What the wise minds at CQ have to say about the Bush speeches

The CQPolitics Forum: Will Bush's Speeches Make Voters Sway His Way?

CQPolitics.com asked its Board of Advisors the following:

President Bush and top administration officials have engaged in a series of speeches — keyed to Monday’s fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — that seek to directly identify Iraq as a crucial battleground in the international war on terror and warn that a U.S. military withdrawal from that nation before “the job is done” will embolden America’s adversaries and increase the likelihood of attacks on U.S. soil.

Have these speeches, aimed at stemming the sharp drop in support for the war in Iraq and Bush’s foreign policy in general that has been seen in public opinion polls, changed the political dynamics of these issues in this midterm election year?

Today, six professional political analysts — David P. Rebovich, Rhodes Cook, Bruce E. Cain, Charles S. Bullock III, Susan A. MacManus and Dotty Lynch — provide their views on these questions.

David P. Rebovich: Polls have long shown that most Americans disagree with the president’s policy toward Iraq and that problems with the war may result in the Democrats gaining a majority in the House and perhaps the U.S. Senate this fall.

So what did President Bush decide to do with Election Day two months away? Rather than try to rationalize, much less apologize for, the slow progress in Iraq, he went on the offense. With the emotional five-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks approaching, Bush used the bully pulpit to speak optimistically and enthusiastically about his administration’s efforts to fight terrorism abroad and protect the homeland.

The president’s series of speeches had two key purposes. One was to rally Republicans, some of whom are disenchanted with Bush’s and the GOP-controlled Congress’ performance the last few years and are disinclined to show up at the polls on Nov. 7. Turnout by Republican base voters will be especially important in those districts and states — and there are many — where GOP incumbents are in tight races.

Bush’s second purpose was to put the Democrats on the defensive and make them seem like mere complainers while the White House and GOP-controlled Congress wrestle with the complexities of fighting terrorism in Iraq. And, as the president explained in his speeches, while the administration prevented several planned attacks on America since 9/11.

The implications of this approach are clear. The president wants to make the point that electing Democratic majorities in Congress will undermine the war on terrorism abroad and at home, thus jeopardizing the nation’s short- and long-term well-being.

This assertion might have some political bite except for two recent developments. The Senate Intelligence Committee just concluded that, contrary to Bush’s claims, there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were connected prior to the American invasion of Iraq. And the Democrats announced that they do, in fact, have some specific alternatives to the administration’s policies.

Last week, the Senate Democrats announced an elaborate plan that they call the Real Security Act of 2006. This plan contains reasonable proposals for changing the course in Iraq, refocusing the war on terror and bringing terrorists to justice, implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, protecting transportation systems and improving intelligence capabilities. The Democrats’ ideas are worthy of consideration, if hard to put on a bumper sticker, and are subject to the same critical analysis and debate that the president’s policies are.

Thus, Democratic candidates can counter the claim by Republicans that they simply want to “cut and run” on the war in Iraq. However, by trying to demonstrate that they can take the nation in a new and better direction on the war and on anti-terrorism policy, the Democrats may have opened themselves up to criticism on issues that they were already winning in the minds of most voters.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Democratic candidates may find it more difficult and distracting to explain their party’s proposals than simply criticizing the president and the Republicans in Congress. But that is the price of trying to show voters that you can lead and govern effectively.

David P. Rebovich, Ph.D., is the managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics in Lawrenceville, N.J.. He is a columnist for PoliticsNJ.com and New Jersey Lawyer, and a contributor to Campaigns and Elections magazine.

Rhodes Cook: I don’t know how much the administration’s renewed focus on the Iraq war and terrorism has changed the dynamic of these issues in this year’s midterm campaign. But the latter issue in particular plays to the Republicans’ strength.

It reminds one of the old football adage that if a play works, keep running it until the other team stops it. Republicans have been running the terrorism “play” since the midterm of 2002, and the Democrats haven’t stopped it yet.

Rhodes Cook, a former CQ senior politics writer who publishes The Rhodes Cook Letter, a bi-monthly political newsletter, and is author of America Votes, a biennial compilation of election data published by CQ Press.

Bruce E. Cain: At this point in the mid-term election, the question is not whether it will at least partially be a mandate on Iraq. It will.

What we do not know is how much of the national swing will be determined by national issues as opposed to local, campaign-specific factors such as incumbency, negative ads, candidate quality etc.

This gives the president two tactical choices. Lie low, stay out of the news, and let the Republican candidates fight on their own terms. Or charge forward, trying to change the frame of reference that voters have when they cast their ballots.

Since it is not in this president’s make-up to sit on the sidelines, it is no surprise that he is attempting to re-link the war in Iraq with the war on terror, and using the anniversary of 9/11 to remind voters of his bold, even if erring, leadership on terror.

The Republicans generally have been more aggressive than the Democrats about shaping the way that voters think. However, this is no easy matter: At some point, the facts have to connect up with the “spin” and national mood.

An atmosphere of palpable fear inclines voters to risk aversion, giving the benefit of the doubt to those who sound confident, strong and determined.

As time has progressed since 9/11, fear has lessened and the hard facts have not supported the president’s arguments. A flurry of speeches will not do the trick if voters have serious doubts about the president’s judgment.

This is the president’s last chance to help his party. If the polls next week indicate that his Iraq speeches and new proposals for handling terrorists have not pushed presidential approval ratings up significantly, President Bush will be doing his own marginal Republicans no favor by trying to repair his own image. His attempts to change the frame of the midterm debate have the byproduct of making national issues more salient.

Sometimes the best leadership is to get out of the way. But not all leaders can do that.

Bruce E. Cain is the director of the University of California Washington Center and longtime director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley.

Charles S. Bullock III: The president continues to get his best ratings from the public on the issue of who is best suited to defend the nation from terrorism. While his recent speeches are designed to remind the public that terrorism remains a threat, the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks do even more to promote the image of President Bush the Defender.

However, it is other aspects of the president’s role on which Bush needs help. The 20 cent per gallon drop in gas prices may do more to help the president in the polls and to bolster GOP fortunes for the fall.

Charles S. Bullock III is the Richard Russell Professor of Political Science and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia.

Susan A. MacManus: Nothing disgusts average Americans more than the politicization of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

What drove this home to me was tuning in to watch the moment of silence memorial service this morning at Ground Zero, only to have a local television station break to air two strident attack ads from a Democrat and Republican running against each other for a state Senate seat here in Florida.

It reminded me of the blatant disconnect between the public and politicians when it comes to manners and common decency in times of grief. It had the uncomfortable feel of disrespect and poor taste, much like the disruption of a funeral. (And I love politics whereas most Americans do not.)

That said, the public has never stopped believing that America will be attacked again. Polls continue to show that Americans are even willing to give up some of their personal freedoms to make the nation safer.

The fight against terrorism still resonates with many citizens, but the politicization of the issue does not. Yet both political parties continue to use it as a political “weapon” against each other.

One ties the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq together; the other separates the two. One argues the country is safer today than five years ago; the other says “not true.”

What is true is that the public wants to feel safer, and longs for Democrats and Republicans alike to stand side-by-side, working together to solve problems, rather than treating serious issues as a political chess game, where each fights to position itself for victory.

Of course, that will never happen in the midst of a critical election cycle.

Two questions remain insofar as midterm elections. First, which view of the link between the war on terror and the war in Iraq is the most prevalent in each competitive congressional district? It is a question not easily answered with aggregate-level public opinion polls. Attitudes fluctuate depending on how the question is asked and what is happening at home and abroad. President Bush will quite likely get a bounce in the polls from the fifth anniversary of 9/11 … at least in the short term.

Second, are foreign policy concerns really that much bigger than pocketbook issues — jobs (and immigration’s impact on them), health insurance, affordable housing, and rising state and local taxes, especially property taxes?

So far, this election cycle is shaping up to be one that is more focused on Congress’ inability to tackle serious pocketbook-related issues that are stressing out the average taxpayer — and voter. Incumbents beware.

Susan A. MacManus is Distinguished University Professor of Government and International Affairs at University of South Florida and political analyst for NBC affiliate WFLA-TV in Tampa.

Dotty Lynch: I think they may have worked temporarily to change the topic from Iraq to terrorism. The anniversary of 9/11 is obviously a time of heightened attention.

The president and the GOP need to rebuild their image of the party that can keep people safe. An interesting indicator of their problem is in a CBS/New York Times poll released last week. In response to an open-ended question about what they like and dislike about President Bush, only 11 percent named his handling of terrorism as a plus, compared to 38 percent who volunteered Iraq as a negative.

I think that the public still separates Iraq from terrorism. While they give the president negative reviews on Iraq, they are mixed on terrorism.

His “non-political” speech on the evening of 9/11 will be a very high-profile attempt to regain his image on terrorism. The Bush administration has lost ground here, but their bigger problem is the anger toward the war in Iraq. His attempt at linkage will be assessed by a skeptical electorate.

Dotty Lynch is a CBS News political consultant and an Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Can we all now say DUH!

Senate Report Says Hussein Didn't Support Al-Qaeda (Update2)
By William Roberts

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Declassified U.S. Senate reports said that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein didn't trust al-Qaeda and refused to support it.

“Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,'' one of the reports said. Hussein refused all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support, said the report issued in Washington today by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A second committee report said that Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress told U.S. officials that Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, information that later proved inaccurate.

Democrats said the reports show that statements by Bush administration officials before the Iraq war weren't supported by U.S. intelligence known at the time they spoke.

They include statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, linking Iraq to al-Qaeda, said Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee.

Cheney's statement that an Iraqi intelligence officer met in Prague with Mohammed Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was “ not substantiated by the intelligence assessments at the time this statement was made by the vice president,'' Rockefeller said.

Rice's statement that “there are lot of tantalizing meetings between Iraq'' and “people who were involved in 9-11'' was “clearly false based upon what was known prior to the war,'' Rockefeller said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the reports contain little new information.

“All I can say is been there, done that,'' he told reporters at the daily White House briefing today.

Among the reports' conclusions:

-- "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.''

-- "False information from the Iraqi National Congress - affiliated sources, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq and was widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war.

"The Iraqi National Congress attempted to influence United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.''

To contact the reporters on this story: William Roberts in Washington wroberts@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 8, 2006 12:48 EDT

The death of CBS news

Not that I watch CBS anymore but still...

From this





The most respected newsman in America, acknowledged even by such diverse people as Abbie Hoffman and Lyndon Baines Johnson, sat at the helm of CBS news through turbulent times, and steered his news broadcast on an even and admirable course.

To this
A pleasant, sweet, fluffy, meaningless model wannabe.

I'd stopped watching network news to begin with but this still depresses me. I worshipped "Uncle Walter." I respected Dan Rather. I found Bob Schieffer interesting enough. But this? This is just embarrassing for all concerned.

All the President's Calories

I kid you not.

He's gained five pounds and is concerned about it, blaming it on recent excessive consumption of birthday cake.

Gosh, I'm glad he's on top of these things. The nation can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that their Commander in Chief is aware of his weight.

/sarcasm

I'm in a mood today, ain't I?

Dammit, I TRY to hate Wal-Mart. I really try!

Okay, I actually am effetely intellectual enough to have the New York Times delivered daily to my front door (the delivery dude is a klutz so if I'm lucky it's on my front sidewalk but you get the idea...) And I read it, although on days I drive to work my reading is less thorough than it is on days I take the train. And I never read the business section unless something grabs my eye in the half second it takes me to glance at it and discard it.

So I think I can be excused for missing the following article until today. Mind you, I'm not so dedicatedly Jewish that it matters a whole helluva lot to me that Wal-Mart has proven supportive of the Jews who work for the Evil Empire. But it's hard to hate any company that not only is supportive of a minority that is really not beloved in Arkansas (when I attended my ex-father in law's funeral my ex pleaded with me to wear makeup to alter my appearance and tell everyone my ancestry was Ukranian and Polish and not mention Jewish at all...) but also holds meetings to promote environmental awareness among its managers and is trying to stock more organics at reasonable prices (okay, that one has clear economic motive and is likely to be executed poorly but at least they're trying!)

The link may not work as the article is in the paid archives so I'm reproducing it below.

BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK

In the Hometown of Wal-Mart, Synagogue Is a Sign of Growth

By MICHAEL BARBARO (NYT) 1450 words
Published: June 20, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Residents of Benton County, in the northwest corner of Arkansas, are proud citizens of the Bible Belt. At last count, they filled 39 Baptist, 27 United Methodist and 20 Assembly of God churches. For decades, a local hospital has begun meetings with a reading from the New Testament and the library has featured an elaborate Christmas display.

Then the Wal-Mart Jews arrived.

Recruited from around the country as workers for Wal-Mart or one of its suppliers, hundreds of which have opened offices near the retailer's headquarters here, a growing number of Jewish families have become increasingly vocal proponents of religious neutrality in the county. They have asked school principals to rename Christmas vacation as winter break (many have) and lobbied the mayor's office to put a menorah on the town square (it did).

Wal-Mart has transformed small towns across America, but perhaps its greatest impact has been on Bentonville, where the migration of executives from cities like New York, Boston and Atlanta has turned this sedate rural community into a teeming mini-metropolis populated by Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

It is the Jews of Benton County, however, who have asserted themselves most. Two years ago, they opened the county's first synagogue and, ever since, its roughly 100 members have become eager spokesmen and women for a religion that remains a mystery to most people here.

When the synagogue celebrated its first bar mitzvah, the boy's father -- Scott Winchester, whose company sells propane tanks to Wal-Mart -- invited two local radio D.J.'s, who broadcast the event across the county, even though, by their own admission, they had only a vague idea of what a bar mitzvah was.

''Jesus was Jewish,'' one D.J. noted in a dispatch from the reception at a local hotel. The other remarked, ''I love Seinfeld.''

Shortly after he moved to the area, Tom Douglass, a member of the synagogue who works in Wal-Mart's logistics department, made a presentation about Hanukkah to his son's kindergarten class. The lesson, complete with an explanation of how to play with a spinning dreidel and compete for chocolate coins, imported from New York, proved so popular that the school's librarian taped it for future classes.

Then there is Ron Haberman, a doctor and synagogue member, who has introduced Jewish cuisine to the county. His new restaurant, Eat This, next door to a new 140,000-square-foot glass-enclosed Baptist church, serves knishes, matzo ball soup and latkes. To guide the uninitiated, the menu explains that it is pronounced ''LOT-kuz.''

Not everyone is ordering the knishes, but Christians throughout Benton County are slowly learning the complexities of Jewish life. Gary Compton, the superintendent of schools in Bentonville and a member of a Methodist church in town, has learned not to schedule PTA meetings the night before Jewish holidays, which begin at sundown, and has encouraged the high school choir to incorporate Jewish songs into a largely Christian lineup.

''We need to get better at some things,'' he said. ''You just don't go from being noninclusive to being inclusive overnight.''

Surrounded by Christian neighbors, Bible study groups, 100-foot-tall crucifixes and free copies of the book ''The Truth About Mary Magdalene'' left in the seating area of the Bentonville IHOP, the Jews of Benton County say they have become more observant in -- and protective of -- their faith than ever before.

Marcy Winchester, the mother of the synagogue's first bar mitzvah, said, ''You have to try harder to be Jewish down here.''

Which may explain why what began as a dozen families, almost all of them tied to Wal-Mart and almost all of them sharing only a passing familiarity with one another, managed to create a free-standing synagogue in just under a year. Tired of being asked which church they attended, they decided to build the answer.

For several years, many of them had attended a small synagogue attached to the University of Arkansas about 30 miles south of Bentonville. But the drive was long and the university temple, a converted fraternity house, never felt like home.

So in 2004, the families -- most of them like-minded transplants from big cities largely in their 30's -- decided it was time to create a permanent Jewish community in Benton County. They bought a former Hispanic Assembly of God church a few blocks from the first five-and-dime store operated by Sam Walton, Wal-Mart's founder, and renamed it Congregation Etz Chaim, or Tree of Life.

A dozen families quickly turned into 20 families, then 40.

There were, for example, Betsy and Marc Rosen, who moved to Benton County from Chicago in 2000 after Mr. Rosen was offered a job in Wal-Mart's technology department. The family did not attend a synagogue in Chicago because, Mrs. Rosen said, ''you didn't need a synagogue to have a Jewish identity.'' There were Jewish neighbors, Jewish friends, Jewish family.

But not in Bentonville, where her daughter brought home from day care a picture of Jesus to color in. Suddenly, a synagogue did not seem like a luxury anymore, but a necessity to preserve her family's Jewish heritage.

The Jewish community here is a demographic anomaly. For decades, the Jewish population has plunged in small Southern towns like Bentonville, as young Jews have been lured to big cities like Atlanta and Houston. The Jewish population in Arkansas was 1,700 in 2001, down from 6,500 in 1937, according to the most recent numbers available from the American Jewish Yearbook, forcing synagogues in towns like Blytheville and Helena to close their doors.

''Bentonville is the exception,'' said Stuart Rockoff, a historian at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit group that supports synagogues like Etz Chaim.

But as Etz Chaim nears its second anniversary, Benton County's only synagogue -- and by extension, its fledgling Jewish community -- faces several unexpected challenges.

The members of the congregation come from observant religious families in Connecticut, reform synagogues in Kansas City, Mo., and everything in between. Though they agreed to share one roof, they are struggling to reconcile varied backgrounds and traditions, which has made for hours-long debates over, among other things, whether congregants can take photos inside the synagogue on the Sabbath. (The answer is yes, but only with the flash turned off.)

Then there is the pressure from the outside. Eager to gain a foothold in what they consider a fast-growing Jewish community, several major Jewish movements have begun wooing the synagogue. In the last year, representatives from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements have all visited the temple.

After learning there was a sizable Jewish population in the area, a rabbi from the strictly observant Chabad-Lubavitch movement moved to town, creating a potential competitor to Etz Chaim. The rabbi has had some success offering residents prayer services in his home -- which has its own Torah -- and a hard-to-find amenity in these parts: a kosher meal.

Members of the synagogue's board said they were in no rush to pick a religious affiliation but conceded the decision was inevitable.

Turnover has also proved to be a problem. Wal-Mart's suppliers like Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney, which set up satellite offices to be closer to their largest retail client, replace their Wal-Mart teams every few years, so Etz Chaim has already lost some founding members.

David Hoodis, the synagogue's president and an executive in Wal-Mart's operations department, said he expected to lose two to three families a year, forcing the temple to recruit aggressively. Members of the congregation are encouraged to invite new Wal-Mart employees over for dinner on the Sabbath to talk to them about Etz Chaim. And, to build the congregation, the synagogue has created associate memberships, with lower dues, for businesspeople who make frequent overnight trips here to visit Wal-Mart.

''I still think we are fragile,'' Mr. Hoodis said.

But the synagogue's roots are deepening. It recently celebrated its first renewal-of-wedding-vows ceremony. It received a Torah from a temple seven hours away in El Dorado, Ark., that closed because of a dwindling congregation. And after relying on borrowed rabbis, it has hired one of its own, a member of a Conservative temple, who travels to Bentonville once a month from Tulsa, Okla., with his wife, a singer who serves as Etz Chaim's cantor.

With its purple carpet and orange pews, both vestiges of the Assembly of God church it once was, Etz Chaim is not the synagogue that all of its members envisioned growing old in. But in a short time it has become the center of the Jewish community here -- and has begun to weave its way into this overwhelmingly Christian community.

This year a prominent local faith-based charity, consisting exclusively of churches, invited Etz Chaim to join. The charity promptly reworded it mission statement, replacing ''churches'' with ''congregations.''

Correction: June 23, 2006, Friday A front-page article on Tuesday about the growth and influence of the Jewish community and other religious faiths in Bentonville, Ark., because of the expansion of Wal-Mart's headquarters there, referred imprecisely to the name of one Christian denomination with several churches in the area. It is the Assemblies of God, not Assembly of God. The article also, misstated the location of the IHOP restaurant where free copies of the book ''The Truth About Mary Magdalene'' are available. It is in Rogers, Ark., not Bentonville.

Boy, when even Congressional Quarterly sees it...

When the normally extremely non-partisan Congressional Quarterly has an article essentially bitching about Pres. El Nino's hypocrisy on the issue of leaks from the administration, you know it's gotten bad out there.

In an article entitled "Indignation, Full of Holes," in this week's CQ Weekly, NBC/CBS' Craig Crawford writes:

"It’s a given that presidents relish leaks to the news media when it serves their purposes, and that they act outraged at leaks that do not make them look good. But George W. Bush’s relativism on this score is like watching a roller coaster on acid."

(read the rest at the link above.)

The State of the Nation is....Forgiving?

This Alternet story about the traffic in slaves was thought-provoking and horrifying. This U.S. State Department report from 2005 has the same effect.

But the Tier List, taken from the above mentioned State Department report, made me look twice. Look at who's on Tier 3, which is the worst offenders. Do you recognize the names of any of the United States' "good, strong allies" there? How about the ones on the Tier 2 Watch List (the ones heading to Tier 3 if they don't clean up their acts.)

If that were a United Nations report, I could almost understand how the State Department justified our alliances. After all, our present administration dislikes and mistrusts the U.N. in the first place. But this is an internal report, one done at the behest (well, officially at the behest, although it probably wasn't her idea to begin with) of Condi Rice, the Secretary of Helmet Hair and State.

We clearly forgive our allies for sins many of us cannot forgive ourselves. While our government tries to come to terms with African American descendants of slaves asking for restitution on behalf of their ancestors, it is silently permitting its wealthy allies to keep human beings, many of them extremely young children, in conditions of involuntary servitude that would have offended many of the most hard-hearted slave masters in American history.

Tipped by a story on Alternet.

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

What more should we expect, considering Our Fearless Leader (pictured at left) has stated that he doesn't consider Wicca a religion?

DISPATCH FROM THE CEMETERY

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

By Alan Cooperman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Page A02

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That's because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion -- a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle -- to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

(click link above for the whole story.)

Overheard on the train

On my trip home last night (the train's air conditioning was not working, btw) I chanced to eavesdrop on the conversation being held behind me by three young men with unkempt hair and chips on their shoulders. I can't reproduce it word for word because I wasn't really paying attention initially, plus I can't use the word "fuck" with nearly their alacrity, but the gist of it was that they were discussing how to acquire enough explosives to do something exciting. I do recall that one of them said that one would have to be a signator to the Geneva Convention (I'm actually making it more grammatically correct than he was) in order to get one kind and another had to be avoided because the government puts some kind of indestructible identification in it so they could find out who'd used it. Okay, I thought, either they're complete morons or they're trying to get someone to start a fight on the train. If that latter, no one bit. Someone joined them and asked what they'd been up to. "Blowing up fucking A-rabs," said one, followed by gutteral noises no doubt intended to make fun of the Arabic language. The three (or four, I really wasn't looking) howled with laughter. Another fellow got on the train. As he took his seat just ahead of me, one of the guys behind me called out to him by name. He recognized them and they started to chat, all talk of blowing things or people up left behind. I started to pay attention, I don't know why. And it gradually came out that all four had served together in the Army. Recently. One of the young men behind me kept saying, "Fuck you, man, I EARNED my freedom!" They discussed the skanky girls they'd ogled at some strip club outside of Fort Lewis. They discussed the weather in terms of how hot it was in Iraq. (Sorry, EYE-rack...) The last guy got off the train a few stops later, and one of the young men behind me spotted a girl he thought looked "fine, man." (She did, but that's beside the point and doesn't excuse the way they were talking about her.) They started gesturing wildly for the guy who'd gotten off the train to talk to her. One of the three remaining guys jumped off the train and I lost sight of him. The train doors closed, the train started to move, and the cell phone of one of the young men trilled. He repeated, for his friend's benefit, "She waited and caught the red line behind us." "Well, let's get to it!" said the other, and they hopped off the train at the next stop, presumably to get on the train the "fine" looking girl was on.

When they left, I realized that perhaps I am in serious error judging American soldiers by arkham4269's standard. And if these men are a true example of the kind of men we have fighting to defend our freedom, I truly do fear for our nation. I acknowledge that just coming back from combat might have made them louder and less genteel and polite than most people riding Max at rush hour are accustomed to, but the way they seemed to take naturally to stalking the girl (she was maybe 19) they found attractive made me queasy and their loud, racist, violent conversation may have been intended for its shock value but it was said with enough conviction that I believed they were speaking their true beliefs (albeit most certainly not their true activities.)

I always like to share the surreal in the news

The Da Vinci Senator

By Bob Geiger, AlterNet
Posted on June 19, 2006, Printed on June 19, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37668/

The United States Senate is often called "the greatest deliberative body in the world," which usually raises the bar on the tenor and intellectual content of speeches given on the floor, if not for the official record.

Not so for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who took to the Senate floor last week to deliver a strident push for the bigoted "Marriage Protection Amendment." Alongside the typical massive distortions of the issue was an argument that was based almost solely on the opinion of a little-known conservative think tank affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei.

"The problem we have in front of us is the institution of marriage has been weakened, and the effort to redefine it on this vast social experiment that we have going on, redefining marriage differently than it has ever been defined before," the Kansas senator grimly intoned last week. "This effort of this vast social experiment, the early data that we see from other places, harms the institution of the family, the raising of the next generation. And it is harmful to the future of the republic."

Brownback then went on to give figures for how various states have shown their hatred of gay people with their own prohibitions on same-sex marriage and used that as his rationale for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But Brownback really hit his stride when he described a paper called "Ten Principles on Marriage and the Public Good," published by a fairly new and extremely conservative group at Princeton University. According to Brownback, the paper is an "important statement of principles from top American scholars [to] be considered carefully by my colleagues." He then added that the sentiments expressed in the nonscientific treatise were so vital to our national dialog that they should "… help guide our debate on this issue."

The paper, sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton, makes a case for banning same-sex marriage altogether. What's extraordinary is the idea of a United States senator attempting to sway opinion on an amendment that would have altered our Constitution (had it not been defeated last Wednesday) by using a paper from an organization linked to Opus Dei, a strict religious group that some former members have described as a cult.

Brownback spent a good part of his lengthy Senate speech last week citing the study and attributing it to "this Princeton group of scholars," while never mentioning that all of the findings were based on the ultraconservative Witherspoon Institute bolstered by the involvement -- directly or indirectly -- of a nonprofit, tax-exempt religious organization in Opus Dei.

So what exactly is the Witherspoon Institute, whose paper formed the foundation of Brownback's anti-gay argument?

The institute, which has only been around since 2003, has close ties to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, but is also tightly aligned with Opus Dei. Indeed, Luis Tellez, the president of the Witherspoon Institute is also the director and lead cleric of Opus Dei in Princeton.

Since its founding in 1928, Opus Dei has been known for its traditionalist values and right-wing political stances. And critics in academia -- which include former members who sometimes go through "deprogramming" upon exiting Opus Dei -- charge that organizations like the Witherspoon Institute are just veiled attempts by Opus Dei to spread its influence in top-tier academic circles.

So why then, is a U.S. senator offering to Congress "research" linked to Opus Dei on something as vital as amending the Constitution? It turns out that Brownback, who was formerly an evangelical Protestant, converted to Catholicism by way of Opus Dei in 2002 and was sponsored in that conversion by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., a vocal Opus Dei advocate.

Tellez, the leader of Opus Dei in Princeton, is a "numerary," considered the most conservative of the sect's members -- they are unmarried, celibate, devote every aspect of their lives to their spiritual beliefs and turn over their salaries from secular jobs to Opus Dei.

Again, it bears repeating that Tellez is also the head of the Witherspoon Institute, the group Brownback cited at great length as his primary argument against gay marriage.

And remember, it is Brownback, as an Opus Dei convert, who also leads the charge on Capitol Hill against abortion and stem cell research and who, along with Santorum, is seen by the Religious Right as a point man on "culture war" issues.

The other central figure in the Witherspoon orbit is Dr. Robert George, a Princeton professor and a board member in the institute who, not coincidentally, helped draft the federal gay-marriage ban that was just defeated in the Senate. George chaired a meeting of religious leaders in late 2005 that included Dr. James Dobson and other members of the extreme Religious Right. In fact, in addition to his pivotal role in the Witherspoon Institute, George is also a board member at Perkins' Family Research Council, a group known for its bigoted positions on the gay community.

And, via Brownback, all of this is ultimately finding its way into the halls of Congress.

While it may not be technically illegal for Brownback to be so clearly mixing hard-right religious ideology -- and faux-academic papers promoted by religious organizations like Opus Dei -- with debate on the Senate floor, it should certainly raise some eyebrows. In a country where strict separation of church and state is mandated, it seems Brownback is freely blending the two, attempting to use religious dogma to influence public policy -- all the while not disclosing to his Senate colleagues the background sources of the research he is citing.

But this should not be surprising coming from Brownback.

In a January 2006 Rolling Stone article, "God's Senator," Brownback is described as a religious zealot with a view for America's future that could almost be described as medieval.

"In his dream, America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with," reads the article. "There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all."

After all, it was Brownback, who came to Congress in 1994 and refused to sign Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" because he felt it wasn't conservative enough. Even then, as a newcomer to the House of Representatives, Brownback believed that the vast majority of what he saw as Big Government should simply be eliminated, including the departments of education, energy and commerce.

And, yes, it was also Brownback who was so outraged at the split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl, that he introduced the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which substantially raised fines for such simple on-air displays of nudity.

Finally, in addition to being brought into Catholicism by the likes of Opus Dei and using laundered research by an affiliated group on the Senate floor, Brownback chairs a meeting every Tuesday night with the "Values Action Team," consisting of religious leaders like Dobson who help the senator formulate his thoughts on public policy issues.

According to Time magazine, Opus Dei has assets in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion and, with John McCain unlikely to significantly rouse the Religious Right in 2008, look for Brownback to be the guy that Opus Dei, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council turn to as their presidential candidate.

And make no mistake about it: Brownback wants to run. So if you think his views for a new America, as viewed from the Senate floor, are scary, think of what he'll be like sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In his mind, it may already be ordained.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/37668/

Where are the demonstrations?

I've been listening to the news almost compulsively for years now. And I'm awestruck...and not in a good way...by the lack of public protest against the war in Iraq. Has the anti-war movement really been castrated by the Internet? Yeah, there was a memorial vigil tonight. Yeah, there's a weekly peace vigil in Beaverton. But where are the protest rallies? Where are the people taking to the streets?

I have to quote Arlo Guthrie, and that scares me. "If you wanna end the war and stuff, you gotta sing loud."

(I feel better having typed that.)

As the American death toll reaches 2,500 in Iraq

here is how our government is safeguarding the freedoms they say the terrorists and insurgents hate so much.

Alito Vote Loosens Limits on Evidence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that police can use evidence collected with a warrant even if officers fail to knock before rushing into a home.

Flag-burning amendment heads to Senate floor

By Andy Sullivan

Reuters
Thursday, June 15, 2006; 2:50 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A measure that would change the U.S. Constitution to let Congress ban burning the American flag was sent to the Senate floor on Thursday, setting up an election-year debate.

All this within a week of trying to pass the anti-gay marriage amendment.

I posted this on today's Marc Maron Show blog.

To protect our freedom, it appears the Shrub Pack are going to put it somewhere safe. Can't have just anybody exercise freedom. Might be a terrorist, you know. The little people might lose it. Better to lock it up in a vault somewhere and let the people who know what to do with it, like corporations and politicians, be the only ones allowed to have it.

Sadly, I'm afraid I might not be entirely wrong.

In addition to the Haditha "incident..."

We, as a nation, need to stop digging ourselves into deep shit and hire a bulldozer to get it done faster. It took a lot longer for Viet Nam to have "it's" My Lai.

May 31, 2006
U.S. Troops Killed 4 in Kabul Riot, Witness Says

By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 31 — American soldiers involved in a car crash in the capital Monday fired into the crowd of protesters and killed four people, according to the chief of highway police in Kabul, Gen. Amanullah Gozar, who was at the scene.

Three people died in the multiple car crash caused by a runaway United States army truck, he said, and four people died from gunfire from the last vehicle in the convoy, as the American troops extricated themselves from an increasingly hostile crowd, he said.

David "Signing Statements" Addington

According to the Boston Globe's article :

"The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power,according to former White House and Justice Department officials.

"The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the "signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws.The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

U.S. News and World Reports describes Addington as "the most powerful man you've never heard of" in an article explaining who Addington is and what his significance is in our lives.

You can read up on the fellow in the Wikipedia entry under his name. It behooves us all to know who the invisible power brokers are and what they're up to.

And, now, ladies and gentlemen, the Academy is proud to introduce your host for this evening...AL GORE!

I'm afraid Al Gore may not be doing himself any favors by turning into a movie mogul. It makes him sound less serious. Read this, from Arianna Huffington's blog, to see what I mean. (I edited out a comment about his pitch-perfect French and his high school trip to Cannes because it only made things worse...)

May 22 -- Over the weekend, I flew from Washington to Cannes. In Washington,
the talk was all about 2006. In Cannes, the talk is all about 2008.

That's because even with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Penelope Cruz, Jamie Foxx,
and Halle Berry here for the film festival, the hottest star in town is Al
Gore.

In Cannes for the European premiere of his powerful global warming
documentary, An Inconvenient
Truth, Gore has been surrounded by adoring crowds and deluged with
interview requests. He told me that he gave 23 back-to-back-to-back interviews
on Sunday, Hollywood junket-style (all on only one hour's sleep), and had
another 23 scheduled for Monday.

See what I mean? He comes off sounding like Stephen Spielberg and not like a scholar or a serious activist or even a politician.

Gore says he's not running for office in the forseeable future, and I take him at his word. However, even if he only wants to be taken seriously as a scholar or as an activist, he needs to avoid looking like he's gone all Hollywood. I'm not saying he did this to himself. Huffington is the one whose words I'm quoting. I just don't think she's the only one seeing him this way. 

The trouble is, I can't think of any way he can do it differently.

Advice for those who get to stay home.

My good friend Ian is about to be sent to Afghanistan as part of the Oregon National Guard. He posted this in his Live Journal and I want to share it with anyone who reads this blog, too. If you know anyone in the military, please read it.


However, I do have a bit of a complaint. If there is one constant with
civilian to military relations is that you all are really supportive
and say you want to be there for us, but when we start to talk about
what we're doing, you all (the generic "you" here) tend to draw back.

Hey,
let's not kid ourselves here, I'm going somewhere very dangerous and I
do run the risk of coming home a bit banged up or not at all. While I
understand the tendency to want to draw away from that, the way people
tend to draw away with people with terminal illnesses, it helps me and
my compadres not at all.

A lot of us have already noticed when
we were describing our Convoy ops on our seperate blogs that almost no
one responded. For my part, I got one response from my wife. I'm not
asking for therapy here folks, but after I get some huaw training or
what ever, I like to share what's going on in my life, as do my fellow
soldiers. Writing up these long posts and then getting nothing back
makes us feel disconnected from you folks back home. We start to worry
if folks are going quiet about us training, what's it going to be like
when we get home in a year.

Danger isn't contagious folks. I
can't believe that no one out there reading my stuff didn't have some
sarcastic comment about me swearing over the radio while training. That
no one did makes me feel like either you're all not reading my stuff
(which I guess is okay) or that there is some other reason.

I'm
just asking that we all are hungry to keep our ties with our family and
friends back home. Traditionally this doesn't happened and the only
people we can turn to is our buddies and fellow soldiers. Then when we
get home, soldiers tend to be distrustful and scornful of the civies
for awhile. A lot of us where talking about it, especially with those
who've been to Iraq before and they say it happens all the time.

I would hope that me and my buddies won't have to it happen to us.

May. 11th, 2006 @ 10:10 am

I didn't realize Al Gore had a personality.

The following is from a comment found via link from Crooks & Liars. I saw it on Olberman last night and swore that man was not the candidate I supported and wept for in 2000. Oh, Al, Al, why did you have to be set up by the Evil Empire? Why aren't you our President today?

Not that this is the speech you'd be making, but the fact that you could deliver this so well blows me away.

Last night I dreamed of...well, I'll wait til you've read the script to tell you about it.

**********************************************************

Announcer:
And now, a message from the President of the United States.

President Al Gore:
Good evening, my fellow Americans.

In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead.

In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack.

As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: we will not let the glaciers win.

Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history.

We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon and the oil companies are hurting.

I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash.

I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because - hey if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us.

On a positive note, we worked hard to save Welfare, fix Social Security and of course provide the free universal health care we all enjoy today.

But all this came at a high cost. As I speak, the gigantic national budget surplus is down to a perilously low $11 trillion dollars.

And don't get any ideas. That money is staying in the very successful lockbox. We're not touching it.

Of course, we could give economic aid to China, or lend money to the Saudis... again.

But right now we're already so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can't even go over to Europe anymore... without getting hugged.

There are some of you that want to spend our money on some made-up war. To you I say: what part of "lockbox" don't you understand?

What if there's a hurricane or a tornado? Unlikely I know because of the Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.

But... what if? What if the scientists are right and one of those giant glaciers hits Boston? That's why we have the lockbox!

As for immigration, solving that came at a heavy cost, and I personally regret the loss of California. However, the new Mexifornian economy is strong and el Presidente Schwarznegger is doing a great job.

There have been some setbacks. Unfortunately, the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Michael Moore was bitter and devisive. However, I could not be more proud of how the House and Senate pulled together to confirm the nomination of Chief Justice George Clooney.

Baseball, our national passtime, still lies under the shadow of steroid accusations. But I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, "We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!"

In 2001 when I came into office, our national security was the most important issue. The threat of terrorism was real.

Who knew that six years later, Afghanistan would be the most popular Spring Break destination? Or that Six Flags Tehran is the fastest growing amusement park in the Middle East?

And the scariest thing we Americans have to fear is ... Live From New York, its Saturday Night!

**********************************************************

Last night I dreamed that Dubya was Baseball Commissioner and Condi was Football Commissioner and the Bush Twins were servants in Brittany Spears' household. The only good thing to come out of all this was that the Spears-Federline children were placed properly into their car seats.

I have news for Condi Rice and everyone else in the Shrub administration

Remember when La Rice testified before the 9/11 commission and said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane," and "using planes as a missile?"

Well, not only did the August Presidentail Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" hint at this possibility, but even before that, in 1996, Kurt Russell and Halle Berry thought of it.  Well, technically a couple of movie writers thought of it and it was acted by a cast of gajillions in the movie "Executive Decision." (BTW, the cast is awesome. Russell, Berry, Steven Seagal, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, a whole bunch more people and I'm only naming the good guys in this one.)

Here's the bare bones of the plot: Arab terrorists board an
American airliner (they do it outside the US, but you can't expect them
to think of everything five years ahead of the incident.) The terrorists  have a large quantity of nerve gas, a US Senator and a bomb on board the plane. (The latter does not necessarily refer to the flick itself.) Although they give the appearance of negotiating for the return of the plane and its passengers, that's not their real plan. They plan to  detonate the bomb over Washington DC in order to wipe out as much of the eastern seaboard as they can. There is obviously more to the plot, including a secret new airplane that has the capability of putting a crew of specially trained American commandos (and an engineer and an intelligence analyst for some reason) onto the plane. But that isn't my point.

My point is this. Do you mean to tell me that there's an action shoot-em-up anti-Arab-terrorist movie with a big cast including Steven Seagal out there that FIVE YEARS before 9/11 posited a
scenario almost identical to the one that took place and not a single
soul in a war-hawk administration had seen it and thought it sounded
possible? Or, at least don't you think that someone in  the select group of war-hawks who were privy to that memo might have read it and thought, "Gee, this reminds me of a movie I saw a few years ago...I wonder if maybe they're really planning something like that?"

Now, I am neither a Kurt Russell fan nor am I a Russell detractor. I've seen several movies in which he's been beyond wonderful. But he's done a bit more than his share of bombs. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being "Stargate" and 1 being "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes") this movie is a 5 to a 6 depending on how you feel about air disaster movies. But I still insist that someone surely saw this movie before the August PDB and for not making the connection that person should be...well, in the Bush administration, I guess awarded a medal since they so boutifully reward stupidity and blind, sheep-like loyalty..

Dumb f*ucks!

Ai Yi Yi!

WTF is WRONG with Tom Hartman? If
it weren't for Heidi Tauber bringing him back on track every time he
goes wandering off into his seeming senile meanderings he'd be lost.
And yet he has a cult-like following of people who call him and
pronounce him "the greatest thing on the radio" and in one case "the
saviour of liberal talk radio." (And Al Franken hasn't taken him to task on that, and Ed Schultz continues to LIKE the dude! And Randi Rhodes---the GODDESS of radio according to Sam Seder---promotes him as one of her favorite talk show hosts.



I can't decide if he's got some kind of charisma I'm immune to, if I
still resent him for taking the slot that used to belong to (the now
cancelled for no good reason)
"Morning Sedition" on KPOJ in Portland, or if there really is something
seriously wrong with him and people are so starved for liberal talk
radio that they'll love anyone who can be made to sound left-wing and
angry at the same time.



He claims to be a scholar yet he can't get the pronunciation of words
related to his field(s) of expertise right. He mis-quotes Jefferson, or
attributes any quote he likes from the Revolutionary War era to
Jefferson. He mis-quotes FDR. He gets sidetracked by some of the
stupidest damn stuff, like if the address 12250 is pronounced Twelve
thousand two hundred and fifty,, twelve-two-fifty, or what. Or while
discussin the ozone layer he goes off into how lovely the view from the
deck of his houseboat is. After two years, he still has no clue what
goes on in Portland, except in terms of politics as fed to him by his
(inefficient, I suspect) researchers.



I'm over the loss of "Morning Sedition." I can listen to Maron at night
now. And Rachel Maddow is pretty darned interesting first thing in the
morning, anyway.  But why can't people see that Hartman is a jackass
and needs to be replaced by someone who has a clue?



As mentioned, if it weren't for Heidi Tauber (who is a very
intelligent, articulate, and interesting lady) the show would be a
nightmare. I'm back to listening to books on tape to avoid having to
listen to his drivel in the morning. (I get sleepy listening to
"Morning Edition" on NPR and KBOO is so bad in the morning I can't even
fathom it.) Could someone please get Tauber a GOOD co-host? I'd listen
to her in a flash.



Okay, I'm done ranting and I'm off to work now.

cross-posted to my Live Journal site.

Thank you, Stephen Colbert!

Will everyone within the sight of my html code PLEASE go to this website and thank Mr. Colbert for his entertaining, funny, and skewering act at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday last. For those who missed it (and you missed one HELLUVA show!) there are links at that site for you to see it for yourself.

Even Botox couldn't make the First Lady smile. This from the woman who told stories about the President's inability to tell a male horse from a cow.

Colbert doesn't seem disturbed by his reception. Here is what both he and Jon Stewart had to say about it.