Disney/ABC's 'Stab in the Back'

Rewriting history is what "The path to 9/11" is all about. But Disney/ABC are rewriting it in a certain way conforming to a particular script. That script is a tried and true one, the one Hitler and his fascist minions called the 'stab in the back.'

The term comes from German mythology about how the almost invulnerable hero Siegfried was killed by a perfidious public-friend-but-secret-enemy Hagen. Siegfried (like Achilles in Greek myth - the 'Achilles heel') was invulnerable except in one spot on is back. Hagen discovered this and treacherously stabbed him in the back, killing him.

Hitler used the myth to scapegoat the Jewish people for the German loss in WWI. He claimed that the German army was never defeated but instead 'stabbed in the back' by German citizens of Jewish ancestry and/or religion. It was patently false, but in true 'Big Lie' fashion, it appealed not to reason but to emotion. What would people rather believe: that the most revered and honored institution of the German Empire - the Army - had been defeated or instead that the army had been betrayed by an unpopular minority? The Big Lie worked just as it was intended: it was 'red meat' for the true believers, it clouded any undertanding about the true causes of defeat among the apolitical majority, and was absorbed into the impressionable youth who were too young to know any better.

A more emotionally palatable fictional narrative became more real than fact for large segments of the population. Defeat of the German war machine became a symbol of its near infallibility and the need to resurrect it while 'dealing harshly' with those who dissent.

The same scenario is now unfolding with Bush, Disney/ABC and 9/11. The truth of 9/11 is that Bush and his administration simply did not take non-state terrorism seriously. It was merely 'swatting at flies' as Bush himself put it. He had bigger things on his agenda: Iraq. But Bush's failure of omniscience - and his total disregard for his constitutionally sworn duties - is hard to square with the belief of his all-knowing persona as projected by the WH press office or with the typically American belief that government officials always do what they think is best for the nation rather than say, merely a segment of the nation (oil & military industries foremost among them). Wouldn't it be far easier to swallow that Bush was hoodwinked (just like the rest of us) by the enemy within? And the ground for substituting Liberals for Jews has already been well prepared by the likes of Rush and Coulter

(I'm curious, why - when all we hear from the WH is how 'no one took Mein Kampf seriously no one seems to take the hate from Coulter et. al. seriously?).

Hence the creation of a fictional history to embed a false - but emotionally more satisfying - narrative. America was betrayed not by a lackadaisical president whose imperial ambitions did not admit of engaging in anything as menial as 'swatting flies,' but rather by a pusilanimous, dithering liberal administration who couldn't stand tall in defense of America. Our Armed Forces and spy networks were not defeated as much as they were prevented from winning. We're still #1 - as long as we don't make the mistake of electing liberals.

The take home message from Disney/ABC: Clinton and liberals stabbed Bush, the CIA, and the US in the back. Yes it is 'factually inaccurate' - pure fiction in the key points - but that will not rob it of its influence and power once it gets out there. We need to stop the lies before they seep into our children's subconsciousness - it is no accident that Disney/ABC sought to enlist Scholastic books and school districts to promote their lies. Don't let this become another Rambo (the liberal politicians didn't let us win!) or Clint's 'make my day' (the liberal politicians didn't let us win!).

Contact your ABC affiliate and politely inform them that you have read about the gross lies and distortions displayed in the 'docudrama' and that you will you contact your channels local sponsors informing them that you will no longer patronize their products/services if this fascist (in the true sense of the word: and ideology of anti-liberal, militaristic corporatism) propaganda goes on the air. Do your bit to save our Republic! See how it is done here and here, with more general info here and here. Finally here are a bunch of great resources here.

Good luck and Godspeed!

The myth of fair elections in America

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.

Everyone remembers the debacle in Florida, 2000. The recounts, the law suits and the eventual deciding of a presidential election - not by the voters - but by the Supreme Court. The memory still causes a collective shudder to America's body politic.

Which makes the fact that America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before so utterly shocking. Across the country a bewildering series of scandals or dubious practises are proliferating beyond control. The prospect of a 'second Florida' is now more likely not less. There are many - and not all of them are conspiracy theorists - who believed it may have happened in Ohio in 2004.

This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. The Times is editorialising on a shocking government report into electoral rules in Ohio's biggest county, Cuyahoga, which contains the city of Cleveland. It details a litany of errors and a large discrepancy between the paper record of a ballot and the result recorded by the new Diebold electronic voting machines the county has just installed....

propaganda alert!

Controversy Over 9/11 Film Hits Press -- Here's a Sneak Preview

Donald Rumsfeld's Dance With the Nazis (Set Frank Rich Free!)

That's Frank Rich, who penned a must read that now you can read thanks to Mother Jones:

...In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford....

Body politic a dead giveaway

Interesting brief article on politicians' attempts to manipulate body language - and how their body language also betrays them:

President Bush's exaggerated "power walk" is put on in an attempt to impress. The knuckle-dragging swing of the arms, the languid simian gait and the palms facing backwards are all part of showing who's boss.

"This is not how normal people walk," Dr Collett told the annual British Association Festival of Science in Norwich. "[It is] to convey an impression of his masculinity and therefore his power."

Keith Olbermann on Rumsfeld, govt infallibility and fascism

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis--and the sober contemplation--of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril--with a growing evil--powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the "secret information." It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England's, in the 1930's.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions -- its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all -- it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic's name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty -- and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today's Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their "omniscience" as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have -- inadvertently or intentionally -- profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens-- must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: "confused" or "immoral."

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."

And so good night, and good luck.

Spinning the bullets

This is a good article, read the whole thing (but at minimum, click on the links in cluded below) at:

Spinning the bullets the Guardian Unlimited: News blog

...You can find the roots of [the refusal to accept the reasons behind the bad coverage from Iraq] in the sincere belief among many American conservatives that the media should be used as a partisan tool to advance their political ends - an attitude encapsulated in the infamous Nixon-era memo by late Supreme Court judge Lewis Powell, seen by many as the seed from which the modern conservative media backlash has grown....

...The fact that Washington seems to believe its own propaganda, blaming the media for all this seems astonishing. But as US social theorist Eric Hoffer pointed out, propaganda doesn't so much deceive people, as help them to deceive themselves.

Disaster capitalism: how to make money out of misery

Katrina is a classic example of what you get when you put people (Rethuglicans) whao are ideologically opposed to the government in charge of the government - dithering, delay and disfunction:

The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).

We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent.

But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditure for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatised disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).

I call it the Disaster Capitalism Complex. Whatever you might need in a serious crunch, these contractors can provide it: generators, watertanks, cots, port-a-potties, mobile homes, communications systems, helicopters, medicine, men with guns.

This state-within-a-state has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it....

News from the work front

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Under Bush - and his congressional enablers - we continue to go backwards: in foreign relations, on civil liberties and in dollars and cents, both at home and with the all time largest Federal budget deficit.

Had enough?

Bush's 'malaise moment'

But in Bush-speak is it not a malaise (as it came to be called when Carter sought to shift blame) but rather a "straining [of] the psyche of our country."

Translation: the American people are to blame if Bush's policies fail.

Yes, this is the critical turning point when the failed politician points the finger of blame not at himself but at the public he has served so poorly. He tried blaming the terrorists, he tried blaming his predecessor, he tried blaming the messenger. And now (like Hitler in the bunker) he has run out of people to blame - so the blame falls upon the people themselves for failing Der Fuehrer.

Make no mistake about it, this is Bush's attempt to fob off blame for his failure as the fault of American citizens' collective loss of nerve, not flawed policies he built upon a house of cards composed of lies and neo-con fantasies.

'Straining the psyche' will go down in history as a moment - like Carter's 'crisis of confidence' malaise speech or Ford's WIN buttons - that crystalized the fact that this man has no clue what he is doing or what he is up against. And that means that the rest of us are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Think Progress - THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?

So, did the latest 'terror scare' have a snowball's chance in hell of actually taking place? that is the question asked in the following very insightful post:

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers....

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard....

It turns out actually mixing the chemicals is a several hours long process that requires delicate mixing (otherwise the mixture will go 'poof' without the force necessary to do much damage - except perhaps kill the person mixing) and abundant amounts of coolant:

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two....

Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy....

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned....

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs....

Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.

Of course, what the article doesn't address is WHY the ernest focus on the nitwits - in order to scare the bejesus out of the rest of us, of course. Because when people are afraid they don't ask questions and they rally around the authorities, no matter how incompetent those authorities (Bush and Blair) might be. In short, it is a cynical attempt to shore up declining polling numbers.

Thankfully, according to the polls, by now the public seems to have finally heard the cry 'wolf' one time too many.

Judge to Bush: "No hereditary Kings in America"

The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution.

Here is some quick analysis:

...the court made its scorn quite clear for the administration's Yoo [John Yoo, Bush regime lawyer] theory of executive power because, as the court put it, "there are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." Citing Youngstown again, the court made clear that even in time of war, and even with regard to the President's Commander-in-Chief powers, the President is subject to constitutional restrictions -- a proposition long unquestioned in our system of government until the Bush administration began inventing radical theories of executive power.

Even conservatives skeptical of recent 'terror plot'

Read the whole thing...

So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch. Under a law that the Tories helped weaken, the suspects can be held without charges for up to 28 days. Those days are ticking by. Remember: the British authorities had all these people under surveillance; they did not want to act last week; there was no imminent threat of anything but a possible "dummy-run," whatever deranged guest-bloggers at Malkin say. (Correction, please.) Bush and Blair discussed whether to throw Britain's airports into chaos over the weekend before the crackdown occurred....

...I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

A Primeval Tide of Toxins

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading.

Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked.

Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all the Earth's natural processes. Million of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

Iran: The Next War

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.
BY JAMES BAMFORD

...In the Pentagon's view, according to one senior official there at the time, Iran was nothing but "a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice." So far, though, the White House had rejected the Pentagon's plan, favoring the State Department's more moderate position of diplomacy. Now, unwilling to play by the rules any longer, Franklin was taking the extraordinary—and illegal—step of passing on highly classified information to lobbyists for a foreign state. Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member of Feith's secret unit in the Pentagon was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran.

It was a role that AIPAC was eager to play. Rosen, recognizing that Franklin could serve as a useful spy, immediately began plotting ways to plant him in the White House—specifically in the National Security Council, the epicenter of intelligence and national-security policy. By working there, Rosen told Franklin a few days later, he would be "by the elbow of the president."

Knowing that such a maneuver was well within AIPAC's capabilities, Franklin asked Rosen to "put in a good word" for him. Rosen agreed. "I'll do what I can," he said, adding that the breakfast meeting had been a real "eye-opener."

Working together, the two men hoped to sell the United States on yet another bloody war. A few miles away, digital recorders at the FBI's Language Services Section captured every word....

It's all about oil?

...We are trained to think of Middle Eastern conflicts as modern flare-ups of ancient tribal animosities. But to uncover why the flames won't die, the usual rule applies: follow the money.

Am I saying that Tehran, Riyadh and Houston oil chieftains conspired to ignite a war to boost their petroleum profits? I can't imagine it. But I do wonder whether Bush would let Olmert have an extra week of bombings, or the potentates of the Persian Gulf would allow Hamas and Hizbullah to continue their deadly fireworks if by doing so they would cause the price of crude to crash.

You know and I know that if this war took a bite out of Exxon or the House of Saud, a ceasefire would be imposed quicker than you can say "Let's drill in the Arctic."

Blame the Bloggers - Joe Conason

The conventional narrative of what may become Joe Lieberman’s final campaign for public office—parroted faithfully by pundits and politicians who admire the Connecticut Senator—is a moving tale of courageous dissent in the very maw of fanatical extremism. It is the story of a supremely decent public servant, purged by party activists with a mean-spirited, shortsighted, single-issue obsession. And it is a fable with a familiar moral, supposedly proving once more that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted to protect America.

Compelling as this account of the beleaguered Democrat’s travails may sound, it is very much like his position on the war in Iraq: wrong, superficial and divorced from reality.

And wingnuts like to mock the French?

But it seems that it is the British, or more specifically, Blair's 'new Labourites' who are the spineless lickspittles of Europe:

You will have your own view - there's so much to choose from - on which part of the open-mic conversation between George W Bush and Tony Blair at the Yo Summit was the most toe-curling. One of my favourite excruciating moments is when Bush thanks Blair for sending him a Burberry sweater as a birthday gift. The American President sends up the British Prime Minister by mocking: 'I know you picked it out yourself.'

There's no question which exchange is most enjoyable for those with contempt for the Prime Minister. It is the moment that makes Mr Blair look like the poodle of popular caricature. Worse, he comes over as a poodle who can't even beg his master to toss him a dog biscuit. It is the same bit of the encounter that has caused the most wincing among the Prime Minister's friends.

When Tony Blair offers himself as a Middle East peace envoy, he is casually rebuffed by the American President between bites on a bread roll. Told by Bush that 'Condi is going', the normally fluent Blair is reduced to inarticulate jabbering. 'Well, it's only if, I mean, you know, if she's got a... or if she needs the ground prepared as it were... Because obviously if she goes out, she's got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.' Yeah, just talk.

It was awful for Tony Blair to be caught asking for permission to go to the Middle East. It was dire to hear George Bush saying he wouldn't let the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom go out - not even on a pointless trip. It looks even more humiliating when the French Foreign Minister is going.

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis - New York Times

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis - New York Times
So much for being an 'honest broker' of any cease fire talks. This is sure to do wonders for our position in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.