The one Democrat I can see myself supporting at this point

It sure as hell isn't Holy Joe Lieberman OR Hillary Clinton.

MBNA Biden? Forget it.

No, the one guy who can count on me getting out on Election Day 2008 would be Russ Feingold.

Jeffrey Feldman explains why:

Kerry made a series of statements where he attempted to parse the difference between his position and President Bush's statements. According to John Kerry, the problem with the President's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" was that it made the claim that the U.S. military belonged to the President's policy and not to the American people (hang on, here, it's hard to explain Kerry's arguments). He then went on to explain that Democrats are not calling for a time table for leaving Iraq, but were instead calling for a time table for success in Iraq which would allow for the U.S. military to leave (See the difference? Yeah...me neither).

Kerry was confusing, he was overly patrician. He was unclear. After listening to him speak for five minutes, it was not clear what his ideas were.

Feingold was the exact opposite.

Interviewed by Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC, Feingold was asked a series of questions where he was supposed to respond to the President's attacks on his position. Rather than answer those false charges, each time he reframed the debate. Each time he did this--he was fantastic. FANTASTIC!

Feingold made several points that were crystal clear.

First, he said that the President's strategy should not be "Victory in Iraq," but "Victory Against Al Qaeda." That was a very good point. He held up the President's document and said, essentially, the title of this document is wrong. Very clear. Our goal is to stop Al Qaeda.

Second, he said that just because the President made the mistake of confusing the war in Iraq with the fight against Al Qaeda, doesn't mean that we should make that mistake over and over again. We must refocus the war on the real enemy: Al Qaeda.

Third, he said that winding down the mission in 2006 would not mean that America had 'cut and run' from Iraq, thereby giving the terrorists a victory. He explained clearly that the American presence in Iraq--our military occupation of Iraq--was the single largest factor fueling the terrorists in the world, today. He said that the President was mistaken or confused in his understanding, and that key generals and Iraqis themselves had said that the most important factor that his helping Al Qaeda is the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Fourth, he used a chessboard metaphor to explain that the fight against Al Qaeda is taking place in dozens of countries around the world. Therefore, what the President is advocating, according to Feingold, is that we fight only in "one square" and not on the whole board. It was a very clear way to frame this discussion. And one that has legs, I believe.

Feingold was great and he demonstrated the importance, and the power, of his general idea that we must initiate a 'new beginning' or 'refocus' our fight for national security. This is clearly more powerful and more effective than Kerry's attempt to blame the President for Iraq.

With Kerry, we are stuck trying to out maneuver the White House on Iraq--stuck in the frame of the Iraq war as the lone key to national security.

With Feingold, we get a comprehensive vision of national security based on success and action across the board. National security is about engaging Al Qaeda everywhere and playing on our terms, not the terms that help Al Qaeda.

Feingold's frame is not perfect, but it is powerful in how distinct and clear it is. I believe we are seeing a new leader emerge in the Democratic party in Russ Feingold and we will see his frame and his positions become more refined and more articulate as he circulates more and more in the media.

Finally! A real voice of leadership emerges.

Of course Feingold doesn't have a chance in hell. First of all, he's unafraid to frame an issue in a way that isn't "We're just like Bush...only not crazy!" And second of all, this country is NOT going to elect a twice-divorced Jew. It's just not going to happen.

A damn shame, too.

Maybe Maureen Dowd is right

Contrary to what some of my trolls think, I don't hate men. I've always kind of liked men, which is something Mr. Brilliant just can't seem to understand. He thinks the reason men don't respect women is because we put up with them. He could be right, though I happen to be still extremely fond of Mr. Brilliant, even after lo these 23 years (Discordians and Lost fans, take note). And even at my advanced age, I still enjoy looking at a nice-looking, broody, tortured, Mr. Darcy-type on a movie or TV screen.

Mr. Brilliant is dashingly handsome, intelligent, and has a wicked sense of humor. And he knows who the Wooleyburger was, which is what sealed the deal for me back in 1983.

But lately the battle of the sexes has been in the news again, in between the ranting about the liberal war on Christmas, largely because of Maureen Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary, in which she apparently hashes out the old chestnut that men can't handle strong, successful women; and because of recent stories indicating that Ivy League women are back to wanting their MRS degree.

I'm not going to rant about that now, though I have plenty to say on that front. But you can read an interesting, if ultimately pointless back-and-forth on the subject here.

Maybe it's that I'm not as highly accomplished as Maureen Dowd, or that I never looked to a guy to support me, but her angst has never been an issue for me.

But when I read something as vile and reprehensible as this, I think she may be on to something, though not for the same reasons.

Another Jill at Feministe does a fine job of eviscerating the piece of human excrement that wrote the above.

HR 550: Because if you believe in democracy, you support accurate vote counts

I've taken a fair amount of crap from our wingnut trolls over the past year and a half, and even more before then from Republicans who seem to think that unverifiable voting is A-OK by them -- especially when the machines are built and programmed by companies that support Republicans.

America's moral authority, or what little of it is left, is predicated on the idea that we elect our leaders in free elections in which the votes are counted as they are cast. The last three elections, in 2000, 2002, and 2004 cast doubt on this principle, as more and more districts using electronic voting reported machine glitches, votes being cast for the wrong candidate, and other "quirks", not all of them easily attributable to malfunction.

I'm hardly a power programmer, but I could write a web-based system in an afternoon that would take every "n"th vote for Candidate A and change it to Candidate B. I could also write a function that would watch for a certain vote percentage before kicking the count change into play.

Those of us with programming and system knowledge are appalled at the kind of loose controls placed on these machines -- the security holes, the insecure databases, the level of crappy code that most of us would be fired for producing.

Although Rep. Rush Holt is, alas, not my representative (my own representative, Scott Garrett, feels that rigged voting is just fine with him), I'm proud to be from the same state as the Congressman who introduced Bill HR 550: the The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act.

This bill, if passed, will:

• Mandate a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast in every federal election, nationwide; because the voter verified paper record is the only one verified by the voters themselves, rather than by the machines, it will serve as the vote of record in any case of inconsistency with electronic records;
  
• Protect the accessibility requirements of the Help America Vote Act for voters with disabilities;
  
• Require random, unannounced, hand-count audits of actual election results in every state, and in each county, for every Federal election;
  
• Prohibit the use of undisclosed software and wireless and concealed communications devices and internet connections in voting machines;
  
• Provide Federal funding to pay for implementation of voter verified paper balloting; and
  
• Require full implementation by 2006
  

A petition to support this bill can be found here.

Projection

President Rubber Room's remarks yesterday at a greedfest for embattled Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave are a perfect example of projection at work:

We believe in the freedom of people to worship and speak their mind, the freedom of the press to print what they want. They believe in the opposite. They have a dark vision of the world. They have made their intentions clear. They want to establish a totalitarian empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia. And one way for them to accomplish their objective is to drive us out of the Middle East, is to cause America to become isolated. It's not going to happen on my watch. (Applause.)

One of the reasons I'm proud to stand here with Marilyn is she understands the stakes, as well. It's important to have a -- somebody from the United States Congress from that district, from her district, who understands that on September the 11th, 2001, an enemy declared war on the United States of America, and we must do everything in our power to protect the American people.

This is an enemy that has declared their intentions in Iraq. They've got one weapon, by the way -- their ideology is so dark, nobody believes in it except for a handful, but they've got the capacity to kill innocent people and have those images on the TV screens around the world, all attempting to shake our will and to get us to retreat. They have stated openly their desire to do to Iraq what they did to Afghanistan, to convert that country into a safe haven so they can plan, plot and attack. We will defeat the enemy in Iraq. We will do our job to protect the American people.

I think you just read the President of the United States telling us what HIS agenda is, not that of the Islamists.

But if you need further proof that Peggy Noonan has left the building, Pam points it out for us:

Also, the Chimperor spent a lot of time building up the "dark swarthy enemy" imagery in this speech. God, this writing is awful. The only numnuts that could possibly tolerate a speech like this are the hand-picked automaton event supporters. I'm just surprised that his staff can't come up with anything less hoary and tired to say than this.

Miss Kitty: The Conclusion

Some of you may remember me blogging on the story of Miss Kitty, the heroic cat who saved the life of her owner, Bill Harris, as the flood waters rose in his Slidell, Mississippi home during Hurricane Katrina. (Previous entries here, here, here, here, and here).

I'd like to be able to say that Harris and his cat lived happily ever after, but alas, Harris died last week from a recurrence of the gastrointestinal bleeding that took him from a Red Cross shelter to a hospital in September, where he was reunited with Miss Kitty.

Miss Kitty, who at age 17 is no spring chicken herself, will be moving to her new home in Canada with Donna Wackerbauer, one of the animal rescuers who found her.

Noah's Wish is working on a way to commemorate Bill Harris and Miss Kitty in Slidell.

The story of this amazing cat should put to rest the idea that only dogs have the heart to save the lives of their owners.

The first domino falls

And this is even BEFORE the Abramoff Gang starts singing:

Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, resigned from Congress on Monday, hours after pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes to help friends and campaign contributors win military contracts.

You've got to give Duke credit: at least he's an expensive whore.

Mr. Cunningham, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, tearfully acknowledged his guilt in a statement read outside the federal courthouse in San Diego.

"The truth is, I broke the law, concealed my conduct and disgraced my office," he said. "I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions and, most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."

Mr. Cunningham, 63, pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, tax evasion, wire fraud and mail fraud. He faces up to 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeitures.

Prosecutors said he received cash, cars, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees, moving expenses and vacations from four unnamed co-conspirators in exchange for aid in winning military contracts. None of this income was reported to the Internal Revenue Service or on the congressman's financial disclosure forms, the government said.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known as Duke, lived while in Washington on a 42-foot yacht, named the Duke-Stir, owned by one of the military contractors that received tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts that prosecutors said Mr. Cunningham helped steer its way.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known for his combative conservatism and his emotional outbursts, served on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism and human intelligence.

"He did the worst thing an elected official can do," Carol C. Lam, the United States attorney, said in a statement. "He enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there."

Mr. Cunningham's plea adds to the ethics cloud over the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush White House.

These guys are never in the least bit sorry for their greed, but they're always very, very sorry they get caught. Shed no tears for the Dukester, my friends, for his trials and tribulations are well-deserved.

This is why we need a two-party system to provide oversight. The Republicans have been so certain of their own eternal rule that they believed they could get away anything. The one hopeful sign that our system, as creaky and damaged as it is by this bunch of criminals that constitute today's GOP, still has some life in it is the fact that while Republicans control everything, there are still some people with integrity in the Justice Department.

So here's the GOP scorecard so far:

Rep. Randy Cunningham: plead guilty

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: under investigation by the SEC for insider trading.

House Majority Leadert Tom DeLay: indicted on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon: plead guilty to bribery charges.

Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby: indicted on perjury charges.

Ohio Rep. Bob Ney: under investigation for bribery, tied to Jack Abramoff

Montana Sen. Conrad Burns: part of the Abramoff campaign finance investigation

California Rep. John Dolittle: part of the Abramoff campaign finance investigation

And that's just where we are so far. Now tell me again how Republicans are the party of high moral values.

Is this what we're training the Iraqi military to do?

Freedom on the march:

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Some of the young men have turned up alive in prison. In a secret bunker discovered earlier this month in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that some of the mostly Sunni inmates appeared to have been tortured.

Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, and other government officials denied any government involvement, saying the killings were carried out by men driving stolen police cars and wearing police and army uniforms purchased at local markets. "Impossible! Impossible!" Mr. Jabr said. "That is totally wrong; it's only rumors; it is nonsense."

Well, at least we know the Iraqi government has been well-trained by the White House -- they use the same tactic: act shocked, shocked, and appalled; and then deny, deny, deny.

President Delusional

This isn't even funny anymore. Forget impeachment, we may be looking at a 25th Amendment removal from office scenario before this is all over.

This Kos diary excerpts an interview Wolf Blitzer did with Sy Hersh today that represents quite probably the first time the idea that the president is a few sandwiches short of a picnic has appeared in the mainstream media:

BLITZER: In this new article you have in The New Yorker, you also write this about the president: " 'The president is more determined than ever to stay the course,' the former defense official said. 'He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, "People may suffer and die, but the Church advances." ' He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. 'They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,' the former defense official said."

HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I'm sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He's upbeat. He thinks that he's going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He's committed to the course. He believes in democracy.

HERSH: He believes that he's doing the right thing, and he's not going to stop until he gets -- either until he's out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.

BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him? HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he's absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He's been sold on this notion.

He's a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn't have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn't able to change.

I'll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they're not sure how you get to this guy.

We have generals that do not like -- anymore -- they're worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that's -- Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don't know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He's a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they're not saying to them.

And if you're a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved.

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding."

Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.

They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able -- is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.

He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews.

How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.

And so we have an election coming up -- Yes. I've had people talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this war if it gets to that point. I don't think they're ready to do it now.

But I'm talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that's seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in terms of getting information it doesn't want to receive.

It's one thing for bloggers like me to talk about how Bush feels he's anointed by God to be president; and to believe that Bush sees himself as God's messenger to bring about Armageddon in our lifetime. I have long believed this is true, and I've seen little to dissuade me from that notion. But it's quite another for someone with the journalistic track record that Seymour Hersh has saying essentially the same thing, especially when taken in conjunction with other articles also tiptoeing around the delusions of this president. Hersh isn't using the "God's messenger" language, but his implication is clear: the current occupant of the White House is clearly off his rocker. His messianic narcissism is putting us all at risk, and at a time when we need a clear thinker who understands geopolitics, what we have is a religious fanatic with delusions of grandeur.

Pleasant dreams.

High Tea at The Globe Bar, The Observatory Hotel

When five foxxy females seek to celebrate four November birthdays, a High Tea affair offers the perfect combination of sophistication, conversation and self-indulgent deserved gluttony.Our chosen destination was The Observatory Hotel, a member of the Orient-Express family which, although only built in 1993, attempts to look as if it has been there ever since 1893.The olde world charm is apparent

High Tea at The Globe Bar, The Observatory Hotel

When five foxxy females seek to celebrate four November birthdays, a High Tea affair offers the perfect combination of sophistication, conversation and self-indulgent deserved gluttony.Our chosen destination was The Observatory Hotel, a member of the Orient-Express family which, although only built in 1993, attempts to look as if it has been there ever since 1893.The olde world charm is apparent

Where the rich people are creating jobs with their tax cuts

The kool-aid drinkers who constitute the remnants of Bush supporters will always parrot the meme that tax cuts for those already rich beyond their ability to spend it all are justified because "rich people create jobs."

This particular model of benevolent corporate executives showering jobs upon us, the teeming masses, has always seemed a peculiar one for middle-class people to embrace, but embrace they have.

Of course outsourcing has been eliminating any sense that this argument might have ever have made for some time, but now industry has found a NEW place to outsource: Central America. And CAFTA, passed in Congress with both Republican AND Democratic support, is going to make it easier for them to put YOU out of work for good:

A lot has been written about the outsourcing of high-tech and customer-service jobs to lands overseas. But the latest threat to job security in the United States, some argue, lies right next door, south of the border.
Touting Central America as the "new Asia," pro-business and investment organizations across the region are all talking about the benefits of "nearsourcing." It's the same thing as outsourcing - that is, sending jobs to lower cost locations outside the US - but closer to home: It's South rather than East, near rather than far. And it's increasingly attractive to US firms.

Lured by the ease of working in the same time zone a mere three or four hours' flight away from headquarters in the US, such companies as Dell, Sykes, Sitel, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, and Western Union on the service side and Sara Lee/Hanes, VF Corp., and Russell Athletic on the manufacturing side have been moving business into the region.

Central America received just over $2 billion in foreign investment last year, up from an annual average of $633 million in the first half of the 1990s, according to the UN's Economic Conference on Latin America.

To be sure, the numbers of US jobs - manufacturing and service alike - that are going to Central America is minuscule when compared with those being outsourced to Asia. The number of jobs currently outsourced to India alone ranges between 400,000 and 700,000, says market-research company Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

[snip]

"It would be hard to find people in the US who wanted this job because they have too many other options," he says. "But here the pay [$400 a month plus incentives] is triple minimum wage."

So think about that as you whip out the Visa card to buy your kids ever more gewgaws this Christmas. The corporate executives who already make 431 times the pay of the average worker think that American workers are worth only about $400/month.

Hell, it'll cost that just to fill up the SUV.

A lame attempt to save face

For the oh, five or six of you who have been following our Save Morning Sedition Blogwhoring, at last we have some answers.

Unable to find a way for Danny Goldberg to save face, and unwilling to fire his know-nothing ass, which is what he richly deserves, it seems that Air America Radio is trying to keep Marc Maron in the AAR fold by negotiating a one or two hour show, buried in the dead of night when Goldberg no one's listening. One word for Danny Goldberg: PODCASTING.

Of course, Danny Goldberg is still living in Radio World Circa 1972, so he doesn't care about podcasts and streaming.

The new morning configuration at Air America Radio will consist of Mark Riley from 5-7, and Rachel Maddow from 7-9. While an additional presence of Rachel Maddow is welcome, it remains to be seen whether she's going to be allowed to retain the snark of her current 5-6 AM show, or if Goldbert is going to try to turn her into Mara Eliasson.

So after December 15, Morning Sedition listeners will be faced with the choice of selling out to Danny Goldberg's dumbass vision, or penalizing a good man like Mark Riley by not listening.

Happy fucking holidays.

Whose war on Christmas is this, anyway?

This Has Nothing To Do With Jesus

While the Christofascist Zombie Brigade decides that the period which began yesterday and ends around 6 PM on December 24 is some kind of Onward Christian Soldiers crusade, in which you're either with them, or you're some kind of JEW or something, here's how some shoppers began their celebration of the birth of Their Lord:

Mays Landing, NJ:

Pre-dawn pandemonium and violence erupted at two Mays Landing stores as thousands of shoppers eager for Black Friday sales overwhelmed retailers and police.

Customers trampled, shoved and assaulted fellow shoppers and even fought police in "their race to be the first in line" for discounted electronics at Circuit City and Wal-Mart on the Black Horse Pike, said Police Chief Jay McKeen.

Trouble began shortly before 6 a.m. at Circuit City when employees handed out pamphlets to shoppers at the front of a line of about 1,500 people. Customers further back, mistakenly thinking vouchers for limited-supply items were being distributed, rushed to the front.

"The lemming-like action of the entire crowd resulted in injuries to several shoppers who were pushed to the ground and trampled, or crushed against the doors at the front of the store," McKeen said.

Two women were hospitalized for rib and other injuries. At least three other shoppers suffered minor injuries.

A half-hour later, some 1,000 shoppers began forcing their way past employees, security workers and police at Wal-Mart when doors opened.

Orlando and Sunrise, Florida:

In Orlando, security guards at a Wal-Mart wrestled a man to the ground after he cut in line to get a discounted laptop computer, according to WFTV-TV crews who captured the brawl on videotape that was broadcast nationally. An elderly woman was trampled by shoppers at a Sunrise outlet mall; she wasn't seriously hurt.

[snip]

At Sawgrass Mills outlet mall in Sunrise, Josephine Hoffman, 73, was trampled at the entrance to an electronics store as a crowd rushed the metal security gate.

"I was trying to get out of the way, but they knocked me down. I hit my head on the floor and people stepped on me. I don't understand why people do these things," the Coconut Creek resident told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as she rested on a box at the BrandsMart USA.

Grandville, Michigan:

Erik Turk, 38, left the Grandville store in an ambulance -- but with a $400 laptop computer. Deja McHerron, 13, shopping at the Cascade Township store, wasn't so lucky. She only got a trip to the hospital.

They were among a dozen or so people trampled at local Wal-Mart stores as shoppers rushed through the doors at 5 a.m. Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. They fell like dominoes, with other shoppers going over and around the downed individuals to get to the merchandise they sought.

Cascade Township, Michigan:

The bargains were so good at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which offered better deals than last year, that things got out of hand. In Cascade Township, east of Grand Rapids, Mich., a woman fell as dozens of people rushed into a store for the 5 a.m. opening. Several stepped on her, and a few became entangled as a man pushed them to the ground to keep them away.

By the time the rush ended, the woman and a 13-year-old girl had suffered minor injuries.

Renton, Washington:

Sergeant Paul Cline with the Renton, Washington Police Department said, "People pushing and shoving and starting fights. That’s something that we really ant to avoid. People are getting a little out of control wanting to get the best buys to the counter."

Now, I'm not a Christian. Never have, probably never will be. But it just seems to me that if so-called religious leaders are going to talk about a war on Christmas, they ought to be talking about this. What on earth does trampling a 73-year-old woman in a Wal-Mart while racing for a $300 computer have to do with a baby in a manger that you believe is your messiah?

If this is Christmas, then damn it, yes, LET'S declare war on it. Let's stop this nonsense with the greed and the shopping hysteria and the "must-have" items of the year and the "can you top this" attitude of homeowners who insist on putting as many cheap plastic inflatable Santas/snowmen/penguins/whatever as they can on their lawns, amidst the wire reindeer. Yes, let's put the Christ back in Christmas. Let Christians tell the story of the baby in the manger, go to church, and have a nice dinner -- and then call it a day.

That should make the fundies happy, because they'll have Jesus back in Christmas. It should make parents anxious about how they're going to give each kid an iPod Nano this Christmas and still pay the heating bills happy because the pressure will be off. It won't make the kids happy, but too bad. It's a tough world, kid, deal with it.

And Northern Trust Company Bank chief Economist Paul Kasriel will be happy, because if people go into debt this Christmas, they may very well be in for a rude awakening come 2006:

"We have a very accident-prone economy," Mr. Kasriel said. "We have the most highly leveraged economy in the postwar period, and the Fed is increasing rates. In the past 30 years or so, whenever the Fed has raised interest rates, we've quite frequently had financial accidents."

Much has been written about the deeply indebted consumer, of course, and even more about the bubble in real estate. But Mr. Kasriel is especially persuasive because of the data he presents to support his gloomy view.

If a financial blowup occurred, the unhappy fact is that few consumers would be able to walk away unscathed. After all, over most of the last five years, American households have spent more than they earned. In contrast, for almost 30 years beginning in 1970, the opposite was true: households earned more than they spent.

Here's a stunning figure: In the third quarter of 2005, Mr. Kasriel calculates, households spent a record $531 billion more than their after-tax earnings, on an annualized basis.

These nonstop shoppers have propelled consumer spending to a record high as a share of gross domestic product - 76 percent in the third quarter, Mr. Kasriel said, up from 73 percent in 2000.

Real trouble could begin, Mr. Kasriel fears, with a decline in property values, the assets backing the enormous debt of consumers and banks alike.

It seems to me that if Jesus is going to come back, riding Shadowfax and brandishing his Terrible Swift Sword, he might want to start with the Wal-Mart shoppers scrambling for bargains.

What Bush Hath Wrought

Given the obsession with sexual perversion of some White House staffers as evidenced by their penchant for writing trashy novels, and the overall bloodthirstiness of the Bush Administration, one has to wonder if this is what "Mission Accomplished" meant all along:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.
'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

So we ousted a secular dictator who was concerned about keeping Al Qaeda out of his country; one who gassed his own people in the early 1980's and THEN was visited by Donald Runsfeld -- and replaced him with this. And now, despite all the hue and cry about Rep. Jack Murtha's move last week for a phased withdrawal, it looks like the Bush Administration is planning to declare victory and get out before the 2006 elections anyway -- ONLY because it hurts their chances.

You'd almost think this is what they wanted in the first place.

Sugar frenzy: Holiday Cookie Swap

When you find a good cookie recipe, life is good.It gets better when you start playing around with the ingredients. You can vary the flavours but most importantly this recipe doesn't lose its crisp sugary exterior and soft chewy core.You may remember I recently altered Donna Hay's Double Choc Cookies into my own variation of Coffee Hazelnut Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks.For the latest

Sugar frenzy: Holiday Cookie Swap

When you find a good cookie recipe, life is good.It gets better when you start playing around with the ingredients. You can vary the flavours but most importantly this recipe doesn't lose its crisp sugary exterior and soft chewy core.You may remember I recently altered Donna Hay's Double Choc Cookies into my own variation of Coffee Hazelnut Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks.For the latest

Chicken salad rice paper rolls

The other night we had Thai Beef Salad for dinner, so tasty and deliciously tempting that I ravenously grabbed my fork instead of the camera.The next day the leftover bunches of mint, basil and coriander beckoned from the fridge with their summery clean freshness. Inspiration struck in the form of a Vietnamese-style chicken salad.Cooked chicken thighs were pulled apart roughly and mixed with a

Chicken salad rice paper rolls

The other night we had Thai Beef Salad for dinner, so tasty and deliciously tempting that I ravenously grabbed my fork instead of the camera.The next day the leftover bunches of mint, basil and coriander beckoned from the fridge with their summery clean freshness. Inspiration struck in the form of a Vietnamese-style chicken salad.Cooked chicken thighs were pulled apart roughly and mixed with a

Where it all began

Atrios reminds us of the birth of turkee.

(Too bad he doesn't seem to actually blog anymore, just puts up mostly open threads....)

Worst New Flavor

Via ShakesSis comes the latest reason to be thankful I don't have children.

Hey, George! Just make sure that Danny Goldberg is the only one in the building when you bomb AAR headquarters, OK?

This story has been kicking around a few days, and I meant to blog on it sooner. But this more than any of the other Bush horrors of late shows just what kind of awful things of which this particular cornered animal is capable. Juan Cole tells us what George W. Bush considers when faced with media organizations he doesn't like:

The Mirror broke the story on Tuesday that a secret British memo demonstrates that George W. Bush wanted to bomb Aljazeera's offices in Doha, Qatar, in spring of 2004. The subject came up with Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK, and Blair is said to have argued Bush out of it.

Despite attempts of British officials to muddy the waters by suggesting that Bush was joking, another official who had seen the memo insisted, "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

The US military bombed the Kabul offices of Aljazeera in mid-November, 2001.

The US military hit the Aljazeerah offices in Baghdad on the 9th of April, 2003, a year Bush's conversation with Blair.* That attack killed journalist Tarek Ayoub, who had a 3 year old daughter. He had said earlier, "We've told the Pentagon where all our offices are in Iraq and hung giant banners outside them saying `TV.''' Given what we now know about Bush's intentions, that may have been a mistake.

When the US and the UN shoe-horned old-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi into power as transitional prime minister, he promptly banned Aljazeera in Iraq. The channel still did fair reporting on Iraq, finding ways of buying video film and doing enlightening telephone interviews.

There have long been rumors that the Bush administration has pressured the government of Qatar to close the channel down.

One of the misdeeds attributed to Syria or pro-Syrian forces is the attempt to assassinate the Lebanese journalist and fixture on LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, May Shidyaq (Chidiac). If the British report is true, Bush really is just a Baathist in the mirror.

Aljazeera is a widely misunderstood Arabic television channel that is mainly characterized by a quaint 1950s-style pan-Arab nationalism. It is not a fundamentalist religious channel, though it does host one old-time Muslim Brother, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Its main peculiarity in local terms is that it will air all sides of a political issue and allow frank criticism of Middle Eastern politicians as well as of Western ones. It is the only place in the Arab media where one routinely hears Israeli spokesmen (speaking very good Arabic, typically) addressing their concerns and point of view to Arab audiences.

Most of Aljazeera's programming is presented by natty men in business suits or good-looking, chic Arab women in fashionable Western clothes. (I see the anchors every day and am stricken at the idea of them being blown to smithereens by an American "accidental" bombing!) A lot of the programming is Discovery Channel-style documentaries.

The news is often criticial of the United States, though the journalists like controversy and are perfectly capable of asking fundamentalists and nationalists from the region very hard questions. The channel is one of the few places where you can sometimes see frank debate among Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis (the Lord knows we don't see it on US news!) Some Aljazeera journalists may have been sympathetic to radical Muslim groups, but mainly on nationalist and anti-imperialist grounds. These people don't look like adherents of political Islam for the most part.

Ironically, after one of the early-morning Aljazeera news broadcasts EST on Wednesday that discussed the Bush plot against the channel, the next show was about recently released American movies, including "Jarhead" (about a Marine during the Gulf War), which showcased the films enthusiastically and may as well have been an infomercial. It was jarring, the effusiveness about American soft power after the admission of the dark side of US military power.

Plotting to assassinate civilian journalists in a friendly country is certainly against the law, and if Bush is ever impeached, this charge will certainly figure in the trial. Who knows, maybe the murder of Tarek Ayoub will be added to the charges. His daughter must be 5, now.

There is a detailed and very valuable timeline of Bush administration- Aljazeera relations at Booman Tribune

Digby has more.

It's time to redefine "chutzpah"

Remember that old chestnut about how chutzpah means a guy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan?

It's time to change that definition.

"Brownie" has a new job:

Says Brown, when asked how he plans to pull this off: "You have to do it with candor. To do it otherwise gives you no credibility. I think people are curious: 'My gosh, what was it like? The media just really beat you up. You made mistakes. I don't want to be in that situation. How do I avoid that?'"

So it gets better, Brown is not only selling emergency preparedness expertise, he's opening a secondary racket in 'candor'.

Actually, from the quote it seems that Brown's actual angle may be providing not generic emergency response consulting services but rather consulting services to incompetents who've been saddled with emergency preparedness responsibility and fear becoming national laughing stocks when they turn mid-size disasters in to full-on catastrophes through gross mismanagement.

This actually may be a solid and underserved niche Brown could cater to, though my understanding is that in such a learning process someone like Brown is generally referred to not as a 'consultant' but rather as 'specimen'.

However that may be, this might also suggest more evidence for a government management consultancy bell curve -- GMCBC, also sometimes referred to as the 'Kerik Principle', KP -- in which the most lucrative work is available for the truly able and the abjectly incompetent, leaving the great majority of hard-working, though middling operatives unable to find big-ticket post-government work.

What I'm thankful for today

• I'm thankful that I'm married to a great guy and that after 19 years, we're still best friends.
  
• I'm thankful that I'm still healthy and come from long-lived stock.
  
• I'm thankful to be employed (and that Mr. Brilliant is too)
  
• I'm thankful we bought our house in 1996.
  
• I'm thankful we had siding, windows, and the roof done last year before the price of building materials went up.
  
• I'm thankful that the Bacari Grill dishes up a nice spread on Thanksgiving so the two of us can go out for a nice dinner, then come home and have no dishes to wash.
  
• I'm thankful that I love to write and I'm reasonably good at it.
  
• I'm thankful that the mainstream media are finally waking up to what the Bush Administration is doing to this country.
  
• I'm thankful that Paul Hackett has decided to pursue office in Ohio again.
  
• I'm thankful for Cindy Sheehan's courage.
  
• I'm thankful to have had 18 months of waking up every morning to Morning Sedition, and just wish I could look forward to more.
  
• I'm thankful that I'm on speaking terms with everyone in my family.

I am thankful today that I don't live inside James Dobson's head

Can you imagine what the mind looks like of a man who seems to think children might be tempted to "become gay" by looking at a Spongebob Squarepants balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and is sending his minions out to distribute 5000 "stress balls" [insert your own joke here] along the parade route to promote a so-called "ex-gay" ministry?

You simply cannot make this stuff up:

The balloons at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade won't be the only things filled with hot air this week in New York.

Antigay Colorado group Focus on the Family said Tuesday that its members plan to distribute 5,000 "stress balls" along the parade route to promote a Web site it operates that claims that homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured through faith. Visitors to the site, TroubledWith.com, who think they might be gay or lesbian are told, "You're not simply 'wired that way.'" In another section, visitors are told that being gay or lesbian can be prevented, because "like other adult problems, homosexuality begins at home. Mom and Dad are key players." Also to blame are porn, the media, and "seduction by peers."

Pam brings us this little tidbit, along with some earlier information about what a bunch of warped motherfuckers the operators of TroubledWith.com really are.

The Holiday Recipe Open Thread meme

For the last six or seven years, I've gotten together with my longest-term and dearest friend to bake holiday cookies. Every year we get together, bring in sandwiches, open a bottle of wine, then bake batches and batches of cookies, put them in tins to give to neighbors, family, and friends, and cap off the day by swearing we'll never do it again.

It's actually my favorite holiday ritual.

My second favorite holiday ritual is the annual all-day holiday nosh in my department at work. This is essentially a potluck affair, with everyone in the department signing up to cook or bring something. Until this year, this was always a pretty diverse foodfest, reflecting the diversity of our department. Alas, we had significant layoffs this year, so the event will be much smaller. What I like about doing this is that it gives me a chance to throw a party without having to do all the cooking myself -- and I don't even have to clean the house.

Now I need another project like I need a second navel, but I think it might be fun to put together a compendium of holiday recipes from readers of this and other blogs. So if you have a blog, please pass the meme on.

If you have a recipe to share, either post it in the comments or send it in an e-mail to blogrecipes-at-mixedreviews-dot-net, with HOLIDAY RECIPE in the title, no later than December 10. I'll pull the whole mess together and make it available as a PDF file by December 20.

To get things started, here's the chili recipe I usually make for the office party. Jazz has tried it and will attest to its fabulousness. Feel free to adjust seasonings, all measures are approximate.

Award-Winning Chili*

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. sweet or hot Italian sausage, casing removed and crumbled
1 large onion, chopped
As many garlic cloves as you like, minced
1 large bell pepper, diced
1 28-oz. can plum tomatoes
2-3 Tbs. chili powder, to taste.
2 Tbs. paprika
1 tsp. cumin
1-2 shakes hot pepper flakes or 1 hot pepper, seeds and pith removed, minced
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can small red beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 bottle barbecue sauce

Brown meats in dutch oven, draining as you go, until no pink remains. Drain in paper towels in a colander, then remove paper towel and rinse well. Yes, rinse. It has almost zero effect on flavor, and removes much of the fat.

Wipe out pot, add a little olive oil, heat. Add onions and garlic,cook over medium heat till onions are translucent, Add bell pepper, spices, and hot pepper or pepper flakes, cook another 1-2 minutes or until bell pepper starts to soften. Keep eyes away from pan smoke.

Return meat to pan and mix. Add tomatoes and barbecue sauce.

Cook 1-2 hours, or as long as you like. You can also make this in a slow cooker, but be sure to brown the meat and cook the onions and spices first.

Add beans and heat thoroughly before serving.

What makes this chili interesting is the flavor the sausage adds to the mixture, plus the interplay of the hot pepper and sweet barbecue sauce. Make it the day before for even more flavor, and serve topped with diced sweet onions and shredded cheese.

*The award is from my department's 2001 chili cook-off.

What "stay the course" really means

It doesn't mean victory or honor or fighting terrorism.

Will Pitt tells us what it IS about:

If these political pushers can throw a man like John Murtha under the bus, they can do it to anyone. The sacred honor earned by those who have served this country in the uniform of our military, those who have stood the watch and heard the screams and felt that place inside go empty and cold and strange when they know they have taken the life of another person, the sacred honor of those who know, means nothing to the pushers. Nothing at all. They will throw men like John Murtha under the bus, they will consign hundreds or thousands of soldiers to death and maiming, they will allow the Armed Services of the United States to become a hollowed-out shell.

They will do all this to protect their poll numbers. That is what "staying the course" means. That's all it has ever meant.

So why on earth is the Democratic Party still afraid of him?

So much for George W. Bush being perceived as the honest president after the nightmare of peace and prosperity that was the Clinton Administration:

A majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.

While the telephone survey of 1,011 U.S. adults indicates about 64% of Americans believe the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends," opinion on the topic is clearly divided along party lines. A large majority (68% to 28%) of Republicans say the Bush administration generally provides accurate information. However, even larger majorities of Democrats (91% to 7%) and Independents (73% to 25%) think the information is generally misleading.

I'm with the parody church sign going around that says "Would someone please give him a blowjob already so we can impeach him?"

Tomodachi, Broadway

Deep-fried soft-shell crab sushi $3.50The food court crowd is a tough one.Spinach pide boats jostle with lamb madras curries under the watchful eye of slowly twirling yeeros. The shiny happy salad bar and the sandwich counter beckon your conscience before your attention is diverted by the cake display, the gelato cart and the Chinese greasefest of all-you-can-plate.And then your eyes alight upon

Tomodachi, Broadway

Deep-fried soft-shell crab sushi $3.50The food court crowd is a tough one.Spinach pide boats jostle with lamb madras curries under the watchful eye of slowly twirling yeeros. The shiny happy salad bar and the sandwich counter beckon your conscience before your attention is diverted by the cake display, the gelato cart and the Chinese greasefest of all-you-can-plate.And then your eyes alight upon

The smoking gun?

Murray Waas was on The Majority Report last night talking about his article in National Journal which reveals what would in a sane society be the smoking gun proving that the Bush Administration went to war not on bad intelligence, but on lies:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Of course they have -- because they are the most damning piece of evidence yet.

Obviously National Journal is not a source most people are going to read, but the MSM has now picked up the story, and it will be interesting to see if it gains any traction.

Yahoo! News:

US President George W. Bush was reportedly informed 10 days after the September 11, 2001 attacks that US intelligence had no proof of links between Iraq and that act of terror.

ADVERTISEMENT

Citing government documents as well as past and present Bush administration officials, The National Journal said the president was briefed on September 21, 2001 that evidence of cooperation between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terror network was insufficient.

Bush was also informed that there was some credible information about contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda that showed that the Iraqi dictator had tried to establish surveillance over the group, according to the report.

Saddam Hussein believed the radical Islamic network represented a threat for his secular regime.

Imagine that....yes, there WERE in all likelihood contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda -- but only because Hussein was adhering to the "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" philosophy.

My Blue Heaven

It's a pretty sight, isn't it?

If he's going to suck up to the Christofascists, I hope this is right

Lynn tells us today why John McCain will never be president.

I used to have a lot of respect for John McCain, to the point that I might have even considered voting for him. Alas, he's lost all of my respect with his buttlicking of the theocrats, so now I've put him on the scrap heap of candidate whores I can't support.

More proof that they really DO want an evangelical Christian theocracy

Via a Kos diarist comes this hateful Republican screed attacking Sen. Kent Conrad's religion (he is a Unitarian Universalist).

Here's the twisted logic:

Certainly, I believe that everyone is free to live how they want to and I do not think that Universalist Unitarians are going to burn in hell or anything crazy like that, but I definitely think that this religion is way out of the mainstream of America. Senator Conrad's religious afiliation is out of the mainstream.

So who is anyone to decide that Sen. Conrad's religious affiliation is out of the mainstream, and that he should be judged accordingly? Evangelical Christians hate it when people judge THEIR faith as invalid, or dangerous, because it's out of the mainstream, but they reserve the right to do it to others.

It's the "one true way"-ism of these people that I find most galling. I understand that conversion, forced if necessary, is part of Christianity, which is one of the reasons I think it is one of the most dangerous religious traditions to mix with statehood. But who the hell decides what's mainstream and what isn't?

Actually, what we're trying to do is eliminate apple pie

When I was a kid, I sang Christmas songs in the school Christmas pageants. I sang Silent Night and O Come All Ye Faithful (which sounds like some kind of sex cult, actually), and I survived without succumbing to the belief that some Jewish guy who refused to get married and give his mother the pleasure of grandchildren got nailed to a tree two thousand years ago just so that I could do whatever the fuck I wanted, as long as I believed this ridiculous story.

Seriously, though, has there ever been a story more emblematic of Jewish guilt than that of the crucifixion? "Jesus went through all this for you, so that you could cheat on your wife, molest children, embezzle money for your employer -- and THIS is the thanks he gets?"

It's not that I grew up in the kind of strong, Jewish home in which my identity was incorruptible by the relentless holiday hoo-hah; it was more that singing these words involved just about as much thought process in my 10-year-old mind as the fact that every day we pledged allegiance to the republic and to widget stands. (It is my understanding that there was a variant to this involving someone named Richard Stans, but I think that must have been the red state version.)

And until the Christofascist Zombie Brigade decided that their particular brand of Christianity should be the state religion, we managed just fine with nativity scenes on the town hall lawn and salesclerks saying "Merry Christmas" at Macy's.

But now that our society is more diverse than just "Good Wholesome Americans" and "The Jews", and especially now that it looks like the theocrats are going to get their anti-Roe justice after all, they need a new axe to grind -- and that axe is the so-called Liberal War on Christmas:

Evangelical Christian pastor Jerry Falwell has a message for Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You're either with us, or you're against us.

Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.

The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign's "eyes and ears" in the nation's public schools. They'll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: "Merry Christmas. It's OK to say it."

I actually prefer something like "Do what thou wilt, harm none: It's OK to say it" -- but somehow I think that won't fly with this bunch.

It gets even better:

Fanning the yule log of discontent against what the Liberty Counsel calls "grinches" like the American Civil Liberties Union are evangelical-led organizations including the 150,000-member American Family Association. It has called for a boycott of Target stores next weekend. The chain's crime, according to the group, is a ban on the use of "Merry Christmas" in stores, an accusation the chain denies.

Note to Target Stores: This is what happens when you try to placate these people, as you're trying to do with your policy on allowing your pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for any medication to which they "morally object". I, and the millions of other progressives who will be avoiding Target stores this season becasue of that policy, would be happy to come back and help you fight this particular battle if you just put on a pharmacist on the same shift as the Christofascist Zombie one. Think about it and get back to me.

On his show last week, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly offered a list of other retailers that he says refuse to use "Merry Christmas" in their store advertising.

In signing on to "Friend or Foe" this month, Falwell urged the 500,000 recipients of his weekly "Falwell Confidential" e-mail to "draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics of the ACLU and others who intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas."

Hey, while we're on the subject of spreading misinformation about Christmas, how about all that business with evergreen trees festooned with lights, and wreaths, and a fat guy in a suit breaking into people's houses to steal cookies and then leave presents. What the hell does that have to do with Jesus?

From Religioustolerance.org:

The Prophet Jeremiah condemned as Pagan the practice of cutting down trees, bringing them into the home and decorating them:

Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (KJV).

The English Puritans condemned a number of customs associated with Christmas, such as the use of the Yule log, holly, mistletoe, etc. Oliver Cromwell preached against "the heathen traditions" of Christmas carols, decorated trees and any joyful expression that desecrated "that sacred event."

Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland OH appears to have been the person responsible for decorating the first Christmas tree in an American church. His parishioners condemned the idea as a Pagan practice; some even threatened the pastor with harm.

Almost everything we do to celebrate Christmas is either pagan or frowned on by the Bible. Christmas in America is about the deadly sins of envy (what other kids get that you didn't), gluttony (overeating), lust (getting sexy lingerie for your wife), greed ('nuff said), sloth (days off work), and pride (having the most decorated house in town). And of course let's not forget anger, which ranges from the seething at the obligatory family gatherings, to, well, the current threats by Mr. Falwell, Bill O'Reilly, and their ilk.

If we're going to go this route, to turn Christmas back into a religious holiday, then I think we need to shut down the entire way we celebrate Christmas and go back to the basics -- church, crèche, and that's it.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Happy Holidays, everybody. (I feel so subversive now...)

Now hang on just a second....

Remember when you were in clubs in high school and there was always some guy who thought everyone else's ideas were crap -- until he appropriated one of them, and suddenly he's a genius?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Department of Defense:

Barring any major surprises in Iraq, the Pentagon tentatively plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces there early next year by as many as three combat brigades, from 18 now, but to keep at least one brigade "on call" in Kuwait in case more troops are needed quickly, several senior military officers said.

Pentagon authorities also have set a series of "decision points" during 2006 to consider further force cuts that, under a "moderately optimistic" scenario, would drop the total number of troops from more than 150,000 now to fewer than 100,000, including 10 combat brigades, by the end of the year, the officers said.

Despite an intensified congressional debate about a withdrawal timetable after last week's call by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a quick pullout, administration officials say that military and political factors heavily constrain how fast U.S. forces should leave. They cite a continuing need to assist Iraq's fledgling security forces, ensure establishment of a permanent government, suppress the insurgency and reduce the potential for civil war.

U.S. military commanders, too, continue to favor a gradual, phased reduction, saying that too rapid a departure would sacrifice strategic gains made over the past 30 months and provide a propaganda windfall to insurgents.

Uh, isn't this the kind of phased withdrawal Rep. Murtha was talking about? WaPo is really irresponsible here, because they're characterizing the Murtha proposal as being an immediate withdrawal. I realize that if we're talking about the infiniteness of time itself, six months, as Murtha proposed, is nothing -- but a phased reduction over six months would avoid the "turn tail and run" factor, while effecting an exit from the Iraq quagmire.

My own view on what to do in Iraq does NOT involve an immediate, or even a six-month timetable for withdrawal. Americans have allowed our leaders to take us into this mess, and now we are stuck with it until we can fix it. What we're doing is not fixing it. Frankly, the only answer I can see is to make Bill Clinton, who walks on water in the eyes of most of the Middle East, a special envoy to build an international coalition to effect a diplomatic solution. It'll never happen, of course, because it involves cutting the Bush Administration off at the knees, but it's the only way out of this that I can see.

"Mr. Cheney is an Aquarian, ruled by Uranus"

[Insert your own scatological joke here.]

Seriously, though...today Lynn at Astrological Musings brings us Dick Cheney's birth chart, and shows why the nickname "Darth Cheney" may be more accurate than we thought.

John McCain (hearts) racists

Just thought you'd want to know.

Seriously, though: It's one thing for a Republican candidate to want to shore up "the base", even if "the base" is insane. However, when you have a reputation as a straight-talker, rather than as a political animal/whore, doing things like endorsing George Wallace Jr. for a Lt. Governor post, calling him "a committed conservative reformer" when the guy is connected with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens is not the sort of thing that's going to appeal to swing voters.

Of course, if given that this is the same guy who embraced a president whose 2000 campaign referred to his adopted Bengladeshi child as the product of an alleged liaison with a black prostitute and to his wife as a drug addict, one shouldn't be surprised.

But can we please put the "McCain is an honest politician" meme away for good now?

I guess trying new things is too Clintonesque

Jesus H. Christ, are THESE the people we want to have determining our place in the world?

For the president, it was a rare moment of fun on an otherwise dreary overseas trip. In five years in the presidency, Bush has proved a decidedly unadventurous traveler, an impression undispelled by the weeklong journey through Asia that wraps up Monday. As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people.

"I live in a bubble," Bush once said, explaining his anti-tourist tendencies by citing the enormous security and logistical considerations involved in arranging any sightseeing. "That's just life."

The Bush spirit trickles down to many of his top advisers, who hardly go out of their way to sample the local offerings either. A number of the most senior White House officials on the trip, perhaps seeking the comforts of their Texas homes, chose to skip the kimchi in South Korea to go to dinner at Outback Steakhouse -- twice. (Admittedly, a few unadventurous journalists joined them.)

Now admittedly, I'm not a terribly adventurous traveler, but much of that is because we can only really get away once a year, and frankly, that time is better spent recharging my batteries because I'm so compulsively busy the rest of the year. But if you have a chance to travel, to see parts of countries that most people never get to see, and do it in a safe, comfortable manner, wouldn't you jump at the chance to take it all in?

Not the Bush gang -- no, they want the entire world to be like Crawford, Texas, only with more chain restaurants. And maybe that explains how they got us into this mess.
(Hat tip: ShakesSis)

Holiday Movies

As some of you already know, I've been doing movie reviews online for almost eight years. This year I've slacked off, partially because of this here blog and there being only so many hours in the day; and partially because the movies have sucked.

But now it's time for the annual holiday Oscar Grab, so I'm getting pumped to spend far too many hours in front of a glowing screen (as opposed to the hours I spend in front of a glowing screen anyway) watching actors pretending to be people living lives.

There are at least a half-dozen films I wouldn't mind catching this weekend; but it's a rare year that has the kind of holiday film that sets just the right tone for my own curmudgeonly attitude towards the holidays.

My must-see for Thanksgiving is The Ice Harvest -- a dark comedy starring my long-term personal cinematic god John Cusack opposite Oliver Platt and Billy Bob Thornton, all wrapped up and tied in a bow by director Harold Ramis. I am SO there.

What are YOUR holiday movie picks?

Out of sight, out of mind

Sad, but hardly surprising: Washington legislators have largely forgotten about those displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina:

Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight.

As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.

"There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes," said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. "People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done."

Officials from both parties say the bottlenecks have occurred in large part because of a leadership vacuum in Washington, where President Bush and Congress have been preoccupied for weeks with Iraq, deficit reduction, the C.I.A. leak investigation and the Supreme Court.

Congressional leaders have been scrambling to rein in spending, and many in Washington have grumbled that Louisiana's leaders have asked for too much, while failing to guarantee that the money will be spent efficiently and honestly.

By contrast, many say, Washington's response to the Sept. 11 attacks seemed more focused and sustained.

Perhaps it's because most of the displaced from 9/11 were affluent white people living in Battery Park City and environs, and large businesses (a.k.a. "the haves...and the have-mores....I call you my base") that are also campaign contributors. Yes, small businesses were displaced too, and most of them got stiffed, with much of the relief money going to firms in more affluent, upstate communities.

I don't want to hear what Bobby Jindal has to say. Here's a guy who's a rising Republican star becuase he happens to be one of the few Republican legislators who is dark of skin. By supporting Republicans, he's helped allow this to happen. So why does it surprise him that Republicans are refusing to help minorities in his district?

Spice I Am, Surry Hills

It's official.The best green papaya salad is here.Spice I Am.Champion It Is.Green papaya salad (som tam) $7.90If you like your som tum pallid, watery and flavourless you won't like this one.Spice I Am makes their green papaya salad zingy, crisp with plenty of heat. There's a healthy dousing of fish sauce, a wink's worth of lime juice and a chilli kick that gets the adrenalin pumping and the

Spice I Am, Surry Hills

It's official.The best green papaya salad is here.Spice I Am.Champion It Is.Green papaya salad (som tam) $7.90If you like your som tum pallid, watery and flavourless you won't like this one.Spice I Am makes their green papaya salad zingy, crisp with plenty of heat. There's a healthy dousing of fish sauce, a wink's worth of lime juice and a chilli kick that gets the adrenalin pumping and the

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

If it turns out that Bush and Cheney are doing some kind of reverse psychology mindfuck to achieve this result, even I'm going to give them props.

But somehow I don't think so. They're getting so much wood from watching other people's kids get their own genitalia blown off that I don't think they're that smart (though they ARE that ruthless).

But it seems that Iraq's Shia and Sunni are talking to each other with the common goal of getting the Americans out of there:

For the first time, Iraq's political factions on Monday collectively called for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces, in a moment of consensus that comes as the Bush administration battles pressure at home to commit itself to a pullout schedule.

The announcement, made at the conclusion of a reconciliation conference here backed by the Arab League, was a public reaching out by Shiites, who now dominate Iraq's government, to Sunni Arabs on the eve of parliamentary elections that have been put on shaky ground by weeks of sectarian violence.

About 100 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, many of whom will run in the election on Dec. 15, signed a closing memorandum on Monday that "demands a withdrawal of foreign troops on a specified timetable, dependent on an immediate national program for rebuilding the security forces," the statement said.

"The Iraqi people are looking forward to the day when foreign forces will leave Iraq, when its armed and security forces will be rebuilt and when they can enjoy peace and stability and an end to terrorism," it continued.

Of course, Darth Cheney was still playing "The Sky is Green" yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, which means I'm not in any danger of having to give this Administration any credit:

Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up the White House attacks on critics of the Iraq war on Monday, declaring that politicians who say Americans were sent into battle based on a lie are engaging in "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

In remarks delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Cheney briefly said he considered debate over the war healthy, and he echoed President Bush's recent praise of Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has called for an early withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, as "a good man, a marine, a patriot."

But the vice president quickly made clear that after a week of criticism of Mr. Bush on Capitol Hill, the White House would not relent in its campaign against critics of the war and those who say the administration manipulated the intelligence that led to it.

I wonder if Fitzgerald is making him sweat?

Is Rumsfeld going senile?

Yesterday while at the Raleigh-Durham airport waiting for my flight home, I was watching Donald Rumsfeld's bizarre appearance on CNN's Late Edition. Why anyone still takes seriously the opinion of a defense secretary who once described the location of the nonexistent Iraq WMD as "...in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat" is beyond me, but Blitzer did the interview, and it's clear that Rumsfeld's grip on consensus reality is tenuous at best.

More in this diary at Kos...

OMG....tee hee

I've missed so much interesting stuff while I was away, it's like walking in on the middle of The Return of the King and asking a seatmate what happened during the first hour.

But the New York Times front page has living, lurid color photos of President C-Plus Dangerfield's comedy act at his Asian news conference yesterday.

It would be funny, if his wasn't the face we present to the world.

Thai Food Festival

Who knew that one Sunday could hold so many photos?Thankfully the Thai Food Festival was only down the road from the Spanish Quarter Street Festival. I nipped between the two a number of times throughout the day, interspersing Thai treats with Spanish salsa.Thai sweetsThai videosIt was a gloriously hot day and the buzz of families gave Tumbalong Park a happy carnival atmosphere. Thai families are

Thai Food Festival

Who knew that one Sunday could hold so many photos?Thankfully the Thai Food Festival was only down the road from the Spanish Quarter Street Festival. I nipped between the two a number of times throughout the day, interspersing Thai treats with Spanish salsa.Thai sweetsThai videosIt was a gloriously hot day and the buzz of families gave Tumbalong Park a happy carnival atmosphere. Thai families are

Blogrolling in our time

The latest addition to our blogroll is Astrological Musings, a somewhat different prespective on the issues of the day. Today, Lynn tells us why Samuel Alito is a shoo-in for confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Cupcakes on Pitt, Sydney

The tailored suits stride along purposefully, starched white shirt, manicured nails, heels clip-clopping along the pavement with busy urgency. Until suddenly they stop, pause and back-track with reluctance and then growing excitement.Hands pressed onto the glass. Fingers pointing. Squeals of discovery. Sighs of lust.The Power of the Cupcake takes its hold.Behold the girly cupcake. Small, cute and

Cupcakes on Pitt, Sydney

The tailored suits stride along purposefully, starched white shirt, manicured nails, heels clip-clopping along the pavement with busy urgency. Until suddenly they stop, pause and back-track with reluctance and then growing excitement.Hands pressed onto the glass. Fingers pointing. Squeals of discovery. Sighs of lust.The Power of the Cupcake takes its hold.Behold the girly cupcake. Small, cute and

Who is Col. Danny Bubp?

Jean the Harpy cited one Col. Danny Bubp during last night's House fracas as an active duty U.S. soldier calling for the U.S. to stay the course in Iraq?

So who is Col. Bubp? Is he one of those clean-scrubbed American kids from the heartland sitting there in Fallujah with an M-16?

On the contrary -- as you could have guessed, he's just another Republican operative. Oh, he's a military guy all right; just not one with the kind of extensive combat experience Schmidt's remarks would have you believe.

Proof that Darwin is divine

Hilarious.

(hat tip: ShakesSis)

Political theatre at its best

I haven't had much time to keep up with what's going on this week, but I was able to watch some of the political theatre that went on in the house last night, thanks to Countdown. I've always thought that the kind of rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred style of the British House of Commons was far more indicative of the messiness of democracy than the stilted rules-based faux-civility of the House of Representatives, and last night proved me right.

WaPo has the postmortem today, albeit one that still paints the Republicans, otherwise known as "the guys who always fight dirty, relying on Democrats to be pussies and not fight back", as "the adults":

Differences over policy on the Iraq war ignited an explosion of angry words and personal insults on the House floor yesterday when the chamber's newest member suggested that a decorated war veteran was a coward for calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

As Democrats physically restrained one colleague, who appeared as if he might lose control of himself as he rushed across the aisle to confront Republicans with a jabbing finger, they accused Republicans of playing political games with the war.

[snip]

The idea was to force Democrats to go on the record on a proposal that the administration says would be equivalent to surrender. Recognizing a political trap, most Democrats -- including Murtha -- said from the start they would vote no.

But the maneuvering exposed the chamber's raw partisan divisions and prompted a tumultuous scene, which Capitol Hill veterans called among the wildest and most emotional they had ever witnessed.

Though even many Democrats think Murtha's immediate withdrawal plan is impractical, it struck a chord in a party where frustration with the war and the Bush administration's open-ended commitment is mounting fast. Murtha galvanized the debate as few others could have. He is a 33-year House veteran and former Marine colonel who received medals for his wounds and valor in Vietnam, and he has traditionally been a leading Democratic hawk and advocate of military spending.

Murtha's resolution included language the Republicans wanted to avoid, such as "the American people have not been shown clear, measurable progress" toward stability in Iraq. It also said troops should be withdrawn "at the earliest practicable date," although Murtha said in statements and interviews Thursday that the drawdown should begin now.

I don't know if any of you saw Jean "harpy" Schmidt, a.k.a. The Bluestocking Paul Hackett Almost Beat, but she had a near-meltdown on the House floor, to the point that she had to ask that her words be stricken from the record.

Oh, it was hilarious, watching a bunch of chickenhawks holding up sheafs of paper, allegedly from soldiers clamoring for more of the same.

It's astounding how Republicans are so blinded by dumb party loyalty that they don't even think that an accounting of how the war is going and where it should go from here is warranted. It's just not reasonable to say that supporting the troops consists of feeding more of them into a meat grinder, then cutting their benefits when they get home.

I don't think an immediate withdrawal is feasible at this point, and neither does Rep. Murtha, if you look at both what he said and what was in the resolution. A drawdown starting now and completing at "the earliest practicable date" does not mean "bring them all home now."

It's clearly not practical to have a total and immediate withdrawal from Iraq at this point, though a phased withdrawal plan is not only practical, but necessary. Pam and I were discussing this yesterday, and I mentioned that as I see it, the best way to begin phasing down the war would be to appoint Bill Clinton, who walks on water in the Middle East, as a special envoy to bring the battling factions together and hammer out a plan for the U.S. to exit gracefully. Of course it won't happen; the one thing that could emasculate Bush even more than he feels now would be to have the Big Dawg accomplish what he can't. But someone who still has credibility in the Middle East needs to get to the negotiating table, and there is NO ONE in the Bush Administration who still does.

Birthday Blow-out

The best part about having a birthday is the excuse to eat out.So far there's been a delightful Thai lunch and a delicious Japanese dinner this week with family and friends.Coming up:a picnic with fellow foodies feasting on gourmet delights;a girly high tea at The Observatory;and new gastronomic terrain covered in Iraqi and Laotian cuisine.Yes, I take my birthday celebrations very seriously... or

Birthday Blow-out

The best part about having a birthday is the excuse to eat out.So far there's been a delightful Thai lunch and a delicious Japanese dinner this week with family and friends.Coming up:a picnic with fellow foodies feasting on gourmet delights;a girly high tea at The Observatory;and new gastronomic terrain covered in Iraqi and Laotian cuisine.Yes, I take my birthday celebrations very seriously... or

So what did I miss

I'm out of town visiting family for a few days, and looking forward to having lunch with Pam on Friday -- so light blogging till Monday. Alas, with yesterday a travel day (and DAMN -- I see I arrived too late for the Triangle Bloggers Bash, not that I would have qualified to go, being a Damn Yankee and all) and today doing the real estate tour in the event our employment situation should change (knock on wood it won't), I'm hopelessly behind.

But it looks like Bob Woodward, heretofore a journalistic icon who made his name by blowing the whistle on Nixon Administration corruption, and has decided in midlife to shill for an even more corrupt administration, is up to his eyeballs in Treasongate:

Bob Woodward apologized to The Washington Post yesterday for failing to reveal for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of who disclosed her identity mushroomed into a national scandal.

Woodward, an assistant managing editor and best-selling author, said he told Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. that he held back the information because he was worried about being subpoenaed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel leading the investigation.

"I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner," Woodward, who testified in the CIA leak investigation Monday, said in an interview. "I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That's job number one in a case like this. . . .

"I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

Downie, who was informed by Woodward late last month, said his most famous employee had "made a mistake." Despite Woodward's concerns about his confidential sources, Downie said, "he still should have come forward, which he now admits. We should have had that conversation. . . . I'm concerned that people will get a mis-impression about Bob's value to the newspaper and our readers because of this one instance in which he should have told us sooner."

The belated revelation that Woodward has been sitting on information about the Plame controversy reignited questions about his unique relationship with The Post while he writes books with unparalleled access to high-level officials, and about why Woodward denigrated the Fitzgerald probe in television and radio interviews while not divulging his own involvement in the matter.

"It just looks really bad," said Eric Boehlert, a Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of a forthcoming book on the administration and the press. "It looks like what people have been saying about Bob Woodward for the past five years, that he's become a stenographer for the Bush White House."

Said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen: "Bob Woodward has gone wholly into access journalism."

Robert Zelnick, chairman of Boston University's journalism department, said: "It was incumbent upon a journalist, even one of Woodward's stature, to inform his editors. . . . Bob is justifiably an icon of our profession -- he has earned that many times over -- but in this case his judgment was erroneous."

So Bob Woodward turns out to be the second coming of Judith Miller -- another whore for the Bush Administration. I hate reading stuff like this, because it feeds into the Gen-X notion of all baby boomers being hopeless sellouts who are responsible for all the evil in the world. It's the boomer equivalent of shandeh far di goyim -- and John Aravosis smells a rat.