Send in the clowns

FM Guru posted this in comments

Lieberman's expensive consultant sucks ass.

This is yet another reason why Joe's campaign will sputter and die. ALL of the good political consultants and media people are already fully employed with '06 races. Joe fired all his staff after the primary and went to hire a brand-new team. But August 9 is verrrry late in the season to be staffing up a political campaign. The people who are available are the political equivalent of the kids chosen last for the kickball team.

I was briefly worried that Joe was going to go out and get himself a team of ass-kicking, eye-gouging, race-baiting Republican campaign consultants (you know, the ones that actually know how to fight and win elections, unlike the Bob Shrum All-Stars), but then I realized that all of the A- and B-level GOP talent was already busy with actual Republican races. And there are plenty of Democratic shops that won't touch Joe with a 10-foot pole. So he's stuck sifting the dregs for his campaign staff.

It's not even that the ad is terrible - it's that this ad was what they'd spent two weeks cooking up in their backroom. The spent a couple hundred thousand dollars making and airing this ad - this was their opening shot, their best foot forward. That's what so funny about this (well, that and the commo team's hapless response to people wondering how they got the sun to set over the southern coast of CT). It's proof that the entire Lieberman campaign is being run by the political equivalents of Larry, Moe, and Curly. I'm sure this same half-assery is replicated throughout the Lieberman organization. You think these clowns will be able to put together a functioning GOTV operation in 70 days, prep for a debate, organize campaign stops and appearances, or mail out literature to people asking for it? It's like the Lieberman campaign should be followed around by caliope music wherever it goes.

I'm reminded of two things: one is the famous film flub in John Wayne's dreadful rah-rah Vietnam pic THE GREEN BERETS, where the movie closes with the sun setting in the Gulf of Tonkin (nice trick, that), and the other is the half-assed, corner-cutting way they did their web operation in the primary. The sort of people who figure webhosts are all the same, so why not go with the cheapest one are the same ones who'll buy the first piece of stock footage they find on Google. Sunrise, sunset, who the fuck's gonna know the difference, right?

Crock o shite

Read WashTimes, fill, dispose of

Are black Democrats liberal enough for the left?
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published August 31, 2006

The trend of incumbent Democratic lawmakers facing primary challenges from the left is not sparing black lawmakers, despite their generally being among the party's more liberal representatives and blacks being the party's most loyal constituency.

Rep. Albert R. Wynn, Maryland Democrat, is facing a strong primary challenge from Prince George's County lawyer Donna Edwards, who says he is too conservative to represent his predominantly black constituency. The most unlikely Congressional Black Caucus member, Rep. Bobby L. Rush, Illinois Democrat, faced similar charges from his opponent Philip Jackson in the primary.

"Our opponent in the primary attempted to use that strategy against Mr. Rush in relation to his vote for the energy bill last year," said a staffer for Mr. Rush.

Mr. Rush is a former Black Panther and recognized as one of the most liberal members of Congress yet he and Mr. Wynn were both attacked by their opponents for supporting the energy bill, a choice both men said they made after they successfully worked out a deal in committee to increase federal low-income home energy assistance program (LIHEAP) by $3 billion.

"My general view is that the Democratic Party used to be the big tent party where everyone is allowed to express their views; now it is being taken over by these bloggers and purists who can only see one way of thinking," Mr. Wynn said. "We can think for ourselves and not for somebody else's idea of what a liberal is supposed to be."

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as the group's chairman Rep. Melvin Watt of North Carolina, will face black Republicans in November, but the most serious challengers have been fellow party members using this new strategy of tagging their opponents as "conservative sympathizers."

"The policy frame of reference has changed," said Ronald Walters, professor of political science at the University of Maryland. The party "has shifted to the left." While he said he doubts black candidates will lose an election due to this shift, "they will get a lot of questions about it."

Notions that Mr. Rush is a Republican ally were laughable to Black Caucus members, but support for anything perceived to be Republican-led is being used this year by some to target Democrats as enemies of the party.

Democratic consultant Donna Brazile said black politicians cannot afford to allow themselves to be stereotyped or forced into one mold.

"Some liberals are asking black members to vote 100 percent of the time with the party with no flexibility," she said, despite their constituency or offices they are seeking.

Mr. Wynn said he was surprised that his voting with the party 88 percent of the time could be considered not good enough. He called the criticism from the left "a very district-to-district strategy; it takes a lot of different forms."

The Edwards Web site features endorsements from Gloria Steinem and Danny Glover, and a cartoon portraying Mr. Wynn's pockets stuffed with money and bragging on his "new friends" -- "Halliburton" and "big banks." Such important liberal bloggers as FireDogLake and MyDD also have boosted Mrs. Edwards' candidacy.

Former Democrat and lobbyist Oliver Kellman said this leftward surge has been coming on for a few years and is the reason he left the party.

"This happens when any change of view comes up within the Democratic Party; it is close-minded to other people having a different idea," said Mr. Kellman, who once served as chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas.

He said the shift has undercut the true nature of the party: "The Democratic Party is no longer the voice of the people. But a group of folks are standing up and saying they are going to speak for the people, and that is why you are seeing Al Wynn and Bobby Rush being targeted."

Kellman went for the money. How the fuck could a black man be a former Democrat after Katrina, except for greed.

Will Donna Brazile ever shut the fuck up? I mean she needs to find another line of work. She is absolutely horrible at getting people elected. Come on, she's one of the worst losers in the Democratic Party, always willing to suck up to people like Rove while losing race after race.

Why are Rush, Scott and Wynn in trouble? They voted for the Energy Bill, the bankruptcy bill, against Net Neutrality, issues which mattered. Wynn voted for the Iraq war. People don't have to be sold out, which is why black republicans never get black votes in Congressional races. And after some of these votes, votes which hurt their middle class supporters, they're going to get opposition.

The WashTimes acts as if these people have been supporting issues critical to their districts when they haven't.

Brazile is the best example of the minority caucus/loser strategy predominating in Washington. Get a black person, but make sure they toe the party line. Look, the woman fucked up TWO presidential races, not one. Is there any requirement for competence at ANY point?

Braids

The politics of braids

Black women have been braiding hair for generations, and until recently they didn’t need a license to do it for a living. Now the state requires braiders to spend thousands of dollars on beauty school, where they must learn to cut, dye, and perm--services they never wanted to provide. Instead they’re going underground.

By Tasneem Paghdiwala
September 1, 2006

“THE WAY I SEE IT,” Taalib-Din Uqdah tells me, “I’m coming to Springfield, Illinois, to free the slaves. I am a modern-day abolitionist. And the cosmetology industry is the last legal bastion of chattel slavery in the United States.” He’s calling from the hair salon he owns with his wife in Washington, D.C.; their shop is nationally famous among people who care about the upkeep and the politics of black hair. He’s black and Muslim, and in pictures I’ve seen of him he wears sharp suits with folded pocket squares, like Farrakhan’s. His voice is gruff with a preacherly tone. Someone described him to me as “the Johnny Cochran of natural hair.”

When Uqdah’s not tending to the business side of the salon, he’s traveling from state to state as the president of a lobbying group called the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association, arguing against laws that require those who braid, twist, or lock hair for a living to go to beauty school and learn how to perm, dye, and relax it, too. He started the group in 1995 after his salon ran afoul of Washington’s licensing requirement for cosmetologists. Uqdah filed a lawsuit, and the district later deregulated its braiding industry.

Last month, a couple of black hairstylists from Chicago asked Uqdah to come to Illinois and do what he’s done in 11 other states since then: free Illinois’ braiders and lockticians from the state’s 1,500-hour beauty school requirement, which they say is useless for their businesses. They want him to turn back the clock to 2001, before the cosmetology industry’s lobbyists pushed through an amendment that brought them within the state’s regulatory reach.

Uqdah is already up to speed on Illinois’ natural hair-care industry and its attendant politics; three years ago, he was contacted by a group of south-side West African braiders that tried to do the same thing but imploded before any legislative change was won. Uqdah wants to finish what that group started. He told the women who petitioned him to start fund-raising for his retainer. “We fought those jim crow laws in California, in Mississippi. We’re doing it in Tennessee--Tennessee! We’ve been fighting, and winning, up and down this country and now,” he tells me, his voice dropping to a whisper, “and now, we got our eye on Illinois.”

BEFORE 2001, NEITHER the Illinois Barber, Cosmetology, Esthetics and Nail Technology Act of 1985 nor the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, which enforces it, paid attention to the state’s hundreds of braiders, twisters, and lockticians (stylists who twist hair into thin dreadlocks). The act’s list of practices that the state considered cosmetological in nature--that is, administered for the purposes of beautifying--and therefore in need of licensure by an accredited beauty school, said nothing about “natural” hairstyles of the kind Taalib-Din Uqdah is interested in. When Uqdah and his colleagues talk about the “natural” hairstyling industry, they mean selling styles like long, thin microbraid extensions, and Senegalese twists, and corkscrews, and Nubian knots and silky dreads and cornrows, and any of the “probably hundred and one ways, and most of the good ones from Benin,” as one Beninese salon owner on 79th Street put it, of braiding black hair or twisting it or locking it into dreads. They are emphatically not talking about applying chemicals to black hair to relax and straighten it, which, unlike braiding, twisting, and locking, is readily available at full-service black salons.
...............................

Amazon Smiley is a petite African-American woman with light-colored locks and a wide, infrequent smile. She owns Amazon Natural Look Salon at 55th and State with Roberts, who’s gruff and solid and towers over her, with graying locks pulled into a long ponytail and a quick, deep laugh. They’re both wearing loose Africanprint shirts. They’ve been business partners in the natural hair industry for over 20 years--“and we’re best friends,” Roberts tells me.

They know Taalib-Din Uqdah and the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association well; Uqdah plans to have Smiley testify against the cosmetology act when he travels to Springfield. “She’s been in this business the longest of anyone in the state of Illinois. I am very interested to hear what the cosmetology association thinks they have to teach Amazon Smiley,” Uqdah says. Smiley doesn’t have a cosmetology license and she doesn’t intend to get one. I ask her if she hopes Uqdah can obtain an exemption from the license requirement.

“We already think we’re exempt,” she says.

Roberts says, “The way we see it, we don’t believe the cosmetology association has any jurisdiction over us. They can write whatever they want, doesn’t really mean anything to us.”

Smiley grew up braiding hair but never thought she’d do anything with it beyond a hobby; her first career was in social work. At an African art fair in 1976 she ran into a high school friend who was running a hair braiding booth. Smiley was intrigued. She started helping out at her friend’s in-home salon and opened her first salon at 87th and Bennett in 1978. “There were maybe six of us in the beginning,” she says, all African-American women, “though I was probably the most well-known.

“And then the African braiders came, and that started my competition.” She laughs ruefully.

Smiley was involved in the founding of the International Braiders Network, a trade association that met every year in a different city until it folded in 1998. She thinks the group had 1,000 members at its height. “It was this wonderful community where we all shared what we were learning, teaching new creations. It was phenomenal.”

I ask if any African women were involved in the group.

“No,” she and Roberts say in unison.

“Well, I don’t want to say no,” Smiley says, and pauses. “Maybe one or two. It wasn’t an African braiders organization, it was an African-American braiders association. It was our recognition that we know how to braid,” she says, echoing something Taalib-Din Uqdah told me a couple days before. “I didn’t appreciate the signs that I saw Senegalese braiders hanging on their shops when they started coming over here--authentic African hair braiding,” he said. “As if what we’d been doing was fake?”

I asked Senegalese shop owner Kadya Nome if there are differences between braiding shops owned by African-Americans and the ones owned by Africans. She didn’t exactly call the work of African-American braiders fake--just poor. “The American people, they don’t do the professional job that we do. We take eight hours, ten hours, to do it neat and tight. You go to the salon of the American people, the braid does not stay. One month and you can tell if an American person or an African did the work. The customers come back to our place and they complain, because the hair is frizzy or raggy,” she said.

After talking to Nome I walked down 79th and stopped at a big, busy shop called Millennium Braids and Beauty. There were about a dozen customers inside; I’d seen a total of one customer at the three other shops I visited that morning. Millennium looked like a mainstream, full-service salon. The owner gave only her first name, Shevonne. Shevonne was the only African-American salon owner I encountered just by walking down the street and randomly popping into stores; all the other owners said they were from Togo, Guinea, Benin, Senegal, Burkina Faso, or the Congo. I told Shevonne hers was the busiest salon I’d visited. “You hear what she said?” she announced to her employees. “She saying she been all up and down the block, and all the Africans got no business.” Everyone stopped braiding to whoop and clap.

Shevonne pointed the sharp end of a purple comb at me. “You put this in your paper. Tell them Africans to go home and stop stealing our business. They act like no one know how to do hair but them. Did they tell you where they buy their hair from? ’Cause they won’t tell me. I go in their shops to talk about the business, and they act like it’s some big secret. Just ’cause I’m not African they can’t let me know anything. I gotta buy from the beauty supply store like anybody else, ’cause they won’t tell me who’s their suppliers.” I ask what she pays for a pack of average-quality synthetic hair from the brick-and-mortar beauty emporium, and it’s a lot higher than what her African colleagues pay for the same materials from their Asian distributors in New York.

Amazon Smiley says she noticed new African-owned shops, mostly West African, dotting the south side in the late 80s, and then a seeming deluge in the mid-90s. “It changed the whole industry,” she says. She lost clientele to the new shops, though she says many came back, preferring the work they got at her salon. “It was very in-my-face. The tagline that they all used was ‘We cheaper than Amazon’s.’ If I was walking down the street wearing braids, they’d say, ‘Where you get your hair done?’ And I’d say Amazon’s, and they’d say, ‘We cheaper than Amazon’s!’”

Senegalese braider Kadya Nome in her salon at 79th and Ashland
Lloyd DeGrane

Smiley and Roberts say they didn’t attend the African Hair Braiders Association of Illinois meetings three years ago because they weren’t invited. Shevonne of Millennium Braids and Beauty says she’s never heard of the group--“I told you! They never tell me anything.” African-American lockticians Maevette Allen- Brooks and Arlanda Darkwa, the heads of the Chicago chapter of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association, have heard of it--and of the rumors that its leaders ran off with the funds--but say they weren’t contacted by the group. Amazon Smiley explains to me that her International Braiders Network was an African-American association, not an African one; in the same way, the very name of the 2003 West African braiders’ group excluded the likes of Smiley and Allen-Brooks and Darkwa. Had the West African association gotten its bill passed, it wouldn’t have benefited a large part of these women’s businesses--locking. The 2003 proposal provided a separate licensing procedure for braiders, but said nothing about lockticians. “We’re glad their bill never made it to the senate,” says Smiley.

Just as braiding shops made overnight entrepreneurs of hordes of newly immigrated African women, in the last decade many African-American women have learned to lock and make a full-time business of it. Smiley and other African-American stylists told me locking is the new, sweeping trend in black hair, what braiding was before it. “A lot of people with locks have this spiritual feeling about their relationship with their locktician,” Smiley says. “Once someone does your locks, they are very special to you. It’s a unique feeling, more so than braids. Braiding is more elusive. It’s not permanent. It’s just a temporary solution. Locks is a way of life.”

While braids are mostly hair that’s not the wearer’s own, locks are made by tightly twisting and retwisting together thin sections of natural hair until each section begins to grow as one mass, like dreads but with lots of thin strands instead of a few big bunches. Women who wear locks can style them a “mainstream” shape like a bob if they want, just as they can with relaxed hair. But as with braiding, no harsh chemicals are involved. Braiders and lockticians both fall under the umbrella term of “natural hair care,” but lockticians see themselves as evolving beyond the braiders and consider ownership of their craft to reside in the African-American community. An African braider I talked to saw it the same way. “Locks, that’s the black women’s thing,” she said. She wasn’t planning on learning how to lock.

Smiley and Roberts think that with Taalib-Din Uqdah’s bluster, bravado, and experience behind them, the women heading up the Chicago chapter of AHNHA stand to win their cause. Unlike in 2003, though, this time around the effort is to get both braiders and lockticians exempted from regulation, even though the effort is led by a pair of lockticians who’ve never braided professionally. “Right now it’s like two separate camps, but we hope to form a bridge through this,” says Maevette Allen-Brooks. “I believe we’re all equally the best at what we do.” Arlanda Darkwa envisions another town-hall-style meeting down the road, like the ones Mouche Anjorin called, but this time with Africans and African-Americans, braiders and lockticians, and anyone else who wants to come. I ask her if she thinks African braiders will show up. “It’ll be hard to get them out, since Africans are naturally suspicious of Americans, even black Americans, and also because of what happened with the money the last time,” she says. “I should know, I was married to an African man. But to do this, we gotta have everyone on board.” To foster trust, Darkwa and Allen-Brooks say they’ll have a team of treasurers, not just one, and keep a detailed paper trail. And rather than rely solely on contributions, they’re holding locking workshops to raise some of the money.

I think of something Art Turner told me before he knew a new effort was under way to change the license laws for braiders. “Politically, my preferred strategy would be to have African-American women take charge of this issue if we wanna win it,” he said. He says he’ll sponsor any new proposed bill, and he can think of at least a half-dozen black female legislators who wear braids themselves and would probably help carry it through the senate.

I call Taalib-Din Uqdah once more, and ask if he sees a hard fight ahead of him or an easy one. “Oh, it’s never easy to do God’s work,” he tells me. “But I’m willing to die for what I believe in, that’s the difference between me and the cosmetology associations.” I say I hope it won’t come to that. “Well, if I can force Mississippi, I guess Illinois should be a breeze,” he says. “Anyway, all I care about is getting the white man’s foot off the black woman’s neck. Then I’m through. I got 35 other states to deal with,” he tells me, and hangs up.

Fuck all the nationalist rhetoric, what about health and safety issues? The 1500 hours is bullshit, but a barber can't just cut hair, why are these women exempt from ANY training. I mean, there is no formal training system and you're working with people's hair and potential health issues.

It's nice to talk about getting the white man's foot off the black man's neck, but it's not that simple. You have black cosmetologists who follow the rules and have to live by them. This isn't just a black/white issue. It's about fairness to everyone involved, including customers. There has to be a liability mechanism, health training, more than just people acting in a lassier faire way.

The search for Hitlers

From the comments:

From Daniel Ellsberg's 1973 book, Papers on the War, chapter entitled "The Responsibility of Officials in a Criminal War", page 281. Ellsberg writes:

I know of very few Americans as yet who have really confronted that question closely. And I think it is not too early to do so, even though the war is not over -- because some of the officials now in office are as "liberal," as "human," as any we've had in the past, with assistants as conscientious as I was helping them, and they are still continuing the war. Still keeping secrets well, still lying and killing. And I think they and others like them are likely to continue this for a long time, for many of the same reasons as in the past, unless we develop new standards both for them and for ourselves in our relation to them. So I will not wait for the others to do it; let me begin and ask myself how these things looked to me.

To go back to the question: "How could we . . . ?" I think the answer goes back in part to an event we all remember, in August, 1945. This was the same month when, unknown to me and most Americans, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with himself as leader: a status recognized by the former Emperor and by the French. We remember August, 1945, instead, because it was the month in which the United States ended a World War with an unprecedented act of genocide, unleashing the poiwer of the sun on the people of Hiroshima.

I remember feeling, at fourteen, some uneasiness about one aspect of that event--the very evident lack of uneasiness in the announcement by our President, Hary Truman. I remember his voice on the radio as he announced in a euphoric tone the great tachnical achievement of the United States in using this powe to save American lives and to end the war. Even then I had a feeling that this was a decision that would better have been made in anguish.

On the other hand, the background to that lack of anguish is known to all of us who lived through that war. Although the atom bomb did begin a new era in the technical capabilities of wiping out mankind, the event was not in itself totally unprecedented by the usual quantitative standards which we used, then as now, to measure such achievements: the body count. As a matter of fact, the atom bomb did not kill as many people as the fire raids on Tokyo, during a period of a day or two earlier that year. Those raids created a firestorm: people who took refuge in the canals were boiled alive; the asphalt in the streets boiled; and the city of Tokyo was destroyed. And that holocaust had been predelded by similar ones: the fireestorm in Dresden; the firestorm in Hamburg; and the raids which were comparably destructive on Cologne and Berlin.

These were things that we had been doing for several years. That period was an educational process for the United States: it taught us that there were simply no limits to what was permissible for a United States President to order and carry out -- without consulting Congress or teh public -- once he determined that the stakes were sufficiently high. We emerged from that education potentially a very dangerous nation.

There is an idea that fascinated Dostoevski's Ivan Karamazov: If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. In the four years after 1941, Americans learned: Hitler exists, therefore everything is permitted. There was no limit at all -- we learned from our own actions -- to what one could justifiably do against such an enemy: one who threatened our existence, who used deception and terror, who stopped at nothing -- one who carried out actions each more terrible than the last. Even before we learned of the nearly complete destruction of the European Jews, we knew that twenty million Russians were dying in that war, and not in gas chambers. The Japanese, meanwhile, had attacked us directly. So it seemed very clear in fighting such enemies -- in fighting for one's life -- that secrecy, deception of the public along with the adversary, concentration of power in the Executive, mobilization of all resources, and the use of absolutly unlimited violence were all justified, even required.

Albert Speer tells us he has no doubt that if Hitler had been given the atom bomb, he would have used it against England. But we have no doubt what we would have done with the atom bomb, since we did get it, and used it.

All of this creted a supreme experience for many Americans, but particularly for officials close to the President. Their role had come to seem absolutely central in the world. Randolph Bourne said during the First World War, of which he was a lonely opponent: "War is the health of the state." But that is not true of all the branches and institutions of the State. The role of Congress, for example, is much diminished, and so is that of the courts and of the press. War is the health of the Presidency, and of the departmnets and agencies that serve it, the Executive branch. In no other circumstances can the President and his officials wild such unchallenged power, feel such responsibility and such awful freedom.

So what we learned -- especially members of the Executive -- in those four years from 1941 to 1945 was how exhilarating, in a certain sense, it was to have an opponent like Hitler, if one were to have an opponent at all. And we have not lacked for opponents, in the thirty years since 1941, as our officials took on what they perceived to be the challenge and responsibilities of leading half the world.

But in the last quarter of a century, Hitler has not existed, so it has been necessary to invent him. And we have invented Hitlers again and again. Stalin made a plausible one; Mao, somewhat less so. Even Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, and other nationalist leaders of obstreperous former colonies have taken on the ugise of Hitler in the eyes of various Western powers seeking to maintain their rule, however exaggerated the image may have seemed to their own allies. Thus, Eisenhower, hoping to keep the French fighting in 1954 by united U.S./U.K. support, suggested to Churchill that the challenge posed by Ho Chi Minh at Dien Bien Phu -- for example, to British intersets in Malaya -- was equivalent to that of Hitler in the Rhineland or at Munich.
Mark

The last, desperate gasp

He froze then, and it's been down
hill since then

Today I'll discuss a critical aspect of this war -- the struggle between freedom and terror in the Middle East, including the battle in Iraq, which is the central front in our fight against terrorism.

Except Al Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq until the war started

To understand the struggle unfolding in the Middle East, we need to look at the recent history of the region. For a half century, America's primary goal in the Middle East was stability. This was understandable at the time. We were fighting the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and it was important to support Middle Eastern governments that rejected Communism. Yet, over the decades, an undercurrent of danger was rising in the Middle East. Much of the region was mired in stagnation and despair. A generation of young people grew up with little hope to improve their lives, and many fell under the sway of radical extremism.

And the corrupt governments which we funded and supported, like the Saudis and Egyptians, which coincidentally was where the 9/11 hijackers came from.

The terrorist movement multiplied in strength, and resentment that had simmered for years boiled over into violence across the world. Extremists in Iran seized American hostages. Hezbollah terrorists murdered American troops at the Marine Barracks in Beirut and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Terrorists set off a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies in East Africa and bombed the USS Cole. Then came the nightmare of September the 11th, 2001, when 19 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 men, women and children. In the space of a single morning, it became clear that the calm we saw in the Middle East was only a mirage. We realized that years of pursuing stability to promote peace have left us with neither. Instead, the lack of freedom in the Middle East made the region an incubator for terrorist movements. The status quo in the Middle East before September the 11th was dangerous and unacceptable, so we're pursuing a new strategy.

Mostly because of our support of corrupt and brutal governments which spawned Al Qaeda

First, we are using every element of national power to confront al Qaeda, those who take inspiration from them and other terrorists who use similar tactics. We have ended the days of treating terrorism simply as a law enforcement matter. We will stay on the offense. We will fight the terrorists overseas so we do not have to face them here at home. (Cheers, applause.)

Yeah, I'm worried about the Mahdi militia and their Revolutionary Guard trainers popping up in midtown. Because that's who we're fighting.

Second, we have made it clear to all nations, if you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists, you're an enemy of the United States and you will be held to account. (Applause.)

Unless you're Osama Bin Laden, then you can make recordings taunting the US

And third, we've launched a bold, new agenda to defeat the ideology of the enemy by supporting the forces of freedom in the Middle East and beyond. The Freedom Agenda is based upon our deepest ideals and our vital interests.

Like the Shia militia which kills people in hospitals and engages in death squad activity. They walked IN THE FUCKING HOSPITAL, FOUND THIS GUY, DRAGGED HIM OUT AND KILLED HIM IN THE HALLWAY,

Americans believe that every person of every religion on every continent has the right to determine his or her own destiny. We believe that freedom is a gift from an almighty God beyond any power on Earth to take away. (Cheers, applause.) And we also know by history and by logic that promoting democracy is the surest way to build security. Democracies don't attack each other or threaten the peace. Governments accountable to the voters focus on building roads and schools, not weapons of mass destruction. Young people who have a say in their future are less likely to search for meaning in extremism. Citizens who can join a peaceful political party are less likely to join a terrorist organization. Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock are less likely to blow themselves up during rush hour, and nations that commit to freedom for their people will not support terrorists; they will join us in defeating them. (Applause.)

Unless they do. And Iraq doesn't qualify since it is a collection of militias as government.

So America's committed its influence in the world to advancing freedom, and democracy is a great alternative to repression and radicalism. We will take the side of democratic leaders and reformers across the Middle East. We will support the voices of tolerance and moderation in the Muslim world. We stand with the mothers and fathers in every culture who want to see their children grow up in a caring and peaceful world. And by supporting the cause of freedom in a vital region, we will make our children and our grandchildren more secure. (Applause.)

You mean like the Saudi princes, Mubarak and the puppet government in Iraq? Like we did the Shah? No, we will ignore challenges to our allies whenever possible.

Over the past five years, we've begun to see the results of our actions, and we have seen how our enemies respond to the advance of liberty. In Afghanistan, we saw a vicious tyranny that harbored the terrorists who planned the September the 11th attacks. Within weeks, American forces were within Afghanistan. Along with Afghan allies, we captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. We closed down their training camps, and we helped the people of Afghanistan replace the Taliban with a democratic government that answers to them. (Applause.)

And now Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of heroin and the Taliban is killing people with suicide bombers. I wonder where they picked that up from.

Our enemies saw the transformation in Afghanistan, and they responded by trying to roll back all the progress. Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan, and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. And so they're trying to return to power by attacking Afghanistan's free institutions, and they will fail. (Applause.) Forces from 40 nations, including every member of NATO, are now serving alongside American troops to support the new Afghan government. The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan, and the future of Afghanistan belongs to freedom. (Applause.)

Except that there is a desperate, if forgotten struggle in Afghanistan, while Osama still makes videos to taunt us.

In Lebanon, we saw a sovereign nation occupied by the Syrian dictatorship. We also saw the courageous people of Lebanon take to the streets to demand their independence. So we worked to enforce a United Nations resolution that required Syria to end its occupation of the country. The Syrians withdrew their armed forces, and the Lebanese people elected a democratic government that began to reclaim their country. Our enemies saw the transformation in Lebanon and set out to destabilize the young democracy. Hezbollah launched an unprovoked attack on Israel that undermined the democrat government in Beirut. Yet, their brazen action caused the world to unite in support for Lebanon's democracy. Secretary Rice worked with the Security Council to pass Resolution 1701, which will strengthen Lebanese forces as they take control of southern Lebanon and stop Hezbollah from acting as a state within a state. I appreciate the troops pledged by France and Italy and other allies for this important international deployment. Together we're going to make it clear to the world that foreign forces and terrorists have no place in a free and democratic Lebanon. (Applause.)

Except that we allowed Israel to destroy much of Lebanon's infrastructure while they lost to Hezbollah in brutal fashion. Hezbollah was handing out $10K to ANYONE who lost a home. You think they didn't buy loyalty doing that?

..................
At every stop along the way, our enemies have failed to break the courage of the Iraqi people. They have failed to stop the rise of Iraqi democracy, and they will fail in breaking the will of the American people. (Cheers, applause.) And now these enemies have launched a new effort. They have embarked on a bloody campaign of sectarian violence which they hope will plunge Iraq into a civil war. The outbreak of sectarian violence was encouraged by the terrorist Zarqawi, al Qaeda's man in Iraq, who called for an all-out war on Iraqi Shi'a. The Shi'a community resisted the impulse to seek revenge for a while. But after this February bombing of the Shi'a Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra, extremist groups mobilized and sectarian death squads formed on the streets of Baghdad and other areas. Our ambassador reports that thousands of Iraqis were murdered in Baghdad last month, and large numbers of them were victims of sectarian violence. This cruelty and carnage has led some to question whether Iraq has descended into civil war. Our commanders and our diplomats on the ground in Iraq believe that it's not the case. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life and a unified country. Iraqi leaders from all backgrounds remember the elections that brought them to power, in which 12 million Iraqis defied the car bombers and killers to reclaim, "We want to be free." (Applause.)


They drag people from the hospital and kill them. Mothers torture and kill the killers of their sons. Neighborhoods are armed camps, people have to hide that they work for the US. It's a charnel house. The elections put the militia leaders and their lackies in charge.

It's really quite simple

Cindy Sheehan is right.

Repeat until you understand.

Dear Sen. Lieberman

Dear Sen. Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, Josh Isay,

I know that finding the right sunrise can be hard. So here is a guide to finding one in Connecticut.


This is Santa Barbara, California. This is also a sunset.



This is the state of Connecticut. See, it has miles and miles of shoreline.



Like this, the New Haven light house. It's right by the shore. Really.



This is a Connecticut sunset, notice the woods, notice the reeds, the bird, the kind of things one sees on the east coast North of New York. But since you didn't want a sunset, we can show you a Connecticut sunrise.



See the nice orange tones, the docks, the shoreline with the trees and bushes. Now, that's a Connecticut shoreline.



Here's another one.


And this is one with the Senator at the shoreline, a Connecticut shoreline. Maybe you can
think calm thoughts in Westport, not Santa Barbara, and at sunrise, not sunset.

Seems Lieberman's ever incompetent spokesman Dan Gerstein embarasses himself again,
according to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

joe-nertia: apply directly to your forehead!

helen ubinas in the hartford courant found out that joe-nertia's campaign manager was pretty agitated about the commercial that was supposed to have a calming effect on everybody:

gerstein was downright chafed when i called him about the new age-y lieberman ad that urges folks to step away from the negativity of the campaign and think of all the "good stuff ... like sen. lieberman saving jobs, improving health care and keeping us safe. eighteen years of honest leadership. there's nothing negative about that."

there's still no beating the lamont ads; the bad coffee one is my favorite. but cheesy as lieberman's new ad was, at least the sun-over-water video had a nice late-summery feel. then the lamont folks realized the "sunrise" was actually a sunset, and called it a metaphor for the senator's career.

and things got ... well, negative.

this is just more negativity coming from the lamont camp, gerstein fumed. "they're so blind in their hatred of joe lieberman that they have to make even the most trivial, silly things an issue."

breathe, buddy, breathe ...

"i've already gotten three calls about this. it just shows how tone deaf people are. why aren't they calling about lamont's flip-flop on earmarks? why isn't that an issue?"

ok, now he was making me tense.

"this is a camp that mocks joseph lieberman's wife and kids and we make one honest mistake that we own up to and they jump all over it. i can send you documents that show how much more negative they are than us, how they continue to resort to these kinds of tactics. ... it's not even a close call.

"

i thought we were all going to relax and get away from the negativity here.

helen goes on to make a really good point: this obsession with "liebermont," as she calls it, is getting as boring as tomkat/brangelina headlines. after a while, who cares anymore?

apparently, dan gerstein does:

"

it's actually a sunrise," gerstein initially insisted. "it's very much a sunrise."

actually, it's very much a sunset, as pro-lamont bloggers gleefully pointed out. they even tracked down the video used in the ad on the getty images web page. clip 843-2: "wide shot sun setting over ocean/ birds walking along water's edge/ santa barbara."

"wow," said gazeena, the helpful customer rep at getty images. "that's too bad."

there is a 30-day return policy, she offered. but it's only good for half the purchase price, somewhere around $1,000, she said. "and if it's already been used, i'm not sure that applies."

apparently that's not going to be an issue; gerstein said they were going to continue to use the ad.

"of course we will," he said. "why in god's name wouldn't we, just because ned lamont's people reflectively attack us? that's just insane."

good stuff, dan, remember? think about the good stuff ...

note to dan gerstein: take your own commercial's advice.

How much did Josh Isay collect for that POS ad? $50K, 100K? And all you get is humiliation?

Godwin's Law comes to American Politics

We fought these people and won

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a mainstay of Internet culture, an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. It is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil".

The law states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. [1]

Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin argues in his book, Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions^[2], the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and Wikipedia discussion pages.

When Rumsfeld and Bush can no longer discuss the war on the terms they have claimed to have fought it on, killing nearly 3000 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have no arguments left. We have entered the world of Godwin's Law.

They aren't suggesting that the American people are appeasers, they are begging for one more chance by playing on nostalgia: "We're America, we're fighting a good war, give us more time". But time has run out.

The problem for Bush is that he tried to do his war on the cheap and that war needed to go as they planned. And it so didn't. Iraq is worse now than at any time in modern history. They kill people in hospitals.

This is the last ditch argument, the tug on the heartstrings of failures, but instead of rekindling nostalgia, it has enraged people. What Terri Schiavo started and Cindy Sheehan amplified, Katrina shouted. These people are clueless, they have no ability to get anything done right. When a choice is to be made, they will make the worst one possible.

So now, they use nostalgia to save themselves, because they have nothing else to use.

Fighting fascism

Courtesy of the Tagawa family
Jim and Katherine Tagawa as newlyweds in 1944.
Their families were still being held in the "Rivers"
detention camp in Arizona.

Bonnie Henry : From detention to Purple Heart

Bonnie Henry
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.27.2006

They were a couple of California teenagers with little in common. Her name was Katherine Otomo, daughter of a surgeon educated in Japan and England. His name was Mitsugi Tagawa, son of a tenant farmer who sold fish and vegetables out of his pickup truck. On Dec. 7, 1941, the trajectory of their lives would forever change with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Within months, tens of thousands of Japanese living in the western United States, native-born included, were forced into hurriedly thrown-together relocation camps — the victims of wartime paranoia. Katherine and Mitsugi, who now goes by Jim, were no different, even though both were born in the U.S.A.

Just months after the United States declared war on Japan, both were shipped to the Gila River Indian Reservation near Casa Grande, where two relocation camps known collectively as
"Rivers" seemed to spring up overnight in the barren desert.

"We arrived in a sandstorm. Every time we took a step, we were ankle-deep in sand," says Katherine, 82, who grew up near Los Angeles.

Flashback to the fall of '41: Katherine is a senior at Mark Keppel High School in Monterey Park, Calif. Her father has been dead two years, leaving behind a wife and six children.

Meanwhile, Jim is working the fields in California's Central Valley and attending school in Selma.
"I was born four days after my mother got off the boat," says Jim, 83, who learned English only after he started first grade.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, he was cultivating a vineyard on somebody else's land when his sister came running.

"She said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor." He ran to the house, where his parents were listening to the radio.

"They could not understand what happened," says Jim, who translated for them. "They were as shocked as everyone."

Like millions of other young American men, Jim tried to enlist, only to be told by his local draft board that he had been reclassified to "alien ineligible."
.................................

Even so, he says, "My parents were ready to accept it. They told me, 'This is your country.' "

As for Jim: "I was a little peeved. I shook Roosevelt's hand in 1932 when I was a Cub Scout and he came through Gardena in his open car."
.........................

As for his first impression of Rivers: "I thought it must be a POW camp. There was a barbed-wire fence, sentries, a watchtower with armed guards."

Camp was set up in blocks, each block containing 14 barracks, one mess hall and a recreation hall. Schools and a hospital would soon follow.

At its crest, Rivers would hold 13,000 men, women and children — the fourth-largest "city" in Arizona.

Jim's family was assigned to the end section of a four-unit barracks. "There were tarpaper walls and curtains for room dividers," he says.

Before long, he landed a plum job delivering the mail by truck at Rivers, first at Canal Camp, and then at Butte Camp. Pay was $19 a month.

............................

By then, the U.S. government had reversed its stance on Japanese-Americans joining the service.

Jim promptly signed up, joining the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up solely of Japanese-Americans.

"There were 26 or so of us in camp who signed up," says Jim. "We left on a Greyhound bus."

Katherine was there to see him off. But there was no throng of well-wishers. "We were not that popular in camp," says Jim.
...............................................

"You could leave if you were going eastward and could support yourself," says Katherine, who briefly landed a job taking care of a 4-year-old boy in Dearborn, Mich., before joining her sister in Chicago.

On Jan. 15, 1944, she and Jim were married in Chicago. The newlyweds then returned to the camp where their families were still incarcerated, Jim proudly wearing his Army uniform.

In May of '44, he shipped out to join the 442nd, newly linked to the famed 100th Battalion that had already slogged its way through Salerno and Anzio, earning the nickname the "Purple Heart Battalion."

Jim, who fought in Italy and France, would earn several honors himself, including two Purple Hearts.

"Four from my own company got the Medal of Honor," says Jim, who like the rest of the 442nd was feted with a heroes' parade in Washington, D.C., upon their return in the summer of '46.

Long before then, Katherine and her two sisters had saved enough money to move her mother and younger brothers out of camp to Chicago.

Meanwhile, Jim's parents had been released and given a train ride back to California's Central Valley, where they resumed working in the fields.

Like millions of other veterans, Jim went back to school on the G.I. Bill, earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and eventually going to work for IBM.
............................................
"My mom was very smart," says Katherine. "She told me in the camp, 'Use this as an experience. This is tough, but we can do it.' "

Japanese Americans were jailed, then drafted. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought with a number of divisions, including the 36th, 34th, and 92nd in Italy and Southern France, ending the war in Northern Italy as a regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division. The division had a white regiment, black regiment and the 442nd.

Twenty two members of the regiment won the Medal of Honor for service in World War II naking it one of the most highly decorated regiments in the history of the US Army.
Just Americans, by Robert Asoka is a recently published book about the regiment, their service and the discrimination they faced.

I bring this up because of the recent white house push to talk about fascism. They use cheap words to promote their failed ideas, but more on that later.

Failure, not fascism

This is from Crooks and Liars.

Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld

By: Jamie Holly on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 6:22 PM - PDT

Keith had some very choice words about Rumsfeld’s "fascism" comments tonight. Watch it, save it and share it.

Video - WMV Video - QT

Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld’s comments echoes other times in our world’s history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.

Remember - Rumsfeld did not just call the Democrats out yesterday, he called out a majority of this country. This wasn’t only a partisan attack, but more so an attack against the majority of Americans.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and

shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars

yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every

American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or

intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who

oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our

employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither

common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad,

suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of

human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the

kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still

fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it

is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was

adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.

For, in their time, there was another government faced with true

peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the

facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true

picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in

terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their

morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone

England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all

treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which

contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience — needed to be

dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew

the truth.

Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics

needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost

of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at

best… morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this

evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way

Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England

- taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own

confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the

man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the

modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern

version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscients.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused… is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,

all voices count — not just his. Had he or his President perhaps

proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin

Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago

- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one* year ago - we all might be able to

swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful

recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own

arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or

intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to

Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to enveloppe this

nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently

or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and

the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the

Emporer’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day

to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of

America?

—–

The confusion we — as its citizens - must now address, is

stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when

men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and

obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier

Americans always found their way to the light… and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and

this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the

terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for

which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City,

so valiantly fought.

—-

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country

faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew

everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he

said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

—-

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble

tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist

Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I

come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of

us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew

everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954.

"We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction

depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be

driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history

and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;

"Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to

defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

Food Cultism

Texas Hot Links

In Defense of Tofu

Ah, the vegetarian paradox. It's an odd state of affairs. Being the guy who snacks on soy, my fellow bread breakers seem routinely fearful that I'll mention the horrific conditions at the overcrowded feedlot their burger came from. Oddly, little interests me less than talking food politics over, you know, food. And yet, I get no end of flack for the tofu on my plate. You'd think I were cutting into a heaping pile of fly-infested cow shit for all the raised eyebrows and snide asides I get. A few things:

• I like tofu. Really, I do. I didn't order it as an implicit rebuke for your burger, or a way of karmically balancing our bill. I just like tofu. It soaks up flavor, is low in fat (so I don't get food comas), and is invariably cheaper. Generous as The American Prospect is, that matters.

• I really like cooking tofu. Much more so than meat. It's clean to handle, doesn't require I scrub my hands in scalding water, and ensures that my inattention and inexperience won't make either of us sick. And, again, it's cheaper, even more so for home use than restaurant consumption. Plus, I make it really, really well. If you're judging my cooking, my comparative advantage almost certainly lies in my skill with soy. I'd be a fool not to display it.

• What's up with the gender politics over dinner? I don't get my masculinity from my plate, I get it by driving my enemies before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women. Do girls get a lot of shit for eating vegetarian? Or is it just us Y chromosomes who people look at like we're slapping on lilac aftershave?

• I'm not judging you. If you think I am, you probably just feel bad about eating meat, and should better reconcile yourself to your culinary choices. The percentage of items on my plate that survived through photosynthesis really has no bearing on the morality of steak.

• Everyone, no matter what they eat, should read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I don't like food cultism. I don't care what it is, raw food, veganism, low carb, South Beach, it's all variations on bullshit to me. Eat less, eat less fat, eat more fruits and vegetables, drink a LOT less soda, and exercise, which I am slowly working around to, and you'll feel better.

Like the Starbucks girls, they could eat pizza every day and put less calories in their bodies than a mochachino frappe whatever. A lot women/girls claim to be vegeterians as well, when they're doing everything not to eat, like smoking, drinking coffee and eating crappy salads while skipping breakfast. Doesn't mean they forget the ice cream from Cold Stone with the brownies, however.

If young Ezra likes tofu, he's in good company. I have no issue with it, and Jen loves a meatless meal.

Now, to be fair, most guys will mock men endlessly for being a vegeterian. We have a friend who was one in high school, three months in college, he was eating burgers and getting drunk like the rest of us. Hamburgers, with beef. And beer. No, Ezra, girls don't get shit for being a vegeterian, because most of us want to fuck them and eat something else, which is amazingly meat like. But if you're with the boys and start talking up tofu, you will take shit. Which is why young Ezra is so defensive. The boys and some of the girls have been wondering about his manilness.

See, but here's the deal, being a vegeterian is fine. Annoying the shit out of people about it is not. Making people accomodate you is not. It is not good manners to go to thanksgiving dinner and have someone make tofurkey for you or to go on about factory farming at the barbecue. And don't go on about health. I know meat eaters who are trim, rarely drink soda or coffee, and never smoke. And vegeterians who do all three. I mean, if you want to be an asshole and get up on a soap box and lecture people, fine. But that's like telling people how to fuck.

Even among bloggers, I'm sure Stoller and Big Media Matt would tease him over dinner, for a laugh if nothing else. But then Kos is a vegan, which I only know because I've actually talked to our leader in person.

Do I think veganism is silly? Sure, just like low carbs and every other variation. It's an artificial distinction in the way of good eating. Just like the fact that I hate most cheeses and yogurt, because I think it taste like vomit. Is that silly? Sure. Oh, I'm going to eat a pound of bacon and eggs, but bread will kill me. Please. Balance, it is balance which matters.

Anthony Bourdain talks about Charlie Trotter's new raw food cookbook. And while he praises how it was designed, he is deeply offended by how it came about. Trotter's co-author was travelling in Thailand and ran into Woody Harrelson, who told them he was on a raw food diet. Bourdain compared this to the American tourist who never eats outside his hotel in Paris. Pure xenophobia. Given the freshness and the quality of Thai cooking, it was bizzare to do this.

My only real beef with vegeterian eating is this: real meat is better than fake meat. I wonder what chemicals people shove into Boca Burgers and Morningstar to make it meatish. If you want meat once in a while, real meat is probably healthier for you in the end, like butter is over margarine.

Oh, and that a lot of "vegeterian" meals are as badly cooked as can be. I mean, one can make a clever meal with vegetables, if one wants to. But not if one has an agenda. Agenda cooking sucks.

But fuck it, I hate rules when it comes to food. Rules and cultism just bug the shit out of me, Just eat what you want and don't pester me about it.

This makes my brain hurt

Watch for concern trolls

Lieberman, ‘Snakes' and the seductive mythology of the blogosphere

By Bruce Kluger

If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.

On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.

Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.

But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election.

If this wasn't enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America's noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office.

Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.
...................................

And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it's easy to be seduced by one's own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a “www.” Now it's time to play catch-up ball. Lamont's handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail; New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That's the way the blog bounces.

As an occasional blogger myself, I'm still wary of the phenomenon. On one hand, it can be liberating to log on and spout off, unencumbered by editorial oversight.

On the other hand, as August 2006 clearly demonstrates, bloggers can just as easily get it wrong. That's worth remembering.

First, everyone expected Lieberman to continue running since he said so and no one has stopped anything regarding his campaign. The fact is that Lieberman's campaign, and I did
not think this possible, has gotten worse since the primary. Lamont didn't win because of blogs, Lamont won because he worked the ground game while Lieberman tried to buy his. Now, Lieberman is still losing ground with voters and hasn't made any sign of building a ground team to actually canvas.

Not that the author here knows that.

The Internet doesn't win campaigns. It can only help them. Lamont is smart enough to take advantage of that while Lieberman isn't. Lieberman is losing ground in the polling and will continue to lose ground.

Snakes on a Plane did better than it would have with a traditional campaign, trust me on that. Without Internet support it would have not opened at number one at the end of the summer.

Lieberman is running a shell campaign without the ground team he needs to have any hope of winning. Watch the next series of polling

This isn't WWII

He's just a plan old fascist, not an
islamofascist.

Rumsfeld Says War Critics Haven’t Learned Lessons of History

By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: August 30, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 29 — Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that critics of the war in Iraq and the campaign against terror groups “seem not to have learned history’s lessons,” and he alluded to those in the 1930’s who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany.
.........................

Comparing terrorist groups to a “new type of fascism,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”

..........................

“This is not an enemy that can be ignored, or negotiated with, or appeased,’’ he said. “And every retreat by civilized nations is an invitation to further violence against us. Men who despise freedom will attack freedom in any part of the world, and so responsible nations have a duty to stay on the offensive, together, to remove this threat.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech on Tuesday did not explicitly mention the Democrats, and he cited only comments by human rights groups and in press reports as evidence of what he described as “moral or intellectual confusion about who or what is right or wrong.”

......................................

While he did not directly compare current critics of the war in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler, his juxtaposition of the themes led Democrats to say that he was leveling an unfair charge.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army officer and a Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, responded that “no one has misread history more” than Mr. Rumsfeld.

“It’s a political rant to cover up his incompetence,” Senator Reed, a longtime critic of Mr. Rumsfeld’s handling of the war, told The Associated Press.

Mr. Reed said there were “scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical of his handling of the Department of Defense.

”

For some reason, the White House wants to call on the spirit and unity of the Second World War without any of it's sacrifices, no rationing, no draft, no restriction on travel, even a refusal to mention the war in any serious way, much less having their families participate in it.

Osama Bin Laden doesn't have Grossdeutschland and 2nd SS Panzer in some cave. He isn't enslaving a continent, he's not sinking the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

He is not a threat to the stability of the United States. He cannot conquer the US. He is, at most, a threat to US interests. Yet, to beat Osama, the microchip militia and friends want to toss out the consitution and call anyone who questions them appeasers. It isn't us who is hosting Central Asian dictators who boil their opposition alive, or turn our back on repressive regimes or who has built a network of secret prisons.

If this was WWII, Barbara Bush would be in a uniform and not conducting tours of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Bush's bodyman would be training at Quantico or Benning for deployment overseas, not going to Harvard B School without the benefit of a BA. Jenna's boyfriends would be in uniform and not drunken louts working for daddy.

It's a pathetic comparison to the national sacrifice of World War II, and the only one which can be made by people who's knowledge of history doesn't go beyond a textbook.

Yeah, child rape is no big deal

The folks who live here take a dim view
of child molestation. Why not Carlson?

Tucker Carson Thinks There Are Worse Things Than Polygamy And Sexual Assault Of A Minor

Newsbusters | MSNBC | Posted Tuesday August 29, 2006 at 11:21 PM

Oh, Tucker Carlson. No sooner do you win us over by agreeing to wear very tight spandex on "Dancing With The Stars" and posing for pictures like this than you lose us utterly by endorsing Top Ten Most Wanted Man Warren Steed Jeff's right to enjoy sexual relations with girls aged 13 - 16. Newsbusters has the details:

On his MSNBC show of this afternoon, Tucker was outraged that Jeffs had been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list:

"His crime was wanting to enter into life-long arrangements with women, or facilitating that between a man and . . . was this guy trying to undermine America, destroy our way of life or murder our citizens? No! What the hell was he doing on the Top Ten list?"

Carlson wouldn't back down even when guests A.B. Stoddard of 'The Hill' newspaper and Republican Frank Donatelli pointed out that Jeffs has been accused of sexual assault on a minor and other crimes.

Alas, Tucker missed the opportunity to refine his position on the Top Ten list ("murder our citizens" is pretty clear cut but the murky "undermine America" and "destroy our way of life" are wide open to debate in this instance). Instead, he tried to make a case for the defense of "the alternate lifestyle that is plural marriage." Democratic strategist Steve McMahon stepped neatly over the hole in Tucker's logic by pointing out that "Pedophilia, Tucker, is not an alternate lifestyle that's recognized anywhere as a legitimate one." Tucker still didn't stop, pointing out in his defense that the "women" were 16 (our quotes, not his). When McMahon pointed out that some of the girls were "as young as thirteen" Tucker still didn't recant, saying "It's a hard-nosed group here today!" Damn, some people are uptight about statutory rape.

This is the second time Tucker has been dangerously glib and cavalier about matters relating to sexual assault; he previously referred to the alleged Duke rape victims as "crypto-hookers." Charming.

I don't know what the fuck Carlson's problem is, but Jeffs was a predator who send hundreds of boys into the street to be homeless so he could keep his mitts on teenage girls. I mean, most of these folks are on welfare, so why didn't that upset him. Oh, they're white.

Alternative lifestyle my ass. It's child molestation. Carlson has four kids, I wonder what he would say if his oldest daughter wound up with a 47 year old boyfriend at 16. Think he'd be that tolerant?

Benedict Lieberman

The Lieberman Effect

FDL says the following:

When asked about his Connecticut for Lieberman candidacy having a negative effect on Democrats in House races in the state of Connecticut, Turncoat Joe said:

"Well, I guess I should say that they should have thought of that during the primary, but here we are."

Yes, here we are, you odious Turncoat.

Oh, and for all those who have been questioning whether Lieberman is campaigning with Republicans, you can watch Lieberman and Chris Shays campaigning together on video at a rally. Including Chris Shays saying about Lieberman that "we have a national treasure" in him at this public event, while introducing him to the crowd — and then later hugging him on camera (and then getting an admonishment from such PDAs in the future from a skittish Turncoat Joe).

Any questions now?

Memo to Rahm Emmanuel:

Take the hint, Lieberman is going to fuck your candidates over for spite. Petty bastard. Thought this would work out your way, huh? He doesn't give a shit about your House candidates. He just made that crystal clear, buddy.

You need to run him to ground or he will continue to fuck you over.

Lieberman has to be one of the most selfish pols in modern history.

Post endorses Edwards (MD-4)

For Congress in Maryland
Our choices: two worthy incumbents and one fresh face

Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A18

REP. ALBERT R. WYNN has represented Maryland's 4th Congressional District since 1993, and in that time he has never faced a serious challenger. This year, in Donna Edwards , he does. Ms. Edwards, a lawyer and foundation executive with a distinguished record of civic activism, is Mr. Wynn's opponent in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary. Tough, articulate and knowledgeable, she is one of the smartest and most impressive newcomers in Maryland politics.

The 4th District, comprising parts of Prince George's and Montgomery counties, is heavily Democratic, a profile that meshes with Ms. Edwards's long involvement in liberal causes. She has championed a higher minimum wage, campaign finance reform and an array of environmental issues, and she fought for legislation to curtail domestic violence. Locally, she was an ardent opponent of National Harbor, the multibillion-dollar development underway in Prince George's, but she came around to supporting it when she was satisfied that it would include a balance of commercial, entertainment and residential components. Her assent removed one of the project's last major hurdles -- a fact that testifies both to her skill as an advocate and her openness to reasonable compromise.

Ms. Edwards worked for Mr. Wynn as a clerk in the 1980s, when he served in the Maryland House of Delegates. Initially she backed him for Congress, but since then, she says, Mr. Wynn has betrayed the principles that first got him elected. In making that point in a debate with Mr. Wynn this month, she left him out of sorts and on the defensive.

No wonder. As we've noted in the past, Mr. Wynn has often seemed more involved in playing the role of a kingmaker in Prince George's than in his duties in Congress. On key federal issues, he has cast himself as the most bipartisan member of Maryland's congressional delegation. That's great in theory, but too often his votes have been at odds with good government and the interests of his constituents. He has backed the estate tax repeal, a measure that benefits the richest Americans at the expense of the poor and middle class. He supported the Bush administration's energy bill in 2003, offering subsidies to oil and gas companies even as they were headed toward record profits. He has flip-flopped on fuel efficiency standards and opposed campaign finance reform. And he has tried to clear the way for casino gambling in Prince George's. All in all, it is a lackluster record.

On the war in Iraq, Ms. Edwards has scored points by attacking Mr. Wynn as Maryland's Joseph I. Lieberman -- a supporter of the war portrayed as too close to the Bush administration. Mr. Wynn backed the war at the outset, but he has since recanted, saying he was misled by bad intelligence. More to the point of today's debate, both candidates are calling for a U.S. withdrawal, a scenario that we believe would leave chaos in its wake.

Mr. Wynn insists he has been a successful pork-barrel politician; we suspect Ms. Edwards, razor-sharp and relentless, would be at least as effective. We disagree with her on some important issues, but we are convinced she would be the more forceful, principled and effective representative. And while her insurgent candidacy is an uphill battle, it should put Mr. Wynn on notice that voters expect quality representation in Congress, not just a local political boss.

I have not contributed any money this cycle to any race, and will not contribute to any race in Maryland or Virginia. After mocking the hapless and whiny Steele, there's no need to give a Republican or GOP-lite like Wynn any tool to go after their opponents. Therefore, I won't tell anyone to send any of these candidates money.

However, if people want to get involved in her campaign, this is her website

Oh my God

Iraqi Hospitals Are War's New 'Killing Fields'
Medical Sites Targeted By Shiite Militiamen

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- In a city with few real refuges from sectarian violence -- not government offices, not military bases, not even mosques -- one place always emerged as a safe haven: hospitals.

So Mounthir Abbas Saud, whose right arm and jaw were ripped off when a car bomb exploded six months ago, must have thought the worst was over when he arrived at Ibn al-Nafis Hospital, a major medical center here.

Instead, it had just begun. A few days into his recovery at the facility, armed Shiite Muslim militiamen dragged the 43-year-old Sunni mason down the hallway floor, snapping intravenous needles and a breathing tube out of his body, and later riddled his body with bullets, family members said.

Authorities say it was not an isolated incident. In Baghdad these days, not even the hospitals are safe. In growing numbers, sick and wounded Sunnis have been abducted from public hospitals operated by Iraq's Shiite-run Health Ministry and later killed, according to patients, families of victims, doctors and government officials.

As a result, more and more Iraqis are avoiding hospitals, making it even harder to preserve life in a city where death is seemingly everywhere. Gunshot victims are now being treated by nurses in makeshift emergency rooms set up in homes. Women giving birth are smuggled out of Baghdad and into clinics in safer provinces.

But it's not a civil war

The paper parent

(Bridget Brown/ Bangor Daily News via Associated Press)
Logan, 3, and Justin Holbrook, 14, rode to dinner
with the life-size cutout of their father, Lieutenant
Colonel Randall Holbrook, a Maine National Guardsman
from Hermon, Maine.

Guard families cope in two dimensions
`Flat Daddy' cutouts ease longing

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | August 30, 2006

Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.

But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.

Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."

At the request of relatives, about 200 Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy photos have been enlarged and printed at the state National Guard headquarters in Augusta. The families cut out the photos, which show the Guard members from the waist up, and glue them to a $2 piece of foam board.

Sergeant First Class Barbara Claudel, the state family-support director who began the program, said the response from Guard families has been giddily enthusiastic.

It's ok to read this and cry, right?