First thing I heard at 5 AM, Pacific time, was that Reid is threatening ... a filibuster. Stop laughing. He is our leader. And his Everlast wardrobe closet is ... ready to go. Those are NOT mothballs you smell. Stop with the jokes.

Leader Reid fights for us and he picks his battles. He warehouses his powder. We need to be appreciative.

Gagging yet? Have a dog bone... and the b-b-blogs will be back to saying all of the above pretty soon.

There is a co-option of message on the b-b-blogs, as they sense some real rebellion in the ranks. No shit. DC looks to be somewhere out past Pluto in terms of being clued into anything on earth... Meanwhile they bluster: gosh! they missed how weak DC is -- Duckworth juuust scraped in, despite spin from DC that the boyos (say they) fell for, shock in the electronic town square.

Stop laughing, you might choke on your dog bone...

There are signs all over, from MyDD in full genuflection to "not getting it" and, for those around for a while, in the upper corner today at MyDD is a pic of Ginny Schrader... the last anti-establishment candidate (PA-8) rally run out of Dkos/aligned blogs (7/'04).

Like Chris, I screwed up on Cegelis.

I didn't realize that the party establishment was as weak as it was, and I didn't get the basic dishonesty of the DCCC in this fight. The DCCC was squeezing donors hard to give to Duckworth, as did golden boy Barack Obama who appeared in Duckworth's commercial.

But what offends me is not that they weighed in on Duckworth's side, but that they pretended like Cegelis did not exist. I bet that a substantial portion of Duckworth's voters simply did not know that Cegelis was a Democrat. They probably saw Duckworth on TV with Obama, got some mailers, and figured, hey, I'll vote for the Democrat.

Cue the smoke and mirrors. Certainly on the establishment acting like Cegelis "did not exist".

Kos dropped her, hugged Duckworth and the lambkins followed suit. DC needed to deliver on Duckworth... return on investment, face saving, you name it... and the play is old. Decades old, but a recent one was the SF mayoralty run, Nov 2003. They dared not have DLCer Newsom (oh don't be taken in by gay marriages, it was all so cynical on his part) lose to a just-barely-not-a-Green anymore (Gonzales) at the start of the GE season. Marina District (Newsom's neighborhood) pulled in late and put him in. Sound familiar?

Blogs are in a hiccup, an interruption of the establishment message...grateful for Domenech, Lieberman ("Lamont! loves you, NARAL sells you out, click, donate and add a penny!") and even, just now, for Feingold. They shifted FEC hate to Pelosi. I say they - and the big bad DC Dems - want a pro lifer in that spot. Book end with Reid.

But let's get back to Leader Reid... and his big bruiser of a filibuster ... threat:

SAN DIEGO - As the Senate prepares to tackle the most sweeping immigration reforms in years, a top Democrat vowed Wednesday to do everything in his power, including filibuster, to thwart Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed overhaul.

Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would "use every procedural means at my disposal" to prevent Frist from bypassing the Judiciary Committee. Frist, R-Tenn., has made clear the Senate will take up his proposal next week if the 18-member committee fails to complete a broader bill.
"If Leader Frist brings a bill to the floor that does not have the approval of the Judiciary Committee, it will not get out of the Senate," Reid told reporters at the San Ysidro border crossing, a few steps from Tijuana, Mexico.

Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist, did not immediately respond to a call Wednesday evening.

I am sure the Republicans feel properly warned and are girding for battle with "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" (Daily Kos needs to copyright that whopper)...

Toy poodle, "white girl", 200 USD on the tiny hoof

And lest she be left out, Hillary is on the record: no criminalisation should be part of any bill (there are several pending, Sensenbrenner, Spector and McCain-Kennedy, NYDN gives a fast overview, along with Schumer's position). I am certain the clinic docs at the last women's health care clinic in SD are relieved, she will fight criminalisation.... Kidding! We know that is filed under "tragedy".

I am all for sane immigration, amnesty, guest worker programs... but as a native Californian, I have never seen any, other than the one big amnesty program of long ago.... Nor any worker program, from "bracero" forward, that was not abused by the Anglo business community. For the past nearly 10 years (yes some things do pre-date Big Bad Bush) we have had relentless militarisation of the US Mexico border in California. Feinstein and Clinton (Bill) agreed on that... And I oppose any criminalisation of those who might help undocumented workers. We have enough laws, we really do. Coyotes and those who leave them to die in the desert (where we drove them to die) - are different.

However, I don't think the Dems mean much of anything with all this... bluster. Hoopla. Part of 'bitch and capitulate'.

And with photos like this, from the NYT - it accompanied today's story in the NY Region section, Hillary should not be talking about "plantation". AND pointing fingers. From her royal barge floating toward the WH from Chappaqua. Neither Hollywood nor DC does replay well.

[NYT]

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the Bible yesterday to criticize a stringent border security measure that, among other things, would make it a federal crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants.

"It is hard to believe that a Republican leadership that is constantly talking about values and about faith would put forth such a mean-spirited piece of legislation," she said of the measure, which was passed by the House of Representatives in December and mirrored a companion Senate bill introduced last week by Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the majority leader.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Mrs. Clinton, who is running for re-election this year and is leading in polls for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke at a news conference in Manhattan with more than 30 immigrant leaders after meeting with them privately.

The meeting took place in an atmosphere of mounting urgency, as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called on its flock to oppose the measure, and tens of thousands of immigrants around the country stepped up a series of protest rallies in anticipation of a Senate vote on competing immigration bills next week.

One issue is cleared up early, VP choice will be JeeeeeSUS! In a heart beat. The crowded field shaping up for '08 should note*.

*Walter Shapiro in Salon, and worth the ad.

Addendum, 3:11 PM, PT: Kos senses malaise, due to the low fibre kibble.

As long as they are feeding at a well tended trough, the DC Dems care not at all. Careless they are, and they insist they shall be.

But... she plaintively cried, what of the ... the ... the Democratic Big Tent?

Catch this exchange on the Soapblox Chicago blog as the Dupage and Cook counties in Illinois worked at counting with their fingers and toes into the wee hours and even the next day... late word on the blogs is that Duckworth has pulled it out, with about 1000 votes.

Just get Democrats

into power first, then worry about Progressives. That will come in the future. Progressives and other Dems must work together to bring the Party back into power and everyone must loosen the reins on their ideals a little bit.

--------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:06:17 America/Chicago

funny

I've heard that every election for over 20 years now... It's always a one sided compromise. It's like being in an abusive relationship.

Just Another Souless Atheist in Search of World Peace and Harmony

-------------------------------------

by: Kankakee Voice @ March 22, 2006 at 00:12:24 America/Chicago

And yet for the better part

of those twenty years it doesnt seem like people have been following that mantra because Republicans have traditionally been in power over the last twenty years except in the early 90s pretty much. Banging from the outside wont accomplish you anything if you alienate yourself from the rest of the Party. They have the money, the influence, the power. If you want to hol onto your ideals then no, no Progressive will ever get into power.

-----------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:26:19 America/Chicago

Hey! No shit ''Collective Defense'', it has not been working. Get a clue.

And especially don't miss this:

Thank you

and I dont think Duckworth will even reach out to many Cegelis staffers. I dont think they will even need Cegelis' people out on the ground for them with all the backing and money from the Democratic Party.

-----------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 21, 2006 at 23:58:22 America/Chicago

Why would she?

When Cegelis based her entire campaign on trashing Duckworth? A scortched earth policy doesn't leave much behind.

--------------------------------------------

by: nobodysent @ March 22, 2006 at 01:13:14 America/Chicago

Would Duckworth even ask?

My worry is that having won by the skin of her teeth in the primary (if the results so far hold), Duckworth's handlers will think, "Ground game? We don't need no stikin' ground game."
Problem is, the "strategy" that may have won them the primary, hasn't got a prayer of winning against a Republican who will have more money AND significant ground troops on his side.

----------------------------------------

by: Jim in Chicago @ March 21, 2006 at 23:59:47 America/Chicago

And at the end of the thread:

Its pretty bad when youre already thinking

about a recount. Means you dont believe Cegelis will win. Everyone was so sure Cegelis would win, but no. I said think differently. Duckworth might win, she has money and backing from D.C. Democrats, meaning Cook Co. Dems and the like. If Duckworth wins now, what will all you Pregressives do now? I suggest lending your vote to Duckworth for at least one election just to get a Democrat into power in a Republican district and change it for good. Let Cegelis run again in 2008 and see if she wins. Of course she might win it this year.

------------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:17:29 America/Chicago

The party is making it clear as can be, clear as it has been for years... show up for the biannual or quadrennial slog in the mud, work like beavers, be insulted, then STFU and be meek til they need the left, liberal, progressives again.

And this: Dems are happy, they say Republican women will vote for her, she is a conservative Dem.

However, Cegelis who made it thru to run agaisnt Henry Hyde in 04, came closer than anyone had, she garnered 44% of the vote.

Hillary likes her Salazars, Caseys and Duckworths. Likely Duckworth swore on a Bible she would not cough up a fetus in public... LOL. Might as well laugh.

The party is pro-life. With a few stray pro-choice. And DC Dems are not interested in the base, the rank and file.

It has to end. Withhold the vote. And withhold work from the party.

Old English Folk Song:

The carrion crow sat upon an oak,
Fol de rol de rol de ray,
The carrion crow sat upon an oak,
Watching a tailor mending his cloak.
Heigh ho, the carrion crow!
Fol de rol de rol de ray.

O wife, O wife, bring hither my bow (etc.)
That I may shoot this carrion crow. (etc.)

The tailor he shot and he missed his mark,
He shot his old sow right through the heart.

O wife, O wife, bring some brandy in a spoon,
For our old sow's fallen down in a swoon.

The old sow died and the bell did toll,
And the little pigs squeaked for the old sow's soul,

O ho, said his wife, you're a silly old goose,
To kill your old sow and not care a mouse.

O ho, said the tailor, I care not a mouse,
For we shall have hog-puddings and chitterlings and souse

Ya think?

When was she not, I say.

She must do something about getting a stump... er, fire hydrant speech. Just has to. After La Kerry we cannot have another self-impressed nom, who also does not have a credible stump speech. Kerry drooled his speeches, she spits out lectures.

As I type this just the memory of her voice grates in my ear. Quite aside from the guff she upchucks (10K to Casey).

Meanwhile Bill is handy. Useful, ministering, evangelising Bill.

Spoiled Sparky [not kidding, that is his name]

A little Bush Biz, some Africa Biz with Holbrooke (no pic, he is not a dog, he is a rock that speaks), some Ports Biz, little phoning to our (that means Bush and Clinton) friends. You know them: the UAE team for global security and ports and terminals administration.

Schumer?

This is our Poodle Whirligig. It is 15 inches tall and has 10 inch legs. Available in black and white. $29. Look at our other dog whirligigs!

Oh planning on adding enough senate seats to get to majority. Opera glasses at the ready!. This will be fun. Have some champagne, the bubbles help keep one upright in turgid times....

And Rahm, doing what poodles like Rahm do.

Fun stuff - fun for them. Much fuss and bother, accomplishing little.

And all the while the party is:

What floated above the fold, Just the big ones.

First snowfall, winter '95-'96, on the
Korean War Veterans Memorial,
the Mall, Washington DC

From the magazine of the National Archives, Prologue:

The Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., presents in granite what for many remains its most powerful lesson— that "Freedom Is Not Free." Tourists can buy T-shirts sporting a map of Korea over which appears the judgment that this was "The Place Where Communism Was Stopped."

But since 1981 a swelling stream of books and articles reexamining not only the war itself, but U.S. policy toward Korea before June 1950, has shattered traditional beliefs about the conflict.

An artillery officer directs UN troops
as they drop white phosphorous on a
Communist-held post in February 1951.
(NARA, 111-SC-358293)

Viet-Nam

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
a former soldier touches the granite wall
dedicated to casualties of the Vietnam War.
[National Geographic]

George Aiken's 1966 memo, Declare Victory and Withdraw:

Today, the American commitment in Viet Nam no longer involves the fundamental objective of preserving the credibility and integrity of U.S. Armed Forces - provided that the war is not extended in time or in geography to the point where a wholly n ew threat to U.S. military power exists.

The new threat might take either the form of Chinese intervention, or, more pertinent, the form of a prolonged erosion of the _credibility_ of U.S. power through harassment in a political context, namely through the disintegration of the South Vi etnamese society.

The United States government has asserted frequently and emphatically that there is no military "solution" or objective in this war.

We do not seek to destroy North Viet Nam nor its government.

This assertion is shared by virtually every type of observer, allied, official and hostile.

The greater the U.S. military commitment in South Viet Nam, however, the less possibility that any South Vietnamese government will be capable of asserting its own authority on its home ground or abroad.

The size of the U.S. commitment already clearly is suffocating any serious possibility of self-determination in South Viet Nam for the simple reason that the whole defense of that country is now totally dependent on the U.S. armed presence.

This was also true in Korea in 1954, but then the United States was operating under the umbrella of collective U.N. action, and along a well-defined battlefront which permitted organization of the rear areas.

None of this is true in South Viet Nam.

Beirut Barracks, October 1983

On October 23, 1983, a truck loaded
with thousands of pounds of explosives
destroyed the 4 storey command headquarters
of the US Marine Battalion Landing Unit
located at Beirut Airport.

A brief timeline:

On June 6,1982, Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon to eradicate the PLO, which was launching its terrorist raids from there against Israel to the south.

On September 29, 1982, US Marines and French soldiers and Italian soldiers entered Beirut as part of a multinational peace-keeping force (MNF).

On April 18, 1983, a large car bomb exploded at the US Embassy in Beirut, causing massive structural damage and killing 61, including 17 Americans, and injuring 100.

On September 19, 1983, as a result of the buildup of tensions among numerous factions and nations operating in Lebanon, the USS Virginia, cruising with other American ships off Lebanon’s coast, shelled Druze militia in the Shouf Mountains to help the beleaguered Lebanese Armed Forces hold onto a strategic mountain village.

This shelling officially shifted the American role from a “presence� in Lebanon to the “direct support of Lebanese Armed Forces� and cost the US its appearance of neutrality.

On October 23, 1983, a truck loaded with thousands of pounds of explosives destroyed command headquarters of the US Marine Battalion Landing Unit located at Beirut Airport. An almost simultaneous suicide attack destroyed a building occupied by French paratroopers. US casualties were 241 killedand 70 wounded. French casualties were 58 killed.

In early 1984, the battleship USS New Jersey shelled Muslim Beirut and its suburbs, intensifying violent anti-American feeling.

On September 6, 1984, the US vetoed a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s ongoing tactics in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

On March 8, 1985, a car bomb went off near the Beirut home of Shiite Muslim cleric Sheikh Fadlallah (who was not killed in the attack), resulting in 45 Lebanese killed and 175 injured. Lebanese Shiites widely rumored that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved with the car bomb incident.

February to June 1985, Israel pulled out of Lebanon, taking 700+ Shiite hostages with them as security for their departing troops. Instead of immediately releasing the prisoners when their withdrawal was complete, however, the Israelis moved them to Atlit prison camp in northern Israel.

Mogadishu, Somalia 1993

Mogadishu timeline, 1991 forward.

The Former Yugoslavia

On patrol in Bosnia: U.S. Army Maj. Daniel Mahoney,
base commander at Camp Demi [USA Weekend]

In September, 1998 USA Today carried an exchange of emails between Maj Mahoney and his family:

Dear MacroMouse,

[W]e are putting a lot of miles on on our High-Mobility, Multi-Purpose, Wheeled Vehicle. Mine is called "the Beast." I have a three-person crew (four if you include me)... When I go out, I have 1,000 rounds for my M-60 machine gun (the main gun), 210 rounds for my driver's M-16 and 30 rounds for my M9 pistol... The armor on my vehicle can withstand up to .50 CAL machine-gun fire -- so I feel pretty safe. It is a mean little machine. Well, that's it for now, little muncher. Make sure you write back... I will be back before you know it!

Love, Dad

Kosovo

Administration officials pledged, meanwhile, that the NATO offensive would go on and denied that the allies' attacks on the Serbs had prompted Belgrade to retaliate against ethnic civilians.

"We had every reason to believe that they had both the intent and the capability to conduct massive offensive operations that would have been conducted with or without NATO airstrikes," Rubin said.

With the American public about evenly divided in its opinion of the NATO assault, the administration gave no ground either on the mission or that it holds Milosevic accountable for the havoc among Kosovo's civilian population.

"As a political matter, it is clear that Slobodan Milosevic bears responsibility for the events that led to war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and now Kosovo. Events in Kosovo obviously are being directed from Belgrade," Rubin said in suggesting the Yugoslav president could be charged by an international tribunal and face a lifetime prison sentence.

"There are indicators genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," Rubin said after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright received a detailed report Sunday from Hashim Thaci, who headed the Albanian delegation that approved proposals for a settlement in Kosovo.

A girl from Pec in western Kosovo
peers from the back of a tractor-trailer
as she and other refugees make their way
over a mountain road separating Kosovo
from Montenegro. [South Coast Today]

Jeremy Scahill's article when Milosovic died and his ''ambush'' interview with Gen. Clark in NH, January 2004

Afghanistan

[rawa.org]

Christian Parenti, London Review of Books, January 2005:

The top drug lord here is Hazrat Ali, America’s ally in the Tora Bora campaign, the man who allowed al-Qaida to escape as US forces closed in. Now Hazrat Ali - who gave himself this nom de guerre in honour of the fifth caliph of Islam during the jihad against the Soviets - is also the provincial security chief. Karzai gave him the post at the end of the summer to buy his support in the elections. [...]

A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter lands in the
Shah-e-Kot mountains, 25 kilometers (15 miles)
southeast of Gardez, Afghanistan March 15, 2002.
[AP/file]

The poppy crop has already been harvested, but some of the local farmers show me big brown blocks of opium and offer hash. They say that Mirwais Yasini, the head of the Counter-Narcotics Directorate, has done a deal with Hazrat Ali. When the harvest was over, Hazrat Ali told the farmers to burn their fields, so that Mirwais Yasini could tell the British that progress is being made. Officials in Kabul either deny these charges or decline to comment.

American officials have started to claim that Hazrat Ali’s days are numbered. ‘One day, he will wake up and discover he’s out of business,’ David Lamm, chief of staff of US forces in Afghanistan, said in a press interview. But when I went to find Hazrat Ali, he was busy meeting US forces to plan election security. It is thanks to relationships like these that one can easily imagine the poppy economy and the new Afghan state merging into a narco-mafia with a flag and a seat at the UN.

Kandahar children.
MERCY Malaysia first sent its mission
comprising four doctors and two non-medical
volunteers to Afghanistan in October 2001.
The aim was to alleviate the suffering of the
Afghan refugees who fled their homes soon
after the US and its allied forces began
bombing the impoverished nation.

Iraq:

PERSIAN GULF FLYOVER — Two U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornets,
assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 146, and two
U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornets, assigned to
Strike Fighter Squadron 154... in the Persian Gulf,
June 30, 2005.
[U.S. Navy photo by Airman Chris M. Valdez]

Sinan Antoon, native of Baghdad, "Of Bridges and Birds":

And so the city was conquered, sacked and rebuilt time and time again. In its heyday, Baghdad was the heart of an empire, and its rulers, too, wrought havoc on distant lands. But, most of its caliphs and sultans were also patrons of art and knowledge, connoisseurs, and sometimes composers, of the most beautiful poetry to have survived in the collective memory of the Arabs.

Now, it is Baghdad's ironic fate to have been subjugated by a would-be emperor, who has yet to master his mother tongue. While he is fully aware of the geo- strategic importance of Baghdad, Bush is probably the one least aware, in the history of the city's conquerors, of the precious symbolism and rich history of his booty.

Does it matter to him?

Allied warplanes destroyed 134 bridges in Iraq during 1991 Gulf War
[Middle East Online]

Rivers of blood are flowing along the Tigris as America tattoos its imperial insignia into the bodies of Iraqi children, stamping their futures with its corporate logos in order to "safeguard" it. There is an abyss in and around Iraq, and it is widening by the moment.

I used to recite Ali Ibn Al- Jahm's famous line about the enchanting, almond-shaped eyes of the Baghdadi women who used to cross from one bank to the other in the nineth century. On a lucky day, I would encounter a descendent or two of those women.

Now the moon-like faces celebrated in thousands of verses are hiding in houses on both banks, white voyeuristic satellites are hovering above and scrutinising every inch of the city's body.

March 29, 2003. Soldiers setting up barbed wire near Najef
[Benjamin Lowy, Corbis for TIME Magazine]

Orville Schell on remote reporting and the Green Zone.

Over and over, looking at the photographs of the recent wars, I think to myself, is this person alive? I occasionally still think of a young service man, from Appalachia, infantry, hunkered down at the border in February 2003, waiting for the signal to cross over and invade Iraq.... In an interview with an ABC reporter, he said he hoped the politicians would not sacrifice them. Tears at you. It just does.

We do know who is alive, no question. The western pols. And Saddam, Osama. Zawahiri.

Smedley Butler, in a letter home to his parents, while serving in Nicaragua in 1910 as a young marine:

What makes me mad is that the whole revolution is inspired and financed by Americans who have wildcat investments down here and want to make them good by putting in a Government which will declare a monopoly in their favor. The whole business is rotten to the core and I am ashamed to think that a Republican [Taft] administration is, if anything, assisting the revolution.

Norman Solomon has a quick, and desperate (I feel desperate about most things in America these past years... don't you?) look back at what the pundits said in the ramp up to WAR!.

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible.

Continuing with long service to the Bush administration's agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion.

At the Washington Post, the op-ed page's fervor hit a new peak on February 6, 2003, the day after Colin Powell's mendacious speech to the UN Security Council.

I cannot give these creeps a lot of time - but will take the first one off the top... one known to all...

Here is what Solomon selects from the months of blather Richard Cohen extruded onto the pages:

Post columnist Richard Cohen explained that Powell was utterly convincing.

"The evidence he presented to the United Nations - some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail - had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote.

"Only a fool - or possibly a Frenchman - could conclude otherwise."

Fortunately it was a pretty fast google to turn up the day, just this past January, that Richard Cohen joined the (also) staged performance at the Oprah show - to declare his rage over betrayal - and high profile lying... to the American people. Flag, motherhood, and some kind of pie, were just around the corner...

It was over that earth shattering issue: James Frey of A Million Little Pieces.

Take a gander:

Oprah: Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist who wrote in the case of James Frey:

"The liar whose memoir turns out to have a good deal of fiction alongside fact."

[Richard Cohen also] said, "Oprah is not only wrong but deluded."

And I was impressed with that. I was impressed with that because I thought sometimes criticism can be very helpful. So thank you very much. You were right. I was wrong. What do you want to say?

[I feel so much better about America, don't you? -Marisacat]

Richard Cohen: I would say to the publishing industry, you guys have got to cut this out. You're not little shops anymore with two or three people working with quills. You're part of large corporations. Hire somebody for $25,000, $30,000 a year as a fact checker.

A fact checker would have found out in a half an hour that some of this book didn't work because the book doesn't pass the smell test. … When it doesn't pass the smell test, you give it to a fact checker.

Work it out. Somebody could have done what The Smoking Gun did. They could have done it. Publishers have to do it from here on end.

There is a difference between truth and fiction. We find this out all the time. Now we're finding it out again.

This was a betrayal of his readers. It was a betrayal of you.

More from Richard Cohen

Feel better? About America?

About publishing? Media? Truth, Reason, Logic, Art, Beauty? Eros? Thanatos? Feel better, possibly, about the Commerce Clause, with Roberts and Alito well ensconced?, No? Your childrens' future?

Richard Cohen took a public dump of his bottled up ethical angst. LOL, such professional drama...

Really he just adjusted his de rigueur South Seas pearl choker. In light of everything, it was not pretty. Frey is not WAR!. Not by a long shot. But Richard sits pretty... on a dog pillow at WaPo.

*My apologies to the Poodle breed, excellent and wonderful dogs, if not overbred (which is not their fault). I like them, from the tiniest teacup to the most elegant standard poodle. And cockapoos, labradoodles too.

I just disdain humans who want to be poodles.

Well, it is to laugh really.

The umpteenth Democratic pass out, pass over, lie-down-fall-down cream puff move: "I have not read it", they (nearly) all said.

Clinton hiding from reporters behind the 4' 11" Barbara Mikulski (Dana Milbank), Kerry flipped (WaPo and The Hill) and then he flopped, then he tipped over -- he just does somersaults. Nobody sane can watch it by now.

They aren't spineless anymore, they are fucking fried shrimp. Small ones...

...and then I toured the Big Box Blogs... who all shriek they want better, more better, best, bestest from their (you should excuse the commonness of the phrase) Fighting Dems.

They want the fried shrimp to... well, a long list of things dead and butterflied shrimp just cannot do...

Such drahma. So late. And so fake. Crocodile tears. Hot and cold spigots.

I say to them:

get your tongues out for Reid, the way you all did for a damned year. That casino hack with the lobbyist children - and the visible G-spot for rightie pro-life Catholic judges.

Here are the DC Dems:

But for a handful, they are all "Blue Dogs"

Here are the "incestuous amplification" Big Box Bloggers:

Tiniest pink fight promoters -
Don King is not threatened

It's a set.

In case you had not heard (nor caught C-Span last Sunday) the likes of Carville, Begala and Kamarck (all DLC branded on their aging haunches) are "take the party back" people. Really. The kids at Harvard's Kennedy School for Government were not too impressed either...

The tired trio exuded flop sweat thru the event. No surprise, flop sweat is something the party has down pat.

Shrimp, dead but still sweating - and flopping.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

UPDATED: Thursday, 12:17 PM, PT:

Think Progress is reporting the first poll on censure:

First censure poll released.

46 percent of Americans (48 percent of voters) support Sen. Russ Feingold’s censure resolution, while 44 percent (43 percent of voters) oppose the idea, according to an American Research Group poll.

Or is this another earth bound finding from the patriarchy?

So many people insist god speaks. Jimmy says Jesus ''does not want all of these abortions''. I dunno Jimmy. Could Jesus maybe have helped with the rescue that crashed in the desert, all those years ago? Maybe, Jimmy, you could ask AND get an answer...

The Fifth US Circuit Appeals court has indeed upheld a MS lower court finding that the right to privacy does not extend to purchasing sex toys. Further, the MS high court ruled that there is ''no fundamental right of access to purchase sex toys''.

Not to get too serious... because, really, this is a laughing matter... but only if you live outside LA (seat of the Fifth Circuit, right there in wild and pagan New Orleans, now destroyed as an act of god against the abortion clinics - and whatever else!) and outside GA TX MS and AL wherever else the men (and women assists) love to deny humanity.

Made in China FOB Ningbo seaport.
Minumum order 10 dozen.

That is right, surely god filed an amicus brief with the court. Surely there is a passage of bible screed that prohibits... TOY-GASMS !?! and pink fluff handcuffs, dildos that light up... cock rings... butt plugs - and whatever else.

I wanna see the amicus brief. Otherwise it is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Or should be, in a half-way decent world.

Jordan Flaherty living and
working in New Orleans has written with remarkable clarity of the desperation of his city and her people in the wake of Katrina.

Ninth ward, New Orleans [CNN]

Ursula Price, a staff investigator for the indigent defense organization A Fighting Chance, has met with several thousand hurricane survivors who were imprisoned at the time of the hurricane, and her stories chill me.

"I grew up in small town Mississippi," she tells me. "We had the Klan marching down our main street. But still, I've never seen anything like this."

Safe Streets, Strong Communities, a New Orleans-based criminal justice reform coalition that Price also works with, has just released a report based on more than a hundred recent interviews with prisoners who have been locked up since pre-Katrina and are currently spread across thirteen prisons and hundreds of miles.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's most infamous and largest maximum security prison, known as "The Farm". In the 18th and 19th centuries, Angola was a thriving slave plantation. After the turn of the century it was officially converted into a prison, yet very little changed: the free labor which was originally provided from the sweat of an entirely black and slave population was then taken over by a mostly black and convict population.

They found the average number of days people had been locked up without a trial was 385 days. One person had been locked up for 1,289 days. None of them have been convicted of any crime. [...]

According to a pre-Katrina report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 65% of those arrested in New Orleans are eventually released without ever having been charged with any crime.

Retired school teacher, Arthur Davis, and NOLA cops, October 2005

Samuel Nicholas (his friends call him Nick) was imprisoned in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) on a misdemeanor charge, and was due to be released August 31. Instead, after a harrowing journey of several months, he was released February 1. Nick told me he still shudders when he thinks of those days in OPP.

"We heard boats leaving, and one of the guys said 'hey man, all the deputies gone,' Nick relates. "We took it upon ourselves to try to survive. They left us in the gym for two days with nothing.

Some of those guys stayed in a cell for or five days. People were hollering, 'get me out, I don't want to drown, I don't want to die,' we were locked in with no ventilation, no water, nothing to eat. Its just the grace of god that a lot of us survived."

Lake Ponchartrain, July 10 2005, high water in the wake of Hurricane Dennis
[Globe and Mail]

Benny Flowers, a friend of Nick's from the same Central City neighborhood, was on a work release program, and locked in a different building in the sprawling OPP complex. In his building there were, by his count, about 30 incarcerated youth, some as young as 14 years old.

"I don't know why they left the children like that. Locked up, no food, no water.

Why would you do that?

They couldn't swim, most of them were scared to get into the water. We were on work release, so we didn't have much time left. We weren't trying to escape, we weren't worried about ourselves, we were worried about the children.

The guards abandoned us, so we had to do it for ourselves. We made sure everyone was secured and taken care of. The deputies didn't do nothing. It was inmates taking care of inmates, old inmates taking care of young inmates. We had to do it for ourselves."

Benny Hitchens, another former inmate, was imprisoned for unpaid parking tickets. "They put us in a gym, about 200 of us, and they gave us three trash bags, two for defecation and one for urination. That was all we had for 200 people for two days."

Slaves at work on the Indies Company plantation, across from New Orleans
[Lassus, 1726]

State Department of Corrections officers eventually brought them, and thousands of other inmates, to Hunts Prison, in rural Louisiana, where evacuees were kept in a field, day and night, with no shelter and little or no food and water.

"They didn't do us no kind of justice," Flowers told me. "We woke up early in the morning with the dew all over us, then in the afternoon we were burning up in the summer sun. There were about 5,000 of us in three yards."

Woodlawn Plantation, Louisiana
1941 [Edward Weston]

Abu Ghraib on the Mississippi

From reports that Price received, some prisoners had it worse than Oakdale.

"Many prisoners were sent to Jena prison, which had been previously shut down due to the abusiveness of the staff there. I have no idea why they thought it was acceptable to reopen it with the same staff.

People were beaten, an entire room of men was forced to strip and jump up and down and make sexual gestures towards one another. I cannot describe to you the terror that the young men we spoke to conveyed to us."

In 1724, Louis XV adapted the Code Noir for Louisiana. Since 1685 this code had regulated the condition of slaves in the French Islands, notably forbidding interracial marriage and sexual relations.

"We have a system that was broken before Katrina," Price tells me, "that was then torn apart, and is waiting to be rebuilt.

Four thousand people are still in prison, waiting for this to be repaired.

There's a young man, I speak to his mother every day, who has been in the hole since the storm, and is being abused daily. This boy is 19 years old, and not very big, and he has no lawyer. His mother doesn't know what to do, and without her son having council [sic], I don't know what to tell her."

September 1970 raid on Black Panther offices, across from the Desire Housing Project, est. population, 20,000. Moon Landrieu was mayor of NO at the time.
Link*

I asked Price what has to happen to fix this system.

"First, we establish who was left behind, collect their stories and substantiate them. Next, we're going to organize among the inmates and former inmates to change the system. The inmates are going to have a voice in what happens in our criminal justice system.

Untitled, from the One Big Self, Prisoners of Louisiana series, 1999, silver emulsion on aluminum
[Deborah Luster]

If you ask anyone living in New Orleans, the police, the justice system, may be the single most influential element in poor communities.

Its what beaks up families, its what keeps people poor."

Amen to that...

*Link is to online facsimile of the Black Panther newsletter of June, 1971.

Word has come thru of the discovery in Iraq of the body of peace activist Tom Fox.

Tom Fox, the Virginia peace activist ... has been found dead, a State Department spokesman said last night. The FBI verified that a body found in Baghdad on Thursday morning was that of Fox, according to the State Department. It was not immediately clear last night when he had been killed or how. Nothing was said immediately about the circumstances leading to the discovery of the body. [...]

Fox disappeared Nov. 26 in Baghdad, along with Norman Kember, 74, of Britain, and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada. The four worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Toronto- and Chicago-based group that opposes the Iraq war and has criticized treatment of detainees in U.S. and Iraqi jails.

UPDATE: 6:19 PM, PT: AP report with additional detail on the death of Tom Fox. His body indicated, from the wounds, that he was tortured before he was shot in the head and chest. His hands were bound.

Last year, within days of the abduction of the 4, Media Matters documented Rush Limbaugh's ditto head take on christians abducted in-country, while there opposing the war, working as peace activists within Iraq.

Yeah, all right. Now, let's take this at face value just for a moment.

This could all be BS. I mean, we've never heard of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. This could all be a stunt, but let's take it -- well, let's take it both ways.

We'll take it face value at first, then we'll look at it as a stunt second. I said at the conclusion of previous hours

-- part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, "Rush, that's horrible. Peace activists taken hostage." Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.

So here we have these peace activists over there. I don't care if they're Christian or not. They're over there, and as peace activists, they've got one purpose. They're over there trying to stop the violence. Now, if this German group fits the mold, they are probably blaming the United States and coalition forces for all of this.

Authorities tell ABC News they are investigating Limbaugh for money laundering violations, involving "30 to 40" just-under-$10,000 withdrawals from US Trust bank, structured to avoid Federal currency reporting requirements.
[18 November 2003]

But more importantly, they believe that if they just go there, like these idiotic human shields before the war, if they just go there -- "Mr. Limbaugh, it's real simple, something you wouldn't understand because you've never been to conflict resolution. But it's real simple. If we go there, and we show them that we are people of peace, and that we want to stop the violence, and that we don't hold them responsible, they will see and understand that this is the way to bring peace."

Imagine, for a moment, had they been there church planting or attached to Franklin Graham's West Wing sponsored Samaritan's Purse (reported as inside Iraq first!). Oh, I do believe the entire Right Wing Wurlitzer, in all its bellows and buffoons, would assemble... a new casus belli would be called forth. Or their bodies discovered, mysteriously, in Iran.

Instead:

LIMBAUGH: They wouldn't have been kidnapped because they wouldn't have been there in the first place if Bush hadn't gone and caused the war and created all these terrorists.

I mean, these people are liberals, they're warped. Well, I mean, that's why there's -- I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this.

Probably, even with this, though, you know, they're not going to see the light of day. They're not going to -- I know, let them take me out of context. I don't care anymore.

I hope no one thinks I thought Saturday morning, in liberal leftischer blogoland, needed yet another story about Pill Boy.

No, this got written up, at the instance of yet another wholly tragic martyr, to contemplate the Bush Family Greed (themselves fixers and enablers for generations) which has met the Great American Emptiness - and to deliver this tidbit from Rush's personal timeline:

Marries third wife Marta Fitzgerald [27 May, 1994] a 35-year-old aerobics instructor he met on Compuserve.

The two are married in Justice Clarence Thomas' house, with the ceremony officiated by Thomas himself. Also in attendence were William Bennett, James Carville and Mary Matalin.

- only consider this line up of eminent personages if you are not eating. It's an appetite killer. And remark on the vast moral emptiness of our so called governing class. They are all, with heartbreakingly few exceptions, pundits, lobbyists, TV/radio personalities, war mongers, campaign managers, consultants, titans of various cash industries, fixers and enablers and too many of these same people revolve in and out of academia (Ken Starr, Condi Rice, Larry Summers) and / or the military.

And in some cases are on the SC. For life.

Have a pill. Or two or three... Hell, it might even help.

Could they stand on their hind legs? Do you think?

performing pastel-colored poodle,
in a clown and poodle show
[OCRegister]

Ari Berman in The Nation takes a look at the Dems, embroiled in their running soap opera of duck and cover. Hide from it all but be The Alternative --also known as The Candidate:

Iraq returned as a central theme in George W. Bush's State of the Union address this year. With the war on the minds of many members of the public and with the 2006 midterm elections approaching, it seemed natural that the opposition party would forcefully challenge the President's policy.

Instead, the Democrats ducked and covered. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine devoted a mere three sentences to the Iraq War in his official Democratic response to Bush.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, a leading party strategist, didn't even mention Iraq when asked on television what his party would do differently from the Republicans--a hint of how the Democrats have downplayed the issue internally.

On the advice of top party consultants...

[there we go again! If they had any decency, or could close their greasy palms, they'd leave the country, FOR SHAME!],

the Democrats in the run-up to the 2006 midterm vote are either ignoring Iraq and shifting to domestic issues (the strategy in the 2002 midterm elections) or supporting the war while criticizing Bush's handling of it (the strategy in the 2004 presidential election).

Three years into the conflict most Democrats can finally offer a cogent critique of how the Bush Administration misled the American people and mismanaged the Iraqi occupation, but they're unwilling or unable to suggest clearly how the United States should extricate itself from that mess.

Count on the Dems to catch the drift, and depart, vacate any idea of leadership. Remembering that Murtha stepped forward FIVE months ago, read it and weep:

For a moment on November 17, when Representative Jack Murtha boldly called on Bush to bring the troops home, the Democrats seemed to have found such a voice--and with it an opportunity to shift the debate to how to exit Iraq, not whether to stay.

Sure, plans to redeploy US troops within a year or two, sponsored by Russ Feingold in the Senate, the Out of Iraq Caucus in the House and the Center for American Progress (CAP), were already on the table.

But none brought with it the standing and sense of urgency of Murtha, who previously had been known on Capitol Hill as the dean of the defense hawks.

Well, do you think that Pelosi and Reid and others are, you know, hampering a strong anti-Iraq War coalition from forming within congress ?

I do.

Progressives/left/liberal need to break away. there is no place for them in the party.

A Washington Post survey of eight prominent foreign policy advisers found that only one, former Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, proposed a clear plan for how to get out.

The resulting headlines--DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS SPLINTER ON IRAQ, DEMOCRATS FIND IRAQ ALTERNATIVE IS ELUSIVE, DEMOCRATS FEAR BACKLASH AT POLLS FOR ANTIWAR REMARKS--reflected the disarray.

As prominent Democrats shied away from the fight, Bush went on the offensive with a series of Iraq speeches, allowing Republicans to caricature Murtha's plan as "cut and run."

Pollster Mark Penn [Penn is Hillpac's pollster] and Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From warned that foes of the war "could be playing with political dynamite" and needed to be "extremely careful."

These Democrats seemed transfixed by the ghost of George McGovern, instead of reacting to the mounting unease with Bush's policies. [...]

Democrats in Congress subsequently went mute on the war.

By mid-February even Pelosi was reassuring nervous party strategists that there would be no specific talk of Iraq when the Democrats unveiled their own version of the GOP's Contract With America later this year.

The bulk of Democratic strategists approved of the no-details-on-Iraq approach.

Do nothings. Newly born. Born again. The No Details New Democrats, Republicrats, Demlicans, Trojan Horses, Republican-Lite... we all know the drill.

And here is a tidy quote from Steve Elmendorf:

"You can't hope the Democrats will ever have a unified message, other than a unified critique of how Bush mishandled the war," says Steve Elmendorf,

a former chief of staff to Representative Dick Gephardt and senior adviser to the Kerry campaign who's helping plan the Democratic agenda for '06.

Begala:

"The point of an agenda is to be unified, and the party clearly won't be." Nor is it realistic to expect they should be, says longtime political adviser Paul Begala:

"I don't think a Congressional candidate ought to presume to be able to solve unsolvable problems."

Let us be clear, the issue is not, any longer, voting for the war. More than half the Democrats in the senate voted FOR IWR, and few have recanted, much less apologised to the American people. Let's get real here, they have provided, already, the heavy lifting to get us there, and keep us there. They now plan to continue with the proven themes.

The issue is a measured plan to withdraw, semi-withdraw -- oh, troops at the ready in the friendly circle of friends we have, Doha Qatar, UAE, Jordan Israel others... We are in the bag for ''war in the region''. We are readiness at the ready!, there to put down palace coups or internal armed insurrection. We stand ready! Our sphere of influence is across 27 countries in the broader region, from the 'Stans westward. As the Iraq invasion took place we "greatly expanded our footprint in the Horn of Africa".

That is all this is about: Sign on to a plan for measured withdrawal.

Understand this: The party will split, whether it cuts the damned baby in half or not, because it, Biz Wing, War Wing, supports war forever, permanent bases forever. They voted for it. And for Negroponte too, 98/2. And they voted for him when Clinton made him Ambassador to the Phillipines. Let's get real.

The short version: The party supports George Bush. Oh they flail around, they rail, they bitch, they moan... but when the cow chips are down? -- crickets -- His poll numbers are down? Cue the crickets.

Those who see it otherwise, see issues of morality and pragmatism in a responsive approach:

It may be impossible to assume that discussion of the war can wait until after November, given the recent events on the ground. If most Democratic strategists have continued to counsel caution on Iraq, a few do not--for moral and pragmatic reasons.
"I think the Democrats are afraid of the issue, but I don't think they should be," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Lake had previously fallen into the camp of consultants who advised Democrats to ignore the war and pivot to domestic issues.

Now she says that approach is no longer possible, and that Democrats must talk about a plan to bring troops home. "Iraq is the essential factor in the voters' landscape," Lake says, the number-one issue feeding distrust of the President and a desire for change.

And Brzezinski, NSA under Carter:

"The tone, unfortunately for the Democratic majority, has been set by the two Clintons," says Brzezinski, a longstanding hawk and vocal critic of the Iraq War, "who have decided that Senator Clinton's chances would be improved if she can manage to appear as a kind of quasi-Margaret Thatcher, and therefore she's been loath to come out with a decisive, strong, unambiguous criticism of the war, with some straightforward recommendations as to what ought to be done. And I'm afraid that has contaminated the attitude of the other Democratic political leaders." [...]
"Prolonging the war is damaging us in every respect," says Brzezinski.

"The costs are quite extensive and if you add the economic costs [$1 trillion] and the costs in blood [roughly 20,000 US casualties], staying the course is not a very attractive solution or definition of victory.

And I think Democrats could make that case intelligently and forcefully."

Berman closes on some notes of hope, but I am very sorry: I say, think back. Did they ever get it, in recent memory? '00?... and '02? Grab a hankie and think back to '04? Kerry at the Grand Canyon? He'd vote for it again! It did not mean war...

Last year? What did they "get" last year? We got primary fields cleared, for the likes of Casey, just ONE example.... Who is pro-war, pro-life, supports defense of the fetus from conception (that heralds criminalisation for drs and women, let's get real) and would vote for ... Alito.

A gift quote, well timed for the administration and the speeches, that Casey and Rendell gave to Bush. Bush, three times, quoted Rendell's support for Alito, identified him each time as a Democratic governor, naming him. It is called "supporting Bush".

I say it makes Rendell and Casey what Bush called "discerning Democrats" who should join with Zell and vote for Bush. I rather suspect Casey did. Rendell may very well have.

Let's get real. They divvy up power.

Caste your eyes back up to the quote from Brzezinski, about the Clintons:

"The tone, unfortunately for the Democratic majority, has been set by the two Clintons, who have decided that Senator Clinton's chances would be improved if she can manage to appear as a kind of quasi-Margaret Thatcher, and therefore she's been loath to come out with a decisive, strong, unambiguous criticism of the war, with some straightforward recommendations as to what ought to be done.

And I'm afraid that has contaminated the attitude of the other Democratic political leaders."

Vote for us, we're poodles! About where it is.

Progressives need to pull away. There is no place for them in the party.