But things are not better, not really.

Attn: All politicians: Less speeches and more action, if you please.

Or most Christians, for that matter.

Robertson’s advocacy of assassination is little more than a fundamentalist Protestant version of a Islamic Fatwa and as such should be condemned.
The “different hat” theory is as silly in real life, as it was in The Mikado.

The Prince responded by saying that SA does not fund extremist madrasas.

Which is a flat-out lie. Either that, or the Prince was on something during the Blitzer interview.

In fact, radical madrasas are financed by Saudi Arabia as part of SA’s ongoing export of its official religious ideology and as a means to strengthen the Sunni sect of Islam as against the Shia sect. They are supported not only by official contributions, but also by wealthy members of the business community. Pakistan’s madrasa system has for many decades enjoyed substantial funding from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, which is why the number of madrasas in Pakistan has grown from 147 in 1947 to more than 9,000 today.

Undaunted, Blitzer pressed his point to the Prince who simply repeated the lie that SA does not support radical madrasas. Blowing more smoke, the Prince finally made another astonishing statement. He stated that, although he does not know of any extremist madrasas, clerics or mosques in SA, he assured Blitzer, that as soon as he is given names and addresses the SA government will take the proper action.

With no names and addresses, he said, the government of Saudi Arabia was powerless to act. The Prince then went on to tell Blitzer he had met with a US senator, and tried to get such information, but was told that it was "classified" and therefore could not be revealed to him.

Most likely this is simply another lie.

But suppose for a moment, the Prince is telling the truth. Why is it that the names and addresses of radical mosques and schools in SA is classified information?

After all, the US has borne the brunt of attacks organized by Saudi citizens and supported by Saudi clerics. Thousand of US citizens have been killed by Saudi or Saudi-trained terrorists who got their funding and education in part through radical Islamic schools and clerics in Saudi Arabia.

The names, and addresses of schools, seminaries, and institutions of any kind in SA that teach radical Wahhabism and violent Jihad against the West should be made public.

And then shut down.

Is there any explanation for their acts? The Prime Minister, Mr. Blair has called the serial bombings in London as an attack upon the civilized world. He also said in a recent speech that certain brands of Islam are "evil" and in contrast to "true" Islam. But how can he be so certain? Muslims themselves disagree about Islam. Some Muslims feel that violent Jihad is true Islam. In any event, the London attacks were carried out by men who believe in the violent side of Islam. Which implies that to certain Muslims, feelings of Islamic unity are trumping traditions of liberal democracy, at a very fast pace.

And there are a lot of Muslim immigrants living in the democratic nations of Europe today. What exactly may some of them be thinking; or planning?

The invasion of Iraq certainly hasn’t helped matters. It’s simply created one vast terrorist training camp, offering on-the-job training, to those who feel that violence is the only way to restore the grandeur of Islamic civilization, as well as kick the West out of the Middle East.

The challenge for the democracies of Western Europe an North America is, how to plan against terrorists acts, without losing the very freedoms we in the West value.

In other words, can national and international laws governing freedom of religion declare that religious concepts that preach intolerance towards other faiths and their adherents are illegal? Tony Blair has proposed reining in Islamic preachers that urge violence. Would the government have to regulate Islamic seminaries so they will omit the concepts of violent Jihad while teaching the Koran to youngsters? Could such a program succeed. History would argue against it.

One thing most people agree on, and that is another attack is surely in the cards and there is little, at present, anyone can do about it.

Leo’s attack amounted to little more than a diatribe against academicians who study language and cultures from a comparative POV. Professors involved in these studies were called “postmodernists”.

Those in the academic world who merely  pointed out the fact that language is an imperfect device to describe reality, were turned into   allies of the Islamic fanatics.  Back seat pilots to those  who drove those jetliners into the Twin Towers. 

Postmodernists, said Leo, are also guilty of the crime of denying reality.

Other right-wing nutters went on to blame 9/11 on multiculturalism. Multiculturalists they said, also deny reality. Multiculturists don’t believe that any society’s values are worth preserving, since the multiculturist views all societies as essentially equal.

These and other like views put out by the wingnuts are absurd on their face. Postmodernism is basically a theory of language. Postmodernists do not deny reality, they simply expose language for what it is, an imperfect tool for describing reality.

The rightists attempted to blame multiculturalism for 9/11;--an argument equally nonsensical.

Multiculturalism essentially views all societies as equal for the purpose of unbiased study.  Such a view is necessary for an academic carrying out unbiased study. 

Apparently simply being an academician and trying to be unbiased in the study of culture, is enough to merit  condemnation by the far right.

It all comes down to this:  Dare to  do social or cultural   research in an unbiased manner and pretty soon you’ll be accused of being a terrorist sympathizer.

University professors weren’t the only targets of the far right back in 2001. Entertainers got bashed too.  

Bill Maher got kicked off ABC for saying  that the 9/11 attackers were not cowards. That did him in.  Like a maddened bull, the right-wing media machine crashed up against ABC, calling Maher every name they could think of. Politically Incorrect was taken off the air.

The fact that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards (cowards do not drive jet-fueled bombs into buildings) meant nothing to those who wanted Maher out of a job. 

As if Mahar condoned 9/11 because he described the terrorists accurately!

Come now to the aftermath of 7/7. Who's the right blaming now?

A recent article in frontpagemag.com provides the answer.

The left, of course. 

The left and its “allies” were responsible for 7/7. If by any chance someone said something nice about a radical Islamic cleric or actually criticized President Bush, that person is somehow or another an “ally” of the bombers.

Perhaps someone thought that the idea of invading and occupying an Islamic country might be the wrong way to fight Islamic terrorists.  Say they actually said so in a public forum. Appeaser! yells out  frontpagemag.

Another accusation sometimes made is that the  left, is so “consumed with hatred of the West” that it “embraces” its would-be destroyers.

Again, irrational nonsense, but it's classic right-wing blame-gaming.

An interesting variant of the blame-everyone-and-everything-but-the-terrorists argument was recently put out by Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country.

Scarborough blames the London bombings on Americans who are not serious enough.

Yes, that’s right, lack of American seriousness causes terrorism.

Scarborough’s culprits?

Well, they’re a more interesting lot than John Leo’s. They include Ted Kennedy, rock stars, Hollywood actors, the French PM, and Paris Hilton.  Also rock promoters like Bob Geldorf.

Scarborough doesn’t like ‘em, so they must be allies of the London terrorists.

It all makes you wonder if it is asking too much for the right to stop it with the silly scapgoating and jerky demonizing when it comes to terrorism?

The John Leo’s and Joe Scarborough’s of the world would be far more credible if they were to start placing the blame for Islamic terrorism where it belongs; on the terrorists and the radical form of Islamic Jihad they practice.

As it stands now, they  use terrorist attacks to  push their  ideological or partisan POV.

Surprising? Yeah. Surprised me anyway.

According to William Kristol, "For the last 18 years constitutional jurisprudence has continued to drift away from a sound constitutionalism based on the written Constitution and a proper deference to popular self-government."

That’s odd.

When I last looked at a book on constitutional law, the US supreme was and is in the business of interpreting a written constitution.  At least that's what it's been doing  every since the case of Marbury vs. Madison way back in 1803.

The cure, according to Kristol?

Oppose the nomination of his attorney general , Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court. Why? "(I)t’s simply a fact" writes Kristol, that "Gonzales does not have the stature of several other possible candidates."

That’s a "fact" which is subject to some argument.

First off, Mr Bush hasn’t put forward any candidates to replace  Justice Sandra Day OConnor, who wants to retire.

But Mr Kristol, of course, has.

Kristol’s nominees include, Michael McConnell, of the 10<sup>th</sup&gt Circuit; J. Michael Luttig, of the 4<sup>th</sup&gt Circuit and the recently confirmed Janice Rogers Brown, of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals

What about these folks? Who are they and how come Kristol likes them so much?

McConnell generally supports states rights but doesn’t like the idea of the federal courts actually dealing with state-federal matters. In other words the Fourteenth Amendment is just fine, as long as the federal courts don’t actually enfoce it. He says he’s opposed to school prayer, but his opposition is merely formal. The same goes for his attitude towards public displays of religious images; he claims he supports decisions outlawing them on government property, but only for reasons that have nothing to do with the question of church and state, but merely on how best to present the images to the public. McConnell does not support separation of church and state at least in its Jeffersonian form. He is very much in favor government support for religious institutions . And of course, McConnell doesn’t like Roe v. Wade.
He really doesn’t like it.
In fact you could say he’s got some kind of obsession with Roe v. Wade and seems to salivates at the idea it could somehow be overturned.

J. Michael Luttig has little to recommend him. However, he believes in capital punishment and does not appear to believe in a woman’s right to an abortion. Good enough for Kristol.

Janice Rogers Brown has done nothing to merit a US Supreme Court appointment. However she has gone on record as opposing the New Deal. She also dislikes affirmative action, government regulation and abortion rights. And she lets everyone who’ll listen know it. Especially far-right groups, whose gatherings she sometimes speaks to.
Bottom Line?

Kristol’s nominees are strongly borkable. In fact are in need of a good borking.
Fact is,  opposition to abortion rights is cause enough to oppose any nominee to the federal courts.

Mr Bush, if he has any sense, will put forward Alberto Gonzales. Whatever you might think of his political views, Gonzales, unlike Mr Kristol believes that he goes to work every day and labors under a constitutional government. Gonzales does not believe that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Knows full well that it cannot be overturned.  Not in the real world.  

Gonzales world is rooted in reality. Kristol’s world?  Well that doesn't resemble Earth, it more clearly resembles Altair IV.

Bottom line: At a training rate of 1.5 battalions a year, in order to reach 280 battalions or 140,000 men, the US will have to occupy Iraq for about another 186 years or so. 

Absent a change in policy.

That’s a long time;  it stretches far beyond the year 2017.
 
Small wonder public support for the war is declining.

These axioms ought to be kept in mind by anyone planning on listening to the President’s next pep talk, set up for next Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Mr Bush has a hard sell. His polls are declining, while US casualties in Iraq continue to climb.

Mr Bush, his supporters in Congress, and their allies in the rightist media keep putting it out that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, they say. Thing is, in the battle zone, the field grade officers (and some of the general officers) are telling a different story. They are telling us in more or less roundabout ways, that it could be years before the insurgency is defeated, if ever.

One thing all parties to this conflict, agree on, and that is that Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic radicals. These are the folks who strap bombs on themselves and kill Iraqis and American soldiers. And if they aren’t committing suicide directly, they are firing hand-held ordinance at American soldiers and civilians. Those Islamic fighters who survive combat, are learning enough about guerrilla fighting to return home to teach a new crop of young Islamic radicals just what they’ve learned.

All of which points up the fact that defeating the insurgency in Iraq is going to be virtually impossible without vastly increased US forces, and a permanent military presence in Iraq for many years to come. No one in their right mind imagines that the current puppet government will last very long without US bayonets propping it up.

Mr Bush ought to do the math. Check out the axioms. The insurgents can draw their personnel from a base population of about a billion Muslims; most of them located in the Middle East. Of course most Muslims do not engage in terrorism and have no interest in fighting Americans no matter what the Koran or some mullah might say on the subject. Unfortunately a small percentage of Muslims, usually young men, scattered through the various absolute monarchies and outright dictatorships around Iraq will do just that.

There’s no way 140,000 US soldiers can deal effectively with the kind of numbers of intense young men the Islamic world can produce. While no one knows exactly how many insurgents are killed on say, a monthly basis in Iraq by US/coalition forces, assume for a moment that about a 100 insurgents are killed every month. That’s about what the news reports indicate, anyway.

Now, let’s say the US kills about 1200 Islamic insurgents a year. Assume further, that out of a billion possible Muslims in the Middle East, maybe a million or so are willing to go to Iraq in order to kill Americans at any one point in time.

If follows then, that if the US kills about 1200 insurgents a year, given a numeric base of about a million potential Islamic fighters and suicide bombers, it will take about 800 years to quell the Iraq insurgency. This contrasts mightily with the two and three year figure suggested by Sen. McCain the other day on one of the cable talk shows.

So what does it all mean? Well, what it means is, that in the absence of an outright re-colonization of the Middle East, there’s no practical way the Iraq insurgency will be defeated or even held in check at any time in the near future.

At the rate things are going, all most Americans have to look forward to is an endless grind of bloody car bombings and convey attacks. An 800 year quagmire, if you will.

Do the math.

Punditwalla--.

According to Bob Herbert of the New York Times, Gov. Bush wrote a letter to Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas and Pasco Counties requesting an "inquiry". An "inquiry" is Gov. Bush’s polite term for a criminal investigation. There’s absolutely no evidence Mr Schiavo has committed any crime, but that’s apparently irrelevant to both Mr Bush and Mr McCabe.

Question is, why, after all the negative publicity about Jeb Bush’s handing of the Schiavo case, is he trying once more to intervene in Mr Schiavo’s life, using his now-deceased wife and the circumstances of her original illness as some sort of tool to keep this matter alive?

Well, could be that Jeb Bush, at the urging of the right-to-lifers, the Christian right, and Mrs Schiavo’s parents, wants to find some way of hanging the death of Terri Schiavo on Michael Schiavo. There’s little doubt they’re not happy campers. They lost in the courts big time and they lost on the local ME’s autopsy table.
But they don’t take defeat easily, so, they asked Gov. Bush to do something.
Which he was more than happy to do;--like Inspector Javert pursuing Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, he doesn’t give up easily either.

State attorney McCabe says he isn’t aware of any crime involving Mr Schiavo. So why is he agreeing to the governor’s request? It’s well-known that when an ambitious state attorney goes investigating, he does so for the purpose of gathering evidence of a crime. State attorneys do not make useless "inquiries." Evidence of a crime no matter how flimsy can be used as the basis of an indictment. Grand juries of course, indict at the drop of a hat. Which brings forth the very real possibility that Mr McCabe will attempt somehow or another to indict Michael Schiavo for some crime or another involving the treatment of his ex-wife.

Which will start the Schiavo circus going once more.

This is an injustice.

It should not be allowed to occur. Mr Schiavo has suffered enough and pursuing this matter, even under the guise of an "inquiry" is not pursuing justice, which is supposed to be the first duty of a public prosecutor.

State attorney McCabe’s business address is:

P.O. Box 5028

Clearwater, Florida

33758

If anyone wants to remind him of what his first duty happens to be.   

And they were scientifically arrived at.

Science, not theology; not wishful thinking, not right-wing voodoo rhetoric, informed the public as to what Ms Schiavo’s condition was as the time of her death.

The CME’s report contradicts and puts to rest all the blathering clap-trap we had to put up with, during the Schiavo soap-opera. It contradicts ambitious GOP politicians, fundamentalist Protestant clergymen and meddlesome Catholic priests alike. 

It contradicts the anti-abortion nut-cases like Randall Terry, who attempted to put his two cents into the Schiavo alive.

That whole crew out-and-out  demanded that the federal government somehow or another intervene in a Mrs Schiavo's state guardianship proceeding. The more extreme elements demanded that the governor of Florida act contrary to what the courts ordered. They were convinced that Ms Schiavo was being murdered, that she was conscious, and that her husband was harming her and all the rest of it.  

But it all turned out to be a load of stuff and nonsense.

Well, three cheers for autopsies.

But this particular autopsy did something else.

It  exposed  Sen. Frist for what he is,  little more than an overly ambitious politico;--a man quite willing to misuse his professional skills as a physician , for the sole purpose of ingratiating himself with the far-right in anticipation for a presidential run in 2008.

As it stand now, most people are left wondering what sort of politician is he now and what sort of president would he be?

They are also asking the question as to what sort of physician he can be, if he is willing to pump out a diagnosis on someone without actually examining him/her. Sen. Frist, or Doctor Frist, as he likes to refer to himself,  came out on TV on the Senate floor and told everyone what Mrs Schiavo’s cognitive state was, on the basis of viewing a video, for God’s sake.

That  tape of Frist issuing his diagnosis survives.

You can bet  it'll aired if Sen. Frist goes ahead and enters the New Hampshire primary.

It'll receive a lot of airtime.   

Yuk!

Talk about yuk;-- Jacko himself provides enough of it, does the newsmedia have to slather it on still more?

Anyway, as to the verdicts themselves, most likely they were due to a peculiar combination of Jackson's superstar status , weak prosecution witnesses, the case’s incredible length (547 days or thereabouts) and messy jury instructions.

One can’t readily blame the jury, (if you believe Jackson guilty) most of the witnesses brought forward on both sides, somehow or another managed to come out testifying for the opposite side. It looks like the prosecution’s main witness, the supposedly molested boy’s mother, was some sort of grifter. She did not impress the jury, except in  a negative way.  Given the confusing testimony and the circumstantial nature of the case, the verdicts were about as reasonable as anyone could expect.

The question now is,  whether or not Jackson can get his career going again.

He  may still have an ability to make a comeback as a pop star. 

But Jackson has a tendency to open his mouth and do certain  things, that have a way of getting  the attention of the local child protective services.

Mr Jackson also  attracts grifters.

And he also doesn’t seem to learn from experience.

By his own admission he’s going to continue sleeping with as many little boys (and maybe girls) as he possibly can.

So, if history is any guide, more charges will come out of Santa Inez  soon and a new parade of black SUVs will be seen running in and out of Jackson's creepy estate out near Highway 101.

Jackson ought to  do California a favor and move  to Nevada.  

Pull a Howard Hughes. 

   

Anyway, start with Howard Dean; Gov. Dean has been saying some rather unflattering things about Republicans and Republican policies.

Which to most Democrats, is a refreshing change.

Imagine;--a Democrat who tells people what’s on his mind. An ex-governor; a man with concrete political credentials, exercising his right to speak out and actually tell Americans what he thinks of the GOP and its policies.

A man with enough guts to come out and tell Americans that the GOP is essentially in the back pocket of the Christian right. That the GOP essentially kowtows to a strange alliance of fundamentalist Protestants and meddlesome Roman Catholic clergymen. That this Christian right is intent on writing their extremist religious views into public law and that Americans ought to beware of them.

Gov. Dean says bad things about the GOP and does not either pull his punches or apologize for what he says. That’s why Noonan is mad at Dean.

What about Hillary?

Well, according to Noonan, Hillary Clinton takes orders from Howard Dean. So much so, she says, that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, all that rough language Howard Dean engages in will surely impact government policies. This will in turn cause all sorts of bad things to happen. Nobody knows that these bad things might be, but there you have it.

The only way out of this decline, says Ms Noonan, is for Democrats like Dean (and Hillary Clinton) to stop engaging in rhetoric that hurts the feelings of Republicans.

Civility, says Ms Noonan, that’s the ticket.

Civility. Right.

Peggy Noonan, GOP hatchet-woman, lecturing everyone on "civility." Peggy Noonan telling Hillary Clinton to be nice to Republicans. Peggy Noonan, implying that Republicans are "generous, mature and fair-minded" to a fault and that Democrats should be the same.

Fact is, Peggy Noonan’s not nice to Democrats. Never has been. How could she be, being a Reagan speechwriter and rightist hack. And what about Hillary Clinton, just how nice has she been to Hillary Clinton? Not very nice, in fact she’s been downright nasty to her.

Anyone read that vicious little polemic she wrote a while back, entitled The Case Against Hillary Clinton?
Nice? Yeah.
The Case Against Hillary Clinton accuses Mr and Mrs Clinton of being little better than common street criminals. The book is nothing more than page after page of scummy invective, attacking the Clintons, pummeling their marriage, and bashing them for being opposed to GOP political extremism.
Let’s face it, Peggy Noonan is really upset that the truth is finally out about the Republicans and their failed polices, and it frosts her, that Gov. Dean is not going to back down or apologize for telling the truth.