West, for whatever reason, if you see a keffiyeh, you think of not so good things...

Via Jessie

Baracky

My friend, who has been working on Obama's campaign for the last almost two years now, sent me the video below which, while being Pro-O, is definitely entertaining.

Via YLFO

When Bureaucracy Kills

I'm currently reading a book titled Curveball: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War by Bob Drogin which is making me even more angry than the NYT piece about Afghanistan I posted about yesterday. I cannot believe that America went to war with Iraq over such totally and utter bullshit - in case you were wondering, 3973 Americans have died thus far. Don't even get me started on the civilian fallout.

I would like to quote page 160 where the author refers to the grand UN dog and pony show that our lovely senior government officials (we pay their salary keep in mind) put on in 2002:

[Sr. BND (German Federal Intelligence Service) official Werner] Kappel had expected to see photographs, hard evidence. [U.S. Secretary of State Colin] Powell's illustrations weren't proof. They were hearsay. Kappel couldn't get over it. Powell had used artists' conjectures based on analysts' interpretations of Arabic-to-German-to-English translations of debriefings reports of a manic-depressive defector the Americans had never talked to.

Please re-read that passage and tell me you feel good about paying taxes right now. The book details all the people who knew the intelligence being used to go to war in Iraq was bullshit but no one really did anything to stop it. Some people covered their asses but for the most part no one did anything.

If you pay taxes like I do you are culpable - you pay into this system like I do. You pay for the government, which includes petty people who would rather protect their pension than admit a mistake. I'm embarrassed, again.

The "Dollar Auction" In Iraq

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate to their students how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result which they call a "dollar auction." As you read on, keep the whole Iraqi war debacle in mind.

Here is how the "dollar auction" works: a dollar is offered for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle - the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well.

Initially, almost every student gets sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears. The highest bidders now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player.

If this strategy is followed, the highest bidders usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster. Just like the war in Iraq. Hmmm. Has anyone in the current administration taken Econ 101?

This isn't my original thought: Oliver R. Goodenough wrote about the dollar aution in the Rutland Herald, but I liked it so much that I thought I should share it with y'all.

Via Neu

Food, Or Should I Say MRE, For Thought

I've been catching up on old Thomas Friedman columns and getting nice and angry about what is taking place in the good old USA. Here is the last part of his recent Charge It To My Kids column:

Previous American generations connected with our troops by making sacrifices at home — we’ve never passed on the entire cost of a war to the next generation, said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who has written a history — “The Price of Liberty” — about how America has paid for its wars since 1776.

“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mr. Hormats, “Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.”

In his celebrated Farewell Address, Mr. Hormats noted, George Washington warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear.”

I once again have started to day dream about moving to Canada...

On Democracy

Stanley Fish was asked 10 questions about democracy by the BBC. Two questions are related to one another: “What is the biggest threat to democracy?” and “Can terrorism destroy democracy?” and I thought I would share his responses I thought they were not only insightful and sum up how I feel:

The answers depend on what you think democracy is. I tend to resist romantic definitions that feature phrases like “noble ideal” and opt instead for something more analytic: democracy is a form of government that is not attached to any pre-given political or ideological ends, but allows ends to be chosen by the majority vote of free citizens.

What this means is that democracy is the only form of government that, at least theoretically, contemplates its own demise with equanimity. Democratic elections do not guarantee that the victors will be democratically inclined, and it is always possible that those who gain control of the legislative process will pass laws that erode or even repeal the rights – of property, free expression and free movement – that distinguish democracies from theocracies and monarchies. (Some would say that this is exactly what has been happening in the past six years.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fragility of a form of government that can alter itself beyond the point of recognition when he said that if his fellow citizens want to go to hell in a handbasket, it was his job to help them, even if he deplored the consequences. Democracy, then, can be said to be its own biggest threat.

Terrorism presents a parallel threat from the outside. The danger is not so much that terrorists will defeat democracies by force as it is that, in resisting terrorists, democracies will forgo the procedural safeguards (against warrantless detention, censorship and secret surveillance) that make a democracy what it is. (Again, some would say that is already happening today.) If terrorists can maneuver democracies into employing tactics indistinguishable from theirs, it could be argued that they have won no matter what the outcome on the battlefield.

For more on this topic, check out www.whydemocracy.net

Thou Shalt Prove A Point?

Straight from the "you can't make this stuff up" department is this bit of news about how Nebraskan State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. While Ernie says he is trying to point out how frivolous lawsuits can be, I pray that he does not believe in a vengeful God after reading the suit's language. if God exists, he, she or it might very well be pretty pissed after reading it.

First off, the lawsuit accuses God "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent."

Second, it says God has caused "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like."

Third, it also says God has caused "calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction."

I would head insead the

6 Years Later

In everlasting remembrance of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001:

Today is the sixth anniversary of when two planes flew into the Twin Towers, bringing with them destruction and death on a quiet and sunny almost Fall morning in the Big Apple. This is the first time that the anniversary has happened on the same day of the week [Tues] on which the disaster took place so I've had a bit of deja vu, maybe self imposed. While I have keenly been emotional today, I felt like I was the only one who knew what the day was as in my office, everyone that I came in contact with acted like nothing ever happened.

No one was especially somber, though no one discussed anything related to 9/11 so I don't know who else but me was actually a tad down today. Time does and should move on but when unions do not have parades on Labor Day, its too much for me and this is similar because I went to the office today expecting a lot of things but dying in the office was not one of them.

I was living and working in NYC six years ago today as well and wasn't expecting to die that day either but some people, people just like me, actually did. I sit in front of a window on the 8th floor that looks out over Houston Street towards Broadway. I look out my window frequently throughout the day but never expect to see a plane flying directly towards me, yet that is exactly what happened for hundreds of people that fateful day. I do no think I will never forget what I felt, saw, heard and smelt, not just that day but in the days and weeks after. Anytime I hear a plane that I feel is too loud, I still look up. Anytime I smell burnt rubber, I think of the stench that emanated north from downtown for weeks on end.

That being said, six years later "ground zero" is still a construction site, just like last year when the NYT wrote:

"Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, ground zero remains a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole in the heart of Lower Manhattan. High above it, a scaffolded bank building, contaminated during the attack, hulks like a metal skeleton, waiting endlessly to be razed."

Since last year, little progress has been made and the bank building mentioned above caught on fire which lead to another 2 firefighters losing their lives - I know, when I heard it too for the first time I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?!". This is beyond asinine at this point: for the love of all that is holy, rebuild the site!

While others may simply go about their business today, I just laid some flowers down in front of my local firehouse tonight to honor the 9 guys they lost 6 years ago today. While my wife and I were there placing the flowers in a plastic bucket vase already brimming and overfull next to many others just like it, we were next to a father who had two little kids with him, a boy and girl, and the girl looked younger than six, so she wasn't even alive when this event first happened. Time marches on. Never forget.

Gonzales's Exit Not Speedy Enough

The NYT leads off its article about Alberto Gonzales leaving his post as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government this way:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned."

Just like most of Bush's other appointees, A.G.A.G. was much more focused on keeping Bush, he supposed boss, happy than keeping his real boss, namely the American Public, happy. I thought it couldn't get worst after Ashcroft, the man who lost to a dead man when running for Senate, became AG. I was wrong. It got a lot worse.

The further quote the NYT:

There was a more basic problem with Mr. Gonzales’s tenure: he did not stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, as an attorney general must. This administration has illegally spied on Americans, detained suspects indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” run roughshod over the Geneva Conventions, violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on injecting politics into government and defied Congressional subpoenas. In each case, Mr. Gonzales gave every indication of being on the side of the lawbreakers, not the law.

Angry yet? Yes? No? Well, here is more for you:

Mr. Gonzales signed off on the administration’s repugnant, and disastrous, torture policy when he was the White House counsel. He later helped stampede Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed illegal C.I.A. prisons where detainees may be tortured and established kangaroo courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to keep detained foreigners in custody essentially for life. He helped cover up and perpetuate Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping programs, both in the counsel’s job and as attorney general. The F.B.I. under his stewardship abused powers it was given after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the name of enhanced national security.

In summation, the editorial wraps it up this way:.

Mr. Gonzales, for all of his undeniable deficiencies, merely reflected the principles of this administration. His resignation is a necessary but hardly sufficient step in restoring the nation’s commitment to the rule of law..

I hate to even mention it but lame duck or not, Bush is the leader of this country until January, 2009 and he will be responsible for picking the next AG as well. Hopefully we have reached rock bottom. Someone should tell Bush that when you are in a hole, stop digging, or at least start digging sideways and not further down.

Post-Tribalism

Last Saturday, my cousin asked me a rather general question about the prospects for peace between Israel, Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza and all of their neighbors. This started a long semi-rambling discussion whose thesis was related to something Thomas Friedman said in his Feb, 07 "Rules for the Middle East" op-ed piece. Rule 14 said that the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

I found it funny that the next day, the NYT's Sunday Magazine's featured article titled "The Politics of God" had an intro paragraph which is very related to what I was saying that night and what I have been saying about tribalism in general. To the average American, the Middle East is simply full of Arabs. To me, it is fully of Persians, Egyptians, Alawites, Hashemites, Druze, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Kurds, Jews, Bedouins, Bahá'ís, Yezidis and many more sects, nationalities and/or tribes. The Middle East's tribes are completely intertwined with religion so I do not mind intermingling say Persians, who are mostly Shi'ites and who live primarily in Iran, with Kurds, who have no nation of their own and who generally practice Yazdanism. While many of these sects or tribes believe in in the same deity, their Hatfield versus McCoy differences often can prompt extreme cases of violence. Over the past few years, I seen that common religious beliefs are not strong enough to overcome tribal differences. For example, look at how in Iraq the Sunnis and Shi'ites are wantonly destroying each other's mosques.

I also see that Middle Eastern tribalism is closely related with religious theocracy and dogmatic thought which is why I am linking this term with the article. Tribes are not made up of individuals who are the free thinking Westerners that you and I style ourselves to be. I do not believe that the Western world understands how tribal some parts of the world still are and the intro paragraph neatly sums up this thought:

"We in the west find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions and from political ones, that political theology dies in 16th-century Europe. We were wrong. It's we who are the fragile exception."

Keeping with this tribal theme, although incredibly modern in terms of its society, economics, government and culture, in the end, the modern State of Israel is simply a gathering of the biblical 12 tribes of Israel. Zionism can be considered rooted in tribalism because it is a term used to describe the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Speaking about Israel, an extremely provocative recent New Yorker article titled "The Apostate" is about how one of the country's foremost Zionists has lost faith in the future and his thoughts on the situation there. I found some of the reasons behind his pessimism very true and compelling and other parts actually quite deplorable. Here is one part which shows the provocative nature of the article:

Burg warns that an increasingly large and ardent sector of Israeli society disdains political democracy. He describes the country in its current state as Holocaust-obsessed, militaristic, xenophobic, and, like Germany in the nineteen-thirties, vulnerable to an extremist minority.

In another part, Burg talks about the 3 things that lead to the founding of Israel and how since they have been met, there is great stagnation in the society. Again, interesting food for thought:

Burg said, “after some fifteen, twenty years in political life I had a feeling all of a sudden that, to use the Biblical term, Israel was the kingdom without prophesy. I realized that the three founding narratives of the national idea of Israeliness were over: the mass immigration to the land, aliyah; the security of the land; and the settling of the land. All three had served their purpose and were no longer the core of the nation’s narratives. I asked myself what was the alternative. This was a long process of thought. I didn’t feel that the political system in Israel was trying to renew its thinking.”

Neither of these articles provide answers. For the most part, they only raise questions. However these questions might be ones that you have not pondered as of yet. The more we think about the possibility that maybe we, the Post-Tribal world, is "crazy" and the rest of the world is "sane" the more we might get somewhere closer to peace, in whatever form that concept exists to tribes.

Mission Still Unaccomplished Part II

This is the second of what will probably be more and more frequent posts about how we need to dramatically decrease our level of involvement in the Middle East as soon as possible, if for nothing else simply practical reasons.

Today, 14 American soldiers died when their helicopter crashed in northern Iraq. Military officials said mechanical failure appeared to have brought down the Black Hawk UH-60. It was the second incident of its kind in eight days. (Note: bold was my emphasis).

This directly relates to what I I first said in my first Mission Unaccomplished post from May 1 of this year. I wrote then

Four years in a desert is never good for any car - think about what its doing to our military's trucks, tanks, personnel carriers, helicopters, etc. You should see the amount of sand that gets in my stuff after one day at the beach. After four years at the beach? Oh man...I don't even want to think about it...

I hate to say "I told you so" but I will in this case knowing the limited facts that I know. I also am unfortunately expecting more failures and more injuries. Bring them home!

Support The Contractors Too

Up to 126,000 Americans, Iraqis and other foreigners are working for the United States government in Iraq as contractors yet the toll the war's toll on them has largely been hidden. About 1,000 have died since the conflict began, and nearly 13,000 have been injured. Although some are well paid, many more actually collect only modest wages. It is these people who provide support services vital to the military, not the military itself anymore.

As their reward, they are facing the same issues that the military is facing yet they receive zero of the support that the military receives (okay, after reading about Walter Reed, it doesn't seem that everything is rosy over there either). Their injuries and problems are not really addressed and their health insurance is surprisingly not helpful (shocker!).

For instance, 24% of the Dyncorp police trainers showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after their deployment and those findings parallel an Army study earlier this year that about 17% of personnel in Army combat units in Iraq showed symptoms of P.T.S.D. one year after their deployment, said Dr. Charles W. Hoge, chief of psychiatry at the Army’s Walter Reed Institute for Research.

The numbers actually are worse than that though because if marital problems, alcohol abuse and other adjustment problems are counted, the number rises to 30% to 35%, said Col. Elspeth C. Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

Doesn't this sort of info just warm your heart? To me, it's yet another reason why we need to end this stupid war already.

Big Legal Trouble

Five decisions were recently made by the Supreme Court in cases that were pending before it. They all were 5-4 rulings and each time it was the same five for and the same five against. All five of the decisions refute, repeal or ignore past precidents and they unfortunately are a sign of things to come in this country.

In case you were wondering, below are the five jurors who voted to move our country backwards and the ones who are trying to keep these barbarians from the gate:

To me it is as clear as a pane of glass: this is the Bush legacy and its alive and active already. Fuck Iraq: we need to pay attention to what is happening here. This country is quickly becoming much more conservative, less liberal and it looks like it will only continue this way for the forseeable future.

Thanks to the NYT for that image

Hillary's Song

Like many people who vote Democrat and who are paying careful attention to the 2008 Presidential race, I am currently torn between Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton. I used to also throw John Edwards in the mix but now its just down to Hil and the Big O.

To help me make up my mind, I am going to hear Obama speak on Friday night and depending on how eloquent he is, I may be won over to his side. Then again, Hillary might have already pushed me there today by naming Celine Dion's "You and I" as her campaign song! I mean, as the Junior Senator from New York, doesn't Hillary watch enough NY1 to know that this is the same song that is used in the "Go to Canada" tourism commercials?!?

Okay, to be fair, she didn't choose it: her supporters chose it for her as she had a contest where she listed about 8 songs and said "vote for my campaign song." I forget who I voted for but it was definitely not that crazy Cannuck and if her supporters love Celine Dion, maybe I'm rooting for the wrong team...

That being said, Hillary did do something incredibly cute and clever for a politician in announcing it: she and Bill spoofed the Sopranos ending! To be punny, I found it hilarious. Ba dum dum. Make sure your speakers are on and check it out below:

In this day and age, isn't it great that we are focusing on campaign songs too and not just the issues? To be honest, I'm not even sure if I mean that sarcastically or not. I mean, things are so fucked up in the world, you need to laugh once in a while and just saying "Iraq, Terrorism, Taxes, etc" gets boring after a while and you tune out. So, if having a campaign song contest is a way to get you involved again, who is to say that its so bad?

LA is the WORST

For a city that has only existed for about 100 years, there seems to be an inordinate amount of famous legal problems that have developed there. Skipping straight to the 60's, we have: the Watts riots; rampant & gross corruption in their police department for years; the Rodney King trial, acquittal and subsequent riots; the OJ trial and its absurd verdict.

Now, here is yet another bit of ridiculousness: a celebrity named after the City of Lights, who was caught driving under the influence 3x, was sent to serve the rest of her sentence from home after only serving in jail 3 days of her 23 day sentence (which was reduced from 42 days due to overcrowding mind you). The reason she was sent home? She has an "unnamed" medical condition. Please note that the judge specifically spelled out during sentencing that this Euro-capital was not allowed to serve house detention. Also please note that nationwide, a third of all inmates have a medical condition and none of them are sent home. Rather, if they receive treatment at all, they go to a medical jail.

After I heard this news yesterday, to me, this is the final straw. LA is an absolute fucking joke. Like everything else in La-la Land, the rule of law is merely based on smoke and mirrors. I think their Supreme Court is probably just a movie set facade.

To put this in perspective, my father worked in the NYS Appellate court system for about 20 years. His goal was to try to get sentences reduced for Clients who received poor previous legal representation and who really didn't deserve to be in jail for as long as they were sentenced. There were the guys who, while guilty, went away for 10 - 20 when they really should have only gone away for 3 - 5. He also fought for mentally retarded people who were in crime committing crews (they drove get-away cars, acted as look outs, etc) to try to get their sentences reduced as they for the most part really didn't know what was going on. Keep in mind all of these clients admitted guilt and showed contrition. That being said, he won these types of cases once in a very blue moon, like one every other year.

That was New York. This is LA. A celebutard who could have killed someone's son/daughter/mother/father on 3 different occasions by driving drunk received probation the first two times and was told simply "don't drive." While she has more than enough money to take a taxi everywhere, she continued to cruise around and pretended not to know what she was doing is wrong. She still has not shown remorse yet she received special, beneficial treatment that no other citizen in this country would receive, that is, unless you happen to be a US citizen living in LA.

The only positive I see here is that we have discovered new legal superheroes - the City of Light's legal team. I have no clue how they were able to pull this off. It's like they traveled faster than the speed of light. Maybe Sheriff Lee Baca got a hummer along with a two movie deal. It's simply mind blowing (pun intended).

Mission Still Unaccomplished

According the our esteemed President and Commander-in-Chief, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended four years ago today on May 1, 2003.


Here is the start of Bush's speech:

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.)

On that date, only 139 American soldiers had died. Since then, 3212 have died. That doesn't count the over 62,760 Iraqi civilians who have died. No one ever seems to counts them.

As an American citizen, voter and taxpayer, I am opening demanding to Mr. Bush that he bring the vast majority of our men and women home from the Gulf. Let's give diplomacy a try and our troops and equipment a rest. Four years in a desert is never good for any car - think about what its doing to our military's trucks, tanks, personnel carriers, helicopters, etc. You should see the amount of sand that gets in my stuff after one day at the beach. After four years at the beach? Oh man...I don't even want to think about it...

In Memorium: Liviu Librescu

The sad, tragic and horrible irony of how a Holocaust survivor, a man who then survived Communism in Romania, died in America by a hand gun is not lost on me nor has it been lost on the rest of the world. Professor Librescu died after he threw his body in front of the door to his classroom to allow his students to escape through the windows when the VT gunman approached. At the memorial service, President Bush said, "We take strength from his example" and hundreds of blogs and news outlets are writing about him. I'm just one of them.

Jason Linkins's post on DCist titled Requiem For a Heavyweight is an especially great post which I really suggest you read in its entirety. He details Prof. Librescu's life and how "it is an extraordinary thing, then, that a man whose life was mainly defined through escape and survival faced the unfolding terror of yesterday's killings in an altogether different way."

The most touching point is at the end where he notes that "within hours of yesterday's shootings, it is reported that the inbox of Liviu Librescu's wife began to fill with email, all from thankful students whose lives he saved. In this small way, it can be said that Liviu Librescu has survived even this." It has been reported that all of students wound up safely escaping. Who knows how many would have died if he did not act as he did.

In summation, Paul at Powerline puts it even more simply: "More than sixty years after his liberation, the rescued became the rescuer."

Todah (thank you) Professor. Todah.

Rules for the Middle East

Five US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the past 3 weeks. Four Marines were killed today and the number of Americans killed in Iraq is now above 3,100. Today I heard that Hamas and Fatah have decided for the next day or so to stop killing each other in Gaza but the likelihood of that happening is low to say the least. All of this stryfe makes me think of a recent Thomas Friedman column at the end of the year where he updated his rules of Middle East reporting which work equally well for diplomacy.

For example, rule 14 is especially striking to me after my recent non-UN sponsored fact finding mission to Israel: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

After the jump, please read the rest. They are really thought provoking.

Via Neu

For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I’d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they’ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.

Rule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer yes, you can’t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany — not Iraq.

Rule 3: If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all — they won’t believe it.

Rule 4: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I could paper my walls.

Rule 5: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning’s paper.

Rule 6: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.

Rule 7: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab pols is: “We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it’s too late. It’s all your fault for being so stupid.”

Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.

Rule 9: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, “I’m weak, how can I compromise?” And when it’s strong, it will tell you, “I’m strong, why should I compromise?”

Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.

Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”

Rule 12: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq’s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.

Rule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.

Rousing Rhetoric

The American Rhetoric web site has a complete index to and partial text and audio database of the 100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century. This list was drawn up by 137 leading scholars of American public address and was compiled by Stephen E. Lucas (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Martin J. Medhurst (Baylor University). What a tremendous resource. Enjoy and be inspired!

Via Jessie

More Hidden Military Costs

On top of all the other nonsense that the failed Iraqi War has brought to our fair country and the world, we now have a less educated U.S. fighting force. While the Army met its recruiting goal of 80,000 soldiers last year, they needed to accept fewer high school graduates in order to do so. The Army prefers to have 90% of their recruits to have a high school diploma however last year only 73% met that requirement.

"When you have a lot of recruits who score lower on the exam or who don't have a high school diploma, a much higher percentage with not complete ehtir first term of enlightment," said Anita Dancs, research director for the National Prioriteis Project. "By not hitting those benchmarks, they're increating recruiting and training costs."

Sweet! Even more money wasted on the war!

The USA I Know Is Back

It is a new day in America. The United States House of Representatives and the Senate are now controlled by moderate Democrats, my favorite kind of politicians, and America is finally on the road back from "the George W. Bush era, which will ultimately be seen as a fear-induced anomaly in American history" which is how NYT columnist Bob Herbert put it today. W's got 2 years left. I wish he'd leave today.

While I am a liberal at heart, this country has shown by the incredibly close nature of all the races nationwide that there is a strong split in how people think and feel in this country. Our nation is not red and blue, its purple, and we should start behaving and passing laws that way. Having a strong moderate, centrist government is the way to go and I think that the Dems will behave that way. I hope. I pray.

I was watching Larry King Live of all programs last night waiting to see if Webb really won and Bill Mahr was on. He was making a lot of sense, as usual. To paraphrase what he said, "First, let the conservatives have their guns. Don't even think about taking them. Yes, gun control is a problem but a lot of Americans love their guns and losing control over the country because of this one issue isn't worth it. Second, let them have marriage. Most of them do not hate gays, we have to give them more credit than that, but they want to own that word. They don't want Bob and Tim to get "married" and you know what, I'll give them that too, as long as gays have equal rights. Its just a word and its not worth losing the country over either."

You know what? I totally agree with him. If you are a true liberal, you won't take no for an answer, you will stick to your guns and you'll see the whole country go down the toilet. Ralph Nader refused to resign in 2000 because of ideology and Bush won - no Nader and Gore wins. Sometimes, you have to know when to fold them for the sake of the country. That is why I'm a centrist, a moderate and of course a reasonist.

In summation: America is back. Let everyone in the US and abroad cheer loud and clear. G-d damn, I'm actually optimistic again - who the hell did that happen?!

Reality Wins

I was just informed that Tom DeLay's seat in Texas went for the Democrats. That gives another seat to the good guys and I am proud to say that after a decade, reality is returning to Washington. The Dems now have the House and hopefully the Senate too because while the last 3 are super close, the Dems are ahead in all. As Borat says, "Very niiiice." I'm going to bed and am going to dream happy, happy, happy thoughts.

Vote!

Today is the day - VOTE! If you vote, I suggest you vote the entire Working Families Party line. New York and Connecticut are the only states in the nation where "Open Ballot Voting" is both common and legal. That means that other parties can cross-endorse major party candidates and voters can vote on another ballot line if they feel that it represents their values. Votes on a minor party line play a major role in the outcome of elections and in determining subsequent legislation. In this election, the WFP is actually running the same exact candidates as the Democrats however if you and enough other people vote for them, they will get federal matching dollars to carry their platform further.

Most people talk about the Republicans and Democrats as if they are the only two parties in the country. There are others though, and the WFP is one of them. It is a grassroots, community and labor based political party with chapters throughout New York State. This country needs more choice, more voices at the table, and supporting a third party, especially if they are running a candidate that is someone you will vote for anyway on another party line (say Dem or Rep) is the best and flat out easiest way to make a difference.

The goal of the Working Families Party is to more forcefully inject the issues of working-class, middle-class, and poor people—like jobs, health care, education, and housing—into the public debate, and hold candidates and elected officials accountable on those issues. Our organizing strategy is to start local, think long-term, combine campaign work with organizing and education, and not waste supporters' votes on candidates with no chance of winning.

How can you go wrong with that?

Get Up Off Your Ass And Vote!

We live in the (arguably) greatest democracy in the world. Part of what we receive by being a citizen of this democracy is the right to vote. While you need a license to drive or fish, you only need to be 18 years old and not a felon to vote. That's it. You don't have to do anything else except be alive and show up to pull a lever.

However, it seems that people just do not show up. In the 2004 elections, only 122,293,720 voted for President, which means that only about 60% of eligible citizens actually voted. As we have invaded soveign nations to give them this lovely right to vote, we Americans should take advantage of it ourselves every chance we get and no, texting IDOL7 to 58845 does not count! Plus, if you vote, you get carte blanche to complain about whichever local/state/federal law(s) you see fit.

Here is a great piece by the NY Times on who to vote for if you need help deciding (hint: its not a Republican):

The Difference Two Years Made

On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition — and even the more moderate members of their own party — out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

That was already the situation in 2004, and even then this page endorsed Republicans who had shown a high commitment to ethics reform and a willingness to buck their party on important issues like the environment, civil liberties and women’s rights.

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

In the Senate, the path for this bill was cleared by a handful of Republicans who used their personal prestige and reputation for moderation to paper over the fact that the bill violates the Constitution in fundamental ways. Having acquiesced in the president’s campaign to dilute their own authority, lawmakers used this bill to further Mr. Bush’s goal of stripping the powers of the only remaining independent branch, the judiciary.

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

Nice Job Kerry!

Thanks go to John Kerry for inspiring the photo below:
Any former soldier knows loose lips sink ships and to never give ammo to his/her adversary. Kerry is a just a complete moron. I am just completely baffled by his idiocy this close to election day....I can say no more....

The Hole In The City's Heart

The NY Times lets readers post comments to their articles. One man named John Chuckman wrote a very interesting opinion to "The Hole in the City's Heart" which, while provocative, neatly encapsulates many of my opinions about what has happened over the past 5 years. The only thing his piece leaves out is a thought about our military response in regards to Afghanistan (which I believe was justified and almost effective, until we decided to focus on Iraq). Feel free to read John's thoughts after the jump.

Hole in the heart of the city? Many in the world would ask, what heart?

America’s response to 9/11 has been dangerously unbalanced, about as crazed as Senator McCarthy’s drunken rants over non-existent lists of communists. Americans badly need to get a grip on reality.

The roughly 3,000 who died is far fewer than any number of earthquakes and other natural disasters since have killed in many other places. Yet we keep hearing about 9/11 as though it were pivotal in human history.

The fact is the average American’s chance of being killed by terrorism remains about on a par with slipping on a banana peel or being struck by lightning.

In the last five years, Americans themselves have murdered about 70,000 other Americans. Also in that five years, over 200,000 Americans were killed on the nation’s highways. Over 2,000,000 American children were seriously abused by Americans, usually family members, in that time. And about 2,000,000 Americans died from cancer.

What is almost never talked about is the fact that 9/11 was completely preventable without an insane, pointless war on terror. Just simple safety measures like secure cockpit doors and better inspections would have prevented it. But, no, despite all the hijackings that had become common in the previous decades, no new provisions for safety were made. The Congress of the U.S. is about as responsible as anyone for 9/11 through its failure to govern responsibly.

Then, after one freak event, all hell broke loose with hundreds of billions squandered. That wasted money could have built countless new schools and funded vital research and science.

America is now effectively trying to wall itself off in a globalized world. That’s absurd for the world’s largest economy.

We have idiotic, meaningless measures like no-fly lists. The truth is it wouldn’t matter if Osama himself flew over the US so long as good security measures were in place to prevent his doing anything inappropriate.

Americans have surrendered their own rights and freedoms to a shocking extent for no good reason to a leader whose capacities are best described as extremely meager.

Americans permit horrors like secret prisons and torture to go on in their name. This is a terrible shame for America that 9/11can never justify.

Even worse, Bush’s invasion of Iraq took 100,000 innocent lives, wreaked the economic lives of millions, left tons of vaporized uranium for children to breathe, vandalized one of humanity’s great archeological treasures, and reduced a once-advancing country to hopelessness. A total shame and the equivalent of having dropped a nuclear weapon on Iraq, it did absolutely nothing for American security.

What We've Lost

I think that the NY Times editorial from today is really on point. Please read it in full after the jump.

The feelings of sadness and loss with which we look back on Sept. 11, 2001, have shifted focus over the last five years. The attacks themselves have begun to acquire the aura of inevitability that comes with being part of history. We can argue about what one president or another might have done to head them off, but we cannot really imagine a world in which they never happened, any more than we can imagine what we would be like today if the Japanese had never attacked Pearl Harbor.

What we do revisit, over and over again, is the period that followed, when sorrow was merged with a sense of community and purpose. How, having lost so much on the day itself, did we also manage to lose that as well?

The time when we felt drawn together, changed by the shock of what had occurred, lasted long beyond the funerals, ceremonies and promises never to forget. It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured.

But the call never came. Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children, and with money earned by the next generation. Our role appeared to be confined to waiting in longer lines at the airport. President Bush, searching the other day for an example of post-9/11 sacrifice, pointed out that everybody pays taxes.

That pinched view of our responsibility as citizens got us tax cuts we didn’t need and an invasion that never would have occurred if every voter’s sons and daughters were eligible for the draft. With no call to work together on some effort greater than ourselves, we were free to relapse into a self- centeredness that became a second national tragedy. We have spent the last few years fighting each other with more avidity than we fight the enemy.

When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy. Homeland security is half-finished, the development at ground zero barely begun. The war against terror we meant to fight in Afghanistan is at best stuck in neutral, with the Taliban resurgent and the best economic news involving a bumper crop of opium. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 when it was invaded, is now a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists.

Listing the sins of the Bush administration may help to clarify how we got here, but it will not get us out. The country still hungers for something better, for evidence that our leaders also believe in ideas larger than their own political advancement.

Today, every elected official in the country will stop and remember 9/11. The president will remind the country that he has spent most of his administration fighting terrorism, and his opponents will point out that Osama bin Laden is still at large. It would be miraculous if the best of our leaders did something larger — expressed grief and responsibility for the bad path down which we’ve gone, and promised to work together to turn us in a better direction.

Over the last week, the White House has been vigorously warning the country what awful things would happen in Iraq if American troops left, while his critics have pointed out how impossible the current situation is. They are almost certainly both right. But unless people on both sides are willing to come up with a plan that acknowledges both truths and accepts the risk of making real-world proposals, we will be stuck in the same place forever.

If that kind of coming together happened today, we could look back on Sept. 11, 2006, as more than a day for recalling bad memories and lost chances.
The path to this strategic defeat began with the failure to capture or kill bin Laden. Never mind the anti-Clinton hit piece, produced for ABC by a friend of Rush Limbaugh; there never was a clear shot at Osama before 9/11, let alone one rejected by Clinton officials. But there was a clear shot in December 2001, when Al Qaeda’s leader was trapped in the caves of Tora Bora. He made his escape because the Pentagon refused to use American ground troops to cut him off.

No matter, declared President Bush: “I truly am not that concerned about him,” he said about bin Laden in March 2002, and more or less stopped mentioning Osama for the next four years. By the time he made his what-me-worry remarks — just six months after 9/11 — the pursuit of Al Qaeda had already been relegated to second-class status. A long report in yesterday’s Washington Post adds detail to what has long been an open secret: early in 2002, the administration began pulling key resources, such as special forces units and unmanned aircraft, off the hunt for Al Qaeda’s leaders, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.

At the same time, the administration balked at giving the new regime in Kabul the support it needed. As he often does, Mr. Bush said the right things: the history of conflict in Afghanistan, he declared in April 2002, has been “one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.”

But he proceeded to do just that, neglecting Afghanistan in ways that foreshadowed the future calamity in Iraq. During the first 18 months after the Taliban were driven from power, the U.S.-led coalition provided no peacekeeping troops outside the capital city. Economic aid, in a destitute nation shattered by war, was minimal in the crucial first year, when the new government was trying to build legitimacy. And the result was the floundering and failure we see today.

How did it all go so wrong? The diversion of resources into a gratuitous war in Iraq is certainly a large part of the story. Although administration officials continue to insist that the invasion of Iraq somehow made sense as part of a broadly defined war on terror, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has just released a report confirming that Saddam Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat, not an ally; he even made attempts to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But Iraq doesn’t explain it all. Even though the Bush administration was secretly planning another war in early 2002, it could still have spared some troops to provide security and allocated more money to help the Karzai government. As in the case of planning for postwar Iraq, however, Bush officials apparently refused even to consider the possibility that things wouldn’t go exactly the way they hoped.

These days most agonizing about the state of America’s foreign policy is focused, understandably, on the new enemies we’ve made in Iraq. But let’s not forget that the perpetrators of 9/11 are still at large, five years later, and that they have re-established a large safe haven.

Rock & Roll Bookend

I wish I always could be so lucky: this past week I started and ended it at a concert. On Monday, I saw the Foo Fighters play an acoustic show at the Beacon Theatre (Frank Black - Pixies - opened). Last night, I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) perform at the Theatre at MSG after two different people in my life, separated age-wise by over 20 years, both raved about their performance on this tour. While I immensely enjoyed both shows, I was struck by the amazing emotional gulf between the two, mostly in terms of relevancy and importance. One was simply music - the other was music and so much more.

The Foo show was great and left me all smiles. Dave Grohl was engaging, a regular chatty Kathy actually, and their expanded roster of musicians (Pat Smear was back w/ them - gotta love a punk rock dude who was in a band called the Germs whose name rhymes with pap smear) played a lot of the new tracks off of the acoustic side of their new record along with a good number of older songs - "Its all about the catalog dude!" Dave yelled at one point. The songs were all really well done but one song sticks out in particular after last night's show: "In Your Honor," the title track from their latest album. Dave wrote that in honor of John Kerry while he was out on the campaign trail with him. He sung it well and the band rocked it out but he never mentioned the campaign, the current world we live in, Bush or anything political at all. He simply played the tune and moved on to other tunes, like "Everlong." Looking back, it was like listening to rock & roll cotton candy - all fluff and no substance.

Comparabily, the CSNY show didn't feed you at all: it threw a bucket of cold water in your face and let you know that shits all sorts of fucked up and then worked up your appetite to do something about it. I thought that CSNY would stick to a "safe" show of their classic hits but instead they grabbed the show by the balls. In a surprise, the group played a ton of songs off of Neil Young's new album Living With War which completely slams the Imperial Bush Presidency and the GWOT (global war on terror for those not up on the lingo). I urged you months ago to listen to the Neil's new disc and I urge you again now. The group displayed on a huge video screen US deaths broken out by month and lambasted the president for not attending a single soldier's funeral. They showed a picture of every single dead soldier thus far - 2,607 of them (a fact I know because of last night's show) - while they played a song dedicated to the troops. They put the words to the new Neil Young song "Let's Impeach the President" on screen and urged the crowd to sing along. They played "Teach Your Children" and Crosby said "Every teacher's salary should be tripled!" before launching into it. They played "Ohio" and as everyone was singing "4 dead in Ohio" it felt in a way like Kent State could have just happened.

My friend and I over and over again just couldn't believe that it was 2006, almost 40 years after these gents made their debut, and that we were watching these 4 strong, clear voices belt out songs with such meaning, harmony and clarity, that we were watcing their fingers run wild and pluck out tunes that scarily matter more than ever. Their stamina too must be commended - they played for a total of 3 hours (with only a 20 min break in the middle so the show was almost 3.5 hrs long). Their message of peace is still a sound one. The peace symbol on the stage wasn't a dated relic of the 60's. It was a stark reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a battle for peace too and that battle needs to be fought and not ignored.

Sitting around reflecting this morning, I wish every concert now packed the same emotional punch that the CSNY show did. Art for art's sake in a world gone crazy sometimes is not enough. Someone has to be out there making art with a purpose, art with a message. It was like watching Lou Reed's perfomance at the Hurricane Katrina Summerstage benefit for 3 hours. I feel blessed, energized and motivated. Maybe if every show packed this type of punch I would feel battered but a good slap in the face once in a while to me is a good thing.

The Reasonist Party

My friend and fellow "reasonist' Mr. Neu sent me a depressing link today. I've known for a while that Pat Roberson is a nut but yesterday Pat had David Horowitz, a right-wing writer, on his Christian Broadcast Network new show. Keep in mind that Pat's TV network is one that most of America doesn't watch but that a lot of God fearing voters do watch. Keep in mind that half of Americans do not vote - obviously the "Rock the Vote" and "Vote or Die" campaigns just aren't working - so you really need to pay attention to the ones that do in order to properly gauge the nation's pulse.

Part of what depressed me was how the show featured paranoid ravings about MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, America Votes and the "shadowy group" Media Matters and how they are forming their own party as part of a George Soros plan "to take over the political structure of the United States." While doing so, it repeated a baseless slur that Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew, collaborated with the Nazis as a 14-year-old boy. It was a sickening and sad display, and anchored by a smiling preacher who is worth between $200 million and $1 billion dollars. Say Hallaluyah!

Maybe Horowitz was attacking Media Matters because this moderate group showed how his recent book on these groups titled Shadow Party had "doctored quotes, shoddy scholarship, factual errors, and baseless insinuations on matters both small and large." I know he is scared by MoveOn.org and CAP most likely because these moderate, centrist, "third way" organizations all advocate reason and restraint, not hysteria and fear. If you go point by point through the groups he trashed, you see how they are on the side of reason and moderacy - virtues and not sins in my book.

What really made me feel down in the dumps is that this sort of thing airs every day in the good old U S of A. This poison is being fed and happily swallowed by millions of voting Americans. I cannot stress enough how voting maters because as the Middle East has shown, democracies can be perverted by religious fundamentalism if those leaders win elections. Hamas was elected by the Palestinians because their secular leaders, the PA, were letting them down. One cannot deny the strong link because the fundamentalist movement and conservative Republicans. Rick Santorium, one of the most radically fundamentalist Republicans around, is one of only a hundred Senators in the entire country. He is one of only two Sentors from the great state of Pennsylvania. He is also believes that homosexuality is the same as if not worse than bestiality and he probably watches his good buddy Pat all day long whenever he can.

I bring all of these points up because I think the time is right to start a new poitical movement called the Reasonist movement to counteract the nutso religious fundamentalism that is running rampant in America. Our slogan is "We make good sense." We will advocate for laws that make good fiscal and moral sense, for policies, both foreign and domestic, that make good fiscal and moral sense. We won't shout down the shouting opposition's lies. We will simply wait out their yelling and bluster the way a parent endures a child's temper tamtrum and then will logically respond with facts that simply make sense. I am a rational philosopher - instead of hysteria I prefer reason. The more extreme our nation becomes, the more I will take the middle road of reason. At the lead up to the 2004 election, I was solidly blue and very anti red but I don't want to make a Blue State thing. Barak Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention said it best - to paraphrase, we are all basically purple - both red and blue. To that end, I want to reframe the entire discussion and create a third way: a way of reason. Who's with me?

George Allen: American Idiot

I just love it when Sen. George Allen (R - VA), calls the Indian gentleman who is following him around on the campaign trail a "macaca," which is a form of monkey, and tells him "Welcome to America." First off, as he's in the Senate, can't he at least be able figure out the difference between an Indian and a black guy? If you are going to make a racial slur, make it the right one and call him a turban head or something witty like that. Second, Mr. S. R. Sidarth is an American citizen, born and raised in Virginia, who goes to UVA so he was welcomed to America a long time ago by the doctor who delivered him. Not only that, he's a potential voter! Who cares if he is trailing him because he works for the Webb campaign (Jim Webb is his Democratic opponent). If he was crafty enough, he'd be able to win his vote.

FYI, I just contributed $10 to Jim Webb, George Allen's opponent, who I really hope wins (and not just because he's a Democrat but because his opponent is a racist idiot).

What One Senator Thinks About Net Neutrality

Sen. Ted Steven's (R - Alaska) comments on the issue of net neutrality might be old news to some but they are still very funny and post worthy. For those that don't know, this sage Senator, who is charge of the committee that will decide the future of the Net as we know it, said that "The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's, it's a series of tube." Lovely. Watch Jon Stewart and crew rip him a new one. Happy Friday!

Animal House Summit Op-Ed

I don't love Maureen Dowd's columns - sometimes they are just too cutsy and snarky for me. That being said, she had a great piece today on W and how he's just never changed from the frat boy that he is at heart. A lot of people thought that when he became president he would "grow up" but that never happened. Here is a snipit:

The open-microphone incident at the G-8 lunch in St. Petersburg on Monday illustrated once more that W. never made any effort to adapt. The president has enshrined his immaturity and insularity, turning every environment he inhabits — no matter how decorous or serious — into a comfortable frat house.

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.

Feel free to read the full article after the jump.

Animal House Summit

By MAUREEN DOWD

Reporters who covered W.’s 2000 campaign often wondered whether the Bush scion would give up acting the fool if he got to be the king.

Would he stop playing peekaboo with his pre-meal moist towels during airplane interviews? Would he quit scrunching up his face and wiggling his eyebrows at memorial services? Would he replace levity and inanity with gravity?

“In many regards, the Bush I knew did not seem to be built for what lay ahead,’’ wrote Frank Bruni, the Times writer who covered W.’s ascent, in his book “Ambling Into History.” “The Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster, an adult with an inner child that often brimmed to the surface or burst through.”

The open-microphone incident at the G-8 lunch in St. Petersburg on Monday illustrated once more that W. never made any effort to adapt. The president has enshrined hi