MAX BLUMENTHAL

Read my latest, "Billy Graham's Last Crusade," which the Gadflyer kindly ran when other cash-strapped liberal mags wouldn't. I wonder if the funding problems some outlets are having is related to Kerry's lost, or just the holidays and the end of the year. Anyway, take a look at an excerpt from my piece, a review of Graham's recent revival-style concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena:

Since his first Crusade in downtown Los Angeles in 1949, Graham has refined modern evangelism with an elegant style and moderate tone, always hewing to neutral political territory. While spreading the Gospel to over 200 million people in 145 countries, Graham ministered to presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush -- though he recently contradicted Bush's oft-repeated claim that he helped cure his alcoholism ("I never feel that I helped him in any way," Graham told Newsweek). At age 86, crippled by pelvic injuries and Parkinson's disease, during the weeks leading up to his latest crusade, Graham openly entertained the possibility that it would be his last. On Saturday night, some 80,000 evangelicals of all ages and a diverse spectrum of races flocked to the Rose Bowl as if it were.

Before I made it inside the stadium, I encountered another colorful group of protesters immediately outside its gates, these ones declaring Graham the devil incarnate. Caged inside a "free speech zone" of the variety pioneered last year by the Secret Service to prevent anti-war protesters from getting close enough to the President to harm his feelings, a dozen followers of the Calvinist provocateur Fred Phelps from Topeka, Kansas waved signs featuring such niceties as "God Hates Fags," "Thank God for 9/11," and "Fag Troops." Determined to understand this cult of heterosexual rage a little better, I approached a vaguely pretty but plain-looking 20-something girl holding a "Fag Sin" sign. Since she didn't respond to my questions about her fixation with gays, I tried to get her attention by asking her out for a nightcap....

Cobb County, USA
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
So says "disclaimer stickers" placed on high school textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta that has functioned as an organizational vortex for the Christian Right for over a decade. Here's part of an analysis of the county by Fred Clarkson:

In the summer of 1993, Cobb County, Georgia, repeatedly made national news. The powerful County Commission of this wealthy Atlanta suburb passed a resolution that harshly denounced homosexuality, ordered the cut-off of county funds for the arts, and stopped funding of abortion services through the county employee health plan.(1) These events have continued to polarize the community through the summer of 1994 and have come to epitomize what can happen when the Christian Right starts to implement its agenda. But the community is responding and the tide is beginning to turn against the Radical Right in Cobb.

The county is now the target of a national boycott by gay/lesbian and civil rights groups. Two commissioners recently sought to end the boycott by proposing a substitute resolution, but failed on a three-to-two vote. The resolution would have praised "family values" without specifically denouncing homosexuality.(2) Among other results, the boycott has eliminated Cobb from the siting of Olympic events during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Out of the Shadows

Behind all the headlines is the role of Christian Reconstructionism, the driving ideology of the Christian Right. While the Christian Coalition is now well-known as the leading political group of the Christian Right, the theological movement of Christian Reconstructionism and its leaders carefully have kept to the shadows.

The Neighbors Network, a well-regarded local civil rights research group, investigated the origins and political context of the commission's actions. Its report concludes that a group of Reconstructionists has "been both active and influential in this dispute since the Resolution's inception...They have accomplished this while concealing the radical and extremist character of their broad agenda."(3) Media coverage of the report, notably by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has put Reconstructionism on the map and the Christian Right on the defensive.(4)

Generally, Reconstructionists seek to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would impose their interpretation of "Biblical Law." They would eliminate not only democracy, but also many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women usually would be relegated to the hearth and home. Men deemed insufficiently "Christian" would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as murder, kidnapping, and rape, to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.(5)

Reconstructionists see themselves at war for political control of society in order to advance "Biblical Law" and build the "Kingdom of God" on earth. The founder of the movement, R.J. Rushdoony, states in his 1973 opus, The Institutes of Biblical Law, that "The only true order is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion." "In brief, every law-order is a state of war against enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare." (Emphasis in the original.)(6)

Oh yeah, Cobb is the home of Newt Gingrich.
For testimonials on Cobb by its few liberal residents, click here.
The depressing thing is -- and I really wonder about the accuracy of this -- according to a CBS poll, the general public seems to mirror some of the attitudes of Cobb County's Reconstructionist political elite:

(CBS) Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Support for evolution is more heavily concentrated among those with more education and among those who attend religious services rarely or not at all.

There are also differences between voters who supported Kerry and those who supported Bush: 47 percent of John Kerry’s voters think God created humans as they are now, compared with 67 percent of Bush voters.

More on the Regime Change in the Ukraine
Other than historical context, there's little I or anyone can add to the Ukraine story without first-hand reporting. So here is some context:
It seems that once again, the mainstream US and European press has been taken by surprise by a democratic regime change engineered by US-based non-profits like Freedom House, Soros' Open Society Institute, the International Republican Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, etc. -- groups which work through overt channels to accomplish what the CIA used to do covertly during the Cold War. Their method of regime change is not yet recognized as widely as it should as the total affront to international efforts at democratization that it is, even though such methods were introduced over a decade ago when Chamorro was essentially installed by the National Endowment for Democracy in Nicaragua; even though it nearly destroyed a democratically elected government in Venezuela in 2002; even though it did destroy a democratically elected government in Haiti in 2003, and even though it will ensure another puppet government in Iraq in 2005.
Sometimes it seems the West encourages democracy in developing countries because it is the easiest political system to manipulate. A war for regime change is unnecessary when elections can be fixed.
But back to the Ukraine. William Rivers Pitt has pulled together some of the better reporting on Western manipulation of the country's internal political process, though none of the reporting is thorough enough to provide a clear picture of just how these non-profit groups operate. I, of course, recommend reading my piece, "The Other Regime Change," about how the International Republican Institute waged a ten year campaign -- spearheaded by a right-wing Duvalierist operative -- to destroy Aristide in Haiti.
Here's part of a smart but scant Guardian report posted on Truthout:

...But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes.

Funded and organized by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections.

And more from the Spectator UK:

...It is because of this ideological presupposition that Anglo-Saxon reporting on the Ukrainian elections has chimed in with press releases from the State Department, peddling a fairytale about a struggle between a brave and beleaguered democrat, Yushchenko, and an authoritarian Soviet nostalgic, the present Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych. All facts which contradict this morality tale are suppressed. Thus a story has been widely circulated that Yushchenko was poisoned during the electoral campaign, the fantasy being that the government was trying to bump him off. But no British or American news outlet has reported the interview by the chief physician of the Vienna clinic which treated Yushchenko for his unexplained illness. The clinic released a report declaring there to be no evidence of poisoning, after which, said the chief physician, he was subjected to such intimidation by Yushchenko's entourage - who wanted him to change the report - that he was forced to seek police protection.

It has also been repeatedly alleged that foreign observers found the elections fraught with violations committed by the government. In fact, this is exclusively the view of highly politicized Western governmental organizations like the OSCE - a body which is notorious for the fraudulent nature of its own reports, and which in any case came to this conclusion before the poll had even taken place - and of bogus NGOs, such as the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, a front organization exclusively funded by Western (mainly American) government bodies and think-tanks, and clearly allied with Yushchenko. Because they speak English, the political activists in such organizations can easily nobble Anglophone Western reporters...

Okay, now the possible next Chief Justice, Nino Scalia, is on the record as a theocrat -- and at a schul of all places!

Speaking at a conference on religious freedom in America on Monday hosted by Manhattan's Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, Scalia said that the founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state and that America has prospered because of its religiousness.

"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," said Scalia, considered among the court's staunchest conservatives. Neutrality as envisioned by the founding fathers, Scalia said, "is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion."

A Washington-backed Regime Change in the Ukraine?
It's been obvious for years that covert/overt instruments of US soft-power were working on a quiet regime change in the Ukraine. I'm not saying I support a Putin puppet like Yanukovych, but there's very clearly a Washington-backed destabilization effort in the region and thus, there's reason to question the legitimacy of the opposition. First, this from the Washington Post:
The Yanukovych campaign said the exit polls, which were funded by the United States and other Western countries, and the demonstration were a calculated effort to preempt the official result, which they contend will show their candidate has won by as much as 5 percentage points. They noted that a large turnout in eastern Ukraine, a Yanukovych stronghold, could yet upset early predictions of a Yushchenko win.

The official count had Yanukovych with 48 percent of the vote, compared with Yushchenko's 47 percent. But according to a survey by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Yushchenko had 54 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Yanukovych. A second poll by the Socis agency gave Yushchenko 49.4 percent of the vote to 45.4 percent for Yanukovych, Ukrainian television reported.

Democratic Initiatives is George Soros' platform for using his billions to reshape the world into some romantic vision of a quasi-liberal, free market utopia. So what has George Soros been doing in Ukraine? Why is he pumping so much money into the opposition? Seriously, I'm no expert on the region so I want to know.

Also, what has the International Republican Institute (IRI) doing there? Why are they financing and training the opposition? Are they encouraging it to destablilize the country as they did with the Haitian and Venezuelan opposition movements they helped to create with US taxpayer money?
Here's a highlight from IRI's website on their work with opposition leader Yuschenko:

Viktor Yushchenko, chairman of the Nasha Ukraina political bloc and former prime minister of Ukraine, conducted a series of high-level meetings in Washington from February 4-8. Nasha Ukraina won the largest number of seats in Ukraine's parliamentary election last year. Yushchenko currently serves in parliament and is viewed as the most popular politician in Ukraine, according to public opinion polls.
IRI assisted Yushchenko in setting up meetings with Vice-President Dick Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage, IRI Chairman Sen. John McCain and IRI Board Member Sen. Chuck Hagel, as well as other members of Congress.

"Despite the widespread opinion that Ukraine is a 'country of lost opportunities,' it still can become a civilized law-governed state," Yushchenko said. "The only way to carry out economic and social reforms is to return to democracy."

In his meetings Yushchenko addressed exactly how the U.S. can assist democratic development and underscored the necessity of continued U.S. aid to Ukraine.

More ink on the Mehlman rumors, this time from Signorile:

Surely Mehlman can't complain now that people are talking about his marital status and how he lives—right? Last week, the blogs were abuzz with stories about Mehlman, who refused to tell the Washington Blade when asked several weeks ago if he or others who worked in prominent positions in the campaign are gay. Reporters, according to long-time activist John Aravosis on his Americablog.org, have in recent days been popping the question to White House officials, now that Bush has chosen Mehlman to lead the RNC. They're apparently being told off the record by the White House that Mehlman is straight, and thus the reporters aren't running with anything. But if Mehlman really is heterosexual, why wouldn't the White House—and Mehlman—say so on the record? It would certainly end the speculation and calm the suspicions and fears of the irrepressible leaders of the Christian right , who now believe they're in the driver's seat.

I'm sure this tactic didn't help radicalize any of the young males of Fallujah:

As tanks geared up to trample Fallujah and American troops started circling the city, special operations officers rifled through their CD cases, searching for a sound track to spur the assault.

What would irk Iraqi insurgents more: Barking dogs or bluegrass? Screaming babies or shrieking feedback?

Heavy metal. The Army's latest weapon.

AC/DC. Loud. Louder!

Let's roll.

I won't take no prisoners, won't spare no lives

Nobody's putting up a fight

I got my bell, I'm gonna take you to hell

I'm gonna get you . . .

While the tanks flattened Fallujah this month, Hell's Bells bombarded the town. Speakers as big as footlockers blared from Humvees' gun turrets. Boom boxes blasted off soldiers' backpacks. As the troops stormed closer, the music got louder. The song changed; the message remained the same.

Forcing an unwilling person to listen to AC/DC is torture; applied to an entire city, it's a form of terror. How in the hell this jock fraternity construction-site neanderthal Whitey-rock intimidated a bunch of battle-scarred insurgents who decapitate innocent people with dull kitchen knives is beyond me. If anything, a keyed-up kid from West Yehuvitzville, Texas with a boom box strapped to his backpack is more likely to shoot indiscriminately at anything that moves. But luckily Fallujah was never witness to anything like that, right?

Interesting numbers from an 11/24 Beliefnet poll suggesting Abe Foxman and company's disinformation campaign has achieved little. Of course, this isn't scientific:

Is it anti-Semitic to criticize Israel?

Yes, always.
7%

Yes, if Israel is singled out because it's a Jewish nation.
30%

No, if the criticism is of the country's policies and not its existence.
50%

No, it is never anti-Semitic.
12%

This story is just sad. It reminds me of the jungenkorps Hitler created when the Wehrmacht ran out of able-bodied men late in the war. Has Fallujah become America's Stalingrad?

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A 53-year-old Vietnam veteran from western Pennsylvania has been called up for active service with the U.S. military in the Iraq war, The Tribune Review of Greensburg, Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday.

Paul Dunlap, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, will join an armored division next month as a telecommunications specialist in Kuwait, and expects to be there for at least a year, the newspaper reported.

Dunlap, who has not been in combat since serving as a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam, could not be reached for comment. He will leave behind his wife Mary, four children and three grandchildren.

"I don't think any of them want me to go," Dunlap told the paper. "I'm thinking it's a long time since I've been in war."

The GOP politburo continues to centralize power:

The Republican Conference changed its rules yesterday to give Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) new powers to ensure party discipline.

A coalition of loyalist and new senators managed unexpectedly to push through the more sweeping version of the proposed changes, defeating a watered-down proposal.

The stronger one, which passed on a 27-26 secret-ballot vote, allows Frist to fill half
of all vacancies on “A” committees as he chooses. The other half would be made by seniority, the traditional way Republicans award committee slots.

“It certainly leaves the option open for significant changes in the way we do business around here,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an opponent of the idea.

Critics warned that Frist could use his new powers to punish those who challenge party orthodoxy and reward those to toe the leadership line.

I'm posting this ringing endsorsement of John R. Bolton in expectation of his elevation to the NSC or Condi's number two. (Why isn't there more noise about this guy?)

"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world." --Jesse Helms, 2001

I know Jesse's old enough to have Methusaleh's pager number, but if he can make it another four years, he may get what he's been waiting for.

Thought I'd dredge up this old Lieberman quote to provide a little context on his potential appointment to the Bush regime:

“Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, brutal dictator, supporter of terrorism, and enemy of the United States, and there should be no doubt that America and the world are safer with him captured.”

Now think about where we are now. Was Lieberman right?

Joementum!
More Lieberman rumors:

Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat, could be named secretary of the Department of the Homeland Security, a department he helped to create.

This would leave an open U.S. Senate seat. The buzz is that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell would name U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-5th Dist., to fill out Lieberman's Senate term.

That would leave an open U.S. House seat. A special election would be held, and observers are licking their chops over a possible free-for-all among local up-and-coming pols.

Okay, Lieberman's appointment could help the Dems could pick up a seat in the House and oust the Republican Senate appointee in 2006 with someone who blows less than Joe. On the other hand, by accepting, Lieberman would provide crucial window dressing for Bush's authoritarian, imperial agenda and gain nothing in return. In other words, he'd be a domestic version of Tony Blair.

Corporate State Media
A few months ago, I somehow wound up on a Phoenix Clear Channel affilliate to discuss an article I wrote about a divisive anti-immigrant ballot initiative in Arizona called Prop 200. Seconds before I went on air on the "Kid and Ruben Show," an asisine r&b oldies drive-time talk show, one of the hosts declared, "We're gonna talk about politics now because we need to rock the vote. And we're not telling you who to vote for -- except to vote for Bush. And now, with us is Max Blumenthal..."
Needless to say, I was unceremoniously yanked after a few minutes. The host -- Kid, if I remember correctly -- chastised me off air about not "presenting both sides of the issue. Since I wasn't really surprised then, I'm not suprised now that Clear Channel has erected these billboards in the Orlando area that are frighteningly evocative of North Korea.
Should we just drop the whole "Mr. President" charade and address Bush as "Dear Leader?"  

This is great. The Christian right has revised the first amendment's language for the name of an organization pushing their theocratic agenda -- the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Hey, voters rejected "government run healthcare." Why shouldn't Americans reject government run schools, too? And why can't all our kids just be homeschooled by honest Christian parents, especially those wayward kids with parents working at Walmart and living out of their cars. Anyway...

(AgapePress) - Opponents of public schools are meeting in the nation's capital to advocate what they call the "extinction of government schools." Those in attendance heard a Christian journalist and radio talk-show host tell them that home-schooling families are the vanguard of the new social revolution.

"Get the kids out of harmful schools and into honest education." That is the theme of SepCon 2004, sponsored by the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Alliance founder Marshall Fritz admits the movement is very small -- but he has high hopes for the group's current effort.

"If we're going to get to one million signatures on the 'Proclamation for the Separation of School and State' -- and we have 26,000 now -- and if you calculate the body weight, we are approximately the weight of a three-month in utero child compared to the weight of an Olympic athlete."

Scroll down in the article. The whole thing is a PR scheme of WorldNetDaily.com founder Joseph Farah, who is not as far outside the GOP establishment as he needs to be.

I've discovered a really valuable, well written blog by reporter Dahr Jamail, who travelled to Iraq to provide an unfrosted window into life and death amidst a pointless occupation. Here's part of one of his daily dispatches:

Over in Sadr City, the military are now sealing off neighborhoods doing home searches as well-this after having agreed to a deal with Sadr’s Mehdi Army the fighters turned in many of their weapons and agreed to a truce. Last night a small boy was shot there because he was out after curfew.

Lieutenant-General Lance Smith, deputy US commander of the region of the Middle East that includes Iraq, announced that his command might be asking for 3-5,000 more troops for Iraq.

This goal will most likely be attained by delaying the already scheduled departure of soldiers already here, and was announced at about the same time that the commander for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, Lieutenant-General John Sattler said that he believed the assault on Fallujah had “broken the back of the insurgency.”

Refugees from Fallujah have yet to be allowed to return to their city.

One of my friends here works on the election commission for Iraq-he stopped by tonight laughing at the new date which has been set for the election of January 30th. “They have this new date for their rigged elections,” he rolls his eyes, “And nobody in Iraq believes their propaganda. Elections? Here? I don’t know anyone who will vote. Perhaps the entire country can vote absentee for reason of car bomb!”

He and I were interviewed on a radio program this evening-while I was listening to commercials waiting to come back on, I laugh to myself as one of the advertisements is for folks to trade in their old Hummer for a new one with low financing!

This against the backdrop of the show, where my friend and I had shared stories with the host and callers of death in the streets, Iraqi outrage over the failed occupation and other love stories from Iraq.

Meanwhile, more oil facilities are sabotaged in the north, the “Green Zone” takes more mortars, and the usual gunfire is audible over the generators running out my window.

I almost never post op-eds, but Michael Kinsley's piece in the Post on Sunday makes a point I've been dying to see in the mainstream press:

Today's antiwar cause doesn't even have a movement to speak of, let alone an agenda. It consists of perhaps 47 percent of the citizenry -- the ones who voted for John Kerry -- who are in some kind of existential opposition to the war but aren't doing much about it and aren't very clear about what they would like to see happen. Meanwhile, American soldiers die by the hundreds and Iraqis -- military and civilian -- by the thousands in a cause these people (and I'm one of them) believe to be a horrible mistake.

Kerry spent months untangling the knots of his Iraq position while tangling new ones even faster. He pounded George W. Bush over the phantom weapons of mass destruction and he mocked Bush's confusion of Osama bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. Kerry said that Bush's invasion of Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." So was he in favor of ending it? No, his position was that he would try, but not promise, to bring the troops home in four years. Four years! American involvement in World War II lasted 3 1/2. Bush had a good point when he wondered how, as commander in chief, Kerry could ask American soldiers to die for the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, that problem does not vindicate Bush's belief that Iraq II is the right war in the right etc. But Bush's apparently sincere belief -- protected by his thick skull from all the winds of reality that contradict it -- does relieve him from needing to explain why he doesn't want the war to end now.

Indeed, either get out in the streets and demand the total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq or shut up. To conclude the war is lost is to conclude that a total withdrawal is in order. And if a Democrat who voted for the war is nominated again, I sure as hell hope there's a viable third party anti-war candidate. It's not only irrational to support the occupation anymore, it's immoral.
Should we even entertain arguments about the need for "stability" from foreign policy wonks when what they are in effect calling for is more American and innocent Iraqi blood?

I can't blame the soldier personally. As long as we're fighting a lost war, this is the type of shit that inevitably will happen and has been happening.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The NBC correspondent who filmed the fatal shooting by a Marine of an apparently injured and unarmed Iraqi by a U.S. Marine inside a Fallujah mosque has written on his Web site that the wounded man made no sudden movements before the Marine opened fire on him.

Before the opening of the Nov. 8 assault on the rebel-held city, Marine commanders told infantrymen that the rules of engagement allowed for use of deadly force against men of military age deemed holding hostile intent, even if the enemy didn't fire on the Marines first.

Sins of the Father
It would be wrong to blame the son or daughter for the sins of the father, unless of course, the daughter served as a mouthpiece for the father and the father's sins included the systematic slaughter of millions of people, including the deliberate genocidal massacre of 200,000 Mayans (with the covert assistance of the Israeli military, by the way). It would also be reprehensible if the father was a wanted criminal in his own country, an authoritarian evangelican fundamentalist supported enthusiastically by Reagan despite the fact he was as at least evil as Saddam Hussein.
So despite record levels of loneliness leading even normal-looking people to advertise themselves on internet dating sites, GOP Rep. Jerry Weller, deserves vigorous condemnation for marrying a genocidal maniac's mouthpiece:

Items compiled from Tribune news services
Published November 21, 2004

ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA -- They met during a trade mission, and despite controversy over their engagement, U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller of Illinois and the daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt tied the knot Saturday in a civil ceremony.

About 300 people--including Rios Montt--attended the wedding of Weller, 47, and Zury Rios Sosa, 36, a Guatemalan senator.

Weller's opponents criticized the engagement because Rios Montt, a retired general who seized control of Guatemala in 1982-83, is accused of leading one of the bloodiest campaigns in the nation's 36-year civil war, which killed 200,000 people.

A meeting of the minds.

Ariel Sharon's Ass: What Reconstructed Fascists Kiss
Berlusconi has obviously learned a lot from the New Right in America. The New Right takes a former Nazi, dress him up in a Brooks Brothers outfit, take some snapshots of him kissing black people and waving an Israeli flag and bam -- he's a legit Republican, electable, appointable, ready for mainstream goyisch consumption.
Now Berlusconi takes a "former" neo-Nazi, Gianfranco Fini, and does all that except he can't find any black people around Italy for a photo-op kiss because they're all rotting in fascistic immigration prisons. So Fini has had to suffice by kissing Ariel Sharon's fat ass. Fini and Sharon: it kind of reminds me of David Duke and Louis Farrakhan's symbolic alliance in the early 1990's.

Silvio Berlusconi named Gianfranco Fini, the leader of Italy's former neo-fascists, as his new foreign minister yesterday in a move that offered the heirs of Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts the prospect of new international political respectability.
The appointment was the result of complicated manoeuvring within the prime minister's conservative coalition. It was also the reward for years of effort by Mr Fini, 52, to drag his party, the National Alliance, into the mainstream.

While he has softened his position on many issues over the years, Mr Fini remains a hardline conservative and his outlook is likely to win him friends in George Bush's new administration.

This is particularly true with regard to the Middle East. In recent years Mr Fini has not only disowned his movement's anti-semitism, but set himself up as a leading sympathiser of Ariel Sharon's Israel.

And what does Berlusconi get for elevating fascists to the mantle of respectablity? How about the Anti-Defamation League's 2003 Distinguished Statesman Award? Yeah.
Why even bother sending money to the ADL when you could save yourself and Abe Foxman a lot of time and just send it straight to any Eurofascist soccer hooligan gang.

How did a Democratic economic populist win the Montana governorship? Read David Sirota's profile of the Brian Schweitzer campaign and find out.
Could this campaign be a blueprint for the Dems' new Western strategy?

This one kind of flew under the radar, but it's as abominadle as any other Bush appointment. By tapping a complete nebish for Army secretary, Rumsfeld is clearly designed to concentrate power in the Pentagon's civilian elite.

Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week won his fight to install his man, Francis J. Harvey, as secretary of the Army.

In the midst of two and a half wars, at a time when the Army is struggling to transform itself and must use extraordinary methods to find enough soldiers to fill the rotations to Iraq, Rumsfeld selected a man who's never served in the military or in government to be the Army's CEO.

Rumsfeld told the man he's passing over for the job - acting Army secretary Les Brownlee, a retired Army infantry colonel and a highly decorated combat veteran - that he "wanted a businessman" to run the Army. Harvey, a longtime Westinghouse executive, was Rumsfeld's second choice in 18 months of bitter wrangling with some powerful senators.

Here's another reason Harvey has been nominated over more experienced professionals: he's a Carlyle boy.

...More likely, it was Harvey's ties to the defense industry and the influential Carlyle Group that won him the Bush administration's favor.

Carlyle is a high-power Washington investment firm that counts among its leaders and advisers former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker and, until last year, former President George H.W. Bush, who happens to be the father of the current president....

Harvey is former chief operating officer for a division of Westinghouse Electric, a leading defense contractor, and serves on the boards of two Carlyle-affiliated firms.

Most prominently, he's vice chairman of Maryland's Duratek, which specializes in the handling and disposing of radioactive materials.

Duratek, which reported sales of $286 million last year, has contracts with both the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, which is itself one of the nation's top defense contractors.

Carlyle owns about 23 percent of the company and appointed Harvey to Duratek's board in 1998. He has been re-elected by shareholders every year since then.

Diane Brown, Duratek's vice president of investor relations, said about 3 percent of the company's revenue comes from the Army. About 10 percent is from the Department of Defense and 65 percent from the Energy Department. The rest comes from commercial contracts.

I guess we can expect more highly qualified firms to receive competitive-bid contracts from an uncompromised, ultra-ethical Pentagon. That's the Bush meritocracy for you.

Will Loserman join the Bush regime? Does he have anything left to sell out? From the Forward:

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut — the leader of the hawkish "Scoop Jackson" wing of the Democratic Party — is responding positively to the suggestion that President Bush offer him a post in his Cabinet.

On Sunday, asked by interviewer Chris Wallace on Fox News whether he would accept such a position, Lieberman replied, "I'd certainly think about it."

Lieberman added that, discussion of himself aside, "it would be very good for the country to have some Democrats in the Cabinet" in order "to make clear to America and to the world that George Bush's policy in the war on terror is not just his policy, it's American policy."

It couldn't be more obvious the uproar about Monday Night Football's opening segment is at least as much about race -- or to put it more bluntly, America's racial backwardness -- as it is about sex. Here's what happened in case you missed it:
The lead-in to the Philadelphia-Dallas game on Monday night was packaged as a promotion for "Desperate Housewives," ABC's racy Sunday night series. In the segment, the white, blonde Nicollette Sheridan comes on to black Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens in the locker room. She is only wearing a towel. After begging Owens not to play that night, she drops her towel and jumps into his arms.
Now how do you think that played in Alabama or Mississippi?
Even one of the NFL's few black coaches, Tony Dungy, is upset about the racial dimension of the scene. From the Indianapolis Daily Star:

Dungy was offended on many levels. As an African-American, he considered the promo racially insensitive.

"Racially insensitive?" How?
As Jimmy Inhofe would say, I'm only outraged by the outrage. 

The rabid mishuganahs of West Bank settlement Itamar have struck again. From Ha'aretz:

Dozens of West Bank settlers from Itamar attacked Palestinian olive harvesters and clashed with Israeli security forces in the village of Awarta near Nablus on Wednesday morning.

The olive harvesters in the area are provided protection by the Israel Defense Forces due to the increase in attacks by settlers.

The settlers, some 70 in number, on Wednesday morning threw stones at the Palestinians and clashed with IDF soldiers who attempted to prevent a disruption of the harvest.

The police sent a force of 50 officers to the scene when they received work of the attacks.

Fifteen youths from Itamar were detained for questioning.

During the past several weeks in the northern West Bank, including in the Itamar area, settlers have stolen olives from Palestinian villagers on a number of occasions.

According to an unconfirmed report, the Itamar settlers also attempted to steal olives during the Wednesday morning attacks.

Now here is the back story: Itamar is lavishly financed by right-wing evangelicals through a group called the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. Here's a fundraising pitch for Itamar from CFIC's website:

Due to the dire predicament of the residents of Itamar, a new security system is desperately needed and installation has begun. A perimeter closed-circuit system has been chosen, which consists of cameras, mounted on towers, which have the ability to spot a terrorist from a distance of 3 miles away (at night as well as during the day). This is the same type of system used by the IDF on Israel's northern border.

Closed-circuit surveillance system: $350,000

To date, with CFOIC's help, the community of Itamar has managed to raise over half the amount needed. Another $140,000 remains to be paid over the next several years. To meet the payment schedule for 2004 $56,000 is needed. Your assistance in purchasing the above equipment can make the difference between life and death to these brave pioneers who want nothing more than to live in peace in Biblical Israel.

TOTAL FUNDS REQUIRED:
$140,000 or $56,000 to meet the payment schedule for 2004.

Who want nothing more than to live in peace? Apparently not.

Abu Ghraib in the USA
The Bush regime may be more overtly sympathetic to the ambitions of Mexican-Americans than perhaps any previous administration. But that doesn't mean that Bush and his cadres have not quietly enacted some of the most draconian anti-immigrant programs since Dwight Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback." (In fairness, many of these programs were instituted under Clinton's watch.)
NPR, in a rare moment of real adversarial journalism, has aired a devastating report on the absurdity of these immigrant deportation policies and the brutality of DHS's immigration prisons. Here's part of the write-up:

All Things Considered, November 17, 2004 · Since Congress revamped the nation's immigration laws in the 1990s, the government has rounded up tens of thousands of immigrants each year who've committed a crime -- from murder to offenses such as overstaying their visas -- even if the offenders had already been punished.

These immigrants have been jailed for months or years while Homeland Security officials obtained a court order to deport them. Some have allegedly experienced brutal and violent conditions while in detention....

Here is a great blog I came across recently, "http://christiandems.blogspot.com/">Christian Democrats. No, it's not authored by members of a German center-right party formerly led by Helmut Kohl, it's by a Baptist from Oklahoma who believes in traditional Christian ideas like love thy neighbor and kicking the money-changers out of the temple as well as the First Amendment.
It's also a really well-written resource for info on the Christian right.

Here's one of the most interesting letters I received in response to my piece, "The Christian Right's Humble Servant."

Max,
As a Christian, I look forward to four years of
conservative and value driven legislation. Americans
are blessed by certain unalienable rights endowed by
our Creator (Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of
Independence). Are you not aware that our constitution
was formed and shaped by the very Christian values you
are criticizing?

George Bush, like most of our founding fathers and
millions of modern day Americans, is a Christian. He
chose to be a Christian, and from what I gather from
your article, I assume you have chosen something else.
I pray that someday you convert. It is an amazing
opportunity to live your life dedicated to the Creator
of the universe, the very Creator who gives us our
unalienable rights.

Brad Carson's article on how Crazy Tom Coburn defeated him is a must read. Here's an excerpt which provides a pretty startling snapshot of the Christian right's domination of Oklahoma politics:

After the morning rituals, the pastor called me to the stage, and we engaged in a lengthy discussion about abortion, homosexuality, "liberal judges," and other controversial matters. After leaving the stage, I rejoined the congregation, and the pastor launched into an attack on the "pro-choice terrorists," who were, to his mind, far more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Yes, he acknowledged, thousands had died on September 11, but abortion was killing millions and millions. This was a holocaust, he continued, and we must all vote righteously. Vote righteously! In 13 months of campaigning across the vast state of Oklahoma, I must have seen or heard this phrase a thousand times, often on the marquees of churches, where, outside of election season, one finds only clever and uplifting biblical bromides. But it was not until that September Sunday in Sallisaw, one of the most Democratic towns in Oklahoma, that I first understood that the seemingly innocuous phrase "vote righteously" was the slogan not of a few politicized churches, but the cri de coeur of millions--millions who fervently believe that their most deeply held values are under assault and who further see this assault as at least tolerated by the Democratic Party, if not actually led by it.

Since the early 1980's there has been a strong fundamentalist subculture in the armed forces, one which is obviously growing as our wars begin to look more and more like religious crusades. Seeking to exploit the nexus between right-wing evangelism and the military, SBC President Bobby Welch has written a book about applying military strategy to proseltyzing and fighting "spiritual terrorist" (which are what, exactly?). Check it out:

Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch is seeking to capitalize on the country’s growing spiritual interest through an ambitious effort to baptize a million people in one year and develop “warrior leaders” who will take seriously the biblical call for evangelism and discipleship.

His new book, "You, The Warrior Leader," published by Broadman & Holman, is designed to help demonstrate how Christians in leadership roles can apply biblical principles and military strategy to overcome spiritual warfare.....

“Not only is the United States at war with human terrorists bent on our destruction, but we also are at war with unseen spiritual terrorists who work day and night to discourage and defeat us,” Welch said. “The fortress mentality is not the way to victory -- we must take the offensive and fight strategically,” said added.

It's looking like Arlen will snap up the Senate Judiciary chairmanship before the week ends. I never thought I'd be pulling for this guy but that's where we are right now.

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who like Gregg attended the leadership meeting yesterday, noted the importance that the “values” issues played in the presidential campaign but then said, “Arlen certainly has showed the ability to be a leader and a strong advocate.”

Allen noted that Specter has said he has no “litmus test” for judges on any issues, adding, “I want assurances that, as chairman, Arlen will be effective and desiring to move the president’s nominees to the floor.”

As leaders met with Specter, outside conservative groups continued to deluge Capitol Hill offices with calls and letters about him, with several conservative groups urging Republicans instead to pick a chairman with more reliably conservative positions.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is the next most senior Republican on Judiciary after Specter.

Notably absent was Specter’s home-state colleague, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who was in New York for a speaking engagement. Like many Senate Republicans, Santorum campaigned for Specter’s reelection. But he has not publicly supported Specter for the top Judiciary post.

Allen amassed a lot of cache by spearheading the GOP's campaign to take the Senate. If he supports Arlen, I would assume it's a done deal. What's interesting is Santorum's pointed absence on this debate. By the way, his name is being bandied about as the next GOP presidential nominee. I'd prefer him to Frist, who is far less strident and therefore more dangerous.

What happened to the last English-language reporter in Fallujah?

...Hussein moved from house to house dodging gunfire and reached the river.

"I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards."

All I can say is it's only going to get worse.

Clarkson on the failure to counter the Christian Right:

I have written about the development of the Christian Right for 20 years. I have also watched the activities of the Left, and interest groups affiliated with the Democratic Party. As a rule, they prepare less well for the next round of elections than the Christian Right. Progressives and Democrats do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time armchair-quarterbacking the Democratic National Committee, or opining about "the message." Others seem to think that giving people information, or "the facts" will lead to winning elections. As important as information is, information alone has never won an election anywhere, to my knowledge.

Progressives and Democrats need to learn from the success of the Christian Right, and make some changes. This can be done in part, by individuals and small groups digging into thier own communities -- and figuring out how to be able to deliver more votes in more places next time. For example, people who live in Blue oases in Red states need to turn thier oases into strongholds that turn out progressive voters in numbers disproportionate to the rest of their state. Obviously, this is especially true in swing states. In Blue states that could be bluer -- or that want to correct the view of some elected Democrats that they need to become more Republican in order to win reelection -- it is important to make sure that their constituency is big enough -- and strong enough -- to be able to ensure that elected officials are reliably Democratic in thier views, their activities and thier votes.

Read more here.

Now D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries has joined the chorus of theocrats seeking the total obliteration of Arlen Specter's career. Kennedy is a Christian Reconstructionist minister who belongs to the Dominionist Coalition on Revival and once suggested that gays should be castrated. His Coral Ridge Ministries not only hosts over ten thousand congregants any given Sunday, it serves as his worldwide broadcast platform. Okay, take it away "Dr." (How did all these guys become doctors? Is Kennedy a podiatrist in his free time?) Kennedy:

IT'S ABOUT ABORTION

By Dr. D. James Kennedy

Make no mistake. This is about abortion. It is about whether or not the
ruinous reign of Roe will soon come to an end or continue for another
generation.

On this question, Sen. Arlen Specter, now engaged in a desperate
campaign
to win the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, could not be
more clear. Roe v. Wade, he announced during his campaign, must
remain "inviolate."

For Specter, the most divisive, unfounded, and destructive High Court
ruling
in American history is as permanent a part of our nation's legal
landscape as
Brown v. Board of Education. The right to dismember unborn children is,
for
him, the judicial equivalent of ending racial segregation in public
schools.
When it comes to abortion, the "moderate" senator from Pennsylvania is
unbending. As he put it in his post-election self-disclosure, "That is
my view,
now, before, and always."

So, if Senate Republicans give him the gavel, this famously independent
senator will be empowered to scuttle the judicial nominees of a
President who
won re-election in part on his promise to make ours a culture in which
unborn
children are "welcomed in life and protected in law."

If made chairman, Specter will doubtless do to any High Court nominee
who
threatens Roe what he did 17 years ago to Robert Bork. Back then, Roe
was
at risk because a Justice Bork would tip the Court to a pro-life
majority. He
would have been the fifth vote needed in 1992 to overturn Roe when the
Court issued its opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

That didn't happen, thanks in no small part to Specter. He joined the
Borking
chorus and labeled one of America's most brilliant legal minds
"extreme." For
Specter, Bork's view that the Constitution ought to be interpreted
according
to the original intent of its authors was beyond the pale.

And while he is noticeably mum about the Bork episode now as he bids
for the
chairmanship, Specter bragged about his nasty treatment of Bork during
his
campaign. "I not only voted against Bork, I led the charge against
him," he
said in October.

Specter invites us to examine his record. He said he has supported
every one
of President Bush's judicial nominees. He claims he has no pro-life
litmus test.
Well, in 1987, when it mattered, when Roe was imperiled, Specter broke
ranks
and joined the opposition. In 1986, when it didn't matter, when the
pro-Roe
majority remained safe, he voted to put Antonin Scalia on the High
Court
someone arguably more conservative and outspoken than Bork. And someone
who, like Bork, thinks the text and original meaning of the
Constitution, not
contemporary attitudes, should govern its interpretation. That was
evidently
okay with Specter in 1986. The next year it was "extreme."

President Bush made a costly mistake last spring when he campaigned for
Specter against his pro-life opponent in the Republican Senate primary.
With
the President's help, Specter squeaked by in the primary contest,
winning by
one percent. The President helped secure the re-election of a man whose
uncompromising commitment to abortion rights trumps all else, including
what
political loyalty, if any, he has for the President.

Now Senate Republicans are considering whether to imitate Bush's
mistake by
making Specter chairman of the Judiciary committee. Pro-life
Republicans are
pondering whether to hand power to a man who thinks the Court's
abortion
ruling is untouchable and sacrosanct. Would someone remind me, please,
which party was it that they called the "stupid party?"

After 31 years of abortion on demand in America, the "values voters"
who
helped put George Bush back in the White House have every reason to
expect a pro-life Supreme Court majority by 2008. President Bush, who
said
we should seek a "society that values life from its very beginnings to
its
natural end," may fill up to four High Court vacancies in the next four
years.

The end of Roe is at handjust as it was in 1987. But if Arlen Specter
becomes chairman, it will be Bork II all over again and who knows how
many
more million unborn children will die.

###

D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., is President of Coral Ridge Ministries, a
Christian
broadcasting organization which reaches more than three million people
weekly by radio and television. He is Senior Minister of the nearly
10,000
member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, the author of more than 60
books,
Founder and President of Evangelism Explosiona lay evangelism training
program used in every nation on earth, and Founder and Chancellor of
Knox
Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

It's about abortion? Well, sort of. It's about many more complex issues, and i'll cite one: revenge for the under-qualified Robert Bork.

My latest, "The Christian Right's Humble Servant," is up. Here's a snippet:

Only a few days after 9/11, a shaken George W. Bush invited a small group of evangelical leaders to the White House to offer him spiritual counsel. There, they quietly discussed Scripture and the implications of 9/11 for a few moments. Then former Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) president James Merritt turned to the president with a few words of encouragement.

"Mr. President, you and I are fellow believers in Jesus Christ," Merritt said.

Bush shook his head affirmatively.

"We both believe there is a sovereign God in control of this universe."

Bush nodded again.

"Since God knew that those planes would hit those towers before you and I were ever born, since God knew that you would be sitting in that chair before this world was ever created, I can only draw the conclusion that you are God's man for this hour," Merritt stated.

It was then that Bush lowered his head and cried.

Three years later, the nation was bitterly divided and God's pre-destined president was plunged in a fight for his political life. Without a domestic plank to run on and a staggering record of failure to run from, Bush's re-election was no longer the slam dunk it was once thought to be. Had Bush not cultivated the Christian right as his power base or courted its leadership as his informal advisors, re-election would have been impossible. Indeed, while the presence of Bush consigliere Karl Rove in the White House blurred the lines between policy and politics, the influence of the Christian right on Bush's domestic agenda formally wedded the familiar bedmates of conservative ideology and Calvinist theology. With a disciplined voting bloc at its disposal, the Christian right pushed for increased influence on the White House in a second Bush term, rallying support for his re-election behind church walls, at stadium-sized rallies and across radio waves – often away from the media's gaze but always in the shadow of the offical Bush/Cheney campaign. And when they helped carry Bush to an unlikely but overwhelming victory on November 2, he – and the Republican party, by extension – were secured as the Christian right's humble servants.

"Bush's victory not only establishes the power of the American Christian right in this candidacy, but in fact established its power to elect the next Republican president," lamented Arthur Finkelstein in an interview with the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. Finkelstein, who is an advisor to New York's moderate Republican governor George Pataki, added that the "Republican party became the Christian right, the most radical in modern history ever."

What do mainline churches and college professors have in common? Those who dare to criticize Israel get destroyed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. Presbyterian Churches in the U-S have been put on high alert.

This after a letter received at the church's Louisville, Kentucky, headquarters threatened arson attacks because of the church's policies toward the Middle East.

A church spokesman says the letter threatened to set churches on fire while people were inside in retaliation for "anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes."

The spokesman says the letter had no return address, but was postmarked Queens, New York.

The church's General Assembly decided in June to begin the process of selective divestment from corporations supporting the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

An F-B-I spokesman says the agency is investigating the letter with help from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

.

Get ready for more divisive gay marriage amendments:
(AgapePress) - A west Texas lawmaker has proposed a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Lone Star State is but one of several states that are making similar moves in the wake of Election Day's 11-for-11 performance, when every state considering a marriage amendment approved the measure decisively.

Last year, the Texas Legislature passed the Defense of Marriage Act. As early as next fall, voters in Texas may have the opportunity to vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage because this week, State Representative Warren Chisum, a Republican from Pampa, "pre-filed" his proposed constitutional amendment (H.J.R. 6). The next legislative session for the state lawmakers opens on January 11, 2005.

What Happened to Immigration?
I've recently been sensing an anti-immigrant current running through liberal circles, particularly because corporate Republicans have embraced undocumented immigrants so wholeheartedly as a source of cheap labor. For instance, in a gerrymandered, Republican safe congressional district just northeast of L.A., a Democrat named Cynthia Mathews must have thought she had a chance against David Dreier. A local right-wing Clear Channel radio program on KFI 670, the Ken and Jon Show, turned Dreier into its favorite whipping post.

All summer, these two stereotypical angry white males slammed Dreier as a race traitor simply for voting against draconian House bills that would have denied undocumented immigrants the ability to open bank accounts in the US. In steps Mathews, the populist Democrat who supports militarizing the border and deporting the undocumented. And all of the sudden, she's the toast of the local right-wing radio circuit. That's triangulation, folks!

But even after Mathews sold her soul to ride a wedge issue, Dreier won in a walk. I never thought I'd feel even the slightest tinge of satisfaction in watching a sleazeball like Dreier win. But I have to admit, after the demagogic campaign Mathews ran, I did.

What I'm angling at here is that Democrats have yet to reach a consensus on how to approach immigration policy, the status of the undocumented or border policy. I've even noticed a subtle shift in "progressive" attitudes toward anti-immigrant sentiment cloaked in protectionist, anti-corporate terms. What do progressive Democrats really think about the undocumented immigrants in their midst? Will Dems support the SOLVE act, which confers legal status upon the undocumented? What about the Dream act, which offers college scholarships to over-achieving children of undocumented immigrants? This issue doesn't seem to even be anywhere on anybody's radar screen right now.

This is a discussion that needs to take place because within the next two years, if not sooner, Bush will spend a good sum of the capital he thinks he earned to re-introduce his guest worker bill in congress. The bill will be staunchly opposed by some of his most ardent allies and his base could very well hemmorage. Even Tom Delay can be counted on to obstruct the bill, or at least water it down.

Why? Because the Republican base is not only anti-immigrant (like it is anti-gay), it is anti-Mexican. This presents an outside chance for Democrats to roll back the gains Bush has made with Latinos. (I won't go into why he's gained with Latinos; that should be the subject of a long article, not a blog post). Bush is a guy who cares about undocumented immigrants far more than most of his party does -- and that's why he'll never be able to deliver significant immigration reform policy. That message needs to be rammed home while Democrats introduce more far-reaching legislation like SOLVE. None of this can happen, though, if Democrats are willing to take a populist, anti-immigrant stand for the sake of political expediency. And the so-called "New Democrats" are all about expediency these days.

When immigration hits the political front-burner again, bitter intra-party rifts will emerge while bizarre alliances form. Bush will be caught in the middle. Will the Democrats be prepared?

Update:
A reader asked me:
Max, did you edit/completely rewrite this post since last night, without saying so? Or did I dream what you wrote about Atrios and which I commented on above?
Yes, I blew my top on Atrios and realized a few minutes later he had used quotation marks to suggest a sarcastic tone. I figured nobody read it since it was a late night post, but since somebody has, I should say: my bad, Atrios.

I'm not going to bother engaging in the chatter about Arafat's death, at least, not yet. There's little I could add right now, and I think the most important events are yet to come. For instance, why are we hearing so little about Hamas' machinations right now? And how about the neocons in the Pentagon and AIPAC, insidious figures certain to wage a disinformation campaign against little, old Mahmoud Abbas. The coverage of Arafat's death seems to me like a picture with no frame. I'll be back on this next week.
In the meantime, here's a funny story about the media's (mis)handling of the affair:

Reuters - CBS News has fired the producer responsible for interrupting the last five minutes of a hit crime drama with a special report on the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a network source said on Friday.

Word of the dismissal came a day after CBS apologized to viewers for breaking into "CSI: NY," one of its top-rated shows, on Wednesday night.

"An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news. We sincerely regret the error," the network said in a statement on Thursday.

I guess someone had to take the fall for intervening in the daily habits of exurban, escapist swing voters with five minutes of actual, real-world events. I remember when I was about 9 years old and an asinine Reagan press conference about Iran-Contra or somesuch interrupted a 90 yard Walter Payton touchdown run. He was on the 30 yard line, racing toward the end zone and bam! -- Reagan's wrinkly mug appears on the screen. How come nobody fired Reagan?

Last night I finally got a chance to see "Bush's Brain," the documentary about Karl Rove based on the book by the same title. Although the film was a little hammy in parts, and verged on demagogy toward its conclusion, its generally dark, brooding tone underscores a powerful indictment of Rove both as a vicious, unethical insider and a deeply depraved, perverse human being who cares far more about his own ambition than the lives of the average Americans who form his clients' power base. The story delves into his destruction of the political and personal lives of everyone from Anne Richards to Jim Hightower to John McCain. The film's portrayal of Bush's political guile, a segment which features Molly Ivins as a talking head, is devastatingly accurate.
Of course, I'm sure the book's better, but the movie is highly recommended -- that is, if you can still stand to think about Bush and Rove these days.

Thanks to the politically driven Groznyization of Fallujah, insurgents -- probably those who slipped out of Fallujah before the US attack -- have seized parts of southern Baghdad. The war is unwinnable.

Baghdad residents say there are practically no US troops around, even as regular explosions can be heard all over the city. Baghdad sources confirm to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah, Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods.

Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami, al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) - the movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The message is clear: the resistance is united.

Two Appropriate Quotes
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H.L. Mencken

"Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men.
For though the world stood up and stopped him,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again."
Bertolt Brecht on Hitler

Any other good quotes, anyone?

Message from Mars
"I truly believe, that Iraq is becoming a democracy," said Laura Bush.
Link is to an interesting analysis by Timothy Garton Ash on Europe's strategy to handle Bush's faith-based foreign policy.

LA local news networks are making a big deal about how Alberto Gonzales is going to be the "first Latino attorney general" and how that's good for Latinos somehow. I don't know a single Latino who doesn't think this guy is a complete coconut. I don't know, maybe people feel differently in Texas. Anyway, since everyone's howling about how Gonzales helped the Bush administration wriggle out of the Geneva Convention, I'll throw something new into the mix:

In 1999, a Halliburton employee had won a $2.6 million trial verdict due to allegations that a company supervisor framed him to test positive for cocaine, only to see the verdict overturned by a Texas Court of Appeals. Just before the Texas Supreme Court ruled on the case, Halliburton gave a number of contributions to the Justices, including $3000 to Alberto Gonzales. None of the Justices recused themselves from the case and the Court refused to hear the appeal against Halliburton.

Making the Gonzales conflict even more controversial is the fact that before being appointed to office, Gonzales had been a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins, L.L.P. in Houston which had Halliburton as a major client. And Gonzales worked in the section where Halliburton was represented where he had a strong relationship with the firm.

One positive thing I'll say about Gonzales is at least he's concious of how his ethnicity helped endear him with his Bush family patrons. Unlike Clarence Thomas, Gonzales is, or at least has been, a firm supporter of affirmative action. I don't think there will be much conservative grumbling about his position, though there would have been had he been nominated to the Supreme Court.

Eyewitness account of America's Grozny:
I also saw four crippled US tanks and three abandoned Humvees.

In the Hasbiyyah area, I counted the bodies of at least six US soldiers lying on the ground.

Some of them were badly mangled with various bits blown off. Others were in better condition, as if they had taken small-arms fire.

I noticed two of the US soldiers were still clutching their guns tightly across their chests. But most of their weapons were missing.

Some of the dead are beginning to rot in the streets.

But the living do not exactly smell great either - I have not had a bath for a week. Nor have I shaved.

There is no real rest here, day or night.

Check out my younger brother's new blog. In his first day, he takes on the American Enterprise Institute's annual neo-con cabal ball, which I didn't even know had taken place.

Jerry Falwell on the election:

We should all feel a sense of accomplishment and thankfulness to God for blessing our efforts. We must never forget that people of faith in this country, joined by political and fiscal conservatives, successfully withstood Hollywood, Springsteen, Affleck, Baldwin, the Dixie Chicks (now called the French Hens by some), billionaire George Soros and his ilk, all the 527s, most of the national print and broadcast media, the gays and lesbians, the abortionists, the entire liberal establishment... and about $2 billion of hate-inspired media and campaign expenditures.

The left threw its best punch and George Bush and social conservatism are alive and well. To God be all the glory!

Who are Soros' ilk? You know who he's talking about.
By the way, Jerry's starting what he hopes will become a Moral Majority for the 21st century, the Faith and Values Coalition.

Here's a disturbing rumor from the Indian press:

[World News]: Falluja (Iraq), Nov 8 : Mosques in Iraq's restive city of Falluja announced Monday that rebel fighters inside the city have captured 35 US soldiers, reports Xinhua.

Loudspeakers at the mosques blared out the news as US forces were trying to penetrate the rebel-held city,

The news however could not be independently confirmed.

Here's a confirmed report that also disturbing, if not outrageous:

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Mohammed Abboud says he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down on the Iraqi city.

In the midst of a U.S. onslaught and hemmed in by a round-the-clock curfew, he said he had little choice but to bury his eldest son, Ghaith, in the garden.

"My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment," said Abboud, a teacher. "We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out. We did not know how long the fighting would last."

Residents say scores of civilians have been killed or wounded in 24 hours of fighting since U.S.-led forces pushed deep into the rebel-held city on Monday evening.

Doctors said people brought in at least 15 dead civilians at the main clinic in Falluja on Monday. By Tuesday, there were no clinics open, residents said, and no way to count casualties.

As someone who, as late as last year, believed in the idea that the US needed to maintain a presence in Iraq to prevent civil war and chaos, and "get as many flags as we can on the ground," I now endorse any and every tactic short of violence to voice opposition to the war and force a unilateral withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq. Both the war and Iraq are lost. And we soon will be too.
Seriously, can anyone offer a rational explanation why we should remain in Iraq and how we could possibly achieve even a remotely positive outcome?
In the words of Leonard Cohen, the city is broke in half and the middlemen are gone.

Google "Bush Mandate" and this is the first site that comes up.
Coincidence? I don't think so.

A new thread in Bush's faith-based government:

Federal workers in 27 Illinois counties as of yesterday may enroll in a Catholic-run health insurance plan that does not cover abortions and contraceptives, and limits coverage of fertility treatments.
The program is the first such national plan offered to federal employees. Although it is anticipated that most of the subscribers will be Catholics, there is no religious requirement for participation.
"This insurance plan is moving in the right direction ... because it gives individuals the opportunity to live out their moral judgments, their moral values," said Philip Karst, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Health Association in Chicago.

Little by little...

Here are two heart-warming clips from our Holy War. File under "Who Would Jesus Bomb:"

"... Evangelical Marines prepare to battle barbarians... Outside Fallujah,
35 marines swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect
them... waved their hands in the air... and chanted heavy metal-flavoured
lyrics in praise of Christ..."


"The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been
attacked by a faceless enemy," said Colonel Brandl. "But the enemy has got a
face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy
him."

By the way, I have a prediction that I sincerely hope doesn't come true but almost certainly will: The Pentagon has a brilliant plan for American and Iraqi (read: insurgent sympathizers with US weaponry) troops to win Fallujah but has no plan to win the peace.

Pardon me for the light posting this weekend. I'm working on a long analysis of the election outcome, hopefully one that says something unique.
In the meantime, check out one of my favorite takes on the massive array of war-crimes about to take place in Fallujah, a prescient essay penned months ago by Mike Davis.

The battle of Fallujah, together with the conflicts unfolding in Shiia cities and Baghdad slums, are high-stakes tests, not just of U.S. policy in Iraq, but of Washington’s ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the “key battlespace of the future” - the Third World city.

The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60 percent casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: “Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain.” Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World.

As a result, the four armed services, coordinated by the Joint Staff Urban Working Group, launched crash programs to master street-fighting under realistic third-world conditions. “The future of warfare,” the journal of the Army War College declared, “lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world.”

Israeli advisors were quietly brought in to teach Marines, Rangers and Navy Seals the state-of-the-art tactics - especially the sophisticated coordination of sniper and demolition teams with heavy armor and overwhelming airpower - so ruthlessly used by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza and the West Bank.

Artificial cityscapes - complete with “smoke and sound systems” - were built to simulate combat conditions in densely populated neighborhoods of cities like Baghdad or Port-au-Prince. The Marine Corps Urban Warfighting Laboratory also staged realistic war games (“Urban Warrior”) in Oakland and Chicago, while the Army’s Special Operations Command “invaded” Pittsburgh.

Today, many of the Marines inside Fallujah are graduates of these Urban Warrior exercises as well as mock combat at “Yodaville.” the Urban Training Facility in Yuma, Arizona, while some of the Army units encircling Najaf and the Baghdad slum neighborhood of Sadr City are alumni of the new $34 million MOUT simulator at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

This tactical “Israelization” of U.S. combat doctrine has been accompanied by what might be called a “Sharonization” of the Pentagon’s worldview. Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic “terrorist” insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing mega-slums....

Read the whole thing. And weep.

Specter in hot water.

One pro-family activist -- himself a former presidential candidate -- says Specter's comments should convince the GOP Senate leadership that he is unqualified for the position of committee chairman.

"They ought to make it absolutely clear that he will not be the next chairman when the new Senate comes in next year," says Gary Bauer, president of American Values, who describes the senator's comments as the "height of ingratitude."


Gary Bauer
"It is unacceptable for one liberal Republican from Pennsylvania to thwart the desires of the president of the United States to make our federal courts more conservative and more in tune with the values of the American people."
.....
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council