_____ is a curiosity of modern life:  It is one of the few issues on which there is universal agreement --- it's bad.  Yet, ... it is also, paradoxically, an issue few people seem willing to do anything about.

An issue about which there is universal agreement?  Sounds like a political winner!  Hmmm... what could this mystery issue be?  And what does our candidate have to say about it?

By now, sadly, we're used to news like this.  But yet another huge ice shelf, in place for over 3 millennia, is on the verge of collapse.  New cracks have been discovered in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada.  At 443 square kilometers, this shelf is even larger than the 415 sq. km. one in Antarctica that collapsed last month and received a good bit of press (including here) and its "sister", the huge Ayles Ice shelf, that stunningly broke off in less than an hour about 20 months ago threatening oil rigs and shipping in the Beaufort Sea.

...as well as all other web sites!

In just about 2 hours, the city of Sydney Australia will turn off its lights for Earth Hour, beginning what will hopefully be a very large ripple effect around the planet of city after city doing the same.  (Personally, I'm hoping for a "tidal wave of darkness"!)  And let's hope the ripples continue long after the lights come back on.

In a comment on Meteor Blade's front-page post about this, jmorton asked if DailyKos was going to participate in Earth Hour... that is, not just we the participants of DailyKos (and you were going to particpate, right?), but the actual site itself.

We should, you know.

Shock and Awe, Freedom and Democracy?

"We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror."

CNN has an article  up right now about conditions in Iraq for women that follows in a long line of stories reporting on the continued deterioration (for example, here).  This isn't "breaking news"... (unfortunately) Just another straw on the camel's back.  I wish I could write as righteous of a rant as Grand Moff Texan did last night, but, well...  I am at a loss for words about it.  Instead I'm just going to have to let the horrible truth speak.  The infuriating irony of it all is that our leaders have the gall to call this "liberation" and claim to have improved things for women!

According to CNN the Democratic candidates had received a total of 135,582 votes with 53% reporting, while the Republican candidates had received a total of 107,579 votes with 50% reporting.

What's interesting about those numbers is that CNN also reports that there are 850,836 registered voters in the state and they are supposed to be 26% Democratic (around 221,217 voters), 30% Republican (around 255,251 voters), and 44% Independent (around 374,368 voters). From some quick math, we can infer that the polls were right:  independents broke heavily democratic.

This year, we have a fairly typical mix of presidential candidate:  Governors, Senators, and Representatives.  Earlier, partly triggered by a dispute I was reading about "leadership experience", I got to wondering things like:  "How likely is it that a Senator gets elected President? How about a Governor?" etc.    

So I made a quick, simple visualization to try to help me answer my questions.  I thought it was somewhat interesting, so I decided to share it here.  If you're interested, join me below.

Have you ever noticed that there's not much grass in the woods?  Especially in "old-growth" forests, the tall, established trees spread out their branches to shade the forest floor and soak up all of the sunlight.  

The grassroots metaphor has been a powerful one in the blogosphere.  Indeed, we are the netroots.  For me, the metaphor implies "bottom-up" organization, with hundreds upon thousands of bonds forming amongst loosely-aligned (but not identical) small groups and individuals.  We have made great progress and succeeded in having an impact all around the country.

Yet, we have yet to restore habeas corpus, we have an attorney general who supports torture, we have given giant corporations a pass on more crimes than I can count, the same is true for the administration itself -- yet impeachment remains 'off the table', we are still stuck in Iraq, etc.  The list goes on and on.  And many here feel that the Democratic party -- the party we've worked so hard to support -- has let us down (or worse, sold out).

Although I loved the "grassroots" metaphor, I think it's necessary to transcend this; it's  time for a new metaphor.

And it is time for a new strategy.

In two parts.

The first part is straightforward and obvious to most here.  Hence, since so many people here have diaried about this, I'll just summarize the argument.

When Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table, she not only gave BushCo a pass on all of their previous and notorious criminality, she also gave them a  blank check from there on out on any high crimes that might come to light in the future.  Furthermore, she removed the threat of any sort of meaningful investigations that might uncover wrongdoings.  (After all, what would be the point of investigation with impeachment off the table?  And what incentives are there for cooperation?) Finally, and perhaps most frustratingly, she succeeded in effectively hamstringing her own party, and more importantly Congress, by limiting their constitutional oversight and removing the biggest "check" from the balance.  Congressional leadership, in effect, voluntarily (and unconstitutionally) ceded power from the legislative to the executive branch (as they did with their war powers earlier), thus implicitly reinforcing and confirming the offensive "unitary executive" arguments being made by BushCo all along.

The second part, however, just might ignite some "mild disagreement" here.

"Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.  It won't be a World War III."  --Donald Rumsfeld, 11/2002

"... could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."  --Donald Rumsfeld, 2/2003

"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly... (in) weeks rather than months."  --Dick Cheney 3/2003

"... from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time."  --Dan Quayle, 10/2/1990

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.  --George Orwell, Polemic, 5/1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

1,460 days. (48 months or 208+ weeks.)  And counting...

It has now been 1,460 days since we invaded Iraq.  As of yesterday, we have now surpassed the ("official") length of our (own) Civil War (4/12/1861 - 4/9/1865).  Monday, it'll be 4 years.

When I wrote about us passing the WWII landmark last November, I was cautiously optimistic that, by this landmark, our pullout would be under way.  Alas, I should have known better.

CNN has a story up right now called "Brown: Party politics played role in Katrina response".  Mike Brown, former FEMA director, is now starting to explain in public why he was able to do such a "heck of a job"!  According to Brown, despite his recommendation to federalize all of the areas (~90,000 square mile) hit by Katrina along the Gulf Coast:

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize [only] Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," he said.

As many here have noted/discussed, two weeks ago, Virgil Goode a Republican Representative from Virginia [Ed Note:  corrected from "Senator"] wrote a disgusting hate letter to his constituents and then yesterday, after some justified condemnations and (meager) media coverage, he bluntly refused to apologize.

Two weeks ago.

I originally started writing my own rant about this earlier today, but then saw Cenk Uygur's highly recommended diary and decided to post it as a comment instead.  But I'm reposting my thoughts now as a diary because I don't want to let this die.  Rather:  WE shouldn't let this die...  because Goode's racist idiocy is sitting right smack dab on a deep fault line in the already splintering GOP.

Care to help me hammer on it?

"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbour no rancour against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all. ... I take political responsibility for everything that was done."
      -- Augusto Pinochet, 11/26/2006 (eight days ago, on his 91st birthday)

"Midnight, our sons and daughters Were cut down and taken from us Hear their heartbeat We hear their heartbeat

Augusto Pinochet was given the last rites today, following a severe heart attack that left him hovering near death.

At age 91 he is a frail old man.  Too frail in fact, his lawyers have repeatedly claimed, to stand trial for the dozens of crimes for which he has been arrested and indicted.   More than likely, he will go to his death under house arrest, charged, but having never faced a trial, never having had to face his accusers, nor having been pronounced guilty of anything.

"Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.  It won't be a World War III."  --Donald Rumsfeld, 11/2002

"... could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."  --Donald Rumsfeld, 2/2003

"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly... (in) weeks rather than months."  --Dick Cheney 3/2003

"... from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time."  --Dan Quayle, 10/2/1990 (reported in Esquire, 8/1992)

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.  --George Orwell, Polemic, 5/1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

1346 days.  (Over 44 months, 192+ weeks.)  And counting...

It has now been 1346 days since we invaded Iraq.  I am struck by this because we have now surpassed the length of America's involvement in World War II (12/7/1941 through 8/14/1945).

Think about that for a minute.

Alternative Title: "My Pet Goats, by George W. Bush"

Thought this deserved a mention here.  CNN is reporting that Michael Brown, former chief of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina, received an email from a good friend of the president (in the Executive Office of the President) five days before Brown resigned stating that "President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism."

A little more below.  (Sorry, not much as I'm tired.  And sorry if this is old news... I hadn't seen it.)

As I've written about here before (for example, here and here), I was raised as a fundamentalist and a Republican and have undergone a radical shift in beliefs in my adult life.  While reading the comments for the highly-recommended diary, Romans 13: the reason fundamentalists still support GWB (for example, this thread), my memory was jogged to something I'd written a few years ago to a group of my friends who'd been (playfully, but genuinely) asking me to try to help them make sense of the fundamentalist mindset with respect to politics.  I think this may be somewhat useful to some people here.  

First, I am not posting this to try to defend the fundamentalist belief set, but rather because way back then we found it useful for strategizing going into the 2004 election in our area.  That is, I hope this generates ideas for people here and/or politicians as to how to approach fundamentalists in the future.  

A friend of mine who now lives in Michigan asked me to post this here for her.

First, here is part of what she wrote to me:

For those of you who don't know, Mike Rogers is an up-and-coming Republican congressman from my district [Ed. Note:  Michigan's 8th District].  He's a favorite of the Bush White House because he supports nearly everything the President pushes through (including permission to torture enemy combatants).  I participated in the demonstration at his office a few weeks ago, and it was inspiring to see so many people from all walks of life delivering flowers to him.  I know it had an impact.  I was there when a huge arrangement was sent from Australia, too---it was really thrilling.  Even if you don't live in my district, please consider mailing a flower drawing (see points #3 & 4).  And if you have a similar situation with your representatives, I recommend this strategy highly.

I know this is long and I don't really expect anyone to read all of it. I'm really just writing it to get it off my chest (and to create a record of the saga of this grueling day while it's still fresh in my head).

And, even worse, I'm going to post it and go immediately to bed! I'm very sorry!  You can blame Bush.  I do.

And that's why I'm posting this here...

One of Bush's mottos:  If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again...

I imagine if DailyKos existed back then (I have no idea), this has been diaried before, but perhaps it might be useful to bring it up again...

This diary on the recommended list about Bush's blatant lies regarding wiretapping and FISA jogged my memory about an article I read way back in August of 2002 that is eerily relevant today.  I didn't remember where I read it, but I dug out the headline I'd bookmarked from MSNBC on 8/23/2002 of "Secret Federal Court Rebuffs Ashcroft".  The original link was http://www.msnbc.com/news/798009.asp?cp1=1, but that no longer works (and I couldn't find a working version of it in web archives either).  But a little more digging turned up the fact that it was in the Washington Post.  I found a still-intact copy of this article here:  Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft.  Justice Dept. Chided On Misinformation.

Take the jump to go back in time and see how we got where we are today...