Internal Monologue

Kos observes : MT-Sen: Newspapers will come wrapped Election Day in a pro-Burns ad paid by the NRA. Two things -- 1. Notice how the NRA is actively working against Jon Tester, despite Jon having a perfect gun record. The NRA will always oppose Democrats at the federal level no matter how gun friendly they might be. That's how movements succeed. Not like the jokers at the LCV and Sierra Club and NARAL who think endorsing Republicans and helping them get congressional majorities is somehow advantageous to their agenda; Any progressive group that supports any Republican at the fedral level is practicing political suicide/treason/stupidity.

Very serious, says tristero on Hullaballoo : Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias are wrong. The movement to establish an American theocracy is serious, relentless, and very, very dangerous. [...] But the fact that I find christianism utterly repulsive when it's not just silly doesn't take away from the fact that many, many Americans are deeply attracted to it. Many more Americans have trouble distinguishing between the more diluted versions of christianism and their own desire to have a meaningful place for religion and national pride in their lives. It is a serious mistake to underestimate these people. They have more cash, and more followers than we do. More importantly, they know, as we yet don't, that they are in a culture war. And they know, as incredible as it surely sounds to Rosenfeld and Yglesias, that the culture war is a continuation of the ancient struggle between the priests and the philosophes and ideals of the Enlightenment. Go ahead, Matt and Sam, read what ...

Because if you can't make the occupations work in reality, maybe you can make them work in virtual reality. Just read this on Kos: Pentagon memo reveals launch of new PR war WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is buttressing its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign war room as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces intensifying criticism over the Iraq war. In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record." [...] The plan would focus more resources on so-called new media, such as the Internet and Weblogs. Emphasis added. Does this mean we're going to have more drive-by Pentagon propaganda here on Internal Monologue? I hope it's better than their previous pathetic attempt .

Wolf Blitzer is terribly and shocked and saddened that a Republican operative attacked his patriotism. This is really funny. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the Bush regime attacked Nathan Hale 's patriotism ("You only had but one life to give for your country?!?! You must want the terrorists to win!!"). As usual, Greenwald has a great perspective : But Wolf Blitzer isn't surprised and upset over Lynne Cheney's use of this "ally-of-the-terrorist" weapon. He's surprised and upset that she used it against him. He thought he was exempt, that he has proven to them through many years of obsequious and mindlessly glorifying "journalism" that he is a Good Boy, that he is one of them. It's one thing to label as "pro-terrorist" most national Democratic politicians, American citizens who oppose the war in Iraq, or anyone who criticizes the Commander-in-Chief in any meaningful way. To Blitzer, that is all fine and accepta...

Apparently, now that they're owned by Google, Viacom is not giving them a free pass (HT: Sullivan , a fellow YouTube embedder): When people clicked on links for [Comedy Central clips], they got a stark message: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." Users of YouTube who had posted Comedy Central clips in the past said they received emails late Friday from the site informing them that, if they did it again, it would "result in the deletion of your account." YouTube - a year-old web site that offers video clips of homemade films but also is the go-to site for countless snippets taken from commerical TV - has had copyright trouble in the past. But this appears to be the largest purge to date at the site. Where will I find all those Daily Show , Colbert Report , and South Park clips which my readership counts on being able to see? Bummer, man. So far, my embeds still work, but I fear that soon many of my posts will be encumbered with broken...

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article up on Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer currently held by the U.S. Military who has not been charged with any crime. This story hasn't gotten a lot of air (I only knew about it vaguely before the Greenwald Article), so I thought that I'd refer to it here in hopes that more people learn about it. Here's an excerpt: Hussein's detention in April was preceded by months of vicious complaints from Bush followers that his photojournalism was anti-American and suggestive of support for the insurgents . Before there were even any news reports anywhere about Hussein's detention, Michelle Malkin learned of Hussein's detention -- she claims "from an anonymous military source in Iraq" -- and blogged about it . At the time, she claimed that "Hussein was captured earlier today by American forces in a building in Ramadi, Iraq, with a cache of weapons." It will surprise nobody that, as was conclusively revealed o...

...my favorite Laurie Anderson song, O Superman, was nominated for best 80's video on Sullivan's site. Very performance arty and minimalist, so maybe not everyone's cup of tea. But the song is strangely tender and moving. It was written at a time when answering machines were quite new and strange. The line "smoking, or non-smoking?" sounds so dated now. But I think the song holds up well.

How unsurprising is that ?

...so that's why he accepts campaign contributions from a leading maker of gay porn. (For the whole porn reduces rape idea, see this post .) Now, as Josh Marshall says, gay porn tycoons have every right to participate in the political process. But when Republicans make political hay out of gay bashing (and run ads accusing opponents of accepting porn money), it's pretty hypocritical for the head of the Republican National Committee to be accepting these kinds of contributions. Now the question I want to ask is, what is Mr. Boyias getting from Mr. Mehlman? Why would a producer of gay porn contribute to Ken Mehlman of all people? Is he buying the rights to the Foley story?

I haven't posted on this whole disgusting episode, in which Rush Limbaugh accused Michael J. Fox of faking Parkinson's symptoms and being exploited by Democrats (never mind that he does have Parkinson's and that he's supported Republicans like Arlen Specter who've supported biomedical research). This Keith Olbermann segment is a great summary of the whole thing (HT: Firedoglake ):

The good news is that incidence of rape in the United States is down 85% from 1979 levels. Violent crime dropped only 59%. Why did rape decline more than overall violent crime? Could it be a statistical mirage, due to the fact that rape is under-reported? But why would it become more under-reported in recent years? One would think the opposite would be the case, with increased awareness and education on the subject (let's hope). This guy (Anthony D'Amato) has a guess : increasingly easy access to porn has lowered the incidence of rape by providing an outlet for sexual urges that would otherwise be channelled in a criminal direction. Here's his abstract: The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has re...

Colorful language warning...oops too late. Think Progress via Kos : NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “ Shut Up & Sing .” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘ cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush .’” What I don't understand is that Bush is at 38% approval rating, with very high disapproval. Couldn't NBC make some money of disparaging Bush? Don't late-night comedians disparage him all the time? Doesn't Conan O'Brien make Bush jokes? (Yes, he does .) What is going on here? I can completely understand when corporations do anything to make a buck. But when they turn away money I start scratching my head. Does their viewership skew so wingnut that if they aired these ads they'd lose so many viewers that it would be counterproductive? Or is there some Republican agenda here? Who is doing it, what are they getting for it, and who is letting them get away wi...

This site decided I was worthy of having a fanmail address : Zachary Drake c/o JE Talent, LLC 323 Geary Street, #302 San Francisco, CA 94102 It should work; it's my agent's address. I'm sure fanmail.biz just pulled me from some database (probably imdb.com). Of course, if you're a fan, you're better off just emailing me .

That fleet I mentioned earlier is apparently in position : There is a massive concentration of US naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Two US naval strike groups are deployed: USS Enterprise, and USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group. The naval strike groups have been assigned to fighting the "global war on terrorism." War Games Concurrent with ths concentration of US Naval power, the US is also involved in military exercises in the Persian Gulf, which consists in "interdicting ships in the Gulf carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles"

UPDATE: I posted a revised version of this on Kos . Just got back from this event , which was pretty cool. I'm very familiar with Kos and Lakoff , and know a lot about Joan Blades' MoveOn.org , so there wasn't a whole lot of new information for me. I hadn't heard of Paul Pierson before. Here are some interesting tidbits I heard at the panel: Paul Pierson made the point that one must keep in mind that politics is not just a popularity contest. It is also a contest of organization , and a contest between institutions . One can win an election even if your ideas are less popular if you have better organization and more robust institutions. The Republicans have been able to do this, as this figure illustrates: Markos made the point that he's less concerned with the division between "right" and "left" and more concerned with the divisions between establishment-driven candidates vs. people powered candidates, between Democratic appeasers and Dem...

Lizard at Journal of Applied Misanthropology was asked the following question: Is there not some social utility in having human beings who feel a direction connection to God/Yhwh/the universe/Whoever and to His/Her/its creations? Can we not expect it to deeply influence their behavior in a way more profound than an intellectual acceptance of a systm of morality? Follow the link to read Lizard's response. Here's mine : Ah, yes, the "Noble Lie" argument. I share [Lizard's] disdain for it. And I agree that science provides us with a more firmly grounded connection to the universe. Here's my favorite: All living creatures on earth are members of the same family. Not some hippie-dippy, "spiritual", abstract kind of "family", but all are literally cousins, albeit very distant ones. To riff on an old exclamation, You WILL be a monkey's uncle (if you're male), indeed you already are. But my main objection to the "noble lie" argu...

Orcinus found this on the web: "Sanity," says Akhtar, "has its own burdens, and fundamentalism is the treatment for those burdens." His argument spins on six specific burdens of sanity: -- Factual uncertainty: the need to carry on even when we don't know all the facts -- Conceptual complexity: Our ability to interpret the world, and choose our path among many -- Moral ambiguity: There are almost no one-size-fits-all laws and rules. How do we make the punishment suit the crime? -- Cultural impurity: Human culture is a mix of many influences, which can make establishing one's own identity difficult -- Personal responsibility: Sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes, it's our fault. How do we accurately assign responsibility? -- The confrontation of our own mortality: Death comes to us all, though we almost compulsively deny it. It goes on to explain how there are normal ways of relieving these burdens, but when those are unavailable, one will turn to the funda...

Newsweek/MSN has a startling finding from their poll : Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a “top priority,” but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. OK, 28% of Americans say impeaching Bush should be a "top priority" and 23% say it should be a lower priority. Doesn't that mean that 51% of Americans support Bush's impeachment? Is that not a majority? Shouldn't the headline scream: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT BUSH IMPEACHMENT ? Thanks to other bloggers for pointing this out, including  SSquirrel  and The Talent Show : But, it's sad when a major media outlet like Newsweek is consumed with playing the same song that they end up burying a lede like this[...]Now wait a second...doesn't 28% plus 23% equal 51%? I'd thin...

They didn't say it has to be called marriage, but the NJ court said same-sex couples must get the same "rights and benefits": The Legislature has recognized that the “rights and benefits” provided in the Domestic Partnership Act are directly related “to any reasonable conception of basic human dignity and autonomy.”....It is difficult to understand how withholding the remaining “rights and benefits” from committed same-sex couples is compatible with a “reasonable conception of basic human dignity and autonomy.” ....Disparate treatment of committed same-sex couples, moreover, directly disadvantages their children. We fail to see any legitimate governmental purpose in disallowing the child of a deceased same-sex parent survivor benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act or Criminal Injuries Compensation Act when children of married parents would be entitled to such benefits. ....Gays and lesbians work in every profession, business, and trade. They are educators, arch...

I love the part where Stephen Colbert talks about meeting Len Lakofka at GenCon 10. The Assassin's Knot rocked, especially for the time it was released: 1983. My only objection was that Colbert mentioned the spell heal light wounds , but I'm almost sure it should have been cure light wounds. And unlike Colbert, getting a girlfriend didn't stop me from playing Dungeons & Dragons. Neither did getting a wife, or even getting a son. I'm hardcore . And in no way did D&D Online: Stormreach make tabletop D&D obsolete. I haven't even played Stormreach .

 "Democrats who hoard cash for future political ambitions will find that we have long memories (otherwise called "Google")."   - Kos   Here's a quote from me:   "The Internet: Everything you've always wanted from God, with the additional bonus of actually existing."

This is pretty sick: "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease," Limbaugh told listeners. "He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting." Rush apologized, then renewed his attack from a different angle: After his apology, Limbaugh shifted his ground and renewed his attack on Fox.[...]Then Limbaugh pivoted to a different critique: "Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democratic politician." (HT: Crooks and Liars , but the whole blogosphere has it.) Well, if Democratic politicians were the only ones supporting an avenue of research that might lead to a better treatment for my debilitating condition, I'd "shill" for them, too. The "rights" blastocysts that are already going to be thrown away, vs. potential treatments for devastating illnesses. S...

A purple alien with a chipmunk voice reprimands humanity for its evil ways and demands that humanity follow certain moral principles before being allowed to join galactic civilization. These principles just happen to be the guiding principles of Unitarian Universalism . While it's fun to fantasize that there is a multi-species civilization of UU aliens out there, I think this falls into the common science fiction/religious fallacy of imagining a higher power that just happens to share all of your own values. It's just as likely that the galaxy is populated by religious nutcases. In fact, if the ratio of liberal religionists to fundamentalist fanatics on Earth is any indication of the distribution of such beings in the universe at large, it's far more likely that the universe is populated with the Taliban than with Unitarian Universalists. Of course, my hope is that dogmatic religion is a delusion unique to our species. So far, we've been spared religious idiocy from out...

10 am is the time, according to rubber hose (HT: Atrios ). Sullivan mentions it, too. Will this be the "October surprise" that rallies the Bush supporters? No matter what the wingnuts do, Let's hope same-sex marriage becomes legal there. The more it becomes legal and normal, the more ridiculous the "same sex marriage will end our civilization" argument will sound. And, of course, it's the right thing to do. What should gay people do with themselves, if not have the option to settle down and get married?

I'm not sure that this is an entirely fair comparison, but Joe Lieberman has recently been saying a lot of things that echo what Nixon was saying about the Vietnam war. Both people are trying to reassure the American voters that they want to end a war that they were very enthusiastic about prosecuting. Under Nixon, the war dragged on another 3 years. Now Joe doesn't have the authority to run the war, but his rhetoric played a key part in cowing Democratic opposition to Bush's "strategies", if they can be called that. For him to now claim to want to end the war is pretty ridiculous and is an obvious "blow with the wind" political ploy.

This is a list of articles about Republicans that I'm posting as part of Chris Bower's election project . If I can use Internal Monologue's limited clout to sway the Congressional election just a teeny bit away from the Republicans and to the Democrats, then I will be happy. This is a very important election. This is a list of negative news articles about Republicans in many of the House and Senate races. By linking to them, I hope to increase their prominence in various search engine rankings. It will be interesting to see if this works, how the search engines respond, and how the targeted Republicans respond. You can find the "source code" here . --AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl --AZ-01: Rick Renzi --AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth --CA-04: John Doolittle --CA-11: Richard Pombo --CA-50: Brian Bilbray --CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave --CO-05: Doug Lamborn --CO-07: Rick O'Donnell --CT-04: Christopher Shays --FL-13: Vernon Buchanan aka Vern Buchanan --FL-16: Joe Negron --FL-22: Clay Shaw --I...

And now for something completely frivolous...Andrew Sullivan has begun his 80's videos series . Here's the honorable mention in the "worst" category: Animotion's "Obsession". It's pretty cringe-inducing. My favorite part is where the male lead singer is dressed as a Valentino-style character and just stares at the camera and raises one eyebrow. I shudder to think what the winners in this category will be like.

I guess we're not "staying the course" in Iraq any more. Bush has "cut and run" from that phrase . Josh Marshall: My God, it's a bloodbath. No, not Iraq. That's horror, tragedy. I'm talking about the way the press is turning its hacking, slicing knives on the White House for the pitiful 'stay the course' debacle. The Times and the Post are holding a veritable northeast corridor schadenfreudethon. Say Ruttenberg and Cloud: "The White House said Monday that President Bush was no longer using the phrase “stay the course” when speaking about the Iraq war, in a new effort to emphasize flexibility in the face of some of the bloodiest violence there since the 2003 invasion."

Joe Lieberman is claiming $387 ,000 in petty cash in his campaign expenditures, according to numerous reports around the blogosphere. This is probably illegal, unless he can produce the log showing what it was used for. Lamont's campaign has filed a complaint . But before the Lieberman campaign will produce the log, they're making the strange demand that Lamont and his wife release their tax returns first. This is rather odd. It's like saying, "Before I comply with the law, you have to do something that would help my campaign." If fact, it is saying that if my understanding of the rules is correct.

Krugman (HT: Digby ) makes an important point: Now that the Democrats are strongly favored to capture at least one house of Congress, they’re getting a lot of unsolicited advice, with many people urging them to walk and talk softly if they win. I hope the Democrats don’t follow this advice — because it’s bad for their party and, more important, bad for the country. In the long run, it’s even bad for the cause of bipartisanship. There are those who say that a confrontational stance will backfire politically on the Democrats. These are by and large the same people who told Democrats that attacking the Bush administration over Iraq would backfire in the midterm elections. Enough said. [emphasis added] Damn straight. Republicans have been acting like bullys and thugs for years and now that it looks like they might lose power, there's all this talk about making nice and letting bygones be bygones. Forget it. The Republicans deserve a good working over, and our country needs it to reco...

Matt Stoller at MyDD compares Lieberman's switch on the war to Richard Nixon's statements about how he wanted to end the war: Nixon and Lieberman are very similar politicians, and it's not just that they both liked to use murky slush funds. On Ending the War EXAMPLE ONE "I want peace as much as you do." - Richard Nixon, 11/3/69 "No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do." - Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06 EXAMPLE TWO "I want to end the war." - Richard Nixon, 11/3/69 "I want to help end the war in Iraq." - Joe Lieberman, 8/11/06 On Support for the War "Many others -- I among them -- have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted." - Richard Nixon, 11/3/69 "I have been very critical of a lot of the mistakes the Bush administration has made in Iraq." - Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06 While I'm glad Joementum finally has come around, it's rather late and politically suspect.

A new Japanese wine-tasting robot has a disturbing thing to say about human flesh: When a reporter's hand was placed against the robot's taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon. HT: Majikthise , who says "We're done for." I disagree. There's no reason robots would want to eat bacon or prosciutto. Lindsay is projecting her own appetites on to the robot, who, unless it was designed by a movie-villain creator, would be unable to derive nourishment from either bacon or human flesh. The danger is now that the information is out there that humans taste like yummy pork products, there will be more cannibalism.

I plan to participate in this as much as my childcare and other duties allow: What The utilization of Google Adwords and simultaneous, widespread embedded hyperlinks in order to drive as many voters as possible toward the most damning, non-partisan article written on the Republican candidate in seventy key US Senate and House races. The campaign will run from Tuesday, October 24th until Tuesday, November 7th. [...] Why According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project , the number one way that voters use the Internet for political action is to search for information on candidates. During the final two weeks of the election, it is reasonable to expect that as many as twenty million voters will be searching for information on candidates online. During this key time, this project will help push the most negative article written by a non-partisan media source on all key Republican candidates to the forefront of any search for that candidate. The negative article will appear both hig...

(HT: DailyKos )

The Red Cross/Crescent have teamed up with the Nobel Prize folks to produce this somewhat clunky but strangely compelling interactive " game " about running a prison camp according the Geneva Conventions (HT: Mad Latinist via email). I played and got a "Well-Intentioned Humanitarian" rating. I did a good job, but there were some things I got wrong. (Hint: The guard tower in the upper left is not required by the Geneva Conventions!)

This cost of Iraq war counter currently tops 355 billion. [Blogger won't let me embed the javascript version, and the other one has black text that makes it unreadable on my background] Imagine spending this amount of money to kill and wound thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, turn world opinion against us, quagmire our military, and enormously increase the regional influence of Iran. Oh wait, you don't have to. Because we've already done it.

Atrios , in response to the Republicans' desperate fearmongering ads: Terrorism The point of terrorism is, as the name suggests, to terrorize. Not simply to kill and destroy, but to frighten the broader population. It puzzles me why the RNC has found common cause with terrorists in their new ad campaign, and it puzzles me more why they want to highlight the fact that over 5 years after 9/11 George Bush has failed to catch the guy responsible. It is very strange that they're proud of this. Kos agrees. The funny thing is, the public now trusts Democrats more on how to handle terrorism. So I don't really see how these ads can be effective. To reflect the increasing Republican emphasis on this tactic, Doonesbury has introduced a new character, Fear Itself .

HowManyOfMe.com There are: 37 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name? (HT: rubber hose ) Excellent! I only have to defeat 36 other "Zachary Drake"s before I can be the only Zachary Drake in all of America! Except for all the Zachary Drakes that have arisen since the 1990 census, as apparently this site uses that data . But those Zachary Drake's would either be young, inexperienced whelps or recent immigrants not yet wise in the ways of our land, so they should not present too much difficulty. My wife would have a much more difficult time playing this game which I've dubbed "Name Highlander " (" There can be only one! "), as she would have to defeat 2,369 other people to lay sole claim to her first and last name. Interestingly enough, my son Quinlan apparently has no fellow first namers in the country, but 8,309 people have Quinlan as a last name. The shorter form of his name, Quinn, is much more common. Another fun name applet i...

Well, this little event brings together three of my favorite things to blog about: Lord of the Rings , Republicans saying batshit crazy things about Iraq, and Steven Colbert clips on YouTube. Earlier, the Republican senator from Pennsylvannia Rick Santorum gave us this doozy of a quote , which attempted to use an analogy to Tolkien's saga to justify our invasion and occupation of Iraq: “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth. “It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.” In the clip above, Steven Colbert makes sense of this analogy for us (HT: Crooks and Liars ). Maybe in this analogy we liberal bloggers could be the fighting Uruk-Hai ...

Whoda thunkit, but the Connecticut senate race just got even more wacky and interesting. Kos has a good post . And this is how interesting Matt Stoller over at MyDD thinks the race is : You know you're in an incredible political environment when you're at an event where egomaniac Ralph Nader is wandering around, and not only is no one paying attention to him, but Ralph Nader himself doesn't even expect anyone to pay attention to him. [...] It's not your normal white picket fence suburban election, with attack ad facing attack ad. No, this is more like a white picket fence election that suddenly gets bored with life and decides to live in the forest, take a bunch of LSD, trout-fish naked, and taunt a bear cub before ending its life suddenly and with total and inexplicable resolution on November 7. Well not really, but there's no analogy that I can think of summarizing what's going on. What has happened is that Joe Lieberman competed in a Democratic primary, lo...

Riverbend has posted again after a disturbingly long hiatus: The latest horror is the study published in the Lancet Journal concluding that over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war. Reading about it left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it sounded like a reasonable figure. It wasn't at all surprising. On the other hand, I so wanted it to be wrong. But... who to believe? Who to believe....? American politicians... or highly reputable scientists using a reliable scientific survey technique? There had been speculation that she had been killed in the occupation/civil war. The folks on Kos are relieved she's alive . I add my voice to the chorus.

This article by Irwin M. Stelzer in the conservative Weekly Standard argues that this is so: But in a booming economy, a continued deficit of $248 billion is hardly chopped liver, as the analysts in New York's delis say. And when those deficits result in stacks of IOUs held by China, America's diplomats are forced to walk softly, lest they antagonize so large a creditor. It is this fiscal situation, this unwillingness to rein in spending so that the boom in tax receipts can be used to provide support for American diplomacy, that has made it impossible for America to have an effective foreign policy. Indeed, it is arguable that George W. Bush has presided over the largest decline in America's ability to influence world events since, well, since the 1920s, when we decided it was in the nation's interests to let the world take care of itself while we partied at that era's equivalents of today's discos--the jazz joints and speakeasies that offered solace to the W...

UPDATE: Kos has front-paged this. [Colorful language warning] OK, just a quick post. This NYT editorial , by Jeff Stein, national security editor at Congressional Quarterly , really pissed me off this morning: FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want? [snip] But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics? He goes on to describe seve...

HT: Sullivan . I guess the only thing to do is to find a new Isildur .

Glenn Greenwald : Genuine Republican independence in the Congress is a myth. It doesn't exist. They have spent the last five years as a pitifully obsequious appedange to the Bush agenda. Read the post, he has some great examples in the UPDATE section of key votes where the Republicans totally toed the Bush line. The Democratic attack machine (which as far as I can tell right now is the blogs, Doonesbury , and two shows on Comedy Central) has got to start slamming McCain and his ilk. And what better way to do so than showing what a bunch of Bush-lackeys they are. In the future, I hope chilren will ask, "Mommy, Daddy, what did you do to fight the bad Bush people?" And I hope we have good answers.

A great rant over at Orcinus : You almost never hear stories like this in the US. Almost every county and region in the country, and every state and government agency involved in land use and infrastructure, has a regional master plan on file somewhere. Planning commissions large and small are already working 20 years out, penciling in where the major roads will go, where the water will come from, where the houses and shopping centers will be, how many schools and firehouses and sewer plants they're going to need, and how they're going to finance it all. When's your road up to be re-paved again? Odds are that City Hall can tell you, up to 10 years out. [snip] In short, everybody who knew how to do anything -- and especially those doing it in the interest of the people of the United States, rather than for the benefit of one or another corporate profiteer -- was gradually cut out of the process. Ridiculed and belittled as "the bureaucracy," these people had once be...

Kevin Drum links to a very interesting graph from the New York Times . It shows how the political climate in your 20's can affect your lifelong political outlook. It seems as though Bush is turning off a whole generation of people to the Republican party.

There's been a lot of talk in the lefty blogosphere recently about US Naval deployments close to the shores of Iran. AlterNet : The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it. Billmon and Digby have both mentioned it. The best coverage on the fleet movements and their proximity to the midterm elections seems to be this Kos diary by Steven D. I wish I could say that this was all tinfoil hat speculation, but I would not put it past this administration to launch airstrikes against Iran in an effort to salvage the midterm elections. I can only hope that saner heads in the US military prevail and preven...

There's a reason Greenwald is so popular. Here he talks about howBeltway Democratic consultants have until recently essentially castrated the Democratic party with their fear of anything that smacks of real political passion: The single most erroneous and destructive premise among the Beltway political class -- which includes the Democratic consulting class along with their intellectual twins in the David-Broder-led punditry circles -- is that anger and passion are the enemies of successful political movements. They preach a mindset of fear and defensiveness -- never articulate a view too strenuously and never be driven by principle or passion because to do so renders one an unmoderate extremist who will alienate normal Americans. He points how various successful Democrats have done well by ignoring these kinds of folks and speaking passionately about issues. One of the worst legacies of the Clinton era has been this tendency for all Democrats to try to triangulate the way he did,...

Atrios , Crooks and Liars , and presumably a bunch of other folks point to this TPM cafe article : Joe Lieberman is declining to say whether he thinks it would be a good thing if Dems win control of the House of Representatives. Lieberman -- who needs GOP votes as an independent -- was asked in an interview published today in the Hartford Courant whether America would be better off if his lifelong party took back the House. The Courant reports that Lieberman responded: "Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer." Lieberman also wouldn't say whether he'd vote for Dem John DeStefano, Jr., for governor, who, as the Courant noted wryly, is "mayor of the city where Lieberman has lived since the 1960s." Lieberman also observed that there's "not enough patriotism" in Washington. More from the Courant interview after the jump. Any Democrat who supports Lieberman is inviting a betreyal. The l...

(HT: Sullivan ) Those of us on the left need to start getting the negative memes out there for the possible Republican 2008 presidential nominees. So far, McCain and Giuliani have gotten a lot of laudatory treatment from the press, especially for their "independence". So I think it's important to point out when they sell out their convictions for partisan gain. The Stranger notices how Giuliani has changed his tune on the assult weapons ban now that he's stumping for Republicans. Giuliani in the past: Someone who now voted to roll back the assault-weapons ban would really be demonstrating that special-interest politics mean more to them than life-or-death issues. Giuliani now, stumping for McGavick in Washington (good luck with that: Cantwell (D-WA) is ahead 50-41): The assault-weapons ban is something I supported in the past. Translation: I wanna be president sooo bad. (To be fair, Senator Clinton is having to do something similar). As the 2008 Republican nominat...

The guy who figured out that poor women in the developing world are often a good business investment won the Nobel Peace Prize . I think the whole microcredit movement is one of the more interesting things to happen in the improving people's lives department in a long time. I hope it can scale upwards and benefit even more people.

It's funny to see how Bush's general obliviousness to the most important matters of state (Iraq, Katrina, budget defecits, et cetera ) has now spread to the upcoming midterm elections. Right now, it looks like the Republicans could get electorally slaughtered, and apparently Bush has no plan to deal with a changed political landscape where his stooges don't run everything. Sullivan: Some Republicans think the president is out of touch with respect to the Congressional elections, and their potential aftermath. He is said to have no plan if things go awry. That's not like this president, is it? Just ask the troops risking and losing their lives because he had no plan for the post-invasion in Iraq. Here's a quote from the USNews.com article he links to: Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president'...

No, Internal Monologue did not make the cut. But The Hotline's Blogometer blog directory is still a useful resource. It lists the top 50 political blogs by Alexa traffic (my rank Alexa rank is 3 , 7 98,7 6 3!) . I find that I regularly read 13 of the top 50, and that I don't spend too much time in the conservative blogosphere. (Andrew Sullivan is about as far right as I can go, and a lot of the wingers consider him a liberal.) Of course, there are many blogs I read that are much lower in the rankings. So I think I can consider myself "well-read" in the liberal blogosphere.

Maybe attacking Bush is almost too easy, but Jon still manages to make it fun. Crooks and Liars, as usual, has the video .

Both Taylor Marsh and Jerome Armstrong at MyDD quote this Washington Post story about Democrats "going personal" in their political battles against Republicans. They both approve, and so do I. You know those movies where the nice kid is constantly bullied and bullied and he "turns the other cheek" but really he's just wimping out and you're screaming at him to finally get some cojones [thanks Mad Latinist] and lay the smackdown on the assholes who richly deserve it? That's exactly how I've felt observing the Democratic party these past few years. And in those movies, there's usually a moment where the nice kid's finally had enough and his anger bursts out and he (it's usually a he) hits back. And everyone feels good. Everyone shouts "yes!" in their hearts. Could we be having one of those moments now? Yes, maybe the nice kid in his anger goes too far. And he comes to realize that those bullies are pathetic wimps. And maybe in...

This question is probably impossible to answer with any degree of objective certainty. But Billmon takes a stab at it , using what data he could find: But it's hard -- or should be -- for Shrub to take much comfort even in that, because while Saddam ruled Iraq for almost 24 years, the Cheney Administration and the U.S. Army have had the place in their tender care for less than four. Two million divided by 24 equals 83,333 deaths a year. But 655,000 divided by four equals 163,750 deaths a year -- almost double Saddam's annual output. Or, if you prefer to use more "conservative" estimates for both: Saddam: 31,250 deaths a year (750,000 divided by 24) Cheney Administration: 87,500 deaths a year (350,000 divided by four) But that makes the comparison look even worse . We also shouldn't forget that Hussein has a line drawn under his column in the record books. Shrub and company do not. The civil war they have helped unleash in Iraq could last for a long, long...

And it wasn't produced by the usual Democratic ad consultants. Kos talks about it here .

Tony Blair gets a well-deserved smackdown from General Sir Richard Dannatt (HT: Welshman on Kos): The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society. In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq. Who is left in the stay-the-course crowd besides Bush, his dog, Blair, and Lieberman? OK, too many people. But the rats are jumping from the sinking ship. If only this had happened sooner. As in before the war.

The American South, until recently supportive of the Iraq occupation, has recently soured . This doesn't surprise me too much, as the South is probably bearing a greater share of the military burden. In some ways, I'm sad that it's taken America as a whole a long time to come round to a war-skeptical point of view. On the other hand, it seems we have done so faster than in Vietnam, and with fewer casualties on both sides. (My knowledge is sketchy, but I'm pretty sure "excess deaths" in Vietnam were a lot more than the recent 655,000 estimate that Lancet produced for Iraq.) So maybe that's progress, and I should be grateful. It still seems like a colossal stupid waste of human life that could have easily been avoided, though.

This will teach North Korea to fizzle a plutonium bomb in defiance of the world community: The new American resolution , to be formally introduced this morning, would declare North Korea’s actions to be a threat to international peace and stability and would require countries to freeze assets related to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs and ban the sale or transfer of materials that could be used in them. It would also ban travel by people involved in the programs and bar the sale of the luxury goods used to reward the regime’s elite (emphasis billmon's) Let's hope North Korea doesn't launch a war to seize South Korea's supply of Manalo Blahniks. The resulting refugee crisis may overwhelm retail stores throughout northeastern China.

This is pretty sickening, but not really surprising given the devastation and chaos Iraq has suffered. Lancet is a very prestigious publication, and from what I've read their methodology seems sound. Majikthise : A new study by American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that there have been 665,000 excess deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003. This study, published in the Lancet, is the best scientific estimate of deaths attributable to the invasion. All other methods for estimating the number of deaths pale beside a population based study. Instead of extrapolating the death toll from police reports or media coverage, Iraqi scientists fanned out over the country and asked Iraqis how many members of their households had died since 2003. Of course, the increasingly isolated klatch of people who still think Iraq was a good idea and that we're about to turn a corner in another Friedman or two are sliming this study with all they've got. According to Majikthise ...