Other Eyes on The Prize

While we're getting entertainment from the Birther spectacle in the press, in Iowa - where the 2012 campaign begins - the remnants of the former Republican party are trying to drum back up a winning proposition. Of course, having lost the entire state apparatus to sane types has given them a jolt.

Announcing for election is a large array of locally prominent right wing characters. Funny, no appearances yet by Sarah Palin. Maybe party planners are wising up to the fact that they need to get their nutcases off the screen in Iowa, to get back to respectability where they can win.

Looking over the wasteland represented by nutjobs like Pat Buchanan and recurring talkshow 'others', as well as the Wingnuits, must provide GOP planners with a sad retrospective. From the meeting that raises the majority of campaign funds for the right, held last week, come a few notes that the majority ought to listen to. There, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack's replacement, Chet Culver, faces a crowded field of wingers, but there will be a mighty effort to unseat him and other public representatives in the legislature.

Most recently, prominent leaders of Iowa’s ideology-driven social conservative movement criticized state Republican leadership for not doing enough to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, saying 2010 could be “the year of the primary.”

Barbour, who this week assumed the chairmanship of the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) following the resignation of scandal-tinged South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford from the organization’s top spot, was in Iowa to help raise money for the state Republican Party. He was also asked to come to the Hawkeye State because the RGA’s help will be essential for the party to defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver in 2010.

But if Iowa’s GOP wants to have any chance of defeating an incumbent, it must stick together. The party should also strive to be inclusive, Barbour said, adding that the need to build coalitions and to attract voters means it is not the time to focus on “purity.”

“There are a lot more things that unite us than do divide us,” Barbour said. “Or as President Reagan used to say, remember that a fellow that agrees with you 80 percent of the time is your friend. He’s not some 20-percent traitor.”

Defeating Culver was a reoccurring theme of the evening, with RPI Chairman Matt Strawn pointing out there are “just 496 days until Iowans tell Chet Culver his services are no longer needed.”

Barbour called Iowa one of the best opportunities in the country for Republicans to knock off a Democratic governor, and pledged that his organization would “do all we can do to be an asset to the Republican governor who gets elected next November.”

“Polling indicates the incumbent is in trouble,” he said. “The party has enthusiasm. There is a lot of energy in the party, and there are a lot of good candidates interested in running.”

Strawn said Thursday’s event, called “Night of the Rising Stars” and billed as a celebration of the next generation of Republican leadership, is just one more sign that Iowa’s GOP is back.

“Thinking about where we were just about eight months ago, when people had written us off for dead, not only did we hit the ground running, we’re sprinting,” he said, later adding: “Let’s not be on our heels. Let’s go on offense. Don’t let them define us.” (Emphasis added.)

We are well aware of the tendency of the wingers to bring straying elements into the fold and keep them voting on even the most destructive measures. We saw the arm-twisting in its vilest form when Medicare Part D was passed through falsified estimates of future costs and threats against congresspeople's family members.

The 'purity' designation is being applied to the religious element, and it is well thought through. While most voters are not inclined to dictate to women how they should reproduce and how doctors ought to treat their patients, the fundies that do are vital to the wingers to turn out voters. They have to be brought along, integrated by pacification, and the right is hard at work now to achieve just that.

The telephone trees are still there, waiting for a chance. They are still convinced that your nutty Aunt Tillies are the silent majority and that that vengeful god is just funnin' them because they didn't send Him a soul He really wanted lately. A lot of craziness can be finding itself tamped down, for just long enough to get back into the saddle of power, with the promise that the government will be back on their side if they can just lie low long enough. Pssst, Aunt Tillie, ditch the 'birther' ruckus for a bit.

While the left is busily at work trying to get the economy back on track, get us out of atrocities abroad, get the public back again as the things our government protects, the nutjobs are working to convince its loyalists that doing good is evil.

Their successes in that field worked to divert taxpayers' funds into the trough they fed off of for too many years to ignore. The wingers are out in force in Iowa, where legalizing gay marriage has brought differences to a head. The right is sure they can begin boring holes there that will bring down the solid foundation our country needs, once again.

President Obama is hard at work bringing his own message about what's good for this country to public attention, but he's getting a lot of interference from those who should be working hard to do the same. Keeping our eyes on the prize works for those who are doing right, too.

Celebritude

It's been a long week, seven days of non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin, with occasional mentions of the health care debate in Congress, and just a soupcon of CIA skullduggery. The news media really does believe in the "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra, which means that real news, news that affects us more deeply and directly than celebrities, is buried deep within the paper or the newscast.

And it isn't just the death of a celebrity that outranks hard news. The shenanigans of celebrities also take precedence. Why else would we be so fascinated with what soon-to-be-former Gov. Palin has done or will do? Make no mistake, Sarah Palin has become a celebrity and she counts on that status, which she can mainly because of the way we have been trained by the media. One of the crispest and sanest evaluations of Ms. Palin came from Ellen Goodman in her latest column.

I never believed that it would be easy for Palin to go back to Alaska after the bright lights, big-cities lure of a national campaign. But I didn’t expect this.

“Life is about choices,’’ she said. I guess her choices were: wrestling with a state Legislature, paying lawyers’ fees for ethics investigations, and putting her kids through the ringer. Or making a bundle as an author and speaking star before audiences that adore her.

It wasn’t only “the politics of personal destruction’’ that pushed Palin over the edge. It was the politics of personal adulation. ...

There’s been a lot of comparisons made between Palin’s rambling resignation speech and Mark Sanford’s soul-baring confession of adultery. Sanford fell head-over-heels in love - “Despite the best efforts of my head, my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body’’ - in ways that made us squirm for him and Argentina. Palin fell in love with her star turn. What we see are two middle-age politicians discovering in the most painfully public way that they may not be the people they thought they were.

Sanford is not the straitlaced conservative family man he thought he was. Palin is not the pit bull, lipstick on or off, she thought she was. The woman who wanted to win didn’t want to govern. The woman who glowed in the limelight wilted in the spotlight. And when the going got tough, she got going . . . going . . . gone.

Well, if she didn't want to govern, what did she want? To win at all costs? To be known on sight? If that is the case, then she won't do even as a candidate for the GOP come 2012. If that party is to survive, they will have to come up with a candidate who has the experience of finishing what s/he starts (rather than cutting and running) as well as at least some gravitas.

So what does that leave Ms. Palin? I think John Parisella got it right in his op-ed for MacLeans:

... At best, she will remain a political celebrity we can expect to see on the lecture circuit, campaigning for Congressional and senatorial candidates, and doing high-powered fundraising events. We can also expect her to be a regular commentator in the media.

She'll be with us, if only on our televisions. Over and over and over.

The Silenced Majority

The irony is amusing to me, that now we have those Democrats plugging along trying to get something done through the barrage of wingnut bombast about born again worries about fiscal irresponsibility, socialism and Big gubmint. That majority is about to happen, and it seems that we have U.S. voters unavoidably brought back to reality based policies. Welcome back, indeed.

The defection of Senator Specter is big on the BBC tube I'm watching on shipboard. The international press is covering the Republics' insistence on an ideologically based review of public service rather than actual performance in its votes on the president's cabinet, as well, particularly as relating to swine flu/HHS. The future looks pretty bleak for the wingnuts outside of the absolutely recidivist areas it still holds.

"The BBC's Richard Lister in Washington says the news has sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill, where the president's power has been blunted by the votes of Senate Republicans.

The move should make it easier for Mr Obama to pursue his ambitious agenda, our correspondent adds.

Mr Specter was facing a tough challenge from conservative Pat Toomey in a primary election to decide who would run as the Republican candidate for Mr Specter's Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2010.

Polls suggested that Mr Specter's decision to vote for the president's economic stimulus package earlier this year had been unpopular with Republican activists in the state.

"I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing," Mr Specter said.

Since then, he added, "it has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable".
(snip)
We've been systematically making the case since the election that the GOP is now a regional southern party. And what better way to strike home that point than to see a moderate northeastern Republican switch parties, complaining about his party's swing to the far right?

Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos

The theft of their own party hasn't worked out so well for the wingnuts, and that is resoundingly good for the country. What we have lost in the past eight years includes world influence, humanity, decency, prosperity, ethics and justice. Encouragingly, that makes a big difference to voters, and yes, we have to put that interpretation on Specter's switch. Without the liberal vote, he is not going to stay in office.

Thanks to those of us who have stuck firmly with our principles, the country wins. Welcome aboard even to those who went with ideology, and found themselves on the losing side. Of course, what we need to do now is clean house.

In view of the U.S. public's showing that facts matter, it's time to weed out the delusional, who've put us through the hell of the past eight wingnut years and the crises that have been the result.

Future Forecasting by Business School Method

Happy vernal equinox, what a nice time to be out on the streets. And I have another treat for you, some business school thinking. In Diane's honor, we'll call it Tentcitying©.

Any fool knows that a business making money is the ideal economic gain for the whole economy, right? Okay, leading off with any fool was the hint that we are business forecasting - something that economists know is pure tomfoolery. For your business community, however, forecasting has been manipulative only. The very concept of 'consumer confidence' tells us that. If properly stoked up, the consumer will be a fool and make the choice you have told him/her is the right one. At bottom, knowing that it is the choice that is right for your particular business interest, the consumer accept the view that what is good for you is good for him/her.

Time for a little reverse psychology. Instead of sticking to facts which us nerds tend to do, trying to tell the financial whizzes that if you kill the means of consumers, you kill the geese laying the golden eggs. No, let's give them a ruler they can swallow. Yes, that's a killer image for me, too.

Taking jobs overseas has meant cheap salaries. That meant a profit boost for companies, one that may have meant jobless consumers but of course the assumption passed off in the 70's was that we in the U.S. would move up to technologically advanced jobs, weeding out the service level of workers into purely low-wage jobs where we knew they would be comfortable. These are the Randian assumption of inevitable failures who just aren't up to an ideal society - the ruthless on top and the incapable of ruthlessness on the bottom.

Since weeding out our manufacturing class has been so good for business - oh hush, we're looking at profits from wage and benefit savings, not sales - maybe we can move on to other spheres of success.

Outsourcing firms have been a growing business community and are developing whole factories of technologically advanced workers for peanuts in 'developing' countries. There's new territory to plow there.

The FP branches are suffering from all these attacks, and hiding in the closet from the threat writers presented by Ed Liddy who are talking piano wire. No reason that financial planning can't be done in factories abroad, say, in Indonesia. It's all the same to the business if the work is done under banana trees instead of in the Maple Lanes of traditional America. And you are surely following me? The wage savings would be immense.

It certainly doesn't take even speaking English as a first language to think up toxic bundles that suck in bad debts, hiring a ratings firm that will tell potential investors the bundles are pure gold, and hiring brokers who will sell anything for a commission level that is sure to numb the conscience. That's basic human nature, if you're a devotee of Randian, I mean, business science reasoning.

What was your question? Oh, right, what about the sales pitch we've been putting out about the perpetrators of the economic crimes being essential personnel that need great retention benefits to stay on? Nothing could be more simple. We've taken the public's feelings into consideration and ... retrained those essential personnel for other work. We're coming out with a line of mobile stock carts, to be deployed onto the highways and byways. Coming soon to a street near you.

Treat them kindly. If you can't spring for the stock, buy the apples.

The fact that sending salaries offshore is going to further damage our consumer economy hasn't penetrated yet, so why should it now? And in the words of Alan Greenspan, the effects will be widely dispersed. Don't listen to those creaking sounds, they're gears turning, not collapse.

This is copyrighted, it's too functional for government work.

Your Congress Not Allowed In Peace Process

The occupupuied W?hite House is busily trying to get a long enough time in Iraq to relieve the war criminals in power from having to deal with any more diplomatic thingies. The only way it has come up with to manage this is to deal out your future without Congressional oversight. Those negotiations with their chosen government in Iraq have been conducted totally out of sight, but we are now learning about what has gone on from Iraqi officials. It's much too secret to let Congress know about - or have a say in.

"Negotiators agreed several weeks ago to reduce the presence of all U.S. forces in Iraqi cities, among the most dangerous places soldiers operate, by the end of next year. That process would entail consolidating U.S. troops now deployed in small neighborhood posts into larger bases outside city centers, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials involved in the talks.

"'They have both agreed to 2011,' Mohammed al-Haj Hamoud, Iraq's chief negotiator, said in a telephone interview."

And the only way that would change, apparently, is if the Iraqis want it to. "If the Iraqi government at that time decides it is necessary to keep the American forces longer, they can do so," Hamoud told The Post.

Charles Levinson writes in USA Today that Bush literally bought some time. "Iraq initially wanted all combat troops out by the end of 2009, but agreed to push the date to 2011 after the U.S. agreed to protect Iraqi funds in U.S. banks from being seized by creditors," Levinson writes, citing a Maliki aid.

And while the Iraqi parliament still has a chance to give the agreement a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, the U.S. Congress has no such option. Here's White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe at yesterday's press briefing: "[T]he agreement as it's working its way through the consultative process right now with the Iraqis is not one that would require congressional -- specific congressional approval because this is the type of agreement, in many cases, that we have with many countries around the world. So it's not a treaty, so it would not require Senate ratification or anything like that."

Those many countries around the world that Congress is paying to wage war on, perhaps?

The secrecy the maladministration has surrounded itself with is indication enough that we are being ill-served. That the people's representatives are not even informed that we've been sold downstream is just another proof that the public is not even a tiny factor being considered in the White House usurpation of our rights and our future. Iraqi funds may be under officil WH guard, but our own funds are being confiscated to provide those protections. (Emphasis added.)

There has never been such complete lack of service to the public interest from high powers in this country, and never has damage been so great to our country and our future. The constitution designated powers of war should be held by the congress, ande that was demonstrably the right body to vest those powers in. The warmongers in power are digging ever deeper that black hole they've dragged the country into.

Rotten Policy

There is massive dismay at the Georgia/Russian conflict, although the U.S. encouragement of fledgling Georgian democracy made much of that tentative outcropping from Russia. The deterioration of relations between the occupied White House and Putin has been obvious, and lamentable as so many of the administration's policies are.

That reassurances from this war profiteering crew have made the Saakashvili government think we would be there for them is pretty obvious. Tragically, now, Georgians have been expressing their dismay that we have abandoned them.

"Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia's sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province's capital, Tskhinvali."

But consider this: "At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

"'We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,' [a] State Department official said. 'We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it's not.'"
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Either way, one big question is why U.S. intelligence wasn't up to speed. Surely the kinds of troop movements involved -- on both sides -- should have set off some alarms?

Well, not if everyone was looking the other way.

Landay writes: "One problem in under-estimating the Russian response, another U.S. official said, was 'a dearth of intelligence assets in the region.'

"U.S. 'national technical means,' the official name for spy satellites and other technology, are 'pretty well consumed by Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan,' the official said, and there was only limited monitoring of Russian military movements toward the Georgian border.

"Additionally, the United States had lost access to vital information when Russia dropped out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in December to protest U.S. plans to build missile defense sites in Europe.

"Under the treaty, Russia had been required to exchange reports on troop, armor and aircraft deployments with the United States and other members on a monthly basis. But once Russia dropped out, that information was no longer available."

Disaster follows disaster caused by the ignorant arrogance of the war criminals. They ought to be ashamed. That, however, would take powers of reflection that they lack. At least other nations have seen unequivocally demonstrated that they are all hat, no cattle.

Will we make it until January 20, 2009? It is with increasingly diminished powers that this country limps through the last days of disrepute.

Beijing Says You're Hallucinating The Smog

Anyone looking at reports from Beijing is noticing what I call AMV, 'Air Made Visible', which even in Dallas causes unhealthy air quality ratings, a Red Alert. In China I guess Red Alert is a daily thing. Oh forgive me, I forgot that we need a big loan so Red is no longer the PC word about China. By the standards of the news out of the worst administration ever, day is night anyway.

Athletes are being criticized for wearing protective masks, although their breath is vital in practicing their sports. I am just sick that the bicyclists are apologizing for wearing air masks when arriving in Beijing. Those lungs are vital equipment, and saying the air is just fine, when it is obviously not, is a lie. Even by occupied White House standards, denying that viewers can see what the Chinese government is saying isn't there, is offensive to reason, and to health.

A day before the Games, a BBC reading suggested Beijing's air quality was far below World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.

It put levels of particulate matter (PM10) at 191 micrograms per cubic metre. This far exceeds the WHO target of 50 micrograms/cubic metre, and also exceeds the WHO target for developing countries of 150 micrograms/cubic metre.

But Mr Rogge insisted there was no threat to Olympic competitors.

"Of course we prefer clear skies, but the most important thing is that the health of the athletes is protected," Mr Rogge(IOC President) said in the news conference.

He said there was "absolutely no danger" to the health of athletes taking part in events that last less than one hour. But he said if the pollution was bad, events which lasted more than that could be shifted or postponed.

Mr Rogge urged reporters to distinguish between fog and pollution - a point, correspondents say, often made by Chinese authorities.

"The fog, you see, is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean that this fog is the same as pollution," he said.

And he praised China's efforts to clean up the air around Beijing - efforts, he said, which would "continue and have a lasting influence on the climate of Beijing".

Separately, Mr Rogge said athletes would be prevented from making any political statement or protest in official venues - in accordance with Rule 51 of the Olympic charter, which forbids athletes from making political, religious, commercial or racial propaganda.

But he said they were free to do this in protest areas provided by Chinese authorities, and that "common sense" would be used to judge violations. (Emphasis added.)

Common sense is exactly what rejects the Chinese line, in so many matters. This is not an instance of good international standards of any sort being set, truth least of all. Sadly, it would appear that the world's propagandists have accepted a view of the American public that the occupied White House projects, that they are idiots who will swallow any line thrown at them. That is the 20% that the war criminals consider their 'base', but White House operatives have convinced the Chinese that this is who forms the public in the U.S.

Athletes depend on their health. It is shameful that they should be subjected to unbearable conditions. The IOC needs to be shaken up thoroughly, and concerned protectors of the world's athletes given a deciding voice in its reviews for further locations of Olympic Games. Air should be breathed, not swum in.

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A little venture into speculation about T. Boone Pickens' motives in promoting wind power begins:

Railing against the "club" of Big Oil and promising to shake up "management entrenchment," T. Boone Pickens once turned his epic takeover battles with oil companies into a national effort to make public companies more accountable to shareholders.

He modeled his effort on a political campaign – complete with lobbyists, grass-roots supporters and his own money.



The article makes a good exposition of his career but I was disappointed that it left out Pickens' claim that he was going to put in the transmission lines needed to run wind power from W.TX. to the areas where it is needed.

I am ambivalent about the Pickens move, but on the whole supportive. After all, I detest MicroSoft, but Bill Gates is doing good things with the insupportable profits.

That Pesky War Ended

The Rand Corporation sent the memo yesterday. The GWOT is over. No word yet as to whether Victory was declared. Remember, this is how Vietnam ended. The U.S. declared the war over. But then we left. Now we are doing business with the Vietnamese.

"'Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors,' authors Seth Jones and Martin Libicki write in ' How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda,' a 200-page volume released yesterday. . . .

"The authors call for a strategy that includes a greater reliance on law enforcement and intelligence agencies in disrupting the group's networks and in arresting its leaders. They say that when military forces are needed, the emphasis should be on local troops, which understand the terrain and culture and tend to have greater legitimacy.

"In Muslim countries in particular, there should be a 'light U.S. military footprint or none at all,' the report contends.

"'The U.S. military can play a critical role in building indigenous capacity,' it said, 'but should generally resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment.'"

An excerpt from the report: "A key part of [a successful] strategy should include ending the notion of a war on terrorism and replacing it with such concepts as counterterrorism, which most governments with significant terrorist threats use. The British government, among others, has already taken this step and abjured the phrase war on terror. The phrase raises public expectations -- both in the United States and elsewhere -- that there is a battlefield solution to the problem of terrorism. It also encourages others abroad to respond by conducting a jihad (or holy war) against the United States and elevates them to the status of holy warriors. . . .

"Our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism. Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended: It is often overused, alienates the local population by its heavy-handed nature, and provides a window of opportunity for terrorist-group recruitment." (Emphasis added.)

The idea of making war on a country that has not attacked us was always stupid. The results have been a disaster. Defining the 'war' out of existence is one way to get out. It was always an invasion, not a war. Time to slink away in disgrace, which is far, far better than staying in disgrace.

It's Victory! So Let's Come Home

How encouraging, since we started out to defeat al Qaeda and now that's done, the war is over - right? Nice work, fellas. No more need to kill off their people. We can bring the troops back here and get to work rebuilding the infrastructure and putting the schools back into functioning order, educate a generation of ex-GI's and put the taxes on their improved incomes to work fighting pollution and the fossil fuel dominance - right? According to CIA chief honcho Hayden, they're defeated.

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Wonderfully, candidate McCain declared victory November 25, 2007. We can swing with that.

On Sunday, McCain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “we’ve succeeded militarily” in Iraq.

Besides, there's protesting in Sadr City at the hints during a conference being conducted on Iraq's future - hints that we are extending our conquest. Not only have we succeeded militarily, al Qaeda is defeated - we're being told to Get Out.

In one of the largest demonstrations, several thousand people took to the streets in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, a bastion of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. They held up pictures of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dressed as Saddam Hussein.

In the Kadhimiya district in northwest Baghdad, hundreds of demonstrators with raised fists marched behind a banner asking the United Nations to "stand with the Iraqi people against this security deal between the government and the occupation."

The United States, which invaded in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein, now has 155,000 troops in Iraq.

It is negotiating with Iraq on an agreement aimed at giving a legal basis to U.S. troops after December 31, when their United Nations' mandate expires. Sadr's followers see it as a surrender of Iraq's sovereignty to an occupying force.

Sadr, backed by a militia estimated to number tens of thousands and popular among Iraq's Shi'ite poor, has called for protests to continue until the government agrees to hold a referendum on the U.S. presence.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the biggest Shi'ite group in Maliki's government, also criticized the planned agreement on a troop extension.

In a statement on his website, he said there was a "national consensus to reject many points raised by the American side as they infringe national sovereignty." (Emphasis added.)

In a government acting in the interests of this country, these would be adequate grounds for pulling out and leaving the Iraqis to put back together their world that we have effectively ground into pulp. The bubble around the occupied White House won't let this end goal seep into the considerations of the war criminals, though.

Everything this cabal has thrown away, all the treasures built up over the eight previous years in which President Clinton pulled out of the last morass the GoPervs made, should be repaid. It should come out of the fortunes they have amassed at our expense, the net worth of the Carlyle, and other, corporate bodies they have promoted.

Natural Disaster Does EPA's Job

Tornadoes went a bit north of here on Friday and Saturday, and hit especially hard in Picher, Oklahoma. Who knew the long-suffering residents of Pilcher were planning a Gay Parade?

Ironically, the town was a Superfund disaster site and the winds blew away what was scheduled for the wrecking ball. EPA dodged a bullet.

Mining for lead had left wastes that someone was going to have to clean up eventually. The down side is that the winds stirred up dust that is dangerous to breathe.

The Environmental Protection Agency planned to check for high lead levels Monday after a deadly tornado blew through a heavily polluted former mining town where lead-filled waste is piled into giant mounds.

The tornado was one of several that combined to kill 22 people in the Midwest and the South over the weekend, raising the nation's 2008 total to about 100, the worst toll in a decade.

This year is on pace to see the most deaths since 130 people were killed in 1998, the eighth highest total since 1950, according to the National Weather Service. The record is 519 tornado-related deaths in 1953.

In Picher, the devastation was complicated by the town's status as one of the most polluted Superfund sites in the nation. But Miles Tolbert, the Oklahoma secretary of the environment, said he did not think there was an immediate public health hazard to the 800 residents. He did say more testing is needed to be certain.

In Picher, the devastation was complicated by the town's mining history, though Miles Tolbert, the Oklahoma secretary of the environment, said he did not think there was an immediate public health hazard to the 800 residents. He did say more testing is needed to be certain.

Long-term exposure to lead dust poses a health risk, particularly to young children.

On Saturday, a tornado with the second-strongest rating killed six people, destroyed a 20-block area and blew dust off mountains of mining waste, or chat piles.
(snip)
Because of Picher's Superfund status, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is unlikely to grant assistance to homeowners to rebuild in the town, said Oklahoma Emergency Management Director Albert Ashwood. But he echoed Henry's assurances about the federal buyout program, which is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Hopefully, the residents who have lived with disaster for this long won't be harmed any further.

This is one of the ideal ways to clean up a hazardous waste site, so I expect one of the tv evangelists in the area is about to inform us that his Flying Spaghetti Monster has shown that his noodley heart was warmed by the good hearts in FEMA.

It's a chance for the usually bumfuzzled FEMA folks to get out of rebuilding. Maybe the Spaghetti King has watched them - and the folks that have to depend on them - suffer enough. Something tells me that the already stricken Picherians are not going to have an easy time getting the worth out of their condemned town.

(The Kenosha Kid shared this brilliant idea.)

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All I got here was a few limbs blown down and hail. This time the hail wasn't very large and didn't make holes in the roof. If anything worse comes down tornado alley I'm not optimistic about emergency services. Maybe this would be a good time to review my insurance.

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More atrocities from the voluntary regulation field, drugs that cure you and kill you being sold you by GlaxoSmithKline. It's a game of chance, taking drugs that have been declared 'safe' - a rating that seems to be applied not to the patient but to the following court date.

The multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) downplayed an early warning about the rising number of people who have suffered heart attacks after using one of its drugs, abacavir. An anti-Aids medication, abacavir is taken by tens of thousands of people worldwide.

GSK was officially told of the possible risk in May 2005, three years before it issued a statement to its investors saying that the findings of an even stronger potential link between heart attacks and abacavir are "unexpected" and "unconfirmed". The company also said that it could find no association between abacavir use and heart attacks following a trawl through its internal data. However, it failed to mention that its own summary of product characteristics issued when the drug was launched in the late 1990s had described "mild myocardial degeneration" in mice and rats given the drug for two years.

Some scientists moni-toring the safety of Aids drugs are privately furious with GSK for downplaying the significance of one of the biggest safety trials of abacavir – one of several anti-virals taken by Aids patients in combined HIV therapy – when the findings were published last month.

The government continues to make the world safe for depredations by business.

Peace.Now.

The use of diplomacy is to end or prevent war. To date, the worst administration in our history shows neither comprehension of that simple fact or any ability to perform its mission.

Today's Dallas Morning News shows much greater ability and intelligence about foreign affairs than the occupied White House ever has.

Judging from last week's testimony, Americans will have to settle for an enormously costly, open-ended war without a clear strategy and completely subject to the political whims of Iraq's leaders.

In the next six months, our troops might be fighting Shiites, but they might have to fight Sunnis or Kurds or even Iranians. The mission has drifted so far from its original goals, we can't recognize it anymore.

This lack of definition is appalling, which is why the course we outlined last summer, Plan B, deserves Washington's attention. It requires Iraqis to assume responsibility for quelling their own violence, while American troops transition to a strictly advisory and support role.

By pulling U.S. bases away from urban centers and closer toward the borders, our troops would restore the priority of halting foreign interference and hunting down al-Qaeda.

This plan requires half the troops currently deployed in Iraq and ends the overexposure that is behind most U.S. casualties. The long-term goal remains to support Iraq's stability and independence, but not to intervene every time militia leaders get upset.

It's not a crowd-pleasing plan to bring the troops home now. It won't please the stay-the-course crowd. But it is a workable, definitive, long-term plan that would halt Mr. Bush's amorphous approach to war.

The continuing ignorance of a cabal that refuses to learn from its mistakes, or in most cases even to admit to them, makes this executive branch unique. The American public is disserved by their actions, and so far has been used for nothing so much as another political tool.

Staying the course has been another bumper sticker slogan, masquerading as a policy.

Forgotten goals

Remember when the worst administration in history called for a Surge that was the answer, the final answer, to their blunders? No one any longer is arguing that it worked. The common theme is that the government of al Maliki let it just roll on, did nothing to make any advances in its administration of Iraq. The same group of war criminals is going to ask for more now, to make yet other blunders.

Recent unilateral action in Basra by al Maliki is commonly admitted to have been an effort to shore up his faction in the face of coming elections, not to carry out America's war. Though they will repeat the usual fabrications, the apologists of the occupied White House are losing the war against facts.

In a recent interview with USA TODAY, Crocker said the improved security in Iraq, which followed the troop surge, has contributed to an economic revival, and that the United States has a "moral imperative" to stay and continue to bring down the violence.

A 'MORAL IMPERATIVE': Crocker says U.S. must continue push to decrease violence

Petraeus is expected to ask for a pause in the ongoing drawdown of U.S. troops — leaving about 140,000 — to secure the gains of the troop surge.

Senior administration officials have been making the case that even though the nearly week-long skirmish in Basra ended indecisively, it nevertheless showed that Iraqi forces are making progress.

Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner conceded there were problems with the Basra operation, but said in a recent briefing that "overall, the majority of the Iraqi security forces performed their mission."

"There is no doubt that General Petraeus will present an impressive array of statistics illustrating reductions of violence in Iraq when he testifies before Congress," said Charles Pascual, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. "All key indicators on insurgent attacks, bombings, and civilian and military fatalities demonstrate that violence is down."

But, he said, "I would also predict that if most senior military officers were asked if this progress in security is viable without a political settlement in Iraq, their answer would be no."

The answer should be no. Iraqi troops will continue to fail until they have a real cause to fight for, and it is pretty obvious by now that this al Maliki government isn't that cause.

Twenty-two people were killed and 55 wounded in clashes in Baghdad, police said on Sunday, the worst eruption of violence in the capital since Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called his fighters off the streets a week ago.

Listening yesterday to reports from several representatives of organizations working with displaced people in Iraq, unanimously they reported that it is still impossible to move around in the country, and that those who have been run out of their neighborhoods are unable to return.

It's past time to leave.

Wanted: Your Unwary, Yearning for a Job

Reminder: the U.S. is conducting a war in Afghanistan.

It's going badly, after a stroke of beginners' luck when we drove out an unpopular, restrictive and authoritarian regime of Taliban religious fanatics. The occupied White House in its enthusiasm for war powers, irrational exuberance, denuded troop strengths and sent everyone off to Iraq where their real ambitions lay.

Now the poppy trade is rebounding, as are the Taliban, and we are facing growing rejection by the population that we unaccountably keep bombing for their own good. We have a wonderful idea, now, to strengthen and ally ourselves with, oh, right, train - the discredited police.

Afghanistan's police are notorious for extorting money from civilians, protecting drug dealers and otherwise acting like "terrorists with badges," as one U.S. officer put it. The police sometimes go unpaid and must fend for themselves.

Until November, the police general in charge of this province had a roster that included more than 1,600 "ghost" policemen – someone was collecting their salaries, even though no one ever saw them. Half the fuel and food allotted to the police force was sold on the black market, according to Maj. Mike Basart, who commands the police training teams at Forward Operating Base Vulcan.

When police ran low on firewood or clothes, they went to the bazaar and took what they needed without paying. Cops would set up roadblocks and demand payments before anyone could pass.

"If police officers don't appear to the people as legitimate or professional, how can the government be regarded as professional or honest?" asked Maj. Gabe Barton, operations officer for the 2nd battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, which has responsibility for security in Deh Yak and the rest of Ghazni Province.

Does this begin to sound like our story line in Iraq, where our military claims we can't leave because it would mean that the regime we're propping up, and 'training', would dissolve. Without popular support and involvement, we're creating nothing more than a staged production for the purposes of misleading the press and the public.

There's no There there.

The U.S. embed team arrived at the Deh Yak station unannounced recently and found only 15 police officers on the job. Capt. Bailey mustered 12 of them to patrol down the village streets, only to turn back when Sgt. Farrelly reported that the Afghans had left the station unguarded.

In such cold weather, it's harder to persuade the police to stand guard all night in sentry towers. The U.S. team of embedded soldiers brought wood stoves and fuel for the towers but still had to roust guards out of their barracks beds to man the watch. They harangued police sergeants to keep blankets out of the guard towers because the police are prone to falling asleep.

An impromptu inspection of a remote observation outpost found a group of shivering Afghan police living in trenches and sandbagged huts in the grip of an ice fog that etched its white teeth in everything from eyebrows to engine blocks. Three of the police at this camp were fired recently for taking bribes but had yet to turn in their uniforms.

New York National Guard Pvt. Brendan Marino, a 32-year-old Brooklyn native working security for the team, said he guesses training the Afghan police will take many years to complete. But he's intrigued enough that he said he's considering coming back to Afghanistan as a civilian training contractor. (Emphasis added.)

IOW, our guys are there to get a step up into that well-paid job as a Contractor, while the soldiers are trying to get into position to make a living off that same racket - or the drug trade.

Democracy, national pride, freedom, if you remember all those reasons we made a war in the Middle East, forget them. It's a living.

337 days.

Another Battle in Iraq's Civil War Aims at American "Gains"

Just in case our feeble excuse for a government thought it was going to hang onto a semblance of ending the battle of Shi'ites and Sunnis, our pet Iraqi autocrats have announced an end to cooperating Sunni militias. Whatever happened to our Dear Leaders' great success in winning hearts and minds? Seems it endangers the puppet government we've set up to run Iraq for us.

Even though the cooperating militias preceded the Surge, it has been claimed as one of General Petraeus' New Approach to ending the violence, and has actually been a successful resistance to al Quaeda, we are told.

I expect in the War Room, spinmeisters are hard at work trying to find a new way to win the war on American intelligence.

Iraq's Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed, it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force.

The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government's most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.

The militias, more than 70,000 strong and often made up of former insurgents, are known as Awakening Councils, or Concerned Local Citizens.

"We completely, absolutely reject the Awakening becoming a third military organization," Mr. al-Obaidi said at a news conference.

He added that the groups would also not be allowed to have any infrastructure, such as a headquarters building, that would give them long-term legitimacy.

The government has pledged to absorb about a quarter of the men into the predominantly Shiite-controlled security services and military, and provide vocational training so that the rest can find jobs. Integration would let Sunnis regain lost influence in the key defense and interior ministries.

Let's see, now what will the occupied White House have to say about the 'great gains' that it has made being overturned by our pets in power?

Will it be that of course, they meant to do that all along, and that after all, the Sunnis we are presently paying off were formerly shooting our soldiers? I'm betting on that. The unimaginative occupiers of the white House will have no way to repudiate their chosen government in Iraq, since they have no other possible way to keep a hold on the subject nation.

Say that we ought not sending our people to die and spending their future for a faction that fights against us? Then go home and let the Iraqis settle their own disputes. That would require admitting that everything they've done and said in the war on Iraq was a mistake. I wouldn't take any bets on that.

Declare victory and pull back to outlying countries? That would be too intelligent for the cretin in chief.

The warmongers lose again. Sorry to repeat myself but the GoPervs have sewn the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.

What gloss can we expect the liars in high places to put on it? Stay tuned.

Effects of Bigtime Losses in Credit/Liquidity/Stock Markets

Let's see, now, effects of a financial disaster for the subprime borrowers are leaking through all the holes in our financial structure. What should we anticipate?

As quilt lady told us this morning, being just at the point of beginning her retirement is no time to see the stock markets tumbling, and investments losing value. And I join her in dreading to watch values of those little hoped-for big caches of moola turn into little dribbles that may just disappear instead. There goes the Greek Island cruise for now anyway. There's a tiny glint of hopeful effects IMHO, though. (Skip to the bottom sentence now if you can't wait.)

We all watch stocks tumble in fascination, and I hope no one bet the farm on those stocks. Other considerations were thoughtfully posted at BBC, so I am putting them here for you to consider.

Until recently, we have been living in a period of low global interest rates that have let consumers and companies borrow money cheaply.

That has driven demand for mortgages, let companies pay increasingly large sums for takeovers, and allowed consumers to spend freely.

And the results of this credit splurge are hard to ignore:

UK house prices have doubled in the past 10 years.

China's main stock index has quadrupled in value since the start of 2006.

The UK's FTSE 100 and US S&P 500 stock indexes are at levels not seen in almost seven years.

Commodity prices have been buoyed by strong global demand, pushing some such as copper to records.

Merger and acquisition activity has taken off, and private equity firms are now in control of some of the world's biggest brands.

But as the records have continued to tumble, concerns have kept on mounting. (Emphasis added.)

When credit crunches, the remains tumble out from those businesses that were borrowing from one entity to pay off what they borrowed from the other entity the month/period before. We are on the verge of seeing a lot of shaking.

Of course, the Fed just poured some more money into the growing hole ($19 BN today, $24 BN yesterday). That was a measure to keep from an emergency lowering of the key interest rate (federal funds rate) that is reflective of industry needs, which they chose last week not to budge. In real terms, the Fed is trying not to panic, because if they panic a lot of other financial outposts will also panic and that can be really, really, really nasty for values/money markets.

Now is a good time for those of us with liquidity, that is, cash on hand. Good time to buy houses, land, solid things. And a lot of construction firms are looking for work, you may find bargains on improvements. Also, the demand for rentals will be growing as repossessions ... okay, yes, I'm not half serious. I'm not sitting here waiting for a repossessed yacht to go on sale, not at all. I hate it that so many people were tempted, sometimes even scammed, into buying what they're losing now, with all their hard earned equity.

The individual tax base is taking a hit, too, and your infrastructure is not in line to get that big do-over it needed. But I see a bright prospect in view of lowered expectations. We just can't keep funding the war.

This looks like an ideal time to end the war. No one can believe that we can still afford that bad investment of lives and treasure. A financial emergency might be something we can live with, if it will bring the troops home and stop our idiotic adventure in world conquest.

LIES and Death; Impeach

I suppose this is the desired effect, but my head is spinning from the constantly reversing positions of the warmongers. This morning on CSpan Assistant Secretary of Defense Brinkley was declaring that we can't leave Irag until it's stable. Which means that when we destabilized it by making war against it, we made it into the very thing that we can't have it being - destabilized.

The reason we went to war with Iraq was to make it what? Free, that was number One. It's still not free, we're there and doing a rotten job running the place. Number two; It was to make it into a democracy!, until that didn't work out the way we want it. It was to make a constitutional government? the constitution they have says that each region is free to institute its own chosen form of government which outranks the central government. By the way, that's 'unstable'.

Now the surge is supposed to be what we're relying on to make the country stable. But it's not working, and not just because our soldiers are being used as a shooting gallery.

The neighborhood outposts that the U.S. military launched with great fanfare early this year were supposed to put more American patrols on the streets of Baghdad and make residents feel safer. But some soldiers stationed at the posts and Iraqis who live nearby say they are doing the opposite.

The outposts, along with U.S.-Iraqi security stations, form a cornerstone of the current Iraq strategy. Following a classic counterinsurgency tenet, military planners are trying to take U.S. forces out of their distant, sprawling military bases and into the day-to-day lives of Iraqis.

Although senior U.S. commanders and midlevel officers say they believe the bases are starting to work, many soldiers stationed at the outposts are doubtful, saying that the burden of protecting the bases means they spend less time on the streets.

"They say we are spending more time 'in sector,' which we are doing – we live here," said Spc. Tyrone Richardson, 24, a member of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry, which operates in the east Baghdad neighborhood of Ubaidi. "But we aren't spending the time patrolling."

Iraqis who live nearby say they feel less safe now, because many of the bases have become magnets for rocket and mortar attacks. When attacks miss the troops, they often hit Iraqi civilians.

We're sending our troops out into the streets to defend the outposts they're setting up in those streets, and our troops are dying. The war criminals are hiding inside the White House, defending their position from the public. It's so similar to their own war, and it's so Nixonian. And the representatives of the war criminals are telling us it's too late to go back and accuse them of getting it wrong now, we have to work with the situation we've got. Then they tell us that 9/11 defines everything - so I guess 9/11's not part of the past, according to the cabal.

And now we're supposed to be expecting a terrorist attack in response to the surge, which was .... to make us secure.

There is only one answer to all this gibberish. End the Lies, declare The End if you can't say 'lost'. Deaths are not the answer, lies are not the answer. If the cretin in chief can't serve the country, and won't leave, we need to impeach him.

Let the Iraqis go back to minding their own business, which only they can do, and us to minding ours, which is to clean out the rubbish in high offices in this country.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much what a lot of countries, need to do, too. Putin, Musharaff, Al Bashir, Ahmadinejad, Kabila, .... not our job. This country's presidency and executive branch needs cleaning out. If they won't enforce the laws, which is their sworn duty, it's time to impeach.

Tag, I'm it.

Curse you gently, Dirkgently. So here goes my round, and of course, here are the rules which if you get tagged you are supposed to follow, too. Since I'm about to drive off into the sunrise tomorrow, you can't even track me down and put a curse on me until the 4th, either.

Here are the rules:
1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Now to tell you eight things about me, one of which is about the pictures of Fluffy here:


so;
1. Fluffy has healed over now and except for the shaved leg is lovely although limpy. Fluffy is a stray that had been fixed so at one time had a caring owner. Don't know what happened, but when he showed up here I fed him, then about a month ago he was limping, turned out to have a ligament that had torn and had to be re-attached surgically. I've gotten help from a few people meeting the bill, but still am owing about $450. Any commenters can ask an address, and I'll let you help! I am a longtime volunteer with Animal Refuge Foundation, at www.arfhouse.org.

2. Brag; I have a playwriting award from the Maryland Council of the Arts.

3. My oldest is studying for the Bar exam in VA, so I am not allowed to take up his time or would tag him.

4. I used to manage the Chincoteague Pony Farm and take care of the stuffed Misty, and once had a complaint filed against me that I wasn't taking good enuff care of the dead horse. (I had let a chicken make a nest in her mock stall.)

5. I turned down the only political plums I was ever offered, one on the Montgomery County, MD, Central Committee, another as campaign manager for a shoo-in candidate whose voting record I just didn't support.

6. This was the dust storm we had in early spring, the view from my front porch, left fine W.TX dust everywhere.



7. I have a long drive ahead of me, about 950 miles, starting tomorrow a.m., to go to my nephew's (2nd) wedding in CO.

8. I am doing this at work, since el jefe is nowhere around, and will be out of town a lot of the rest of the summer, which gives me lots of free time. This is not a complaint. And when it's a crunch, like the past two months, it's a major crunch, so I am ready for free time.

And I am going to tag:\

1. Tena at http://www.first-draft.com/
2. Barry from Alaska
3. Martha at Arfhouse
4. Lambert Strether at correntewire
5. Feral Liberal
6. Barndog
7. Gummo
8. trifecta

And off I go into the wilds, hope you all have a great time being Taggees. and Taggors. Or albatrossi.

Military Leadership Ran Out of Patience

Definitely, the Republic pundits are telling us, don't give Congress authority over the war. Forget the Constitution. Give the cretin in chief a chance to end it as he began it, on his own.

That doesn't go over with the most successful tactician in the Iraq history, whose campaign in Tal Afar was used as a model for the security campaign now underway in Baghdad.

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian uthorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

The Responsibilities of Generalship

Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves entire nations.

Lt. Col. Yingling knows as well as Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi know that we are failing in achieving anything positive, and we will continue to fail if the "stay the course" mentality continues to be allowed full sway.

Time for the American public to speak loudly, as it has in the vote and the polls, and tell its leadership to exercise rational judgment in the American interest. If the present leadership isn't capable of it, we need to change, now.

Pop! Goes the Bubble

There was a direct meeting of mind with viscera yesterday, recounted by Froomkin today. The cretin in chief encountered reality. He hates it.

Something we're not allowed to see in public happened yesterday in the White House's Cabinet Room: President Bush was challenged and got angry.

There were no pyrotechnics, but according to multiple reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam at one point in a closed door meeting with Bush. Specifically, Reid suggested that Bush was pursuing a lost cause at the cost of American troops in order to protect his legacy.
Bush's reaction: He was "visibly angered" says the New York Times; he "bristled" according to the Associated Press. And he "denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness," write the Wall Street Journal.

Could this have been the first time Bush has come face to face with someone willing to confront him so bluntly on the signature issue of his presidency?

We don't know. Bush is well known for living inside a protective bubble where accommodating staffers keep opposing views -- and those who hold them -- at bay.

Oh, the march of reality is reaching right to the oval office and it's coming from all around. Here in North Texas, another ray of blinding light. The Dallas Morning News sees the light at the end of the tunnel - it's a big Pop! of the bubble.

The surge is now in its third month, and there's very little sustained progress to report. To be sure, nobody expected the surge to improve conditions quickly and decisively, and we won't know for several months whether the surge will have worked. But with both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers dying at a record rate, the signs near the midpoint are discouraging.

Last week, a suicide bomber penetrated the Iraqi parliament building, in the heart of the highly fortified Green Zone – an unprecedented breach of security that proves no place is beyond the reach of terrorists. Meanwhile, Shiite strongman Muqtada al-Sadr ordered six ministers who owe fealty to him to leave the hapless government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, leaving the embattled leader – upon whose leadership U.S. strategy stands or falls – even weaker.

Meanwhile, an ABC News/Washington Post poll out this week finds that for the first time, a majority of Americans (51 percent) think the U.S. will lose the Iraq war. The poll also finds that two out of three Americans – again, a first-time majority – reject President Bush's belief that winning in Iraq is key to victory in the war on terror.

What does it all mean? That the White House and congressional Republicans, currently locked in mortal combat with the Democrats over war funding and timetables, are running short on both facts and logic with which to make a persuasive case that the U.S. can prevail in Iraq. And they're running out of time.

It's over and everyone knows it. It's looking less and less like the endless process of putting off the inevitable bye-bye to our failed war can be extended on through the election, to hand off to the new White House resident on January 20, 2009.

Time to Start Listening To The People

Today is the fourth anniversary of the entry into Baghdad of the U.S. army, and as we are all aware, the people are out in the streets celebrating by telling us to go home.

The election results from our recent Congressional returns told a story that people in the country have learned. The numbers of supporters of the war in Iraq are small and growing smaller. The Congress has begun whittling away at that war, and managed in both of its houses to enact a beginning to get our forces out.

Voices in Iraq are raised today as well, leaving no mistaking the intentions of the Iraqi people. We are not welcome in their country, even in places where we were at one time liberators. Our continued presence is defiance of the wishes of America and of Iraq.

Demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. Those marching were overwhelmingly Shiite, but Sunnis — who are believed to make up the heart of Iraq's insurgency — have also called for an American withdrawal.

Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: "Yes, Yes to Iraq" and "Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq."

"The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people," said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. "After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded."

A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a "call for liberation."

"We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty," he said.

Al-Sadr did not attend the demonstration, and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq.

Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics — including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.

The occupiers of the White House give every appearance of being resolved to continue defying rather than representing the American public. The voices from Iraqis are telling the administration the same thing the U.S. voters already have. The war is opposed by those people the maladministration claims to protect. Their war is against our own and Iraqi interests, and will.

As Congress strengthens its resolve to uphold and defend the Constitution, it is increasingly obvious that it will have to go over and through the executive branch to represent the people.

That had to be done by impeachment in the Nixon years, and may require a beginning of that process once again. The supervision that Congress is starting under Democratic representatives is one big step on the way to returning this country to the rule of law.

A much needed beginning to overturning violators of our laws would be to turn out the Justice Department officials who have disgraced our country and trample on our laws. From that start, the investigators can work their way up through the layers put in place by the cretin in chief. When they are thoroughly in control of the country again, the justice officials will need to use our laws to rid us of criminals who hold the people - American and Iraqi - in contempt.