Lie down with dogs, you get fleas

The Christofascist Zombie Brigade wants its pound of flesh for all of its donations to Israel. First they gave money. Now they want to start the hostile takeover:

A conservative Israeli activist notes that, thanks to immigration, the Christian population of Israel has grown to a politically significant percentage. That is why he wants to form a new political party to place Christian representatives in Israel's Parliament, the Knesset.

Avi Lipkin is perhaps better known by his pen name, Victor Mordecai. The American-born Israeli author and lecturer has been back in the U.S. recently, telling American Christians about his desire to create the "Bible Bloc Party."

Christians have historically had no voice in Israel's primary legislative body, Lipkin points out. His "Bible Bloc" will be a party that "will have Christian activists and Christian candidates running for the Knesset ... because the Christian population in Israel has grown in the last 15 years from two percent to eight percent of Israel's voting population."

George W. Bush has screwed up everything he's ever tried to do

From failed businesses on other people's money to failure on a scale perhaps unprecedented in our country's history, George W. Bush may be the biggest fuckup this country has ever known.

Mission Accomplished this, Captain Codpiece:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday, killing at least 68 people a day after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.

At least six of Tuesday's attacks hit clearly religious targets, concluding with a car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood that killed 23 and wounded 55. A separate suicide bombing killed 23 people at an east Baghdad gas station, where people had lined up to buy kerosine.

In addition to those known to have been killed Tuesday, police found nine more bullet-riddled bodies, including a Sunni Muslim tribal sheik, off a road southeast of Baghdad. It was unclear when they died.

The surge of violence deepened the trauma of residents already shaken by fears the country was teetering on the brink of sectarian civil war, threatened talks among Iraqi politicians struggling to form a government and raised questions about U.S. plans to begin drawing down troop strength this summer.

I've eaten how much?

I've just worked out that since I started GrabYourFork in April 2004, I've posted:142 reviews on 121 restaurants across Sydney.That means that during 20 months based in Sydney (subtract two months for gallivanting across Japan, Hong Kong and New York), I've been posting an average of:7 Sydney restaurant reviews per month.That doesn't factor in the huge backlog of posts sitting on my hard drive,

I've eaten how much?

I've just worked out that since I started GrabYourFork in April 2004, I've posted:142 reviews on 121 restaurants across Sydney.That means that during 20 months based in Sydney (subtract two months for gallivanting across Japan, Hong Kong and New York), I've been posting an average of:7 Sydney restaurant reviews per month.That doesn't factor in the huge backlog of posts sitting on my hard drive,

Happy Marc Maron Show Day!

Our ten long weeks of crawling around in a dessicated desert without the morning funny is behind us now, and we're sitting here at the oasis, enjoying a nice frozen daiquiri before taking a dip in the pool.

For tonight, at 10:00 PM Pacific time (or 1 AM Eastern Time), Marc Maron refers to the airwaves on KTLK radio in Los Angeles.

For those who are interested (and Barry N. Johnson, you may skip this post now, we already know that you'd rather listen to whatever wingnut is on WABC at night), there are a number of ways you can listen if you're not in Los Angeles:

1) You can stream the show directly from Air America Radio's web site (I'll need to verify this).

2) AAR will podcast the show. If you want to download the podcast, you'll have to either join Air America Premium or subscribe to The Marc Maron show to do this.

3) You can stream the show directly from KTLK's web site. As far as I know, this is going to be a free stream, but if I hear otherwise, I'll let you know.

4) If you're not an insomniac, and want to listen at a normal hour, you can record the stream from KTLK. I bought ReplayAV, and as long as you turn off any hibernation or power save modes on your PC, it seems to work like a charm. And at $49.90, you can't beat the price.

Congratulations, geniuses, philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives…....we made it.

"...liberalism is a world view that is life affirming"

Tristero has a must-read post at Digby about the advocacy of "the wages of sin = death" in South Dakota, and how it points out the death-centered nature of Christofascist Zombie culture. Go. Read.

Why do our troops hate America?

Yes, the headline is inflammatory, and no, I don't think for one minute that our troops hate America. Let's not forget that while the right has been in favor of feeding ever-more bodies into the Iraq meatgrinder, we on the other side been out there donating money for body armor and trying to get safer conditions for them while they're there and better care when they get home.

But that's what you're going to be hearing when a new Zogby poll comes out today.

Nick Kristof reports:

When President Bush held a public meeting with troops by satellite last fall, they were miraculously upbeat. And all along, unrepentant hawks (most of whom have never been to Iraq) have insisted that journalists are misreporting Iraq and that most soldiers are gung-ho about their mission.

Hogwash! A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq — and soon.

The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"

Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."

That's one more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it — and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further erodes military morale.

While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis.

So what would it take to win in Iraq? Maybe that was the single most depressing finding in this poll.

By a two-to-one ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.

Instead of a great legacy of spreading democracy through the Middle East, George W. Bush's legacy is going to be one of instead destabilizing the region to the point that the breakup of Yugoslavia will look like a Mardi Gras party.

Bring them home. All the crazy glue in the world won't put back together what George W. Bush has ruined.

Let's see how happy these wives are when they get traded in for someone younger and firmer

John Tierney is REALLY threatened by accomplished women. Right on the heels of yesterday's Paul Krugman column and recent reports about how middle-class incomes are falling, Tierney is beating the "stay-at-home wives are the happiest" drum:

But it turns out that an equal division of labor didn't make husbands more affectionate or wives more fulfilled. The wives working outside the home reported less satisfaction with their husbands and their marriages than did the stay-at-home wives. And among those with outside jobs, the happiest wives, regardless of the family's overall income, were the ones whose husbands brought in at least two-thirds of the money.

These male providers-in-chief were regarded fondly by even the most feminist-minded women — the ones who said they believed in dividing duties equally. In theory these wives were egalitarians, but in their own lives they preferred more traditional arrangements.

"Women today expect more help around the home and more emotional engagement from their husbands," Wilcox says. "But they still want their husbands to be providers who give them financial security and freedom."

These results, of course, are just averages. Plenty of people are happy with different arrangements — including Nock, who makes less than his wife and does the cooking at home. He says that nontraditional marriages may be a strain on many women simply because they've been forced to be social pioneers. "As society adjusts to women's new roles," he says, "women may become happier in egalitarian marriages."

But I'd bet there's a limit to egalitarianism. Consider what's happened with housework, that perpetual sore point. From the 1960's through the 80's, wives cut back on housework as husbands did more. In the 1990's, though, the equalizing trend leveled off, leaving wives still doing nearly twice as much of the work at home.

That seems terribly unfair unless you look at how men and women behave when they're living by themselves: the women do twice as much housework as the men do. Single men do less cooking and cleaning, because those jobs don't seem as important to them. They can live with unmade beds and frozen dinners.

Similarly, there's a gender gap in enthusiasm for some outside jobs. Men are much more willing to take a job that pays a premium in exchange for long hours away from home or the risk of being killed. The extra money doesn't seem as important to women.

In a more egalitarian world, there would be more wives mining coal and driving trucks, and more husbands cooking dinners and taking children to doctor's appointments. But that wouldn't be a fairer world, as Nock and Wilcox found.

The happiest wives in their study were the ones who said that housework was divided fairly between them and their husbands. But those same happy wives also did more of the work at home while their husbands did more work outside home. Nock doesn't claim to have divined the feminine soul, but he does have one answer to Freud's question.

"A woman wants equity," he says. "That's not necessarily the same as equality."

And why WOULDN'T a world in which there were women mining coal and driving trucks and husbands cooking dinner be fairer, Mr. Tierney? Because it doesn't fit into your worldview?

Now, I can't imagine anyone wanting to mine coal, but that aside -- a world in which couples are free to make their own rules, in which women don't feel they're "settling" if they marry someone who earns less and men don't feel emasculated if they aren't the primary breadwinner.

The housework issue has always been one which does nothing but cause fights, because most men really don't care all that much about housework. We have one bathroom that pretty much belongs to Mr. Brilliant, and every now and then he'll clean it. But I do not make myself nuts about it in the meantime, nor do I make myself crazy about housework in general, because the dust will just come back anyway, and why spend the day cleaning when you can go to a movie?

The fact of the matter is that for as long as I've been around, no woman has EVER been able to afford to rely entirely on a husband for sustenance. Divorce was around long before the feminist movement, as I know from my own childhood. My mother may have wanted me to marry a doctor who could support me in the style to which she wanted me to be accustomed, but she also always told me I should be able to earn a living. That I ended up as a control freak who was unable by disposition to delegate the responsibility for keeping a roof over my head to a high-earning male is beside the point.

As usual, Tierney oversimplifies the causes of the phenomena he sees around him. Yes, there are more women today than 20 years ago who want to be stay-at-home wives. I think much of this is caused by their observance of the exhausting 18-hour days that working wives put in. But instead of a more family-friendly, flexible workplace evolving as a result of the changing family, the exodus of career-path jobs has created a situation where most people don't dare take a day off to go to their kids' school play, lest they be seen as dispensable by employers just champing at the bit to send their jobs overseas. And what happens to the single-earner family when the breadwinner's job is eliminated? Ask the auto workers at GM and Ford. Ask the IT workers at HP and IBM whose jobs have been eliminated. Ask any number of men over 40 whose wives have never worked and who now find themselves tapping their 401(k) money to pay the mortgage. The single-earner family is no boon for men, either, I don't care what John Tierney says.

As for women not being willing to take jobs that pay a premium but involve more time away from home, I can tell you that business travel is still an uncomfortable experience for women. I'm at an age now where I can sit in a hotel restaurant by myself and order a nice dinner without feeling intimidated, and I certainly no longer get hassled by men. But I still wouldn't feel comfortable going out by myself at night in a strange town. Men have far greater mobility in terms of occupying their non-work time on the road, and I would guess they have far less reticence about occupying themselves in ways their spouses would probably not be thrilled to know about. When I'm on the road, I spend evenings holed up in a hotel room with nothing but a laptop, a WiFi card, HBO, and a Diet Coke for company.

But the biggest consideration for women who think that the life of a stay-at-home wife and mother is preferable isn't the boredom, or the limits to such a life. It's that age happens. No women knows when or if her husband is going to decide that she no longer reflects the still-youthful image he has of himself and trade her in for someone younger -- perhaps someone he met during one of those trips he takes for that higher-paying job. No women knows when her husband will tire of hearing "Jacob this" and "Jacob did that" and Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob Jacob until he's ready to swat both his wife AND his son Jacob with a claw hammer.

Whether John Tierney likes it or not, the working woman is here to stay. She's here to stay because she has to be, because in the society that the party he admires has created, most families are two pretty damn insecure jobs away from poverty. In one-earner households, they are only one job away.

So why on earth are both Republicans and Democrats still capitulating to everything he wants?

Good Lord, how many pictures of how many people in compromising positions does Bush HAVE?

Bill Clinton had 60% approval ratings and they impeached him.

This fucking guy is heading towards the Mendoza line full speed ahead:

Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story.

Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.

But yesterday Frist and McCain decided that having the royal family of Dubai run our ports was just ducky.

34 percent. And they're still acting like it's September 12, 2001. Amazing. And so sad for us as a country.

Zilver Seafood Restaurant, Haymarket

The beauty of yum cha is its reliable welcome of harried chaos. The room will be a-clatter with chopsticks and conversation, the waitstaff will be rushed off their feet re-filling teapots and dispensing chilli sauce, and the trolley ladies will harangue you incessantly with the last of the cabbage-filled spring rolls.Zilver is nothing like that.Zilver used to be Silver, as in Silver Spring, but

Zilver Seafood Restaurant, Haymarket

The beauty of yum cha is its reliable welcome of harried chaos. The room will be a-clatter with chopsticks and conversation, the waitstaff will be rushed off their feet re-filling teapots and dispensing chilli sauce, and the trolley ladies will harangue you incessantly with the last of the cabbage-filled spring rolls.Zilver is nothing like that.Zilver used to be Silver, as in Silver Spring, but

If you liked 1910, you'll love 2010

Yesterday the Bergen Record had an article about the rise of depression in the current generation of age 18-25 young people. With mountains of college debt, unaffordable housing, and ever-fewer career path jobs, emergence from college seems to be no longer an opening of a door to an adulthood laden with opportunities, and more one of an inevitable downward spiral.

Paul Krugman notes the appalling rise in inequality in this country, which if it continues, is going to return us to the Gilded Age, with a few preposterously wealthy people and everyone else scrambling for the scraps they toss under the table:

I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.

Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system — and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who — surprisingly, given his libertarian roots — has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."

It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.

With American families increasingly squeezed, it's becoming harder to justfy the cost of a college education, when the potential rewards are so little. It should not require a college degree to work at Starbuck's. It should not require a degree from a top school to simply get into a training program.

Outsourcing and offshoring have dramatically reduced the number of career-path jobs available to everyone, not just young people. But if you cannot posit a brighter future for those about to enter adulthood, what are they supposed to do?

Your tax dollars at work

Ponder this, in the context of the cuts in education, health care, and veterans benefits advocated by Republicans:

The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.

The Army said in response to questions on Friday that questionable business practices by the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had in some cases driven up the company's costs. But in the haste and peril of war, it had largely done as well as could be expected, the Army said, and aside from a few penalties, the government was compelled to reimburse the company for its costs.

Under the type of contract awarded to the company, "the contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to reimbursement," said Rhonda James, a spokeswoman for the southwestern division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, based in Dallas, where the contract is administered.

The contract has been the subject of intense scrutiny after disclosures in 2003 that it had been awarded without competitive bidding. That produced criticism from Congressional Democrats and others that the company had benefited from its connection with Dick Cheney, who was Halliburton's chief executive before becoming vice president.

Later that year auditors began focusing on the fuel deliveries under the contract, finding that the fuel transportation costs that the company was charging the Army were in some cases nearly triple what others were charging to do the same job. But Kellogg Brown & Root, which has consistently maintained that its costs were justified, characterized the Army's decision as an official repudiation of those criticisms.

"Once all the facts were fully examined, it is clear, and now confirmed, that KBR performed this work appropriately per the client's direction and within the contract terms," said Cathy Mann, a company spokeswoman, in a written statement on the decision. The company's charges, she said, "were deemed properly incurred."

And this conclusion was reached without any pressure from the Administration. Uh-huh. Yup. Nothing to see here. Move along, nothing to see....

The future of American women, as brought to you by Christofascist men

Read it and weep.

DOJ really, REALLY wants to know what you search for on Google

So I guess that search I did yesterday on "chimpanzee humans share DNA" may end up having the spooks in DC wondering what it's code for after all:

Google Inc.'s concerns that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said Friday in a court filing.

The 18-page brief argued that because the information provided would not identify or be traceable to specific users, privacy rights would not be violated.

The brief was the Justice Department's reply to arguments filed by Google last week. Google has rebuffed the government's demand to review a week of its search requests.

The department believes that the information will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked. By showing the wide variety of Web sites that people find through search engines, the government hopes to prove that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography and other inappropriate material online.

And more importantly, they may not be strong enough to prevent adults from getting information on breast cancer and contraception, either.


Do YOU trust the Bush Justice Department when they say that the information won't be traceable to specific users? After all, they've been so honest and straightforward about everything else, right?

How about this:

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

In other words, the Bush Administration is STILL interested in data mining our every move. Because you see, in George W. Bush's topsy-turvy America, Cindy Sheehan is a national security risk. Peace activist Quakers are a national security risk. Little ol' bloggers who point out what this administration does are national security risks. Only countries whose leaders vacationed in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden in 1999 aren't security risks.

A stroll down memory lane

Howard Dean, in a speech at Drake University, February 17, 2003:

Our country needs to have national security policies that protect the interests of the American people. To do that, those policies must keep us safe and well defended against the myriad threats we face. But they cannot succeed unless they also reflect the kind of people we are, the values we share, the hopes we have, and the ideals that hold us together as a nation.

I am worried that many of the policies the Bush Administration is pursuing today do not provide the best means of defending our interests, and do not reflect the fundamental values of our people.

In saying this, I am respectful of the pressures our leaders face. Safeguarding our national security in this era is a very complex challenge, to which there are no easy answers. The President deserves praise for rallying the spirits of our people after September 11 and for some of the measures he and others in his Administration have taken since. I know they are sincere, and that they want what is best for our country and the world.

But I would not be doing my job as a citizen if I did not state my own conviction about where I believe we could do better.

The stakes are so high, this is not a time for holding back or sheepishly going along with the herd.

I believe that the President too often employs a reckless, go-it-alone approach that drives us away from some of our longest-standing and most important allies, when what we need is to pull the world community together in common action against the imminent threat of terrorism.

I believe that the President undercuts our long-term national security interests and the established international order when he seeks to replace decades of bipartisan consensus on the use of American force with a new doctrine justifying preemptive attacks against other nation states - not because of their current action or imminent threat, but to preempt a threat that could arise in the future.

I believe that the President must do more on the most important front in the war on terrorism - our home front - through strengthened and well-funded first responders and effective security measures that go beyond calls to purchase plastic sheeting and duct tape.

And I firmly believe that the President is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time, when our energy and our resources should be marshaled for the greatest threats we face. Yes, Saddam Hussein is evil. But Osama bin Laden is also evil, and he has attacked the United States, and he is preparing now to attack us again.

What happened to the war against al Qaeda?

Why has this Administration taken us so far off track?

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein.

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the President to use unilateral force against Iraq - unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

I do not believe the President should have been given a green light to drive our nation into conflict without the case having first been made to Congress and the American people for why this war is necessary, and without a requirement that we at least try first to work through the United Nations.

That the President was given open-ended authority to go to war in Iraq resulted from a failure of too many in my party in Washington who were worried about political positioning for the presidential election.

To this day, the President has not made a case that war against Iraq, now, is necessary to defend American territory, our citizens, our allies, or our essential interests.

Nor has the Administration prepared sufficiently for the possible retaliatory attacks on our home front that even the President's CIA Director has stated are likely to occur. It has always been important, before going to war, for our troops to be well-trained, well-equipped, and well-protected. In this new era, it is as important that our people on the home front also be well-protected.

The Administration has not explained how a lasting peace, and lasting security, will be achieved in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is toppled.

And the Administration has approached the United Nations more as an afterthought than as the international institution created to deal with precisely such a situation as we face in Iraq. From the outset, the Administration has seemed oblivious to the simple fact that it clearly would be in our interests for any war with Iraq to occur with UN authorization and cooperation and not without it.

The Administration's reckless bluster with our allies over Iraq has caused what could be lasting friction in important relationships and has injured our standing in the world community. When rhetoric by subordinates in the Administration alienates our long-standing allies, it should be met with reprimand and not condoned by the President.

[snip]

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration's assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean.

I certainly hope our armed forces will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad.

I certainly hope Iraq emerges from the war stable, united and democratic.

I certainly hope terrorists around the world conclude it is a mistake to defy America and cease, thereafter, to be terrorists.

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, and that the Iraqi Republican Guard will not sit out in the desert where they can be destroyed easily from the air.

It is possible that Iraq will try to force our troops to fight house to house in the middle of cities - on its turf, not ours - where precision-guided missiles are of little use.

It is possible that women and children will be used as shields and our efforts to minimize civilian casualties will be far less successful than we hope.

There are other risks.

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval.

If the war lasts more than a few weeks, the danger of humanitarian disaster is high, because many Iraqis depend on their government for food, and during war it would be difficult for us to get all the necessary aid to the Iraqi people.

There is a risk of environmental disaster, caused by damage to Iraq's oil fields.

And, perhaps most importantly, there is a very real danger that war in Iraq will fuel the fires of international terror.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week's tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

We should remember how our military presence in Saudi Arabia has been exploited by radicals to stir resentment and hatred against the United States, leading to the murder of American citizens and soldiers.

We need to consider what the effect will be of a U.S. invasion and occupation of Baghdad, a city that served for centuries as a capital of the Islamic world.

Some people simply brush aside these concerns, saying there were also a lot of dire predictions before the first Gulf War, and that those didn't come true.

We have learned through experience to have confidence in our armed forces - and that confidence is very well deserved.

But if you talk to military leaders, they will tell you there is a big difference between pushing back the Iraqi armed forces in Kuwait and trying to defeat them on their home ground.

There are limits to what even our military can do. Technology is not the solution to every problem. And we can't assume the Iraqis have learned nothing over the past twelve years.

Howard Dean was right about the Iraq war. He was right, and John Kerry and Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton and all the other Vichy Democrats who cravenly went along with it were wrong. Only Howard Dean had the courage to speak out against this war, which has played out almost exactly as he predicted.

It is now almost two years after the campaign of 2004, and the Democratic Party has not only learned nothing, it is still driving quality candidates who speak the truth out of the race because they're afraid -- afraid of their own shadows; afraid Karl Rove will say mean things about them. They drove Paul Hackett out of the Ohio Senate race. Here in the Fifth District of New Jersey, they have now driven Anne Wolfe out of the race to take our Congressional seat back from Scott Garrett -- a dangerous Christofascist wingnut who ran for office with a moderate mask on and has become Tom DeLay's loyal lackey in Congress.

Here's what Anne Wolfe had to say in a letter sent to supporters this week:

Over 120,000 citizens voted for me in 2004. This was an unprecedented number of votes for a Democratic challenger in the Fifth District. In fact, I received more votes than the Democratic candidate for President. I was endorsed by all three major newspapers. We created a campaign based on issues not on personal
attacks and our opponent outspent us by 3-1. By the end of the campaign, we gained tremendous momentum and I am truly grateful to every voter who cast their vote for
Dorothea Anne Wolfe.

I was asked by a tremendous number of voters to run again in 2006, as many of you felt that the Fifth District deserved to have a known Democratic challenger
continue to fight to regain the Fifth District seat. I raised over $75,000 and went to Washington, D.C., to seek early endorsements from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national groups. I was praised for my performance in 2004, but the priorities of the DCCC and other groups like
EMILY's List for 2006 do not include New Jersey's Fifth District.

If one examines all of the polls and their projections for the 2006 cycle, our District is not included. The cost of running a reasonable race in the Fifth District is above $1.5 million and viability is important for funding. The party organizations have encouraged me to self-fund and that is not possible.

Because of these financial and strategic considerations, and because of other pressing issues in the district that need immediate attention, I have decided to withdraw my name for consideration as a Democratic candidate for the United States Congress in the Fifth District of New Jersey in 2006.

The so-called "Howard Dean wing" of the Democratic party has proven itself correct on issue after issue; and yet time and again, the party has shown that it has no use for Howard Dean, or Paul Hackett, or Anne Wolfe, or any other socially progressive, fiscally moderate Democrat that isn't part of the inside circle.

The Democrats WILL lose in November. Howard Dean has been effectively muzzled by the DLC and their minions. It will be interesting to see how they spin this one the day after Election Day this fall.

(hat tip for the Dean speech link: Glenn Greenwald, at Crooks and Liars)

It's official: Keith Olbermann is God

You all know that I am an occasional worshipper at the altar of Marc Maron. And God knows, Maron may be the funniest man in America today not named "Paul Rudnick." But those of you who read my Brilliant 25 of 2005 know that there is one other commentator on the national scene these days who came out ahead of not just Marc Maron, but also the Holy Duality that is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

That rarefied individual is one Keith Olbermann: Former and current sports guy and the last journalist in America who still thinks aspiring to be like Edward R. Murrow is a good thing.

And if you weren't yet convinced of the worthiness of Keith Olbermann to be placed ahead of not just Stewart and Colbert and Maron, but also of such heroes of the progressive movement as Russ Feingold, Paul Hackett, and John Murtha, this piece of video ought to convince you.

I can't help but think that somewhere, Ed Murrow is applauding -- even though Olbermann's approach is a bit different from what Murrow would have done.

Murdoch-owned New York Post reporting that Al Qaeda has already infiltrated the UAE government

Remember, this is coming from a paper with a decided right-wing slant, owned by Rupert Murdoch (requires login, go to bugmenot.com to get one:

Al Qaeda warned the government of the United Arab Emirates more than three years ago that it "infiltrated" key government agencies, according to a disturbing document released by the U.S. military.
The warning was contained in a June 2002 message to UAE rulers, in which the terror network demanded the release of an unknown number of "mujahedeen detainees," who it said had been arrested during a government crackdown in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The explosive document is certain to become ammunition for critics of the controversial UAE port deal, who fear the Dubai-based firm could be used by terrorists to sneak money and personnel into the United States.

Little is known about the origins or authorship of the message.

"You are well aware that we have infiltrated your security, censorship and monetary agencies, along with other agencies that should not be mentioned," the message said.

"Therefore, we warn of the continuation of practicing . . . policies which do not serve your interest and will only cost you many problems that will place you in an embarrassing state before your citizens.

"Your homeland is exposed to us. There are many vital interests that will hurt you if we decided to harm them."

The document was among a batch of internal al Qaeda communications captured by U.S. forces in the war on terror.

They were declassified and released earlier this month by the Center for Combating Terrorism at West Point.

If these documents can be authenticated, it puts a different spin on the "It's racist to not support this takeover" meme, now, doesn't it?

So much for the "Dubai won't handle port security, just operations" meme

Buried deep in this UPI story is this little nugget, explaining how the ports REALLY work:

The security of port terminal operations is a key concern. More than 7 million cargo containers come through 361 American ports annually, half of the containers through New York-New Jersey, Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. Only a small percentage are physically searched and just 37 percent currently screened for radiation, an indication of an attempt to smuggle in nuclear material that could be used for a "dirty bomb."

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the government began a new program that required documentation on all cargo 24 hours before it was loaded on a ship in a foreign port bound for the United States. A "risk analysis" is conducted on every shipment, including a review of the ship's history, the cargo's history and contents and other factors. Each ship must also provide the U.S. government 96 hours notice of its arrival in an American port, along with a crew manifest.

None of the nine administration officials assembled for the briefing could immediately say how many of the more than 3,000 port terminals are currently under foreign control.

Port facility operators have a major security responsibility, and one that could be exploited by terrorists if they infiltrate the company, said Joe Muldoon III. Muldoon is an attorney representing Eller & Co., a port facility operator in Florida partnered with M&O in Miami. Eller opposes the Dubai takeover for security reasons.

"The Coast Guard oversees security, and they have the authority to inspect containers if they want and they can look at manifests, but they are really dependent on facility operators to carry out security issues," Muldoon said.

The Marine Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires vessels and port facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security plans including passenger, vehicle and baggage screening procedures; security patrols; establishing restricted areas; personnel identification procedures; access control measures; and/or installation of surveillance equipment.

Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans -- that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.

"The concern is that the UAE may be our friend now ... but who's to say that couldn't change, or they couldn't be infiltrated. Iran was our big buddy," said Muldoon.

[snip]

"All a terrorist organization needs to do is find a single weak link within a 'trusted' shipper's complex supply chain, such as a poorly paid truck driver taking a container from a remote factory to a port. They can then gain access to the container in one of the half-dozen ways well known to experienced smugglers," CFR wrote.

But King George, who believes himself to be not just the king of America, but also its infallible pope, will. not. back. down:

The Bush administration said Friday it won't reconsider its approval for a United Arab Emirates company to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports.

[snip]

The president's national security adviser said the White House would keep trying to persuade lawmakers there's more time since the company offered to delay its takeover but the administration wouldn't reconsider its approval.

"There are questions raised in the Congress, and what this delay allows is for those questions to be addressed on the Hill," Stephen Hadley said. "There's nothing to reopen."

[snip]

Said Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan: "We believe once Congress has a better understanding of the facts and the safeguards that are in place that they will be more comfortable with the transaction moving forward. So, a slight delay would be helpful in that regard,"

Here are the guys who Bush says are perfectly OK to run our ports

Money trumps national security every time, when it comes to the Bush gang.

Larry Johnson, who having worked with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, knows his stuff. When he speaks, you should listen. So should the Bush Administration, but they won't.

If Dubai Ports World (DPW) does as nifty a job of running our ports as it has done running the freeport in Dubai then we are screwed. This is not about the fact that police and security officials from the United Arab Emirates have been helping us track down Al Qaeda operatives and other ornery jihadists. The issue here is the fact that the port in Dubai is one of the major ports in the world involved with smuggling of counterfeit and contraband product. A few years ago, for example, I was alerted to a shipment of several containers of cigarettes from Panama's port of Colon to Dubai. The addressee on the invoice? Al Rabea Spare Car Parts. Now, last time I checked, cigarettes are not and never have been an automobile spare car part.

Other items, including consumer electronics, liquor, HP print cartridges, make their way to Dubai and are then smuggled into tough areas like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And what is Dubai Ports World doing to crackdown on this activity? Nothing.

The inability or refusal to deal with the use of ports under the control of Dubai Ports World that are involved with smuggling is reason enough to stop this deal dead in its tracks. The owners of DPW are not the ones cooperating closely with the United States in tracking down the terrorists who attacked us. Instead, they have close ties to a host of shipping companies, including those owned by the Bin Laden family.

The challenge of smuggling a dirty nuke is comparable to smuggling containers of cigarettes, liquor, and shoes. If DPW will not stop the latter how can we be confident they will prevent the former? That's a security bet we should not take or make.

The Iraq war was a foregone conclusion; 9/11 cynically used by Bush Administration for its own ends

Blogger Thad Anderson has received, via a Freedom of Information Act request, Department of Defense staffer Stephen Cambone's notes from the latter's meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. The notes show that by 2:40 PM on that afternoon, Rumsfeld was already thinking of ways the attacks could be used to justify an invasion of Iraq:

The released notes document Donald Rumsfeld's 2:40 PM instructions to General Myers to find the "[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]" (as discussed on p. 334-335 of the 9/11 Commission Report and in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack).

In addition, the documents confirm the contents of CBS News' Sept. 4, 2002 report "Plans For Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted Rumsfeld's notes as stating: "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not." These lines were not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report or Woodward's Plan of Attack, and to my knowledge, have not been independently confirmed by any other source. After the Rathergate fiasco, I wondered if CBS had been fooled into publishing a story that, from a publicity perspective, seemed too good to be true.

Finally, these documents unveil a previously undisclosed part of the 2:40 PM discussion. Several lines below the "judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. at same time" line, Cambone's notes from the conversation read: "Hard to get a good case."

Anderson's full post is here. Links to a Torrent zip file containing the entire set, or individual notes in PDF format, can be found here as well, as well as a link to the entire set at Flickr.

Some chilling statements in these notes for a weird sort of warmongering pseudo-haiku, for those without the patience to look through the handwriting:

2:40
Resume Statement:

Best info fast
judge whether good enough
Hit S.H@ same time -
Not just UBL

Tasks Jim Haynes to talk w/ PW
for additional support v/v Usis &
connection w/ UBL

[REDACTED (N.R. stands for Not Relevant)]

- Hard to get a good case

- Need to move swiftly -

Near term target needs -
- go massive - sweep it all up
- Things related & not

[ARROW]
Need to do so
to get anything
useful"

9:53 PM EST:

VP Report:

1) CIA intercept
[redacted]

2) AA77 - 3 indiv have been followed
since Millennium & Cole
1 guy is assoc of Cole bomber
3 entered US in early July (2 of 3 pulled aside and interrogated?)

3) No M.O.

Julian Borger of The Guardian (UK) is also covering this story, and notes:

Mr Wolfowitz, now the head of the World Bank, advocated regime change in Iraq before 2001. But, according to an account of the days after September 11 in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, a decision was taken to put off consideration of an attack on Iraq until after the Taliban had been toppled in Afghanistan.

But these notes confirm that Baghdad was in the Pentagon's sights almost as soon as the hijackers struck.

More from Anderson here.

So for anyone who bought the line about war as a last resort, here is your proof, right from the U.S. government, that the Iraq war was, in fact, not a last resort, but the first thing that came to the minds of this Administration, and a cynically conceived way to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks.

With Iraq on the verge of Civil War, the impact of this kind of horrific cynicism grows clearer every day.

Every day I grow more astounded that Americans who were so worked up in a lather about a blowjob seem to think that this is all perfectly OK. It shows me that there is a tipping point at which a U.S. Administration can be SO venal, SO corrupt, and so, yes, EVIL, that it extends beyond most Americans' willingness to believe it possible -- and so they deny the evil that exists in our own nation's capital.

But it's there, and wishing it away won't change a thing.

Our long nightmare of being without Lawton Smalls, the Milfingtons, and Marc the Shark is almost over

A return to sanity (or insanity, if the world around us is what passes for sane) is almost upon us:

NEW YORK-February 24, 2006-Air America Radio announced today that comedian Marc Maron, former co-host of “Morning Sedition,” will return to the network on February 28, at 10:00 pm PST, when it debuts “The Marc Maron Show.” The announcement was made by President Gary Krantz.

"The Marc Maron Show" will air from 10:00-12:00 am PST out of KTLK 1150 AM in Los Angeles and will be syndicated through Air America Syndications. The program is a nightly Los Angeles variety show, complete with live comedy, in-studio announcers, and one-on-one interviews. "The Marc Maron Show" has a laid-back performance and interview style reminiscent of "The Late Show with David Letterman" or "Late Night with Conan O’Brien," with an emphasis on culture (including politics) and comedy.

Regular characters will include: Planet Bush Bureau Chief Lawton Smalls, Inside-the-Beltway Odds-maker Johnny K Street, Ultra-conservative alter-ego Marc the Shark, and Cardinal Milfington’s Rapture Watch.

"We are thrilled to be the flagship station for Marc Maron's new show on Air America," said KTLK’s Station Manager John Quinlan. "Many of our listeners have been asking when Marc will be back on the air and we are happy tell them that it will be next week."

"We're going to be drawing talent from my friends in the comedy and sketch community out here in LA to create new characters, bits and insanity," said Maron. "We've got great weekly guests lined up. I've got new issues, the world has new issues, and we're ready to go. We think it will be the funniest, most informative, late night radio show on the air."

We here at B@B think so too.

I can't wait.

Live by scary brown people, die by scary brown people

For the last four years, the Bush Administration has succeeded in getting Americans to accept war without end, intrusions into the most private areas of their lives, and debts so huge to finance his nascent dictatorship that every baby born today comes into the world in the hole for over $100,000. They have done this by using an "They're all alike" stragegy, fabricating an alliance between Osama Bin Laden and Osama Bin Laden that never existed, painting a picture of Scary Brown People from Arab Countries; and all the while sending President My Government out to cover their tracks by saying that we musn't generalize about Muslims.

So their shocked demeanor at finding out that Americans don't want even a so-called "friendly" Arab country operating our ports seems disingenuous at best.

Paul Krugman:

The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new — the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.

So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.

Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time — not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals — especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.

But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.

The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam — what's the difference?

Now comes the ports deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

[snip]

But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs."

Finally, the ports affair plays in a subliminal way into the public's awareness — vague but widespread — that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed deliverer of democracy to the Middle East, and his family have close personal and financial ties to Middle Eastern rulers. Mr. Bush was photographed holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (now King Abdullah), not the emir of Dubai. But an administration that has spent years ridiculing people who try to make such distinctions isn't going to have an easy time explaining the difference.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is trying mightily to find a way to fit the "good Arabs" meme into the fearmongering that has been so successful for them. Yesterday, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England played the "aid and comfort" card, relying on the time-tested Bush Administration tactic of branding everyone who doesn't march in lockstep with them as being traitorous terrorist sympathizers:

If the furor over the port deal should go on, Mr. England said, it would give enemies of the United States aid and comfort: "They want us to become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist."

Well, folks, there's your proof that the Bush Administration really IS in cahoots with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden -- because it is the Bush Administration that's been fostering distrust for the last four years.

This last attempt to reframe the Bush Administration policy is the straw that finally caused the passionate but always controlled John Aravosis to go postal. I'm posting it here in its entirety, because he is absolutely right, and I only wish I'd said it first:

Now, my mom reads this blog. And I don't like gratuitous profanity because it's the easy way to evoke emotion when you don't have the right words. But Gordon England, you're a total asshole.

How fucking dare you invoke Osama and September 11 in order to get us to support an administration policy that is in fact CONTRARY to our national security interests? Just because Bush is in bed with the Middle Eastern oil producers we're supposed to roll over and play dead while you guys just give away that store to your petro-buddies?

How fucking dare you preach to us about being distrustful and paranoid?

You son of a bitches have raised distrust and fear to a high art. You have repeatedly violated the legitimate shock and horror Americans felt after September 11, abused our collective grief and pain and psychosis in order to push your own petty, personal political goals, and now that we catch you red handed, you have the balls to invoke September 11 again?

Gordon England, how fucking dare you, you un-American piece of shit.

You want to talk about giving aid and comfort to our enemies? How about your boss single handedly ripping the US Constitution to shreds, spying on American citizens, lying to the American public in order to get us to support his failed wars of convenience that have now so overstrapped our military we're unable to defend ourselves where and when it really matters?

How many World Trade Centers do you think Osama would have been more than willing to bomb in order to achieve all that? You people fucking handed Osama the dismantling of our entire democracy, and he didn't even need to fire another shot. And you lecture us about aiding and comforting the enemy?

How fucking dare you even have the nerve to speak to us about what's best for American ports when your God damn administration still hasn't secured container traffic coming into those very same American ports from abroad? What's the latest figure of the percentage of foreign containers shipped into the US that are actually screened (you know, for innocent little things like nukes)? Is it 5% max that gets searched, all the rest just go merrily on their way into our country containing God knows what?

And you have the nerve to lecture us about port safety and paranoia?

When the president of the United States is so out of touch that he goes on vacation for three days while a hurricane is wiping an entire American city off the map, you better believe I get paranoid.

When the president of the United States is so out of touch that he doesn't even know until the next day that his own vice president nearly killed a man, you better believe I get paranoid.

And when the president of the United States runs and hides for the entire day on September 11 while millions of us are forced to turn to Peter Jennings and Rudy Giuliani to be our presidents-by-proxy because George Bush is too much of a chicken shit to show his face for 12 fucking hours while we thought the world was ending, you better believe I get paranoid.

Gordon England. Go fuck yourself.

Amen, brother.

While the Bush Administration was selling our ports to Osama Bin Laden's friends, here's what's happening in South Dakota

I admit I'm a bit late to this particular party, but I have just one thing to say to all the young women who blithely assumed that their right of self-determination over their own bodies would never be taken away from them:

I told you so.

First we had the Supreme Court agreeing to tackle the issue of late-term abortions (and you know perfectly well how that's going to be decided), and now the South Dakota Senate has passed a bill to ban almost all abortions in the state by a vote of 23-12.

House Bill 1215 would ban most abortions in South Dakota.

It now goes back to the House, which passed an earlier version and must now decide whether to accept changes made by the Senate.

The bill would then go to Gov. Mike Rounds.

Republican Sen. Bill Napoli of Rapid City said, "This bill is as straight
forward and as honest as it can be. It just says no more abortions unless the life of the mother is threatened."

Republican Sen. Tom Dempster of Sioux Falls said, "This bill ends up being cold, indifferent and as hostile as any great prairie blizzard that this state has ever seen.''

Democrat Sen. Julie Bartling of Burke said the time is right for the ban on abortion.

“In my opinion, it is the time for this South Dakota Legislature to deal with this issue and protect the rights and lives of unborn children,” she said during the Senate's debate. “There is a movement across this country of the wishes to save and protect the lives of unborn children.”

Republican Sen. Stan Adelstein of Rapid City had tried to amend the bill to include an exception for abortions for victims of rape. The amendment lost 14-21.

“To require a woman who has been savaged to carry the brutal attack result is a continued savagery unworthy of South Dakota,” he said.

Republican Sen. Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown objected.

Rape should be punished severely, he said, but the amendment is unfair to “some equally innocent souls who have no chance to stand and defend themselves.”

The Senate also defeated a proposed amendment to insert an exception to allow an abortion to protect the health of a pregnant woman. That was offered by Republican Sen. David Knudson. It failed on a 13-22 vote.

Senators who favor the ban on abortion also killed an amendment that would have sent the issue to a public vote and another amendment that would have created a special abortion litigation fund to accept donations to pay for a lawsuit.

House Bill 1215 seeks to make abortion a felony but wouldn't allow charges to be filed against a doctor who performed the procedure during an attempt to save the life of a pregnant woman.

The bill, largely drawn from the findings of the recent South Dakota abortion task force, is meant to encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

And this will probably be their test case. I doubt the Supreme Court will vote to overturn Roe, but what's to keep them from upholding this case while leaving Roe intact? Sure, it doesn't make any sense, but what in the mind of Antonin Scalia does?

The right wing seems to have this idea that all over America, there are pregnant women who wake up in the morning and say, "I think I'll go get my hair cut, then go grocery shopping, then have my nails done, and then have an abortion." The idea that abortion is an easy thing for a woman to do is an idea that only someone who a) hates women; b) has no understanding of women; or c) is an utter moron; could possibly believe.

It's funny how few of the people who want to ban abortions have actually adopted any unwanted babies. It's funny how the legislators who are the most anti-abortion are the same ones who vote to cut women with young children off of public assistance programs designed to help them raise the children these same legislators would force them to have.

Here's the bill in its entirety. I am just too tired this evening to go on my customary rant about fear and loathing of female sexuality driving this whole debate, so I'll just repost this little excerpt, because this is going to leave every woman who has a menstrual period open to prosecution:

The Legislature accepts and concurs with the conclusion of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception, a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization.

The South Dakota bill defines fertilization, not implantation, as conception. Up to 40% of fertilized eggs never implant, and are passed with the normal menstrual flow. If these fertilized eggs are deemed to be human beings, it opens the door to a great many unintended consequences. One of those consequences is inevitably the banning of certain methods of contraception that prevent implantation, which include the pill and all hormonal contraceptive derivations thereof and the intrauterine device. This will leave women with only barrier methods, such as diaphragms and condoms.

But that's not the only implication of this bill. I've been making jokes for years about women having to submit their used tampons to the government so they can be inspected for fertilized eggs that didn't implant. But if the state is going to define a fertilized egg -- not an implanted embryo -- as a human being, I don't see where there's any choice but to interrogate, investigate and examine every woman who has a menstrual period to make sure that no fertilized eggs are involved.

And frankly, if this isn't what they advocate, then their entire argument about every fertilized egg being the equivalent of thee and me falls apart.

Paddy Maguires, Haymarket

Fillet steak with chips and salad $22.00I love pub grub.The best pub grub is usually found in nondescript watering holes with a sighing barman and a dour-faced cook sneaking a ciggie out the back. Some of my favourite meals have been in pubs, especially in England and Ireland, where stodgy comfort food is the one redeeming joy for invariably inclement weather.In Sydney, as in all cities around

Paddy Maguires, Haymarket

Fillet steak with chips and salad $22.00I love pub grub.The best pub grub is usually found in nondescript watering holes with a sighing barman and a dour-faced cook sneaking a ciggie out the back. Some of my favourite meals have been in pubs, especially in England and Ireland, where stodgy comfort food is the one redeeming joy for invariably inclement weather.In Sydney, as in all cities around

If Sasha Cohen falters tonight, do the terrorists win?

And so it all comes down to this.

After the implosions of Bode Miller and Apolo Ohno and Johnny Weir; after Lindsey Jacobellis' unforgivable crime of letting exuberance get the best of her; after the mutual dislike and disrespect of Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick, and after the dismal showing of the U.S. men's and women's hockey teams and after the tearful withdrawal of Michelle Kwan, it all comes down to four and one-half minutes on Italian ice for the little Jewish girl with the Betty Boop face.

Tonight is the Super Bowl of the Olympics, the bottom of the ninth in game 7, the 2 Minute Warning. Tonight, this most metaphorical of Olympics falls on the shoulders of Sasha Cohen.

It strikes me as strangely fitting that so many of the cockiest Americans at this Olympics have fallen victim to their own hubris at a time when the U.S. occupation of Iraq is descending into utter chaos. This has been the most jingoistic Winter Olympics since the Reagan years, and as it starts to draw to a close, with the Americans rubbing their bruises and wondering what happened, the frenzy surrounding the always-hyped women's figure skating final is worse than ever.

Much of this hysteria is about marketing dollars. American business is in need of marketable heroes, and in our country, heroes are inevitably able-bodied sports heroes. I had high hopes for the hyping of the incredibly hot quad rugby players profiled in last summer's criminally underseen Murderball, but most Americans who did see it didn't leave the theatre thinking, "Once you've had a quad guy, baby, you never go back." One would also think that the images of square-jawed returning soldiers would resonate on Wheaties boxes, but with so many of them coming home missing limbs, and others, such as the iconic "Marlboro Man", suffering from PTSD, they hardly feed our sense of delusion about American prowess and muscularity in all areas:

But for Madison Avenue, the face of the United States that has emerged from these Games is an unattractive sell of bad manners and poor sports.

"It's probably the most hyped and most disappointing Olympic team we've had," Bob Williams, the president of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing, said Wednesday by telephone from Chicago.

The skier Bode Miller was weighed down by expectations and a few extra pounds. He did not win a medal in four events in the mountains at Sestriere — 60 miles from here — with one event remaining. After missing a gate in the combined, one of his best events, Miller said, "At least now, I don't have to go all the way to Torino" to pick up the medal.

Jacobellis won no style points turning a sure victory in the inaugural women's Olympic snowboardcross into a silver medal when she tried to show off with a trick and crashed yards from the finish line. She immediately returned to the United States, saying, "I'm excited to go back home and have a nice steak and a normal-sized bathroom."

Chad Hedrick's speedskating victory in the 5,000 meters has been overshadowed by his ungraciousness in defeat in the team pursuit, the 1,000 and the 1,500, and his open feud with teammate Shani Davis, the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in the Winter Olympics. "I'm here to win," Hedrick said in dismissing his bronze medal in the 1,500. "It's all or nothing."

Hedrick and Davis shook hands during Wednesday night's medal ceremony for the 1,500, but that was a rare public show of civility between the skaters.

Lanktree said: "It may sound self-righteous, but there's a general hope when people watch the Olympics that sportsmanship will prevail. We're used to trash-talking and silly end-zone dances, but the Olympics are about sportsmanship."

[snip]

Salvaging positive spin has been largely left to Cohen. She is leading the competition entering the women's figure skating long program Thursday and could rise above her American teammates in marketing appeal by winning the gold medal. She replaced Michelle Kwan as the face of figure skating after Kwan withdrew with an injury shortly after arriving here.

If Cohen can protect the lead she earned in the short program and become the third consecutive American to win the Olympic women's singles, marketers agree she will be the enduring face of these Games.

"The big names have fallen by the wayside," Bob Dorfman, the executive creative director for Pickett Advertising, said Wednesday in a telephone interview from San Francisco. "Now it's Sasha Cohen's game to win or lose. If she wins a gold, she'll be golden with the marketers. If she wins silver or bronze, it will be seen as a bit of a disappointment."

[snip]

Dorfman called [half-pipe gold medalist Shaun] White a dark horse worth watching in the endorsement race. "He has great hair and a great nickname," Dorfman said of the redheaded White, who is known as the Flying Tomato. White has been on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. He appeared Wednesday on Martha Stewart's television show.

White already had a cult following and is a millionaire several times over, in part because of endorsement deals signed well before the Games. Cheek, however, could be one of the most unexpected beneficiaries of the Americans' me-first attitude.

The 26-year-old Cheek, who is as thin as a ray of sunshine, exuded warmth, team spirit and self-deprecating humor. Chris Witty, a five-time United States Olympian who carried the flag in the opening ceremony, wants to see Cheek get his star turn.

"I hope that's what America's looking for," she said, referring to Cheek's wholesome image. "I worry, though. We've become so much of a pop culture, in-your-face society."

In fact, when Jon Bond, co-chairman of Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, a marketing agency in New York, was asked about Cheek's potential in the advertising market, he responded, "Has he won anything yet?"

Joey Cheek and Shaun White are hardly what Madison Avenue had in mind before this Olympics. Back then, it was all bad boy Bode Miller, whose penchant for tippling gave him an every-guy appeal. It was Apolo Anton Ohno, he of the fabulous name, whose soul patch gave him a certain Maynard G. Krebs je ne sais quoi. And it was Michelle Kwan, who fed into the American fetishization of Asian females. But now, as these and other Great American Hopes crashed and burnt, we are left with two dorky-looking guys and a Jewish princess to carry the mantle of American pride.

The minute Sasha Cohen emerged with an 0.03 lead over Irina Slutskaya in the short program, she turned into Debi Thomas circa 1988. It is Cohen's good fortune this year that her nemesis is the cute but hardly glamorous Slutskaya rather than the vampish Iron Curtain Maiden Katarina Witt. Witt, who at 40 still has an ego the size of thbe planet Jupiter and has lost absolutely no sense of her own unparallelled fabulousness, simply had to smile at a reporter to make him turn his back on his country and embrace this Bond Girl out of central casting. So the psych-out factor doesn't come as much into play here. But Cohen has never been strong in the freeskate, and has often suffered from loss of concentration in the second half of the program. Yet she has never had as much at stake as she does tonight.

The sports press didn't want it to be this way. After Kwan withdrew, they turned their attention to the fresh-faced Emily Hughes, leaving Cohen to focus on the job she has to do tonight. Perhaps they did her a favor, buying her a few days of calm practice time before deciding that the future of American prestige rests on her small shoulders.

Cohen can be a difficult skater to like. Lacking Kwan's press-friendly demeanor and Hughes' "oh gosh" innocence, she is there to skate, not to talk. But with all the expectations resting with her tonight, the responsibility given her by the press to somehow single-handedly resurrect the United States from the bankrupt wreck it has become under the stewardship of the Bush Administration -- while dressed in spangles and resting on a 1/8" skate blade, I hope she can pull it off -- for her sake, not for ours.

How friends of Osama Bin Laden are buying up the U.S. ports

Today's news on the U.S. port story just keeps getting more alarming by the minute.

We have George W. Bush calling everyone who disagrees with the sale of our ports to the United Arab Emirates "racist" -- this after spending four years whipping Americans into a frenzy of hatred for Arabs and playing on that fear and loathing to paint an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden which never existed.

A connection between Osama Bin Laden and the United Arab Emirates DOES exist, however -- and these are the people to whom Bush is giving the keys to the ports:

The ties with bin Laden and the Taliban reach far back into the '90s. Prominent Persian Gulf officials, including members of the UAE royal family, and businessmen would fly to Kandahar on UAE and private jets for hunting expeditions, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2001. In addition to ranking UAE ministers, these parties included Saudi big wigs like Prince Turki, the former Saudi intelligence minister who now is ambassador to the U.S.

General Wayne Downing, Bush's former national director for combating terrorism, was quoted on MSNBC in September, 2003 saying, "They would go out and see Osama, spend some time with him, talk with him, you know, live out in the tents, eat the simple food, engage in falconing, some other pursuits, ride horses. One noted visitor is Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktum, United Arab Emirates Defense Minister and Crown Prince for the emirate of Dubai.''

Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar joined the hunting parties, and there are suspicions Al Qaeda and Taliban personnel are smuggled out on returning flights.

Here is one report, sourced to the 9-11 Commission, appearing in Paul Thompson's 9-11 timeline:

"February 1999: Bin Laden Missile Strike Called Off for Fear of Hitting Persian Gulf Royalty. Intelligence reports foresee the presence of bin Laden at a desert hunting camp in Afghanistan for about a week. Information on his presence appears reliable, so preparations are made to target his location with cruise missiles. However, intelligence also puts an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and members of the royal family from that country in the same location. Bin Laden is hunting with the Emirati royals, as he did with leaders from the UAE and Saudi Arabia on other occasions (see 1995-2001). Policy makers are concerned that a strike might kill a prince or other senior officials, so the strike never happens. A top UAE official at the time denies that high-level officials are there, but evidence subsequently confirms their presence. (9-11 Commission Report, 3/24/04 (B))"

It remains a key center of operations for Victor Bout, the notorious arms dealer, with ties to Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were also ties to the infamous BCCI.

As the Financial Times put it, in the UAE, "Western fraud investigators may find a link here or a connection there, with a person suspected of breaking western laws. But in Dubai, and its neighbor Sharjah, trails tend to vanish like wind-blown tracks in desert sands . . . Secrecy keeps everyone guessing—and speculating . . . 'Medieval feudalism' is how one senior western banker described Dubai's style of government, 'with a veneer of 21st century regulations.' "

If Bush allows this sale, I don't want to hear about Bill Clinton and the aspirin factory, or about how he missed hitting Bin Laden, ever again.

My tinfoil hat would say that this is laying the groundwork for another 9/11-style attack, under the assumption that since it worked for Bush last time, it would work for him again -- especially with his approval ratings hovering around the 39% mark and an increasing majority regarding his pride and joy -- the war in Iraq -- as a mistake.

But especially with the hue and cry coming from BOTH parties in Washington, and upon closer examination of the financial considerations in the deal affecting those making the decision (John Snow, I'm talking to you), I'm thinking more that this is a bribe to the OAE emirs to keep them investing in U.S. dollars by selling off American assets to them. Because if they dump dollars and start buying in Euros instead, this country is going to be like Germany after WWII and we'll be insulating our walls with dollars because that's all they'll be good for.

Bushie's done a heck of a job, hasn't he?

Why the light blogging?

I'm a strong believer in equal rights. One of the rights I believe in is the right of nonsmokers to take a break during the day the same way smokers do. Some people need a break to smoke, I take blog breaks.

There's just one problem, and that is a crackdown on non-work-related internet usage at my place of employment. This seems to be driven by bandwidth considerations, and my investigative interviews with the tech support staff indicates that there are people doing massive FTP downloads and such, compared to which my occasional 10-minute forays into Blogger are but specks of sand in the desert. Still, when I hear about potential examination of system logs, I get paranoid, and so I have had to abandon my blog breaks until I have a better handle on just how severe this crackdown is.

As it is, it's hard enough reading the local paper, skimming the New York Times online and getting a workout in before going to work, but I'll try to get at least one entry posted before work and another posted in the evening.

Distancing from Bush

With Republicans and Democrats finally agreeing on something -- that having an emir-ruled Islamic country constantly under threat of being overthrown by radicals running the ports in this country is a horrifically bad idea -- one has to wonder how on earth the usually savvy Bush Administration got involved with something so dumb.

Once you start seeing Republicans on Capitol Hill distancing themselves from Bush, something is going on.

Never mind how utterly hilarious it is to see Congressional Republicans talking about checks and balances now, when they didn't care about it in the context of the warrantless wiretaps, what is really going on?

Occam's Razor, combined with the pattern of the Bush Administration, indicates that this is just another case of Bush cronyism:

The administration signed off on the deal after it was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a closed interagency panel chaired by Treasury Secretary John Snow.

Snow was chairman of CSX, a rail firm that, according to the New York Daily News, sold its own port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, a year after Snow left to head Treasury. The Treasury Department didn't respond to a request for comment.

Last month, Bush nominated David Sanborn, who heads DP World's European and Latin American operations, to head the U.S. Maritime Administration. Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sanborn does work for the company, but "we're told he had nothing to do with the transaction."

That would make sense, since Bush has never cared about how his crony appointments look. And given the frenzy last week over Dick Cheney's hunting accident, it's possible that the Administration believed that would continue to overshadow everything else -- including this deal.

Last night terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann stated emphatically on Countdown with Keith Olbermann that concerns about these were completely overblown and that there is no more risk here than with any other country. And it's possible that he's right.

But we have long spent huge sums of money propping up the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia in order to keep that country from falling into the hands of jihadists; are we now going to do the same in Dubai, turning it into a Muslim version of Israel -- strategically vital to our interests?

Dubai may in fact be our buddy pal at the moment (though its recognition of the Taliban in Afghanistan, its position as a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and its history of transferring money to the 9/11 hijackers through its banking system have been conveniently forgotten), but when the Bush Administration wants to be able to spy on any American it wants to at any time, for any reason, in the name of the so-called "War on Terror", one has to wonder why Dubai's history seems to matter not a whit.

This is either the height of Bush Administration arrogance (which is still entirely possible), or else it is the sacrificial lamb that allows Republicans on the Hill to distance themselves from Bush over something easy, thus positioning them to run as separate entities from him in November. Or else people other than Bush are really running things and he was caught off-guard and now has to scramble to try to convince people that he's not just the executive branch equivalent of the erstwhile Pets.com sock puppet:

MoDo, today:

What kind of empire are we if we have to outsource our coastline to a group of sheiks who don't recognize Israel, in a country where money was laundered for the 9/11 attacks? And that let A. Q. Kahn, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, smuggle nuclear components through its port to Libya, North Korea and Iran?

It's mind-boggling that President Bush ever agreed to let an alliance of seven emirs be in charge of six of our ports. Although, as usual, Incurious George didn't even know about it until after the fact. (Neither did Rummy, even though he heads one of the agencies that green-lighted the deal.)

Same old pattern: a stupid and counterproductive national security decision is made in secret, blowing off checks and balances, and the president's out of the loop.

Was W. too busy not calling Dick Cheney to find out why he shot a guy to not be involved in a critical decision about U.S. security? What is he waiting for — a presidential daily brief warning, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S. Ports?"

Our ports are already nearly naked in terms of security. Only about 5 percent of the containers coming into the country are checked. And when the White House assures us that the Homeland Security Department will oversee security at the ports, is that supposed to make us sleep better? Not after the chuckleheaded Chertoff-and-Brownie show on Capitol Hill.

Regardless of the answer to that question, it's clear that Congressional Republicans are the big winners here so far.

Five Food Challenges

Sue tagged me for the Five Food Challenges meme a couple of weeks back. I know, I've taken a while to respond. Don't you love procrastination too?Helen's Five Food Challenges for 2006Bake breadEvery celebrity chef / foodblogger / toddler I know waxes lyrical about how satisfying it is to bake your own bread. I love baking cakes but for some reason I have this trepidation when it comes to yeast.

Five Food Challenges

Sue tagged me for the Five Food Challenges meme a couple of weeks back. I know, I've taken a while to respond. Don't you love procrastination too?Helen's Five Food Challenges for 2006Bake breadEvery celebrity chef / foodblogger / toddler I know waxes lyrical about how satisfying it is to bake your own bread. I love baking cakes but for some reason I have this trepidation when it comes to yeast.

Reports of the death of Controller society have been greatly exaggerated

Interesting piece by Jesse Kornbluth at HuffPo:

That day after I studied the Abu Ghraib images, I stumbled over gay sex again. This time, it was in a conversation with a Media Guru about the upcoming Academy Awards. He saw a ratings disaster. "After Jon Stewart's opening segment," he said, "everyone will change the channel."

"What makes you think so?"

"This country isn't going to show up to watch 'Brokeback Mountain' win a bunch of awards."

He's probably right. It doesn't matter that "Brokeback" has out-earned all of the Best Picture nominees. Or that Bill O'Reilly's prophesy --- "This movie does not do big box office outside the big cities. It won't. They're not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana" --- has been proven wrong, not just in "liberal" Missoula and Helena but in hard-core Billings and other "Red" strongholds as well.

So here's my question: Why are so many Americans --- most of them living where there's no uncloseted homosexual for miles --- so full of fear and hate for gay men? (Gay women are another story; just ask any horny guy.) Why is gay sex unacceptable within our borders, but ideal to export to foreign torture chambers? Why, of all our urgent issues, is homosexuality right up there at the top?

I thought of no end of reasons, few profound. So, on a whim, I phoned Philip Slater, the distinguished sociologist best known for his 1970 classic, The Pursuit of Loneliness. Dr. Slater has clearly taken oddball calls before; he was willing to think aloud with me.

There was a study, he told me, of reactions to heterosexual pornography and gay pornography. Two groups of men were tested: one gay, one of men who described themselves as "homophobic." Both were electronically wired so they could be measured for sexual arousal. Interestingly, the homophobes were not especially aroused by the male/female porn. What turned them on? The gay porn. Which presents the question: Why do homophobes hang around gay bars to beat up gay men when they could be at straight bars meeting women?

Then Slater suggested a more provocative question: Why are people on the Christian and political Right so angry when they seem to be winning?

I suggested some sort of twisted sexual rage --- their religions limited their sexual expression and that made them jealous of those who felt unfettered by religious constraints.

Slater had another response: The Christian Right and the political conservatives are not winning. And they know it. That's what infuriates them.

Slater briefly took me through a line of argument that he explains fully in a dazzlingly upbeat essay, America is Polarized. In brief, he sees America --- and the planet --- undergoing "the most revolutionary cultural shift in the history of our species." In response. we tend to join one of two camps: "Control Culture," which clings to rigid, traditional beliefs, and "Connecting Culture," which aims to knock down walls and boundaries.

To read this essay is to be greatly cheered. The spread of democracy, the Women's Movement, the global economy, the ecology movement, the Internet --- everything reasonable people care about is a manifestation of the Connecting Culture. And that culture is growing fast, fueled by technology, global communication, planetary awareness and what Slater calls "the decreasing utility of war."

Ever since we were blessed with the Bush presidency, I've been searching for a way to look at what's happening in this country that doesn't make me feel sick at heart. Slater may not have the ultimate answer --- but he gets you to 30,000 feet fast. From there, you can look around for yourself. At the very least, you can feel the beginning of compassion for those who feel the need to be in "Control" --- people so freaked out by change that they fixate on gays.

Alas, I wish I could share Slater's upbeat vision and buy into it the way Kornbluth does, but I think we're a long way off from vanquishing "The Controllers". For one thing, they now control all three branches of the U.S. government, and they are hard at work changing the entire legal structure to ensure their continued power, and in the unlikely event that they lose it, ensuring that the Controller legacy remains intact. For another thing, any essay which cites gains made 30 years ago and a bunch of lawyers arguing that chimpanzees should be accorded legal status as persons as evidence that things are changing is automatically suspect, as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, and many other states are scrambling to do whatever they have to in order to ensure that the same thing doesn't happen in their backyards. Yes, Brokeback Mountain is the odds-on favorite to win the Best Picture Academy Award, and next year Batman will be fighting Al Qaeda.

I do believe that once this country actually DOES become the repressive, Christian dominionist theocracy that is the direction in which we're headed, people will rebel and realize what they've allowed themselves to buy into. However, the legal structure will be such by then that it will be too late.