the wall street journal correctly credits bloggers, specifically three bloggers working on dkos in the beginning, as the only folks in the world who made sure that the downing street memo got into the public consciousness:

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while trying madly to reach a million hits for our third blogiversary (yes! talkleft coined that phrase!) we stumbled upon a truly conservative blog called cynical nation .

now, by “truly” conservative, we don’t mean way more conservative than lgf (that would be nigh impossible). no, we mean “conservative” in the literal, old school definition of the term: wanting to conserve (budget, environment, values); a real-life libertarian, not a wannabe who likes shouting for the sake of shouting.

cynical nation, when we visited, was still reeling over the kelo v. big corporate greed (sup.ct. 2005) decision, a ruling which, to be quite honest, we ourselves found to be both reprehensible and unsurprising.

reprehensible because, of course, it sets precedents for governments and corporations to steal take private property from land owners under the guise of “eminent domain.” unsurprising, because, well, in our minds, who wouldn’t expect something from a political environment in which corporations and government are fusing all too much.

cynical nation points out that appointing administrations had little to do with the justices’ individual views:

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My, my, my, things sure have changed in the town I grew up in.

To add some perspective, North Falmouth is a rather puritan old town. But like most of Cape Cod, the smalltown atmosphere changes in the summer, when the urbanites from elsewhere in New England come flocking to clog the roads and beaches.

As a result, kids growing up there get exposed to the high-living ways of the (usually) wealthier tourists, a lifestyle that’s generally unsustainable the other 9 months of the year. To add some perspective to that, if a home rents for $1,000 per month in the winter, it will often rent for $1,000 per week in the summer. That annual boom/bust price cycle makes it a difficult place to afford to live, on non-union wages. I’ve always presumed this is true in most seasonal resort towns.

Add to that, the fairly puritan atmosphere that pervaded there in the 50s and 60s, and this article definitely displays how times have changed, as the alleged house of ill repute is within a mile and on the same street as the old Hayden home my folks sold in the 80s.

But I also found a nugget in the story that’s personally interesting:

‘’I've never seen any activity, except for people buying flowers,'’ said Holly Stone Perry, a North Falmouth resident who works at the North Falmouth Diner near Phillips’ home.

Holly Stone was a year younger than me. Her older brother, Andy, was a classmate who I believe is now a Massachusetts state trooper. Of course, I remember him when we were both at summer Boy Scout camp, and he was shoplifting booze from the nearby liquor store. It’s kind of interesting that Holly now works at the diner. She was always the studious one from a large Catholic family of 9 or 10 children, so it kinda surprises me she didn’t go further. But such is the curse of Cape Cod, where the allure of its ocean can overcome career aspirations of even the studious non-partiers.

But back to the sex-for hire story… when my brother sent it today, I replied to his email:

So these two gals were selling sex for money and one of them’s 49 and $250/hr was her rate? Geeze, talk about inflation!

I’m 52. At prices like that, perhaps I need to revalue my income potential and consider a career change.

-No S&M Boytoy Kevin

It might even exceed the lucrative field of blogging, a similar trade that requires some whoring while hidden behind flowers, and can be performed while naked in front of strangers.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

-Jean Baudrillard

I was reading a post at MJW Stickings’ ‘The Reaction’ ,along with the discussion that follows in the Comments section. The topic, which is GOP desperation, was sparked by a Steve Soto piece at ‘The Left Coaster’, saying that, if VP Dick Cheney sees the need to “shoot at a fellow Republican [Chuck Hagel] over Iraq, it’s because the Administration is headed into the dumper by its own making, and the GOP natives are getting restless.

John McCain has been called a “nutjob” by his own. McCain may attempt to marginalize activist/lobbyist Grover Norquist, but political insiders know about the influential Mr. Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform. (For those who do not know him, Norquist is the man who wants to “cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”) Norquist condescendingly and disrespectfully referred to Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe as “the two girls from Maine“. Norquist is attempting to introduce the label of “ANTI-MAINSTREAM” into his attacks and arguments against moderate Republicans, whom he claims are “out of the GOP mainstream.”

The co-opting of the word “mainstream” by radical conservatives will not fly in the face of reality.

Hearing these words of desperation from GOP activists, I sense that there is serious fear of the successful effect of many of the well-organized efforts of grassroots organizations such as DFA and Moveon.org. I can see that fear resonating throughout the right side of the blogosphere. Finally, someone on the other side has caught on to what the GOP has known for at least 20 years. People can harness great power when they organize and unite. The internet has made MoveOn.org an unstoppable powerhouse. Karl Rove has recently invoked their name, not in the hope of dividing the nation between GOP and Dem, but in the direct hope of dividing what he sees as the “traditional/centrist Democrats” from the progressive, free-thinking Democrats (Rove calls them “liberal”, GOP code for Satan). Rove fails to realize that Democrats have caught onto the parlor trick known as “label-and-divide”, and all it took was the Bush administration’s tactical and strategic failures in Iraq to help Democrats (and many Independents) to pull back the curtain and reveal “The Wizard of Rove”, aka ‘Bush’s Brain’, for the fat-headed flim-flam man that he is.

Iraq has turned out to be the Achilles heel of Bush and the GOP.

A longtime Bush apologist named Joel Mowbray, who inspired Pat Robertson to emulate a terrorist and say he wanted to nuke Foggy Bottom, says that Bush, in his speech, “neither tried to justify the rationale for the war nor was there any shift in his position.” I agree with that statement. There was nothing new, at least nothing of any value to Americans looking for a new strategy. You can feel Mowbray’s fear of Moveon.org in the next statement:

While the speech contained little news of any sort, it did achieve a very important goal�€”one that is crucial in the face of the moveon.org crowd�€™s white noise campaign: it laid out in clear fashion the entire framework of what we�€™ve done in Iraq, what we�€™re doing now, where we�€™re headed, and most significantly, why it�€™s important that we prevail.

Mowbray is so lost in the fantasy that I find him to be amusing, as I would find a robot, a broken record, or a cult film about zombies to be amusing.

In the face of all Americans who are paying attention to reality, the only thing that was made “clear” in the Bush speech was that he is never going to change; he will never have the humility and grace that is possessed by the kind of leader who could steer a united nation or the world community toward meaningful peace; and - after the Downing Street memo revelation and confirmation of his lies and misleading - he will never again have the trust of the citizens of the United States.

Bush may have three years left to limp along on his Achilles heel, but he’s over and done.

Say hello to old teammate, seminarian and advocate for the poor, Chuck Currie:

Chuck Currie, a student at UCC-related Eden Theological Seminary who has operated a UCC-oriented web log for close to two years, will provide commentary and analysis of the important decisions being made during this week�€™s meeting of the General Synod on the UCC�€™s new web log.

Currie, whose own web log has received mention in media outlets across the country �€“ including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and Religion News Service �€“ will post his comments and analysis at least several times a day during Synod, which begins Friday and runs through Tuesday.

The web log �€“ or �€œblog�€� for short �€“ will also provide an outlet for members of the public to post their own thoughts and analysis of Synod events.

�€œChuck Currie has been a pioneer in the blog movement,�€� said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, editor of United Church News and the UCC�€™s news director. �€œWe�€™re fortunate that he is willing to be our guest blogger during Synod. We think his contributions will go a long way in helping us to jumpstart our new, emerging UCC blog.�€�

Chuck put his own blog on hiatus to help get the UCC blog going. Among the decisions he’ll be reporting on, in his own words:

“The UCC will be considering some pretty important issues (a proposal to endorse gay marriage and leveraging church resources to put pressure on companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine are two of the big ones) and the religious right is already attacking the progressive stance of the UCC. You’ll remember that last year CBS and NBC even banned our television commercials.”

It’s always good to see faith, tolerance (read: kindness to people) and justice working hand in hand in the progressive community of believers. As opposed to those in the regressive ones who still think we’re living in 200 BCE.

Sen. John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent in last year’s presidential election, told NBC’s “Today” show that the borders of Iraq “are porous” and said “we don’t have enough troops” there.

Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” disputed Bush’s notion that sufficient troops are in place.

“I’m going to send him the phone numbers of the very generals and flag officers that I met on Memorial Day when I was in Iraq,” the Delaware Democrat said. “There’s not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency.” …

Beyond their criticism, some Democrats said they thought Bush strengthened his credibility. “I think he told the American people why it’s important,” said Biden.

Said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.: “The president needs to do more of what he did last evening. This is a beginning.”

With “enemies” like these, Our Noble Lame Duck doesn’t even need any friends.

BushCo would like his speech from last night to close the door on his War in Iraq for the next few years. Let’s be sure that doesn’t happen. You’ve written your letter to the editor already, right? Now here are two dates to keep in mind as you plan your July and September:

July 23rd is Downing Street Memo Day

Click on the image for details and find out how you can participate.

September 24 is the date set by ANSWER for an anti-war march in Washington D.C. with satellite marches going on in Los Angelos, San Franciso. They really need to contact The Heretik or Agitprop to get a good graphic for the event. For now, click here to learn the details. If you can’t be in D.C., LA or San Francisco, organize a rally in your town.

And speaking of events - August is still open. Social Security turns seventy in August. The UAW turns seventy this year. Someone do me a favor and get the Dems to organize a big birthday party for everything that makes America great. They can buck the wisdom of Andrew Card and take the opportunity to roll out their brave new agenda at the same time. Or they can just sit around and wonder why nobody knows they exist outside the punchlines in late-night talkshow hosts’ jokes. I’m sure they’re earning that $161K salary in lots of other ways.

What, did Shrub give a speech last night? Dang, sorry I missed it.

Instead of subjecting my liver to that miserable smirking fratboy I was enjoying the spectacle of my newly beloved Washington Naturals administering a 2-1 baseball drubbing of the dog-ass Pittsburgh Pirates. New righthander Ryan Drese, making his RFK debut, turned in eight stalwart innings, giving up only one run as the Nats eked out a 2-1 victory in their now accustomed scrappy style.

There’s not much to dislike about this team.

But boy, wouldn’t it be just gravy to have an owner that didn’t make you want to take a shower? Can I get a “right on,” Yanks fans? Brewers faithful? Los Angeles Angels at Anaheim flock?

Seems billionaire lie-beral philanthopist and Nobel Prize nominee George Soros has joined with one of the several groups bidding to buy the Nats from their Major League Baseball durance. This has set the cat among the pigeons a little bit down at the Congress.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) is not at all happy that an actual, card-carrying donor to the MoveOn PAC has dared to show his face in a town where His Sort are most emphatically Not Invited. In Roll Call, (via the Stakeholder, the DCCC blog) Davis, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform which has been investigating steroid usage in baseball, is quoted: “I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes. I don’t think they want to get involved in a political fight.”

Roll Call continues,

Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, “I don’t think it’s the Nats that get hurt. I think it’s Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions” from anti-trust laws.

Indeed, Hill Republicans could potentially make life difficult for MLB in a variety of ways. In addition to being exempt from anti-trust rules, baseball is still under scrutiny over the steroid issue. The Nats, meanwhile, hope to have a publicly-funded stadium built soon, though money for that venture is expected to come through the sale of bonds rather than a federal outlay.

Still, Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that covers the District of Columbia budget, said if Soros buys the team and seeks public funding for the new stadium or anything else, the GOP attitude would be, “Let him pay for it.”

“We’re not going to interfere with [the sale], but from a fan’s perspective, who needs the politics?” Sweeney said.

Another senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said that the league should be aware of the perception problem that might be associated with selling the Nats to Soros.

“Why would Major League Baseball want to get involved with George Soros?” said the lawmaker. “It’s about more than just the sale price.”

I’ll let y’all stew in that for a bit.

Sally Jenkins is appropriately scathing in this AM’s WashPost:

I don’t much care about George Soros, and I don’t care at all which rich guy gets the privilege of spending $400 million in heavy sugar on the Nats. But I do care when members of a ruling party start pushing people around, because next, it could be me. This is supposed to be the party that doesn’t believe in government telling business or private citizens what to do. So here’s what I have to say to Davis about that: Get your boot off my front porch, mister.

Today’s conventional wisdom regarding BushCo’s 9/11-packed call for other’s people’s children to sign up to kill and die in the Middle East is that he said nothing new. To a very large extent that it true, but only Billmon (who else?) has picked up a definite new direction in the ever-shifting patented BushCo-brand Post-war PR Plan:

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Journalists don’t read the Bible.

Definitely they aren’t familiar with the Book of Ecclesiastes, wherein thus saith the Preacher:

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.

American journalists, TV and print, routinely react to events as if the act of winning is proof of brains, skill, strength, and God’s favor. This is especially true of sportswriters and announcers who are quick to pronounce every winner a genius or a hero. But it’s also true of the reporters covering politics inside the Beltway, which explains how a thief and a thug like Tom DeLay managed to operate as if he was the Republican Tip O’Neill, only less partisan, and how an obvious con artist and snake oil salesman like Karl Rove gets pronounced a genius.

I’ll get to the President in a minute.

Rove’s m.o., which has always been simply to lie, lie big, lie often, and when caught lie again, is the oldest trick in the hack politician’s bag of tricks, yet for years now he’s been celebrated in the media as a political wizard rivaling Metternich, Tallyrand, and Lyndon Johnson. Everything Rove knows he learned from Lee Atwater, who was far from an original sleazemeister, but if you listened to all the talk about “Bush’s Brain,” you’d think Rove invented the art of political skullduggery and that it was a good thing, a boon to humanity.

Maybe after last night’s desperate charade some of the shine will be rubbed off of Rove’s star. After all, how boneheaded was it to put Bush on TV standing in front of a lot of (not very enthusiastically applauding) soldiers to tell the world what everybody and his brother knows is not true, that things are going well in Iraq? You couldn’t help thinking of the last time the President stood in front of a cheering crowd of military personnel to announce the good news. They didn’t put a Mission Accomplished banner behind him, but everybody watching saw one in their mind’s eye.

But it won’t be because the stunt was obviously a stunt, and a foolish, grasping at straws sort of stunt that Rove will come in for criticism. It will be because the stunt didn’t do the trick. Didn’t rescue Bush in the polls. In other words, Rove didn’t win with it.

As for Bush himself, well, Kathy Flake at What Do I Know is hopeful that at last the media will finally begin to notice that the Emperor has no clothes!

I hope so. But what baffles me is why they ever thought the man was well-dressed to begin with.

I’ve heard it argued that after 9/11, because the country needed a wise and strong leader and we obviously didn’t have one, the media decided to treat W. as if he was what he wasn’t to keep up the nation’s morale, scare our enemies, and maybe help W. grow into being what we needed him to be. This is a plausible argument, but I don’t buy it because the dressing up of W. by the media began way before 9/11, before he became president.

W. first came to my attention, and therefore must have come to the national media’s notice or how else would I have heard of him, twenty years ago as the angry, spoiled, less than bright, and still drunken, son of the Vice President, throwing his weight around his father’s office. He left an impression that shouldn’t have been easy to shake, especially when he decided to run for president and which should have sunk him when his main challenger for the Republican nomination was John McCain. It was amazing that any one in the media could take W. seriously when he was standing besides McCain. But they did.

Not only that, after he had trounced McCain, by letting Rove go to work on McCain’s reputation as a war hero—and how did John Kerry miss that one and not prepare better for when his time came?—the media seemed to jump on W.’s bandwagon and set out to make him President. I don’t know why. I can’t imagine why. They didn’t like his father much and W. wasn’t even close to being the man George H.W. was. I think it finally has something to do with the media’s intense jealousy and hatred of Bill Clinton. W. somehow became the anti-Bill.and his invented I’m Not Billness became his chief virtue in the media’s eyes.

I can’t explain it, except as more proof that along with not having read Ecclesiastes they’ve never read the Proverbs either.

There are six things which the Lord hates,
seven which are an abonination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and a man who sows discord among brothers.

That would have warned them about Rove, too, wouldn’t it?

Political commentator Steve Perry has a polemic on the “new Democrats” going after Howard Dean:

Two things make Democratic Party powers lose sleep over Dean. The first and less distinct is his taste for the populist rhetorical style. He has a flair for articulating popular anger in popular terms, and he is very good at seeing where to strike. It doesn’t matter much that he is sometimes inarticulate or in less than full command of his factual claims for the same reason it hasn’t mattered in the far more egregious case of George W. Bush: Rank-and-file Democrats and independents who see Dean tend to like him. The unprecedented war chest he amassed from nickel-and-dime donors before the Iowa Massacre is ample proof of it. And this brings us to the more material reason the Democrats hate Howard Dean: He threatens to refigure the fundraising base of the party, however modestly, and thus to shift the balance of power in the party hierarchy.

Read the whole essay here.

While it’s true that Dear Leader was forced by plummeting polls to jump through hoops last night and deliver what had to rank in the top three most deperate and uncomfortable presidential addresses ever, falling somewhere between Nixon’s resignation speech and Clinton’s denial of having sex with that woman, some of our elected representatives look at falling poll numbers and laugh:

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President Bush took his magic act on the road last night. Unfortunately, the big finale–where he draws a curtain over September 11, and out pops Iraq–didn’t wow everyone.

Also last night the President appealed to young people to join up. “There is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces,” he said. I’m sure this will inspire a generation of young Republicans to write letters to the troops, or at least send postcards, or maybe just think about the troops once in a while. ‘Twould be nice.

The theater critics weigh in:

Peter Baker and Dana Milbank, Washington Post:

Bush invoked Sept. 11 five times in his speech and referred to it by implication several more times. Although he has previously agreed with investigators that there is “no evidence” of a link between Saddam Hussein’s government and the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, he used much of his speech to depict the militants in Iraq as the same breed of Islamic terrorist who struck the United States. The White House titled his remarks a discussion on the “War on Terror,” not Iraq.

“This war reached our shores on September 11th, 2001,” Bush said. “The terrorists who attacked us — and the terrorists we face — murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom.” He added that many of the insurgents in Iraq “are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania.”

The address continued a shift in the administration’s emphasis as it has justified the Iraq war, beginning with the threat posed by Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, continuing to the need to promote democracy in the Middle East and now suggesting a more seamless link to the attacks on American soil.

“The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden,” Bush said Tuesday night, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the insurgent leader in Iraq. Bush quoted bin Laden calling the Iraq conflict a “third world war” and added that terrorists “are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11th, 2001.”

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I was reminded by devtob’s dKos diary that we should all be writing letters to the editors of our local papers.   It’s easy if you use PFAW’s action center.  You don’t have to register - just click on "Media."

Devtrob has a sample letter at dKos.  Here’s mine:

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On the other Supremes decision (or non-decision, as it happens), Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller failed to get their day in court. To the pokey with them say the judges. Lefties in an uproar. Example:

KUDOS. To Armando over at DailyKos for standing up against the media-bashing hordes and decrying the Supreme Court’s decision to refer the question of whether there is such a thing as reporter’s privilege back to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which had ruled that there is not. The press-bashing on liberal blogs has gotten so out of hand of late that I’ve begun to worry that progressives are simply aiding and abetting right-wing attempts to undermine the whole concept of an independent and free media, instead of taking the historic liberal position of standing up for it at a time when it’s under fire. It’s nice to see at least one leading progressive blogger recognizing that press-bashing isn’t always the way to go.

Sorry, they’re wrong. If this were an issue of protecting sources, I’d be the first one on the street with my homemade sign. It’s not a question of protecting sources, though. They’re protecting thugs who used their megaphone to commit a very serious crime. Garance Franke-Ruta, who wrote the quote above, gets it exactly backward. If you want to protect the freedom of the press, you need to stand up against goons working for the White House who plant misleading, fake, or in this case illegal information in the press.

During Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein protected their sources to uncover government corruption. During Plamegate the sources are the corruption. Revealing them breaches no ethical line nor breaks any journalistic pact. I don’t have an opinion about the legal merits of the Supremes’ decision not to hear the case, but I think liberals need to get out of a frozen, reactionary mindset here and see press freedom in a much wider context. In the age of Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon, we must remember that not only are reporters not always reporters, but sources aren’t always sources.

And we shouldn’t be protecting them.

Quote of note:

His assessment comes on the heels of a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll that showed public doubts about the war reaching a high point — with more than half saying that invading Iraq was a mistake.

We don’t actually have any doubt the invasion of Iraq is not worth a decade of blood and treasure.

Bush Tries to Ease Doubts Over Iraq War
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
4:50 AM PDT, June 28, 2005

WASHINGTON   President Bush is using the first anniversary of Iraq’s sovereignty to try to ease Americans’ doubts about the mission and outline a winning strategy for a violent conflict that has cost the lives of more than 1,740 U.S. troops and has no end in sight.

In a prime-time address from Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division, Bush was to argue that there is no need to change course in Iraq despite the upsetting images produced by daily insurgent attacks.

And that’s the other thing.

Bush (more like his political strategists and handlers) doesn’t really think "images" are more upsetting than the 1700 dead. Come on, after all the Abu Ghraib (however you spell that shit) pictures you’ve GOT to see those images have no power unless there are Americans dying in them.

It’s evidence of American deaths that is costing Bush support, American deaths in an unnecessary invasion of exactly the type Bush 1 fought off for the benefit of Kuwait and its customers.

And death isn’t something you can hide beneath a barrage of word for very long.

Hiding from reality doesn’t make reality go away…it just makes you need to scramble for balance when it hits you by surprise. And a lot of people are scrambling right now, aren’t they? Were you surprised that recruitment has fallen off as the end of the war receded over the temporal horizon? Were you hit by surprise by the repudiation of the whole pension system? Were you taken by surprise by a Republican suggestion you use a Social Security surplus they have claimed doesn’t exist be diverted?

Are you ready for the next surprise? Obviously there’s something in this Presidency for everyone…

What Bush is going to say tonight will be no surprise, of course. He and his entourage have been re-running their most successful sound bites [sic], simply repeating themselves…with the addition that we are getting back into the plutonium business. I’ve even heard the old "you only report the bad stuff, what about these kittens we saved" canard. They think they are doing the same thing and so expect the same results…they think they are not crazy.

They are wrong.

An inability to accept the nature of events due to beliefs held so deeply as to be fundamental to one’s world view is also a definition of insanity. It’s slightly less cynical than the "same thing/different result" standard. And things have changed. What charging ahead means depends on how close you are to the cliff.

People see Iraq as something that affects them now. The forces of NIMBY—Not In My Back Yard—come into play now. People want solutions that require nothing from them personally. And unless you’ve got vast wealth there is no such solution.

This has got to worry Republicans. They know how many elections it took to change the direction of the nation…one.

It wasn’t a presidential election, either.

But I digress..

The Conference Board tells us today that John and Jane Consumer are feelin’ good. It’s not exactly clear, however, why they are.

First, the numbers.

U.S. consumer confidence rose to a three-year high in June, buoyed by a more optimistic view of the labor market, The Conference Board said in a report on Tuesday.

The Conference Board said its gauge of sentiment rose nearly three points to 105.8 from a revised 103.1 in May. Analysts on average had expected a rise to 104.0 in June.

But why is the American consumer feeling so good? According to The Conference Board,

The improved confidence index came as consumers felt more optimistic about the U.S. labor market. The proportion of consumers saying jobs were “hard to get” in The Conference Board survey declined to 22.6 percent from 24.1 percent.

Now the June employment numbers won’t be released until July 8, but the track record of the US economy so far in 2005 isn’t much to instill confidence. It is true that there have been net gains in jobs consistently since June 2003. At the same time, job growth has been sluggish at best. Over the last five months of 2004 the US economy created an average of 177,000 new jobs per month, not much above the estimated 150,000 per month necessary to simply keep up with population growth. Over the five months of this year we’ve been adding an average of 180,000 jobs per month — thus virtually no change in a year. These figures are even down from 204,000 new jobs per month of the first half of 2004. Perhaps June will turn in a banner number, but even another 200,000 new jobs won’t impress.

John and Jane Consumer can’t be terribly impressed with their wage and salary gains, either. For the last two years, the average earnings of production workers — the 80% of us who are not part of ‘management’ — have been stagnant in real terms.

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided to divide the baby and allow the display of the Ten Commandments on public property … sometimes. In the cases where it’s an effort to promote religion, as in the Kentucky courthouse, the Court ruled it verboten. But in cases where the display was used to promote a movie (Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 schlockfest Ten Commandments), as at the Texas Capitol–well, what the hell. Morning-after appraisals are calling the ruling “confused,” but I think they got it right on.

As an American Buddhist, I’ve watched the Ten Commmandments debate with some wonder. It has been an odd spectacle to watch the contortions of the pro-Decalogue camp argue that it isn’t an issue of “establishment,” but one of free speech. Tony Perkins of the pro-theocracy Family Research Council continues to maintain that “The Ten Commandments have played a crucial role in shaping the values and legal system of the United States and of all Western Civilization.” Cut the bullshit, Tony: your mission statement says you want to “promote the Judeo-Christian worldview.” Putting the Ten Commandments in the Courthouse is explicitly an act of religious establishment--it’s what your nonprofit is dedicated to.

On the other hand, I’m not opposed to public displays of religion. We find in our public squares various sculptural and verbal odes to history and cultural diversity of all stripes, so why should religion be exempt? Public institutions represent the public, and religion is one of the most profound forces shaping it. Why would we ban all reference to it in the public square? If a city, for example, wanted to erect a peace monument to the joining of Christians and Muslims post-9/11 and wished to include language from the Bible and Koran (a good idea, by the way), should this be illegal? It doesn’t meet the test of sensibility–clearly, the intent wouldn’t be religious promotion.

There’s a distinction between acknowledging religion and promoting it. For practicing Christians in a Christian nation, this distinction isn’t always obvious. For me, a Buddhist, it’s critical. I’m not anti-Christian nor am I offended by the Ten Commandments. In fact, they look a whole lot like the vows Buddhists take. (Not that my offense should matter–the Cosntitution doesn’t provide for me not to be offended.) But religious promotion is a different ball of wax altogether. This is a country of Constitutional, not biblical, law. Tony Perkins wants to “promote the Judeo-Christian worldview”–fine, he can do it in one of the hundreds of thousands of churches across the country, not in state courthouses.

Yesterday the Supremes drew this key distinction. It may not have looked particularly elegant, sprawled across the two rulings like it was. But the result was sound: a clear balance between the need for free expression on the one hand, while reasonable stops on promoting a single religion on the other.

George W. Bush has a major speech tonight about what we are doing in Iraq. He will be telling us why this is a nobel cause and worth staying the course. Yet this will be a hard story to sell. Even in the red states he will face a more skeptical audience. As the Dallas Morning News editorial implored: Convince us. Bush speech must reassure U.S. about Iraq. The question is, can Bush convince people now that a majority have come to believe that he “intentionally misled the American public” into the Iraq war?

How did it come to this? That Rove and Bush have lost control of the story? Rove and his propagandists had thought they had found the perfect way to get control of the US - control that they would hold for a generation or more. The propagandists used state of the art techniques to convince people that the war on Iraq was the same as the war on terrorism. But somehow their marketing has slipped. Somehow the reality that was held abay by the cognitive dissonance of a conned public has finally become too much to ignore.

Bill Keller said before the Iraq war started, Bush’s big gamble was that if he was bold enough he could reshape the American political future as completely as FDR did during the depression.

What is Bush’s morning in America? He clearly has the instinct to do big things, and barring some failure of leadership — a serious misadventure abroad, a corroding economy — he has the license. What does America look like if he succeeds?

…What Bush is striving for, on the evidence of the choices he has made so far, is bold in its ambition: markets unleashed, resources exploited. A progressive tax system leveled, a country unashamed of wealth. Government entitlements gradually replaced by thrift, self-reliance and private good will. The safety net strung closer to the ground. Government itself infused with, in some cases supplanted by, the efficiency and accountability of a well-run corporation. A court system dedicated to protecting property and private enterprise and enforcing individual responsibility. A global common market that hums to the tune of American productivity. In the world, America rampant — unfettered by international law, unflinching when challenged, unmatchable in its might, more interested in being respected than in being loved.

And after the 2004 elections, Rove crowed that he had found the way to move the country to the right. But he and Bush living outside of reality did not realize that people pay attention to things that hit close to home. Bush’s Social Security bamboozlepalooza was where they overreached. Rather than convincing the public, Bush’s tour of the country created the vast credibility gap that he now enjoys. And even in the heart of Bush country, the great sales job has been exposed as a snowjob:

Or as [Rep Mark] Udall put it when the [Denver] trio visited his office last week, “The president’s Social Security plans are in trouble, and he himself acknowledged early in the year that he had a hard sales job.”

So it seemed “counterproductive,” he added, to invite only people who agree with you.

Once people began to question his intentions on Social Security, it became much easier for them to see that the administration had a credibility problem on the Iraq front as well. And the Downing Street Memos could no longer be ignored and suppressed. Michael Smith, the journalist who reported on the memos, said, he’d gotten the first of these memos over 8 months earlier, but the story went nowhere then. This time he credits people power for carrying it from the blogs to the front-pages. And it won’t stop now.

Will Bush’s speech work? Depends on who still believes that he has any credibility on these matters. And today, we know that many fewer Americans are going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Mad Cow Disease is back in the news, so I’m re-posting the following from my own site, where it went up last Friday, hoping it may be helpful:

Intro

First, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is one form of a group of brain-wasting diseases known as Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) that is most likely caused by a mutant protein called a prion. It is related to the human Creuztfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD)–which takes various forms–and to kuru, which was orginally first discovered in a cannibal people, the Fore of New Guinea, back in the 50’s. It was found to be passed by eating infected tissue, particularly brain tissue. When humans eat animal tissue infected with BSE, they can develop new variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD).

Animals and humans who contract these diseases will die–no ifs, ands, or buts. They are long-developing diseases, so the victim may not become symptomatic for 4-20 years, depending on the variant. It is a horrible death. The brain literally evaporates, as the proteins erode the tissues and leave holes till it eventually resembles a sponge, hence the name. Once the symptoms show, the victim loses mind, movement, sight, hearing, and then mercifully dies in a matter of months.

The easiest way to contract vCJD from eating infected meat is by eating hamburger or other ground/mixed meat that has been formed prior to your buying it. The process used to stun the animals, and of separating and grinding the meat after hand de-boning, often leaves or spreads brain and spinal tissue through the meat. Eating large chucks of muscle meat, like steak, chops, or roasts almost eliminates the possibility of ingesting stray neurological tissue.

Friday, June 25, 2005

Yesterday evening I first saw it. An almost harmless-looking little blurb in the NYTimes Science Section headed: “Tests Confirm 2nd Case of Mad Cow Disease in U.S.” It went on to say that the USDA had confirmed that a cow had died last November of the disease, but as it hadn’t entered the food chain, all was well. In fact, the animal had tested inconclusively for the disease. Additional testing was done in England, where they take such things seriously, and the test proved positive. Our Secretary for Agriculture had this to say:

“”We are currently testing nearly 1,000 animals per day” as part of the program to detect mad cow disease, Mr. Johanns said. He added that scientists had performed more than 388,000 total tests. “This is the first confirmed case resulting from our surveillance.
“I am encouraged that our interlocking safeguards are working exactly as intended,” he said. “This animal was blocked from entering the food supply because of the firewalls we have in place. Americans have every reason to continue to be confident in the safety of our beef.”
Mr. Johanns also said that beginning immediately, if another cow disease screening test results in inconclusive findings, the department would run two kinds of tests, including the “Western blot” test conducted in England and an immunohistochemistry test.”

In another article the Times ran the same day, the cow in question was said to be a beef cow 8 years of age (very old for an animal raised for beef) and that it was slaughtered at a pet food plant. It was old enough to have been born before a 1997 ban on recycling cattle remains in cattle feed, which is a key vector for the disease. All should be well, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s see. A contingent of U.S. lawmakers members paid a visit to Guantanamo this week, and predictably came back praising the detention facility.

Golly willikers, folks, you don’t think Donnie Rumsfeld ordered the place cleaned up before you came down? Or that he gave strict instructions that “no torture” was to be performed while members of Congress were present?

There is a colloquial term for what they were shown. It’s called a “Potemkin villiage.”

A process that was brought to a high art form by the Soviet Union in the 1930’s. A period of time when deluded marxists and socialists in the United States were duped into believing that Stalin’s regime was creating a paradise on Earth, rather than a vast hellhole.

Oh wait! I just compared Donald Rumsfeld to Stalin! I assume I can expect a deluge of hate e-mail and attacks from the wing-not-o-sphere.

Or not. I’m just a small fry.

I’m glad that Guantanamo is not as bad as it was. And I hope it stays that way.

I do wonder, however, whether these folks have a foggy clue how to interrogate prisoners. According to one report:

“[A] female interrogator took an unusual approach to wear down a detainee, reading a Harry Potter book aloud for hours. He turned his back and put his hands over his ears.”

Harry Potter?!?

First of all, do they evenunderstand English? Or is there an Arabic translation of Harry Potter that I am unaware of?

Oh well.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and Republicans and the White House are growing more and more concerned that Iraq could cost them the Congress next year.

When it comes to making a choice between protecting his political heinie, and national security, Bush will always protect his political heinie. So, expect to see us start to draw down out troops before the mid-term elections.

President Bush is making his Iraq war speech on Tuesday night.

In a prime-time address from Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division, Bush was to argue that there is no need to change course in Iraq despite the upsetting images produced by daily insurgent attacks.

He will drape himself around the troops and use them to try and sell the nation on a bad war that needs a little love. A little patience. A little hard work. The “We’re fighters, not quiters,” nonsense will be spewing out of his mouth as mumbled and pointed as ever.
A right wing commentor said this:

“For Bush to be most effective in his primetime speech, he needs to start right off with positive statistics. Let people know that we are getting things accomplished, despite the constant doom and gloom we hear from the MSM.

For some reason though, Bush never does that. He starts off with these grandiose moral narratives, which is nice, but we already know all of that. We know the “killers” are “bad people” who “hate democracy”. That much is obvious. But how many schools have we helped to rebuild? How many hospitals, etc. Let the fence-sitters know this isnt all in vain.

Yes President Bush, let’s hear about all the great things going on in Iraq. Please tell us how much electricity and clean water is being provided to the populace? This poor fool doesn’t understand that if there were any successes to talk about the right wing noise machine would be spreading it through the media as fast as the Swift Boat Liars were.

You can bet “remember September 11th” will be mentioned as many times as his stammering approach to english will allow him. The saddest part of this orchestrated affair is that Bush is playing his usual game of loading the audience. Only this time he is using our proud millitary to be his props. Hasn’t he learned anything since his broken down Social Security tour hurt his cause rather than helped it?

This LA Times op-ed by Oregon Democratic Party Chair Jim Edmunson presents an interesting take on Dean vs. Washington.

Shout It Out, Howard, We’re Listening

Howard Dean’s election as Democratic National Committee chairman was a shot across the bow of Washington’s power clique, so it does not surprise us at the state-party level in Oregon that he is making our kin inside the Beltway nervous.

In fact, it delights us.

This is what I’m seeing within the Party: the folks out in the states, especially the West, are thrilled that Dean is bringing a new approach and some backbone to the Party. They’re jazzed about the 50-state strategy and excited at the thought of support for year-round organizing everywhere in America.

It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party can pull it off, but I, for one, think it’s high time we tried something new.

The new Democrats.org web site is pretty snazzy too.

Now, I’m technically a party insider (a very newbie member of the DNC from Oregon), so I get a lot more communications from the DNC than most of you, but it really does feel like things are changing. What does it look like from out there? Do you perceive any difference yet? What else would you like to see?

The Supreme Court today unexpectedly split the difference on posting copies of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and on the grounds of public buildings, ruling 5 to 4 that only three of them could be placed on display, but seven others were improper under the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion. The opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, was vehemently dissented from by both the “right” (Justices Scalia and Thomas), and the “left” (Justices Stevens and Ginsburg). Scalia wrote that all ten should be okayed, while Stevens wrote that none of them should have been allowed.

In prefatory remarks O’Connor said that the majority realized that no decision could please all sides, so they had tried to compromise between them both as practically as they could. She indicated that the majority accepted in part the argument that some displays would be permissible if portrayed neutrally in order to honor the nation’s legal history. However, they ruled that this could only apply to the parts which actually are still valid legally. The majority therefore went over the various Commandments to see which ones still passed Constitutional muster.

The three which may be posted under this decision are the prohibitions on murder, stealing, and bearing false witness against neighbors. The reasoning of the majority on the others is summarized here:

• The ban on having “other gods” clearly refers to laws against blasphemy and heresy, which have been repeatedly struck down already, and would further be a problem in effectively banning polytheistic religions, which would also violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
• The making of graven images, while it might be subject to zoning, land use, and aesthetic controls under due process of law, is usually listed only as a commandment by Protestants, and therefore to enforce this would improperly discriminate against Catholics, again violating the establishment clause.
• Taking the Lord’s name in vain could only be considered as possibly permissible as part of a broader ban on incitive hate speech in general, including disparagement of any and all deities, and therefore if stated in this form does not pass the test of the establishment clause.
• Likewise, it can be permissible to require a “day of rest” for employees, or even businesses, but not if that day is set by law on the basis of any particular religious practice; again, this fails the establishment clause.
• Adultery between consenting adults in private must be held just as legal as sodomy; therefore bans of this practice are illegitimate, although civil suits may still be permissible, and this Commandment may also not be posted.
• Finally, coveting the wife of a neighbor implies that a female spouse is human property, which is banned under the Thirteenth Amendment. This also applies to a neighbor’s slaves. The court said it would be okay to ban actions pursuant to coveting of a neighbor’s horseflesh, under cruelty to animal statutes, but the prohibition of coveting any property of a neighbor would in effect destroy the very basis of American capitalistic enterprise, namely desire to better oneself.

In response to the decision, the offending Kentucky courthouses said they would be opening the frames and cutting out the seven Commandments they are no longer allowed to post, while the state of Texas promised to call in an engraver to delete the “unhistorical” parts of their monument at the Capitol.

It’s taken me a few days to get around to saying this…..but, what the hell just happened?

Life is good, things are normal. We’re calling them Nazis, they’re calling us terrorists. Just another lovely day in the U.S. of A. *yawn*

Then Kelo v. New London happens, and suddenly I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I was appalled when I read about the eminent domain ruling. Then I was even more appalled when I read who voted for it.

At first, I figured it must be a misprint.

Here’s a little peek into my thought process at the time:

CNN must have got it backwards, right? That seems reasonable. CNN kind of sucks.
flip
Oh wait, but MSNBC must have it wrong too then! Hmm. Also not out of the question.
click
And the Times.
click click click click click click click click click
And every other news source in the world.
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And the official SCOTUS website.
click
WTF??????

Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to wake up to a day where things that Clarence Thomas, Michelle Malkin, and (god help me) Tucker Carlson say make sense to me?

Had my liberal ideals somehow wore off? A voo-doo curse perhaps?

Or had the Republicans finally grown a heart over-night? I admit that the thought of Antonin Scalia’s tiny little heart swelling up–just like when the Grinch sees all the little Whos in Whoville singing on Christmas morn–WAS pretty entertaining…..but highly unlikely.

The lines between Republican and Democratic have always seemed a little random and arbitrary to me. I’ve always thought that maybe the party founders all sat in a room together over cocktails and picked platform issues out of a hat, so maybe that explains it:

Elephant: OK, first up. I got “Abortion is bad.”
Donkey: Nice one. Let’s see mine….”Abortion rights.” That’s convenient.
Elephant: Cool. We can both spin that. My next one is “Down with contraceptives!” Damn! That’s a toughie!
Donkey: Ouch! Well, this one says “Big business should have limits and everybody has the same rights, no matter what their income.”
Elephant: Hmm. Mine says “Big businesses and the filthy rich should get all sorts of special treatment.” Ew.
Donkey: “Wal-mart, strip malls, and really anybody richer than you can take your house if they want it.” Oh….dear.

This just doesn’t make any sense to me. But whatever the reason for it, it certainly puts us liberals in a pretty pickle-y place. I mean, we can either stand in agreement with the conservatives on the issue, making our so-called “liberal activist” judges look like jerks, setting them up to be the demons in the inevitable upcoming abortion debate. OR we can rationalize how this is really a good decision….making US look like jerks for taking away dear old Grannie’s house to make way for the Wal-mart.

Or we can just not say anything about it, I guess. Which also sort of makes us look like jerks, by forfeit.

I think we just got played in a pretty nasty game of “good-cop, bad-cop.”

Whenever President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or any other Bush administration official, or flack, claims that setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea…make them explain WHY in detail.

Force them to provide a logical explanation for why it’s a bad idea.

As many of you know, I’ve been an advocate for setting a specific timetable for withdrawal. I believe it is not only beneficial politically to advocate this position, but it is also smarter from a military and strategic standpoint.

See my posts, here and here, for my thoughts previously expounded.

It is no longer enough for the Bush administration to say that setting a timetable is bad, just because they say so. Nor can they claim, in my view, that it would simply allow the insurgents to “wait us out,” and attack when we leave.

There are a number of serious logical fallacies associated with this argument. Not the least of which is the enormous military and strategic value of splitting the nationalist insurgents from the jihadists. [See this post of mine for more details on that issue.

Apparently, nationalist insurgents are willing to give the United States as long as FIVE YEARS to withdraw its forces from Iraq, in exchange for a ceasefire.

That’s even longer than I would have insisted upon. I believe a 24 month timetable is feasible. But, heck, if the Iraqi nationalist insurgents are willing to tack on an extra three years, I’d be willing to accept it provided we get some cooperation from them on stabilizing Iraq, and taking out the Jihadsts.

The “they’ll just wait us out” rationale also fails logic 101 for another reason. If, in fact, the insurgents dial down their attacks for, say, 2-3 years while we draw down our forces, that will in and of itself have a temendous positive effect on the Iraqi economy, and will improve popular support for the current Iraqi Gvt.

Violence will be down significantly. Commerce will pick up. Fear will dissipate, and Iraqis will get more and more comfortable with domestic tranquility. It will be akin to the ceasfires in Northen Ireland, which got the people in Belfast and elsewhere used to PEACE!

Now, it’s almost impossible for the IRA or the Unionist brigades to start up the violence again without a major public backlash. Their support would dry up.

I think the same would be true in Iraq. The population there currently has a fatalistic view of violence. They don’t like it, but they feel there’s not much they can do about it. So, they just kind of live with it. They don’t really have a peaceful frame of reference to compare it to.

If you give them one, they will not respond kindly to a resumption of violence.

The corrolary to this point is that the insurgents will somehow keep up the pace of their attacks for the entire drawdown period.

But, this obvuoiusly disproves the argument that the insurgents will “wait us out,” They are already attacking US and Iraqi forces with everything they can muster.

I suspect, however, that even without cutting a deal, the nationalist Iraqi insurgents will find it hard to stay motivated if they know we are going to leave by a date certain.

What’s the point of continuing their attacks?

The residual anti-US sentiment in Iraq proving aid and comfort for the nationalists will dissipate if we say we’re going to leave.

Finally, it may be possible to announce a US troops withdrawal timetable, in conjunction with a UN mandated replacement force (a la Kosovo) drawn from other nations. Maybe even from the Arab league.

I don’t thnk this last scenario shows much promise, quite frankly. But it is an option.

All in all, I think Iraq may wind up being more like Algeria than Switzerland when all is said and done.

And that is probably about as much as one could expect at this point.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari said today that:

“[T]wo years will be enough, and more than enough, to establish security in our country . . . .”

Let’s see. We now have the Iraqi Prime Minister saying that two years (my preferred timetable) is “more than enough” time to etsablish security in Iraq. [Outside of the United States, of course. Where that little tidbit doesn’t fit Bush’s propaganda plans].

And we have the nationalist Iraqi insurgents saying they’d accept a timetable that was as long as FIVE years to withdraw all of our forces.

If the Democrats don’t jump on this like a horny teenage boy on a spread-eagled, naked and willing Jessica Simpson…they are the BIGGEST MORONS ON EARTH!