Politics

James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the "Iraq Study Group" have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.

Baker's Two Big Ideas are:

1. Stay half the course. Keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq is a disaster getting more disastrous. The Baker Boys' idea: cut the disaster in half -- leave 70,000 troops there.

But here's where dumb gets dumber: the Bakerites want to "embed" US forces in Iraqi Army units. Question one, Mr. Baker: What Iraqi Army? This so-called "army" is a rough confederation of Shia death squads. We can tell our troops to get "embedded" with them, but the Americans won't get much sleep.

2. "Engage" Iran. This is a good one. How can we get engaged when George Bush hasn't even asked them out for a date? What will induce the shy mullahs of Iran to accept our engagement proposal? Answer: The Bomb.

The slithery junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama is ensuring himself a steady political diet of publicity by refusing to take his name out of consideration as a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. We're entering the timeframe when all such aspirants have to make up their minds whether they can find the requisite money and political base. Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, the obvious peace-and-justice candidate, has already decided that he can't, which gives us a pretty revealing insight into the weakness of the left these days.

            It's a no-brainer for Obama to excite the political commentators by waving a "maybe" flag. It keeps the spotlight on him, and piles up political capital, whatever he decides to do in the end.

I currently am a Democrat that is unhappy with the lack of leadership in my party, a party that can not admit it was robbed of the 2004 election, a federal crime of enormous proportions.  I also currently am the campaign manager for my friend, Bob Fitrakis, the Green Party candidate for Governor of Ohio.  Bob and I have worked on election investigation issues together since November 2004.   

Now here is a peek into some of what I have seen this week.   

New Orleans -- What is the unreported cause of the majority of the 2,000 deaths that occurred after the levees broke last year on August 29?  Catch Greg Palast's investigative exposé this Monday on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! And on Tuesday, watch his one-hour Special on LinkTV. Listings at LinkTV.org.

The Year the Levees Broke

America went through a terrible year. The levees broke in New Orleans. When bodies floated in the streets, the Republican Congress saw an opportunity for more tax cuts and consolidation of the corporatopia they had created for their moneyed donors. The Democratic Party was clueless, written off, politically at death's door.

The year was 1927.

Any morning which carries the fragrance of a defeat for Democratic senator Joe Lieberman is one that should be savored. And his humiliation at the hands of Connecticut voters in Tuesday's Democratic primary is all the sweeter for the fact that it looks as though we may be able to enjoy another Lieberman defeat in November. No longer able to run as the junior Democratic senator from Connecticut, Lieberman insists that he will run as an independent in the fall election. If he does so, it may deny victory to the man who defeated him on Tuesday, Ned Lamont, but Lieberman himself will plummet once again. There are a lot of people in Connecticut who quite rightly can't stand the guy.

The frayed threads anchoring the American government to reality have finally snapped, just at the moment radiologists are reporting that Americans are getting too fat to be X-rayed or shoved into any existing MRI tube.

The gamma rays can't get through the blubber, the same way actual conditions in the outside world bounce off the impenetrable dome of imbecility sheltering America's political leadership.

Twenty-three years after one of America's stupidest presidents announced Star Wars, Reagan's dream has come true. Behind ramparts guarded by a coalition of liars extending from Rupert Murdoch to the New York Times, from Bill O'Reilly to PBS, America is totally shielded from truth.

Here we have a secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who gazes at the rubble of Lebanon, 300,000 refugees being strafed with Israel's cluster bombs, and squeaks happily that we are "witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Bush at the NAACP Convention

God lost this time. I counted: Bush mentioned God only six times in his speech to the NAACP today. The winner was 'faith' -- which got seven mentions, though if you count "The Creator" as God, well, then the Lord tied it.

Coming in right behind God and Faith, other big mentions in the First Home Boy's rap included: The Voting Rights Act, his family's "commitment to civil rights," the "death tax," rebuilding New Orleans and "public school choice" and "soft bigotry."

As the philosopher Aretha Franklin once said, "Who's zoomin' who?"

Let's take it one point at a time.

Death and Taxes -- Inheritance taxes apply only to those who leave assets exceeding $2 million. Mr. Bush realized how crucial this issue was to the NAACP. He said, "The [current] 'death tax' will prevent future African American entrepreneurs from being able to pass their assets from one generation to the next."

HOUSTON, Texas -- A Houston jury convicted both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, despite the fact that Kenny Boy packed his Bible to the courtroom every day.

Since it is a long and noble Texas tradition for the accused to fight all allegations by finding Jesus, this indicates a major degree of guilt. (While on trial for murder, T. Cullen Davis, the Fort Worth millionaire, not only found Jesus but also threw a big party to celebrate at the mansion, with piles of shrimp and BBQ and a soundtrack that announced over and over throughout the grounds that night, "The son of Stinky Davis has found the son of God.")

Meanwhile, Houston reacted as though the Rockets had won the NBA championship.

Many a thoughtful analyst has given us to understand that Lay and Skilling are guilty of arrogance and hubris. Actually, they were convicted of fraud -- massive, overwhelming and monstrous fraud. They also stole money and looted pension funds. They rigged energy markets and almost drove California (seventh-largest economy in the world) into bankruptcy.

BERLIN: Can there be a more vivid panorama of the arc of the Communist movement than the view from the foundations where once stood the Nazi SS headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8? Before one's eyes are photographs of men like German Communist leader Ernst Thalmann. He was arrested on March 3, 1933, a few weeks after Hitler came to power, taken to Albrecht-Strasse 8 and tortured. Never released, never formally tried, he was murdered in Buchenwald on August 18, 1944.

Looking at the big photo of Thalmann -- one of scores posted along that block of German Communists and Socialists -- one can honor courage but also remember epic failures: the blunders of the Third Period, the defeat of the Popular Front in Spain where the German volunteers in the 11th Brigade of the International Brigades named their unit for Thalmann when it was formed in 1936.

For the past few weeks a sometimes comic debate has been simmering in the American press, focused on the question of whether there is an Israeli lobby and, if so, just how powerful it is.

I would have thought that to ask whether there's an Israeli lobby here is a bit like asking whether there's a Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor or a White House located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. The late Steve Smith, brother-in-law of Teddy Kennedy, and a powerful figure in the Democratic Party for several decades, liked to tell the story of how a group of four Jewish businessmen got together $2 million in cash and gave it to Harry Truman when he was in desperate need of money during his presidential campaign in 1948. Truman went on to become president and to express his gratitude to his Zionist backers.