Internal Monologue

The Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani weighs in demanding a ceasefire (HT: Sullivan ): ``Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,'' al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States. ``It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon,'' he added. ``If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region.'' This is an important development, as Sistani had been instrumental in helping the U.S. maintain calm in Iraq and getting the Iraqi elections to happen. It cannot be good when such a figure starts warning of "dire consequences". It must be very frustrating to be Israel right now. Sort of like being the United States after 9/11. Who do you get to hit back? How do you fight an opponent who scores point when it kills your civilians, but also scores points when you kill its civilians? (Or rather, nearby civilians. Sin...

In the numerous conflicts that the Bush administration insists on lumping together in "The War on Terror"(TM), the United States often seems to be funding both sides of the conflict. Not always directly, but certainly signficantly. Some examples: Osama Bin Laden: Got his money from Saudi construction wealth. And this is but one step away from oil wealth. The United States buys a lot of oil (to be fair, other countries do too), and backs the Saudi Regime that shelters and funds the Wahabist Sunni ideologues that give rise to Al Qaeda. Iran: Gets most of its money from oil, and supports Hezbollah and various Shiite militias operating in Iraq. Our high energy consumption funds the Iranian regime, which from what I can tell is as frightening in its ambitions as the neocon warmongers are painting it. (I hasten to add that airstrikes on Tehran are probably not going to make Iran any less frightening.) Afghanistan: No oil here, but we're addicted to something else they produce:...

Well, if this administration ever decides to renew the draft, I'll be safe. What gives me such confidence? I'm an actor. And I guess that's tantamount to being openly gay , as far as the military is concerned. Of course, I've mainly been involved with professional theater, rather than community theater . So maybe that doesn't count. By the way, if they do institute the draft, will anyone be able to dodge it by claiming to be gay? Did anyone do this back in the Vietnam era? UPDATE: Conservative (in the Colbert sense of the word) Jon Swift is thankful that community theater actors are being kept out of the military: But community theater players are different. You can spot them a mile away by the way they overemote, declaim too loudly and don't seem to know what to do with their hands. There is no way that such people can fit into our well-oiled military machine. Amateur actors are also easily prone to blackmail. All the enemy would have to do is offer one of the...

I was thinking of starting a charity called "Belts for Youth" that would raise money to purchase belts for young males, many of whom seem so destitute that they can't afford belts and thus their baggy pants fall down in a most embarrassing manner. But it seems that any such move would earn me the ire of police departments everywhere. According to this post on Rhetoric & Rhythm that quotes the Wall Street Journal , the police seem to like this sorry state of sartorial affairs: Baggy Pants Often Trip Up Thieves Perpetrators wearing low-slung, baggy pants fairly regularly get tripped up in their getaways, a development that has given amused police officers and law-abiding citizens a welcome edge in the fight against crime. [snip] Just about every week, Jim Matheny, a 41-year-old police lieutenant in Stamford, Conn., says he gets into a foot chase with youths. He says it’s getting easier to capture them because they can’t run fast or far in those loose jeans. “When I cat...

Billmon has been essential in keeping track of the horror unfolding in the Middle East (and unfolding in our own minds as we realize what kind of person Bush is). I'll just link and quote: There is, however, a big risk, which is that Sheikh Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, will soon feel compelled by pressure from his own clueless hotheads to unleash the Tel Aviv rockets. This would force Israel to respond with some sort of savage escalation, and since the only available instrument is pure terror bombing [unless Jerusalem wants to take the war to downtown Damascus] the civilian death toll would probably soar even higher. Welcome to the "new" Middle East -- the geopolitical equivalent of the "new" Coke. The recipe may be different, but it still tastes like blood. Also, here's a pessimistic analysis from an Israeli military analyst: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime M...

Via Atrios , MyDD has an excellent post on why the current crop of establishment Democratic consultants has to go: Follow the money. If you want to know why Democrats keep losing, don't offer advice, follow the money and get your hands dirty. You see, Democrats aren't losing because they are stupid. Democrats are losing because a significant portion of the operative class is paid to undermine successful populist positions. Just follow the money. And where are these campaign consultants getting their money? All of these lobbyists/PR people (including Steve Elmendorf) have telecom companies as their clients, and are working against net neutrality. If you want to know why the Democratic party has a muddled message, look no further than the conflicts of interest in trying to run a populist campaign when your other clients have a direct financial interest in not seeing a campaign like that succeed. [emphasis added] Again, Democrats need to rid themselves of these losers. Why w...

Mad Latinist/Justin sent me a link to this NYT story , which describes an evangelical megachurch preacher in Maplewood, MN who has explicitly disavowed right-wing Republican politics. Sullivan links to the article as an example of Christian backlash against Christianism. Just as I am happy to see the conservative movement breaking up over neoconservative radicalism, I'm happy to see the evangelical movement break up over theocratic radicalism. For too long, evangelicals have been used as cannon fodder in the "culture wars", and I'm glad some of them who aren't interested in that role are speaking up. I'm not as optimistic as Sullivan that this movement is growing. I've heard little stories here and there, but I'm waiting for some big, national political fight where non-Christianist evangelicals make a visible impact. And I'm not sure how many evangelicals are actually theocrats at heart and how many aren't. But I do hope we hear more and mor...

This Kos diary by VoteHarder makes an interesting point: Second, the implication of the CBS headline [ "Will Lebanon become Israel's Iraq?" ] is that Bush's war in Iraq has reached such a low point that the media feels comfortable enough to conclude that the public has turned against the war, that they can use the Iraq-gone-bad conclusion to anchor their stories on other matters, i.e., the situation in Lebanon.

I stole that headline from this Pandagon post . Apparently, Mel Gibson got arrested for DUI and went on a crazed anti-Jewish rant : The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?" Sullivan has several posts on it . Mel Gibson has confirmed and apologized for the incident. He also retracted the things he said.

Glen Greenwald has a good article (his posts are long and detailed enough that the word "article" is most appropriate) about how Iraq is already off the radar screen , despite the fact that we have over 100,000 troops there and despite the fact that this administration has been hyping it as the central front in the war on terror for so long. Now that it's going to hell, nobody wants to talk about it. Especially Joe "I'm so prinicipled and have such a muscular foreign policy" Lieberman .

DailyKos has it on the front page . I think this is good for the Lamont campaign, as Lieberman has been getting a lot of "establishment" endorsements recently. This might counter some of the Lieberman spin that Lamont is from way out in left-field (which is ridiculous of course: Lamont is a lot more in sync with CT voters on many important issues). But ultimately, I think the CT primary race will be more determined by get-out-the-vote operations and Lieberman's pro-war and pro-Bush stances than by the parade of folks and publications coming in and giving endorsements (whether they be Bill Clinton, Kos, or the NYT. Or Internal Monologue, for that matter). If you know Dem folks in CT, I urge you to urge them to vote for Lamont. Otherwise, you can donate here .

It's not just Sullivan and me spreading the meme. The Washington Post has this story about how the Bush administration is trying to get congress to pass a law to retroactively shield itself from violations it might have made. An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts. Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. I don't know a lot about the legal ins and outs of this, but it seems to me that if someone violated the Geneva c...

With immigration, come cultural practices that are abhorrent to us (or at least to me). Feministing links to this Reuters article . I don't know if this is happening in the United States, but if the cultures that practice it have people immigrating here, then I imagine it must be.

I'm suffering a bit of incredulity burnout here, but I'll try to blog this a bit. Digby has a post on it. Taylor Marsh mentions it here and here . Think Progress has video of some of it. I guess the the wackiest thing in the transcript that digby posts is this: For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them. And so they respond. They've always been violent. You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah's become violent because we're promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas? One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles. [emphasis added] Uh, last time I checked "those militants" (Hamas) won the Palestinian elections. I think for Bush, "demo...

My super-secret expert Internal Monologue -exclusive source chimes in: Hezbollah's new addition to the arsenal: the "Khaibar-1". They are just renaming these missiles as they go, I think, since that designation doesn't match any Iranian ones. This particular missile was used against Afula, and they're calling this the furthest that missiles have reached into Israel, so I'm guessing it was fired from near the coast in Lebanon. The range and profile seems to indicate this is a Fajr-5, but the warhead was extremely light for an off-the-shelf Iranian Fajr-5. My guess is that they might be intentionally replacing the warheads with lighter ones to attempt to increase the range. A Fajr-5 could just barely reach Tel Aviv without modification. This may have been a combat testing of the modification that they are making to the missiles in preparation for an all-out strike on Tel Aviv. This would be consistent with the verbal threats from Hezbollah that...

...and his guest can play the game, too. Here he's interviewing Eleanor Holmes Norton, the representative from Washington D.C. (HT: Sullivan ) YouTube is awesome. Let's enjoy it before the lawyers shut it down and we have to pay a dollar for each video clip. Some commenters on other sites say that she comes across as clueless, but I disagree. She does seem a bit strange, but she's not afraid to dish it out.

Slacktivist, in is ongoing scathing critique of the "Left Behind" novels, offers up a cautionary tale to writers who use "meaningful" names for characters in their fiction: Once you've carefully chosen a Meaningful Name, you may begin to worry that readers will miss it. Such worry can lead you to think you need to underscore and italicize your Meaningful Name to make sure that readers recognize and appreciate it. No good can come of this. Give in to such worries and soon you'll be writing things like: Shepherd thought of her name, Grace, and it seemed more appropriate than ever. She had come into his life unbidden and undeserved ... He then invited readers to share examples of this phenomenon. Here is mine: OK, the most flagrant example of this I can think of is in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown" . The very title is an example of the phenomenon. But not the most egregious. You see, Young Goodman Brown has a wife ...

Grishnash posted a link to this in his comment to another post , but I felt it should be front-paged because it's so interesting . You enter your income, and it returns with an estimate of your "richness rank"relative to everyone else in the world! What fun! Be sure to select the proper currency; it defaults to Pound Sterling (it's a British site). It's income-based, so I don't know how you'd measure holdings like houses, retirement funds, and investment portfolios. I'm the ?????? richest person on earth! Discover how rich you are! >> Relative to the whole world, I bet my readers are wealthier than they think.

Poor Sullivan, longing for a conservative hero to save his ideology and the Republican party. But McCain, "one of our last best hopes for the next presidency", just recently said this : SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Well, we’ve got a conflict going on in Iraq where the United States is fighting and doing everything that they can to help democracy evolve there. The Prime Minister of Iraq and others have condemned Hezbollah and say they do not support them. [emphasis added] Oh dear. Not only is this false, it doesn't even make one lick of sense. Why would the Prime Minister of Iraq (a Shiite who is backed by Shiites) condemn Hezbollah (who are also Shiites, and are (as we are constantly reminded) backed by Iranian Shiites) for fighting against Israel ? Fighting Israel is how you make yourself popular in that neck of the woods. The only reason Maliki would condemn Hezbollah is because we pressured him to do it, and then he'd loose all credibility with the Shiite militias who back ...

You hear these stories all the time. This one's from Hullabaloo : The Iraq war's forgotten, and in Iran the official language is Persian so this guy's totally expendable : A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified. This is sheer stupidity that weakens our nation.

By the way, our failing "War on Drugs" contributes to our failing war in Afghanistan. Here's a British article explaining how poppy eradication incites violence against British troops and turns the local population against the West: "We`re pouring gas on the flames of the violence with this eradication campaign. By alienating the locals we`re playing into a sophisticated political plan on the part of al-Qaida and the Taliban to destabilise southern Afghanistan. The political naivety of the international community in doing this is mind-boggling," the worker said. A similar article about Canada can be found here . Robert D. Kaplan writes about the effect America's domestic drug policies in this article : While government officials from Kabul show up in rural areas for regular visits, the Taliban are setting up permanent presences in them. They are also importing radical, Pakistan-trained clerics to preach against the Kabul authorities. While officials from th...

"It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard." That's a quote from this Washington Post article . (HT: Sullivan ) It paints a very bleak picture, and depicts morale of US forces as pretty low. (Of course, this wasn't a scientific survey, so usual caveats about reporting bias apply.) This other quote caught my eye: "At this point, it seems like the war on drugs in America," added Spec. David Fulcher, 22, a medic from Lynchburg, Va., who sat alongside Steffey. "It's like this never-ending battle, like, we find one IED, if we do find it before it hits us, so what? You know it's just like if the cops make a big bust, next week the next higher-up puts more back out there." I'm glad the soldier s...

...they accuse Bill Clinton of...get ready for this, it's really good. Pause for a moment and think of the Bill Clinton smear least likely to stick and maybe you'll come up with it...OK, here it is: ... being gay . (HT: Sullivan ) Yes, it's true. Ann Coulter claims Bill Clinton has latent homosexual tendencies: DEUTSCH : OK, say it on air. Ms. COULTER : I think that sort of rampant promiscuity does show some level of latent homosexuality. DEUTSCH : OK, I think you need to say that again. That Bill Clinton, you think on some level, has — is a latent homosexual, is that what you’re saying? Ms. COULTER : Yeah. I mean, not sort of just completely anonymous — I don’t know if you read the Starr report, the rest of us were glued to it, I have many passages memorized. No, there was more plot and dialogue in a porno movie. Poor woman. I guess she had to shift to something other than bashing 9/11 widows. I do feel bad about linking to her words, because I know she thrives on ...

(Click it to enlarge. It's today's Doonesbury strip from Slate .) But is it just another example of how " Their reality has lapped our satire "?

Slacktivist states the obvious . But the obvious seems beyond the grasp of quite a few these days.

Check out this post from Journal of Applied Misanthropology: Just ponder this for a moment -- Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Savior, the Lamb of God, the Cosmic Muffin -- is willing to use a devastating hurricane and a brutal war to prevent homosexuals from peacefully marching. With all the things in the world which might require divine intervention, that's what He chooses to spend His time doing. Now, I don't believe this. (I don't believe in God, for one thing) And I'd like to think most self-proclaimed Christians don't believe this, either. But these people do. And then they wonder why people "turn away" from God. Maybe because if God is so incredibly hateful and petty and vicious, he's not remotely worthy of being worshipped? Amen, brother!

Why would they do this ? (The Guardian has the story.) I just don't get it. Is there something Israel has to gain from attacking this post? Could they really have been attacking it for hours by mistake? Here's the Guardian (HT: Marsh ): "I spoke to Mr Olmert and he definitely believes it was a mistake and has expressed his deep sorrow, " Mr Annan told a press conference in Rome. "But the shelling started in the morning and went on until after 7pm. You cannot imagine the anguish of the unarmed men and women peacekeepers who were there." The four monitors came from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Tonight, European Union and Chinese officials condemned the attack as "unacceptable" and the Irish government filed an official complaint to Israel after its senior UN peacekeeper made half a dozen warning calls over the bombings. Jane Lute, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, told the UN security council that the base came under close Isra...

Sullivan (who has been calling for Rumsfeld's firing for some time now) posts this little snippet from Rumsfeld's recent " press availability ": Q : Is the country closer to a civil war? SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries, this is really quite different. There is -- there is a good deal of violence in Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there's very little violence or numbers of incidents. So it's a -- it's a highly concentrated thing. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I'm not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all. I can just picture Rumsfeld during the American Civil War: "We...

A quick tip from my missle expert, Maniak: Olmert now says Israel is looking to clear only a 2-km DMZ in Lebanon to protect the border. This is useless against missile attacks of the kind that have been ongoing, and represents a serious setback... Israel's actions are starting to look less and less strategically coherent and more like desperate vengeful thrashing. I always had an image of the Israeli military as hard-headed and realistic. But perhaps political considerations and emotional outrage are clouding that. Or maybe I just had an unrealistic picture in my mind.

First of all, who at the AP put this headline: Hezbollah guerrillas battle Israeli troops over this content: BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah guerrillas exchanged heavy fire with Israeli troops attempting to capture a southern Lebanese town on Wednesday, causing several Israeli casualties. The fighting came a day after an Israeli airstrike killed at least three U.N. observers in a border outpost. In a phone call to U.N. Secretary GeneralKofi Annan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep regret" Wednesday over the deaths of the peacekeepers in the airstrike, which Annan had called "apparently deliberate." Olmert said the peacekeepers were killed mistakenly and expressed dismay over Annan's accusation, according to a statement released by his office. The prime minister promised a thorough investigation and said the results would be presented to Annan. Wouldn't something like "Israel kills 3 U.N. obervers in disputed incident" be more approp...

I agree with digby that this is an issue that could create a lot of energy for any candidate (Dem or Repub) willing to take on the credit card industry: I've long felt that this was one of the most potent political issues that nobody ever talks about. It was the main reason why I thought those Democrats who supported the Bankruptcy Bill were prostituting themselves so cheaply when you considered the stakes for ordinary people --- and the political bounty for those who have the imagination and the will to take it on: Slacktivist had a great post on this subject a while back which I linked to from here . This is a big issue that has pocketbook resonance for a huge number of people. I bet we all know someone who has had trouble with debt, if we haven't ourselves. I think it's the sort of bread and butter thing that could make a difference in an election. Of course, extremely wealthy interests are pushing from the opposite side. But I bet a skillful campaign could really make ...

...away from Bush, if you want to get elected. The Republican Senate candidate from Maryland would rather Bush not campaign for him (HT: Sullivan , as usual): Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's Senate campaign acknowledged yesterday that he was the anonymous candidate quoted by a Washington Post political reporter as saying that being a Republican was like wearing a "scarlet letter" and that he did not want President Bush to campaign for him this fall. [snip] Asked whether he would invite Bush to campaign for him, he replied, considering Bush's low approval rating in Maryland, "to be honest with you, probably not." Of course, this is Maryland, which apparently enjoys a 2 to 1 Democratic advantage in registered voters. So its not too surprising. Still, it's fun to see Bush treated as radioactive and the label "Republican" treated like a stigma by a Republican, no less. Implosion and self-destruction for the GOP And none too soon. I hope s...

I'd like to take a brief break from the usual Internal Monologue fare to wish my lovely wife a very happy birthday! We also recently celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Sarah, I love you very much and look forward to many more happy anniversaries and birthdays with you. [We now return to Internal Monologue 's regular programming. By the way, I've just decided that Internal Monologue merits italics, just like The New York Times and the titles of books. I'm real publication, too, gosh darn it.]

I sent a letter to Sullivan in reaction to this post (a reader annoyed that Markos is meddling in the CT senate race): Is your reader looking at the same CT polls I am? This is the latest Rassmussen poll has Lamont and Lieberman in a dead heat in the three-way contest, with the Republican lagging far behind . Your reader seems to be referring to this Quinnipiac poll , which does have Lieberman winning a 3-way with 51% (27 percent for Lamont and 9 percent for Schlesinger). The Quinnipiac poll was from July 13-18. The Rassmussen poll was July 20th. I don't know which polling firm is more reliable, or which polls have favored which candidate. But the data no longer seem to support your reader's contention that Lieberman "is crushing Lamont and the GOP candidate in a 3-way general election". Things are shifting rapidly in CT, and the momentum I've seen has all been in favor of Lamont. It's funny the double thinking about Markos and the lefty blogs...

At this point, all it seems I can do is relate one ominous, sad development after another. The prime minister of Iraq, Maliki, is being torn between his need to placate the US government (which wants to let Israel continue to attack Lebanon) and placate his own Shiite constituency (which is anti-Israel). This NYT article explains: WASHINGTON, July 25 — President Bush and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki , embraced the same vision of an emerging democratic Iraq today, but they made it clear they still have deep differences over Israel’s campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah . Mr. Bush praised the courage of the Iraqi people, who he said were making “enormous sacrifices” to secure their own freedom. And Mr. Maliki said he and the president discussed how to build “a democratic, united, flourishing Iraq.” The leaders also announced a plan to significantly bolster American troop strength in Baghdad to help quell continuing violence in the city. I guess as the Iraqis stand up,...

Ain't it great what the folks we back in the Middle East do? Well, no, it isn't. I just got this via femisting (I love their logo): AFGHANISTAN'S notorious Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which was set up by the Taliban to enforce bans on women doing anything from working to wearing nail varnish or laughing out loud, is to be recreated by the Government in Kabul. The decision has provoked an outcry among women and human rights activists who fear a return to the days when religious police patrolled the streets, beating or arresting any woman who was not properly covered by a burka or accompanied by a male relative. Wait a sec, I thought we invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and install someone just slightly more reasonable. And I thought the Taliban resurgence there was coming from the Taliban (who operate out of Pakistan, our "stalwart ally"), but now it seems it's coming from Kabul, too. Well, this is bad news for the...

Slacktivist has a great post that illustrates the widely varying views people have on a fundamental question: How much money is enough? Here we have a group of people convinced that $500,000 a year is "not enough to live on." They would not understand the grateful joy of my fortunate colleagues in the press room. They wouldn't consider $95,000 a year as "striking it rich," but as "striking it poor." I don't begrudge those millionaires their millions any more than I begrudge the lucky guys in the pressroom their tens of thousands. The trouble comes when these extraordinary people cease to realize they're extraordinary -- when elites fail to realize that they are elites. I do think Americans live in a warped reality when it comes to economic class issues. Probably as warped as the female body image world: I remember in the movie Devil Wears Prada , the main character was considered fat because she wore a size 6 dress (she's down to a siz...

Atrios makes a great point about Joe Lieberman and his "principles": One thing that's been bugging me about Lieberman is that his knee-jerk retort to criticism on the Iraq war has been that he should be applauded because he's taken that stand on principle. At this point I'm not even sure what his stand is, or what principle motivates it, but nonetheless it's really quite bizarre. It's as if all he has to do is play the "principle" card and he's immune from criticism. I picture Joe as Dr. Evil trying to shut up his son, but instead of saying "shhh" he's saying "principle!" This reminds me of the whole "we must respect other people's religious beliefs" canard that I've been doing my best to demolish . We should respect other people's right to believe and worship as they see fit. But that doesn't mean what they believe and how they worship should not be subject to criticism and ridicule. Similar...

Sullivan recommends Gore's movie . He has some objections, though. He thinks Gore should have pushed for an increased gas tax. While I like the incentives such a tax would set up (lower consumption, make alternative energy sources more profitable), I don't like the fact that it would probably be a very regressive tax (i.e. hitting the poor proportionally harder than the rich). If the regressiveness of a gas tax could be offset by packaging it with other changes in the tax code, I'd be more enthusiastic about it. My objections to the movie were more triggered by the Al Gore "bio-porn" about growing up on a farm (wasn't his father a Senator, too?), about not farming tobacco after a relative died of lung cancer, etc. I thought those parts were akward and phony, and did nothing to support the central thesis of the movie. They felt like political puff pieces, and I felt their presence undermined the strength of the arguments a bit. Al Gore is at his best when he...

I have two rival hypotheses to explain the behavior of the Bush administration in the foreign policy area. The first is that it is run by a bunch of war-mongering radical neocons who are supported by the usual set of Bush cronies that profit from their actions: Halliburton, oil companies, defense contractors, etc. The second is even scarier: there is in fact no foreign policy at all. Various groups jockey for power (Pentagon, State Department, neoconservatives, rapture-ready funamentalists, the "let Israel do anything it wants to" lobby) but all are desperately afraid of giving bad news to Bush and thus falling out of favor. Bush isn't really able to decide who's right among them, so his speechwriters use vague phrases and everyone tries to figure out what the policy is from those, and from our actions. The latest swerve in the road seems to be that the US is siding with Sunnis against Shiites. Digby links to Billmon who is stunned by the following quote in the Te...

I like the New York Times . I read it just about every day. But there are some annoying things about it. Like the fact that you can't link to their columnists because they're hidden behind a TimesSelect subscription wall. In today's (Sunday's) Times , there is an Op-Ed by Nicholas Sambanis whose headline reads, "It's Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq". Now, my loyal readers know that I proclaimed the same thing in the early hours of 7/21/06. Wouldn't it be interesting to compare and contrast our opinions? I'd love to give you a link, but alas, the "Gray Lady" has opted out of the conversation. I also just want to point out that the NYT wants you to pay for an opinion that you could have gotten for free right here at least a day or so earlier (I don't know when Sunday columns go live). Of course, Mr. Sambanis' article has a lot more on the history of civil wars, what makes them end or not end, and what might contribute...

Those ads always bugged the shit out of me. I remember when the BART stations were full of them. First of all, there's just the akwardness of seeing all these women standing around in their underwear. Normally, models in ads are "high gloss" enough they don't strike me as really real people. But these women did, which I guess was the whole point of the campaign. But if the women are in fact so damn real, what the fuck are they doing standing around a BART station in their undies? That's not exactly real. And so many people were falling all over themselves praising Dove for using "real people" that they overlooked the fact that the product they were selling was A, designed to cater to the same insecurities that all other cosmetic products cater to, and B, pure crap that did not actually do what it purported to do. (A topical cream that can remove cellulite? Anything that could do that, I assure you you don't want to be smearing it on your body.) What...

...maybe you'd think we're about to turn a corner in a Friedman or two, too. Take a look at this . It's the July 22 issue of "The Advisor", a publication of the Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq ( MNSTC-I ). (Hat tip: Patrick Lang .) Boy does it paint a rosy picture. Check out these headlines: Iraqi government takes control of first province Iraqi Joint Staff College holds first graduation Coalition forces transition “Courage” to Iraqi control Police view new vehicles as symbols of progress Now I know why conservatives complain that the New York Times isn't reporting the good news. It's like the two publications are talking about completely different places.

Glenn Greenwald talks about John Dean's new book Conservatives without Conscience . I haven't read it, but according to Greenwald, Dean's basic argument seems to be that "conservativism" has mutated into "authoritarianism". That seems to fit what I see from the outside: the abandonment of many conservative principles, the eagerness for war, the demonization of dissent, etc. The fact that John Dean was one of Nixon's minions involved in the Watergate scandal is rather ironic. If former Nixon folks are saying Bush is too authoritarian, I think that probably says something pretty scary about how much Kool-Aid this administration is willing to drink. (I bet most of my readers know that the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" means believing blindly in a stupid or insane idea, and know where it comes from. For those of you who don't, there's an explanation here .)

The war between Israel and Lebanon has broken the famous "McDonald's Rule": Countries that have McDonald's restaurants don't go to war with each other. This rule was first put forth by Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree as the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention". Apparently, Beirtut has a McDonald's (it got bombed in 2003). And McDonald's Israeli subsidiary "operates more than 80 restaurants across Israel." And Israel is certainly at war with Lebanon. I suppose you could argue that Israel is at war with the stateless entitiy Hezbollah, and then argue whether or not Hezbollah has any McDonald's, but when Israel is bombing the Beirut airport and blockading ports, that's war with Lebanon as far as I'm concerned. So the rule has definitely been broken. Not even Happy Meals can stifle Middle Eastern violence. Of course, the McDonald's rule has been broken before , as early as 1989 when the...

I thought I should take a moment to note the passing of Syd Barrett , founding member of Pink Floyd who soon withdrew from public life following a mental collapse. His career was quite short, but he was enormously influential. Perhaps more influential than he deserves to be given his actual musical output, but back when I played guitar even I learned a few Syd Barrett songs (" Dark Globe" and "Octopus"). His early Pink Floyd songs represent psychedillica at its height, often infused with a fairy-tale child-like sensibility. His later work is often a harrowing illustration of a mind helplessly witnessing the process of its own destruction. Listening to some of the songs on the solo albums is almost indecent. There are also some bootlegs of songs that haven't ever been officially released: "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Vegetable Man" are Pink Floyd songs that the band never released since they were deemed too intimate and realistic a depict...

Here are some images from the Washington Post. They are panorama views of some of the destruction in Lebanon. (They require a Quicktime plug-in, I think.) (HT: Taylor Marsh ) It's pretty clear to me that the US is not going to seriously try to stop Israel from continuing its campaign, at least for a while. In fact, we're speeding up a delivery of guided bombs to Israel. I bet that's going to win a lot of hearts and minds in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Marsh says: "Holy mother of God, but this has got to be the most fly by night foreign policy strategy in U.S. history, coupled with hints of a longer war." Digby even speculates that Israel was counting on the United States to pressure it into toning down its Lebanon campaign, and now has no way to back down without losing face: The Israelis should ask themselves if they really want to do George W. Bush's dirty work for him. I continue to suspect they did not expect that the US would give them the green lig...

That headline sounds a bit kinky, doesn't it? Well, via Atrios , Political Wire has the poll from which that headline is derived: A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Ned Lamont (D) beating Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) in the primary, 51% to 41%. Here's the stunning finding: In the general election, Lieberman and Lamont are tied with 40% with Alan Schlesinger (R) trailing behind with 13%. Start taking Lamont seriously MSM, and stop doing those stories about how hurt the nice Mr. Lieberman is. If he's such a wonderful guy, why are so many CT Dems going the other way? They can't all be " blogofascists " like me. I wonder how much influence blogs really had. Certainly, lefty blogs have championed and fundraised for Lamont, but that alone can't explain Lamont being ahead by ten percentage points . I think the Iraq occupation has a lot to do with it, of course. But I'd be interested to hear the reasons Lamont supporters in CT give for their choice. I think t...

Digby has this : So apparently John "Death Squad" Negroponte has decided that rather than take the risk of information being leaked, the CIA just won't compile National Intelligence Estimates anymore. Ken Silverstein at Harper's blog reports that ever since the last NIE on Iraq was rejected by the Bush administration back in 2004 (for being "too negative") they haven't bothered to write another one. Apparently, they want to keep the president from having to deal with bad news: “What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.” I don't know what's scarier: the civil war in Iraq or the fact that the president's cro...

Billmon has little sympathy for Andrew Sullivan, who is now being attacked by the far-right blogosphere for insufficient devotion to Dear Leader and the The Cause: Randy Andy still seems to be having trouble figuring out if he's Roy Cohn or Oscar Wilde -- persecutor or persecuted. He's not alone: These days it seems like half of Right Blogistan is busy hurling accusations of betrayal and cowardice at the other half, while that other half is trying hard to ignore the many times it fired those same charges across the DMZ into Left Blogistan. Well, let me help you out, Andy. To paraphrase Grady, the ghostly caretaker from The Shining : You're Roy Cohn. You've always been Roy Cohn. You may have managed to stuff your slime down your own memory hole, but you can't erase the electronic traces of it, which reveal that you aimed your little Wildean bon mot at Susan Sontag, Nom Chomsky, Michael Moore and Eric Alterman -- none of whom sympathized, immediately or later...

From Political Wire (hat tip: Atrios ): In the Connecticut U.S. Senate race, Ned Lamont (D) has surged ahead of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and now holds a razor-thin 51% to 47% lead among likely Democratic primary voters, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. In possible general election matchups: Lieberman defeats Republican challenger Alan Schlesinger 68% to 15% Lamont beats Schlesinger 45% to 22%, with 24% undecided Running as an independent, Lieberman gets 51%, to 27% for Lamont and 9% for Schlesinger. Remember that "likely voter" models for summer primary elections under unusual circumstances are quite iffy. But certainly Lamont has a great deal of "Nedrenaline" at the moment; his candidacy must be taken seriously. I like that. I think the whole progressive movement should be taken more seriously, and I hope I have been and will continue to be a part of that, however small.

Internal Monologue is officially calling the "sectarian violence" in Iraq a civil war. And I'm not going to use the "low-grade" qualifier that's been bandied about recently. My evidence (hat tip: digby ): BAGHDAD, 20 July (IRIN) - The Iraqi government says it is worried aboutincreasing sectarian violence in the country, following statistics released by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) stating that nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in May and June alone." Sectarian violence in Iraq is increasing and day after day more bodies are being found countrywide after suffering serious torture," says Lt. Col. Abdel-Kareem Hassan, a senior official in the Ministry of Interior. "The numbers presented by UNAMI has just confirmed this is reality and also increases fear among the local population. 6,000 civilian deaths in 2 months. That's about 700 per week, or 100 per day. If we assume that Iraq is about 1/10th the population of the United S...

Like many, Billmon is puzzled by what exactly Israel hopes to accomplish in Lebanon, given that its ground incursions there have actually been rather limited: And yes, I'm sure those Vietnam-style search-and-destroy missions will work every bit as well for the IDF as they have for the U.S. Army in Anbar province. And, given that Hezbollah -- by one estimate -- started the war with roughly 13,000 rockets dispersed across southern Lebanon, and has fired only about 10% of them, a week should give the IDF plenty of time to complete the mission. Definitely. He floats one possible explanation that is rather frightening: It may be that the imprecise use of air power in southern Lebanon is designed to send a very precise message to the leadership class in Tehran: This is what could happen to your country if we (that is, the USA and/or Israel) decide to launch a full-scale air attack. We may not know where all your nuclear facilities are, but we know exactly where your bridges, power p...

Lots of people in the blogosphere are talking about the ban on federally funded stem cell research. I've already got one post on it. Andrew Sullivan has come out in favor of the federal funds ban. I see his Catholicism coming through in his thinking on this. Needless to say, I desagree with him. He has printed some good e-mail responses to his support of the ban: here , and this one is especially important: The problem with this ban means that none of the researchers implements funded with federal money can ever be involved/associated with research funded by other means. This includes the lab space, every beaker, piece of paper, pencil, etc.! This is not practical in the slightest. That means that a researcher, say here at UCSF, who wants to tap into the money allocated by the state of California for stem cell research, would have to have a completely different facility whereby NOTHING funded with federal dollars can enter, and that likely includes the researcher himself. In aca...