Stolen verbatim from Kos

A righteous googlebomb

Liberal Blogger Kevin Drum tells us that our passion over our differences may be a little misplaced.  Citing this NY Times Article, he explains that as the rhetoric increases over increasingly trivial differences between the right and left, our similarities are actually greater than our differences. 

In fact, on the issues of partial birth abortion, affirmative action, marginal tax rates, social security, and even the Iraq war, the argument is on the fringes of the debate, not the core.  In other words, the liberals have already won, and can afford to be a bit more dispassionate.

I've always liked Kevin, mainly because he expouse liberal doctrine without going over the top in the shrill tones preferred by Atrios and Kos.  Undoubtedly the reason he got picked up by Washington Monthyl

Of course that only means that the right will fight just that much harder to hang on to what little they have left to fight over.  Fortunately, this will force the left to remain vigilent instead of becomming complacent.  Besides, if a truce were called, what the hell would we write about?

AP via Yahoo! News - Shiite Cleric Vows to Support Iraqi Gov't

Marginalized, radicalized, considered a thug and officially branded an outlaw by Ambassador Bremmer, Muqtada al-Sadr has found a "third-way." Despite the outgoing American head of the Coalition Authority's own fatwah against Sadr and his Militia being allowed to participate in the government for the next three years, Sadr has nonetheless decided to soften his opposition to the new government of Iraq.

The conciliatory tone by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr came during a sermon read by an aide to a congregation in Kufa, scene of recent fighting between his al-Mahdi Army militia and U.S. forces.
In the sermon, the fiery young cleric said "I support the new interim government" and asked his followers to "help me take this society to the path of security and peace."
"Starting now, I ask you that we open a new page for Iraq and for peace," the message said.

It would seem that there is hope yet for Iraq when even a radical Shiite leader can learn the necessity for compromise inherent in a democratic system.

Does this make him "weak" or undecicive. No! It makes him reasonable, pragmatice, willing to compromise absolutism for the greater good. You see, under the right circumstances, when all the facts are known, changing one's mind in accomodation to the realities of the situation and changing facts, is a sign of intelligence, thoughtfulness, resonableness.

A wishy-washy politician who changes his mind to stay in power, transforms into a statesman when he (or she) is pursuaded to compromise for the benefit of us all. To my way of thinking, a solution that leads to peace is always better than an stance designed to incite continued violence.

When supposedly religious men nonetheless incite violence, I reject both them and their screwed up version of religion. If Bush were truly a religious man, he would also be a man of peace and not just a zealous ideologue, and we would never have invaded Iraq. Likewise if Sadr were a truly religious man, and not an intolerant miscreant, he too would be a man of peace and would not even have a militia. I also believe that there is the capacity for redemption, but I have little faith that either Sadr or Bush will really become reasonable actors in this drama anytime soon, despite their words or even best intentions.

I have long since been pursuaded that John Kerry has acted like a statesman instead of a politician in modifying his position on more than one occasion that the Bush campaign delights in characterizing as his flip/flopping nature. I have yet to see any statesmanship from Shrub, although he has changed policies and consistently lowered expectations, I've never seen an instance where he did it because he belived it was the right thing to do.

Throughout his life, Kerry has made principled decisions, often at odds with popular opinion and his previous positions.

Bush changes his policies only when forced. I was pleased to see that an overwhelming number of people agreed with this sentiment that he was "too ideological and stubborn." If a violent religious zealot who never lived in a free, democratic environment can understand instinctively the value of compromise, why can't Shrub?

And how dare he attempt to lable those who can work within the system to gain acceptable results as somehow unworthy of leadership. Give me a leader who can get things done, pragmatically over politically, than an ideologue who's "my way or the highway" stance leads to rancor, bickering and stagnation -- and illegal and unnecessary wars.

UPDATE:  From Juan Cole:

The wire services are misinterpreting this statement as an about-face on Muqtada's part. It is not. It is a piece of bargaining. He is saying that he will swing the Sadrist movement around to support the transitional government if it will commit to throwing the Americans out of Iraq on a strict timetable. That is what Muqtada has wanted since the fall of Saddam. He started calling for a US withdrawal in April, 2003. It seems probable that one reason the Americans came after Muqtada in early April, intending to kill him, was fear that he will become powerful enough after June 30 to lobby effectively for the expulsion of the Americans. (It has now come out that the US military actually printed up broadsheets announcing thet Muqtada had been killed resisting arrest, and that some GI's jumped the gun and actually put some of those out in early April even though in fact, Muqtada eluded his American would-be murderers.) Paul Bremer's recent attempt to ensure that the major Sadrist leaders are not allowed to run for parliament has the same goal. The civilians in the Department of Defense such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz probably went to war against Iraq in part precisely to get bases there. The realization that they might be tossed out at the instance of a few million Shiite slum dwellers has so infuriated them that they attacked the movement without provocation, killed about a thousand of them, and are now trying to disenfranchise several million Iraqis by disallowing Sadrists from holding office.

Yahoo! News - Social Security Forecast May Spark Fight

An election-year duel over President Bush's proposal to revamp Social Security could flare up again Monday with a congressional report that says the giant pension program's long-term prospects may be better than previously thought.

My advice, stay away from this one, except to note how the rhetoric will go out of control. They are arguing about a 0.89% difference in tax increases.

After a week of Ronald Reagan, The Farewell Tour, I've seen enough of Flag Draped Coffins this year, thank you. If you saw both Bush presidents eulogizing Reagan, you probably noticed the same differences they point to in the Washington Post.

Bushes' Distinct Views Imprint Praise (washingtonpost.com)

In their back-to-back eulogies at the National Cathedral yesterday, the presidents Bush revealed much about Ronald Reagan -- and about themselves

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Most telling was the observation that Shrub simultaneously models his presidency after Reagan while scrupulously trying to avoid the mistakes of his father, especially the "no new taxes" lip reading canard. I always thought that the tax flip/flop was over politicized by us dems, and after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, America was simply ready for a change.

Shrub takes it (like so many other things) as Gospel that he will lose his base if he ever raises taxes.

This country, and Dubya's residency, would have been so much better off if he had just been his own man instead of trying to emulate the bigger-than-life Reagan Myth, and realized that his dad wasn't a disaster.

There are tremendous legal, constitutional and just plain unamerican problems with the so-called Patriot Act. With this thing on the books, and Ashcroft's Justice Department eager to prove their bones, no liberal blogger is safe, that is until more cases like this one get through the courts.

Criminal Defense attorneys are the front-line shock troops fighting against the fascist thought-police who are ever vigilant to throw you away for years just for writing what you believe.

I'm sure they could do without me. And by "they" of course I mean the government folks who watch my every move, who opened a file on me at the age of 18 when I misspelled "concientious objecter" on my draft registration card, and who by now, after analyzing several years worth of X-Files, have certainly found the technological means to scan through my tin-foil hat, at least if it's not polished enough. And my file just keeps growing and growing.

Even more disturbing is that just like Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongfully connected to the Madrid 3/11 train bombings due to erroceous fingerprint analysis, my prints were submitted upon my admission to the bar just like Brandon's.

I have to believe, that our original Patriots could throw John Ashcroft into Boston Harbor if they saw his prosecutors in action. From the LA Times

"In some respects, this was the broadest reach in all of the government's anti-terrorism prosecutions," said David Cole, a Georgetown University Law Center professor.

"When President Bush and [Vice President] Dick Cheney say, 'You have not shown me a single abuse of the Patriot Act,' I think people can now say, 'Look at the Sami Omar Al-Hussayen case -- a case where the government sought to criminalize pure speech and was resoundingly defeated.' "

Al-Hussayen was accused of helping to design about a dozen websites in conjunction with a Michigan-based group, the Islamic Assembly of North America, which the government has long suspected of having ties to terrorism but has never charged. The sites included lectures and edicts from radical clerics and links to sites operated by a group designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Among the most incendiary postings: four fatwas, or religious edicts, by religious clerics that Al-Hussayen added to an IANA-linked site that endorsed "martyrdom attacks."

One of the edicts sanctioned crashing airplanes into enemy targets.

One of the most common modus operandi we see in the blogosphere is the reposting of articles of others, along with some personal comments. Just like what you are reading right now. Just like what Al-Hussayen was put in jail for 16 month for doing.

Nevin [Al-Hussayen's attorney] argued that his client was being prosecuted for his beliefs — or the opinions of others that he was simply passing on — and that he was not unlike thousands of others who take to the Internet every day expressing views that, however objectionable, are protected by the 1st Amendment.

No doubt this guy won't get a job hosting an ABC talk show anytime soon, but he certainly has a right to express his freaking views, dammit.

And don't be fooled by La Costa Ashcrofta's hollow boasts of their conviction record (or should that be Ash-Kafka's prosecutors?) They have taken only two Patriot Act terrorist cases to trial, with some of the defendants acquitted, and have gained a bevy of guilty pleas only by dropping major charges.

To me, this is not unlike the crime of "Driving While Black" in certain neighborhoods. Al-Hussayen's crime seemed to be "Blogging While Saudi."

Before Reagan, people sleeping in the street were so rare that, outside of skid rows, they were almost a curiosity.

In other words, before Reagan, there were only a few "Bums" out there, Reagonomics created legions of homeless. All the stats you knew were out there, sumarized for your convenience at Common Dreams

Hat Tip: Justin

Rick DeMent Rants about an article by "a guy named Gary Brecher " which tears apart the fallacy of the Iraq-Vietnam comparisons in depth, then points to a detailed analysis of a more logical historical example we could learn from, Israel vs. Lebanon circa, the Reagan Years.

As Rick says, "the guy makes more sense then a stadium full of Neo-Cons."

Why?

Yahoo! News - TV Host Kimmel Apologizes for Detroit Joke

DETROIT - Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show was pulled off the air for a night following a joke the comedian made about Detroit during the NBA Finals

Controversial, humorous, irreverent truth cannot be tolerated by Disney in film (Farenheit 911) or on their late night talk shows.

ABC is owned by the Mouse, in case you live in a cave some where. Without hearing the jokes (they were joke weren't they?) it's hard to judge. Sure, incitement to riot is right up there with yelling fire in a theater as UNprotected speech, but I'll bet he was just pointing out the obvious, Detroit seems to get warm when their basketball team gets real hot, or it's close to halloween.

A couple of my favorite bloggers took issue with this quote from Paul Richter's article in the Los Angeles Times

"Bush could end up looking like the worst president since Jimmy Carter because of Iraq, and people are going to say, 'You got us into this mess,' " said one Washington source who considered himself a neoconservative and spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's going to be nasty and bitter and brutal."

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon only hopes that it were true.  However, one of the commentators makes the astute point: "Because God knows that he can't actually be worse than a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize."

Juan Cole, on the other hand, tears into the quote as ridiculous, and elaborates in full, taking a swing at Reagan and Shrub along the way.

Jimmy Carter was a far better president than W. can ever hope to be. Carter made peace between Israel and Egypt. He resolved the Panama Canal issue to everyone's satisfaction, and we've never heard any more about it because there haven't been subsequent problems. He avoided a potentially disastrous US attempt to prevent or roll back the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He used the foreign aid carrot to begin the process of pushing the Latin American military regimes to democratize (a process that has been wildly successful). He raised human rights as a foreign policy issue. Carter is a quick study and a bright engineer. He was president at a time of post-Vietnam and post-Watergate doldrums, at a time when Iran and Afghanistan spun out of control, at a time of high petroleum prices, continued stagflation, and high inflation. I am not entirely sure what he could have done about any of these problems, most of which were beyond his control (and most of which remained beyond the control of his successors).

Reagan did not overturn Khomeini, rather he sold him arms. Although Reagan got the Soviets out of Afghanistan, he did it at the cost of creating a radical Islamist international and destabilizing Pakistan and Afghanistan--i.e. Afghanistan continued to spin out of control, with fateful consequences. The price of petroleum declined from $40 a barrel in 1980 to less than $10 a barrel in 1986, helping Reagan quite a lot, but it had nothing to do with any policy pursued by Reagan. (Europe cut its energy consumption by a third after the 1970s oil shock, and OPEC has a tendency to overproduce over time). After Carter retired, he spent his time building houses for disadvantaged people. He also was key to the elimination of a painful and debilitating parasite in Africa, improving the lives of millions. The vilification of Carter and the hero worship of W. is a sign of how morally warped the American Right really is. Carter's political and economic environment made it impossible for him to be a great president, but he was a damn sight better than W. any day of the week.