Maybe ignorance really is bliss....?

Its all psychology, all the time, and just when you think that maybe we are sorta all getting to be grownups, the ugly head of whatever the fuck is wrong with people raises to spit in your eye.
Ego and belief and fear are so complicated and after agonizing over just so many theories and reasons, I guess that its best to give up and try the old time religion approach of heaven and hell, good and bad. But its not that easy...and the depths of insanity that we're seeing in our government, that alot of us see also in our families and communities, is becoming mind boggling. I guess it was easier to handle the personal stuff when the rest of the world wasnt spinning out of control.
So, I began exhausted as I've been, with a kid in the hospital and the dogs fighting, (a mistake by the puppy tore my palm this morning,) and for no real reason at all I stayed up late to watch Woody Allen's Match Point (I have to cancel Netflix because I find myself watching things that I never would have for no reason at all when I could be reading or sleeping.)
I have to say that it is one of Woody's best films in a long time and London served him well. But, the plot was scary in that it was a picture of what people resort to rather than face up and be brave about mistakes. In some cases, being responsible for your actions is worse than death or someone else's death And the thing that this guy couldnt do was to tell the truth to his wife, which, even if painful, should be something doable, as opposed to murder. It was preferable to kill numerous others, and innocent bystanders than to look at himself and take resonsibility for what he had created. So, a web of lies, death, and luck....but the true issue is weakness of character and lack of real direction and ethics. This guy wasnt just a sociopath in the regular murder movie sort of way; he was a regular greedy guy sinking deeper into his own mess.
Sound familiar?
I would say that maybe its true that the breakdown of religion in society and the nuclear family has led to this morass , but it seems that the big problems that we are seeing all around us are coming directly from some of the most devout family guys and gals in the country...or they play that on the news anyway. Its the Jerry Springer TV crowd from the heartland trailer parks who tend to vote Republican and maybe even repents every Sunday, that votes for the conservative agenda because it represents what they would like to imagine they are, or could be...They are the willing audience for all the mistakes and corruption that is handedout, and able to forgive because they are sinners themselves. But there is a line being crossed in the law and maybe in basic hiumanity, and the Sunday repentants seem to be so able to forgive one thing and not another, so what draws that line and why does it move aorund so much?
I think it comes down to education, because you can sit kids in church and bang the good vs. bad stuff into their heads forever but its not going to stick if it isnt attached to what is going on in the real world as opposed to ancient scrolls of papyrus as told by the local preacher (...who is likely a pedophile anyway.)
I would propose ethics and philosophy classes in all public schools beginning at a very early age, and having to do with real situations.
Not so much a good or bad sort of ciriculum, but a problem solving forum where kids exercise their minds. Most of us dont get this till college, and then only if we want it, otherwise we can coast through Philosophy 101 with whatever grade and move on to whatever is the training for the highest paying job.
So why not mandatory problem solving and ethics in middle school and high school? While we're at it, why not mandatory comparative religion classes that study all religions in depth so that kids can maybe understand that there isnt such a divide in these things and everyone is basically the same?
Maybe it is a liberal philiosphy to push public education above all else, and maybe it doesnt really pay in a society as complicated and as ours has become, but it seems to me that ever since the gutting of private education began, (am I thinking of the Reagan era, or earlier?) we have seen a slow slide downhill....and really, what is more important, in light of what is happening with an uneducated and uninformed population? Maybe leaders of a sort feel that it is easier to govern an uneducated populace, but I think thats wrongheaded and lazy.

So, along these lines, Ive been thinking of the Salon piece by Tim grieve today that takes issue with Bill and Hillary and their take(s) on the war vs. voting records and what the hell is really going on what is the heart and power of the Democratic party(?) Many of you know that I dont love Hillary for President, and really think that she needs to stay where she is, opening the door for Gore to run. I dont understand the Democratic voting that has been going on lately, considering that Bushco is sliding in popularity, we maybe looking at a knee jerk turnaround in the House and Senate, and there seems to be less pressure on the Dems in general. But still, they are in lockstep, save the expected few who maybe have an eye on more than the power structure around them and less on their jobs, which may be in danger come 2008, 2010, and 2012. Maybe it doesn't matter to the individuals who are voting with the Republicans, and maybe we are seeing their true colors.
I was under the impression that the Democrats that voted "for the war" were actually voting on a process that would have to be approved IF weapons were found etc.... Why is no one pointing out, screaming at the top of their lungs, that Bushco steamrolled the process and illegally went to war without even formally declaring war? Why didnt Kerry scream that...and any number of things that he viewed as unseemly to talk about in public...? We need soemone who is beyond unseemly talk and worry about what everyone thinks about them. We need someone who is going to tell it like it is and was...dare I say a Howard Dean type (and I voted for Dean in the Primary...yes I did!...though Im not sure of his foreign diplomatic skills, Im just so tired of liars.)
Well, its all psychology, and maybe its easier to look at what we have now rather than learn by our past failures....let the past be the past and all that crap... Then why do they continue to vote this way going forward?
Those who embrace Buddhism cant turn around and yell at you all the usual stuff on the weekends...there has to be some sort of actual going forward happening to make it real.
I realize that I have more questions than answers here and it brings me back to the education issue, where if you view history and see the pattern of things going round, how can you continue to do the same thing hoping for a different outcome? Isnt that the definition of insanity?
So, Bill Clinton had a contentous go round with Saperstein, who couldnt really be more educated or just plain smarter than Bill. But somehow Saperstein has what maybe we call the emotional intelligence (on top of obvious education and an understanding of history,) to sort out the feelings repurcussions around unwinnable wars and history...and even maybe a dig here and there into what drives Hillary Clinton to slide to center right just when she maybe could make some bold statements that just might be well received and change the way the country is being run.
Its not because Bill and Hillary arent smart enough to know this stuff, its because they dont know why they do what they do...and often find themselves doing things just because they can....Think of Bill and Monica....Or they are just more power hungry cogs in the machinery who maybe once had vision but now have been swept up in their own press.
What is going on here?

Saperstein sent the following letter to former president Clinton on May 24:

Dear President Clinton:

Thank you for the apology you transmitted to me last Saturday. It was quite gracious, but it wasn't necessary. We're all adults here, Iraq is a contentious issue and it is no surprise that elbows occasionally will be thrown. I wanted to respond substantively to your comments, but others wanted to ask questions too, so I chose not to monopolize the audience microphone.

The question I raised last Saturday remains: Is it credible for you, or anyone, to suggest that the problems of a war in Iraq, and/or discerning President Bush's true intentions in seeking the Iraq resolution, were not knowable in October 2002? I respectfully submit that the answers to both questions were knowable and the explanations you offered simply don't work.

Separate and apart from any claims made by Bush or Cheney, there existed a large amount of scholarship about the history of Iraq. One prominent book is David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace," a study of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Iraq. Leaving aside the base motivations of Britain, Germany, France, etc. surrounding Iraq's oil, it is clear that the history of racial, ethic and religious conflict among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds goes back at least hundreds of years. Indeed, you can pick nearly any page of Fromkin's book and it reads like yesterday's New York Times. The problems the British had in Iraq were essentially no different than the problems the U.S. is having today and this was totally predictable before the Iraq resolution and invasion. Anyone who thought then that an invasion would not stir those historic conflicts, or thinks now that the U.S. can outwait or outlast these conflicts by continuing to occupy Iraq, is living in Fantasyland.

Even key Republicans understood, and spoke publicly about, the dangers of invading Iraq. Former President George H. W. Bush wrote in 1998:

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of Iraq. We were concerned about the long term balance of power at the head of the Gulf....We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well....Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

On August 15, 2002, Brent Scowcroft wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal:

[T]here is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them. He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail---much less their actual use---would open him and his entire regime to a devastating response by the U.S. While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a power-hungry survivor.

[T]he central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism.

Republicans, of course, were not the only ones to perceive the folly of invading Iraq. In a series of eloquent speeches, Senator Robert Byrd detailed the "disastrous consequences" of invading Iraq, which included violation of international law and the U.N. Charter, weakening alliances with European allies, fomenting Anti-Americanism around the world based on "mistrust, misinformation, suspicion and alarming rhetoric that is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11," ignoring homeland security, disrupting the world's oil supplies and elevating fuel prices, inflaming the Arab world and bankrupting the U.S.

Due to reasons such as these, 148 Democrats in Congress (125 in the House and 23 in the Senate) saw through the smoke and mirrors, accurately perceived that Bush/Cheney would use the Iraq resolution to invade, and voted against it. It was ironic that on Saturday you quoted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to support your argument that mistakes get made in these types of situations because a large number of Democrats voting against the Iraq resolution cited the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to support their skepticism of Bush's claims. Obviously, some Senators had learned the lesson of the Gulf of Tonkin better than others.

Did Bush and Cheney lie and mislead? Did they misinform the Congress and the public? Did Bush claim the resolution would not necessarily lead to war? Of course, but by October 2002 there were abundant reasons not to believe what they said about their intentions---or anything else---and 148 Congressional Democrats were not misled. You know more about leadership than I do, but isn't part of leadership making the right decision under pressure with incomplete information---even when public opinion might be running the other way? And while you twice quoted Bush saying that he would not use the resolution to go to war, when he did use it for that purpose I don't recall Hillary raising her voice in opposition.

I am not suggesting we should judge anyone solely on one vote, but this was the single most important vote anyone currently in Congress ever made and we all will be paying for it for many years, maybe our entire lifetimes. The war has diverted America's attention from the real war---the fight on terrorism. Who knows what this diversion of our attention and resources ultimately will cost us? It has cost us alliances and caused America's standing in the world to plummet. It has weakened America's ability to respond to real national security threats, such as Iran and North Korea---the U.S. and Britain have become, in the words of The Economist, "The Axis of Feeble." It has depleted our financial resources and made it difficult, if not impossible, in the foreseeable future to address any of America's serious infrastructure needs---even if Democrats take control of Congress in 2006 and/or the Presidency in 2008. In short, the war has been catastrophic on many fronts. Are voters supposed to forget how we got into this mess, its long-term costs, or not measure leadership by who got it wrong?

You suggested we look forward, not back, and said the question we had to address was, "What should we do now?" First, let me acknowledge that you and I are not far off in the answer to that question. I have thought from the beginning that once Saddam was removed, there were only two possibilities: A Shiite government closely aligned with Iran that would dominate the Kurds and Sunnis, most likely aggressively; or a tri-partite separation into Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni regions (which Joe Biden now supports and you seem to endorse). Regardless of which direction events are headed, what is important to understand is that the U.S. long ago lost control of the situation. The question no longer is building democracy, or anything else; it is how many more thousands of American soldiers will be killed and maimed and how many more trillions of dollars will be flushed down the toilet before we achieve sanity and get out. Seventy-one percent of the American soldiers in Iraq say that should be within 6 to 12 months, which sounds right to me. Jack Murtha is telling the truth to the American people; it would be helpful if other Democrats joined him.

At risk of invoking humor into a serious topic, the difference you and I have might best be summed up in a cartoon in this week's The New Yorker (May 22) on page 61, where the caption is, "But what you call a track record I call ancient history." I suggest that neither the beginning of the Iraq adventure nor the current quagmire should be treated as ancient history and neither are removed from consideration of what constitutes leadership.

Best Regards,

Guy T. Saperstein

Cc: Democracy Alliance Partners

And here is Dowd...along the same lines for you die hards:

May 27, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Don't Become Them

By MAUREEN DOWD

When I started in newspapers, I shied away from police brutality stories, letting other reporters cover them.

I knew there were cops who had no right to be cops. But I also knew, because my dad was a detective, the sort of blistering pressure men and women in uniform were under as they made snap life-and-death decisions. I'd cringed at the 60's refrain that the military and the police were "pigs."

After my dad killed a robber in self-defense — the man had tried to shoot him point-blank in the face, but that chamber of the gun was empty — he told a police psychologist that he could not swallow or eat because he felt as though he had fish bones in his throat.

So I felt sickened to hear about the marines who allegedly snapped in Haditha, Iraq, and wantonly killed two dozen civilians — including two families full of women and children, among them a 3-year-old girl. Nine-year-old Eman Waleed told Time that she'd watched the marines go in to execute her father as he read the Koran, and then shoot her grandfather and grandmother, still in their nightclothes. Other members of her family, including her mother, were shot dead; she said that she and her younger brother had been wounded but survived because they were shielded by adults who died.

It's a My Lai acid flashback. The force that sacked Saddam to stop him from killing innocents is now accused of killing innocents. Under pressure from the president to restore law, but making little progress, marines from Camp Pendleton, many deployed in Iraq for the third time, reportedly resorted to lawlessness themselves.

The investigation indicates that members of the Third Battalion, First Marines, lost it after one of their men was killed by a roadside bomb, going on a vengeful killing spree over about five hours, shooting five men who had been riding in a taxi and mowing down the residents of two nearby houses.

They blew off the Geneva Conventions, following the lead of the president's lawyer.

It was inevitable. Marines are trained to take the hill and destroy the enemy. It is not their forte to be policemen while battling a ghostly foe, suicide bombers, ever more ingenious explosive devices, insurgents embedded among civilians, and rifle blasts fired from behind closed doors and minarets. They don't know who the enemy is. Is it a pregnant woman? A child? An Iraqi policeman? They don't know how to win, or what a win would entail.

Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, who has flown to Iraq to talk to his troops about "core values" in the wake of Haditha and a second incident being investigated, noted that the effect of this combat "can be numbing."

A new A&E documentary chronicles the searing story of the marines of Lima Company, 184 Ohio reservists who won 59 Purple Hearts, 23 posthumously. Sgt. Guy Zierk recounts kicking in a door after an insurgent attack. Enraged over the death of his pals, he says he nearly killed two women and a 16-year-old boy. "I am so close, so close to shooting, but I don't." he says. "It would make me no better than the people we're trying to fight."

Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, one of those who called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, told Chris Matthews that blame for Haditha and Abu Ghraib lay with "the incredible strain bad decisions and bad judgment is putting on our incredible military."

While it was nice to hear President Bush admit he had made mistakes, he was talking mostly about mistakes of tone. Saying he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" would have been O.K. if he had acted on it, rather than letting Osama go at Tora Bora and diverting the Army to Iraq.

At his news conference with a tired-looking Tony Blair, Mr. Bush seemed chastened by Iraq, at least. But he continued to have the same hallucination about how to get out: turning things over to the Iraqi security forces after achieving total victory over insurgents and terrorists.

Stories in The Times this week show that Iraqi security forces are so infiltrated by Shiite militias, Sunni militias, death squads and officers with ties to insurgents that the idea of entrusting anything to them is ludicrous.

By ignoring predictions of an insurgency and refusing to do homework before charging into Iraq on trumped-up pretenses, W. left our troops undermanned, inadequately armored and psychologically unprepared.

It was maddening to see the prime minister of Britain — of all places — express surprise at the difficulty of imposing a democracy on a country that has had a complex and ferocious tribal culture since the Gardens of Babylon were still hanging.

NYTimes

Draft Gore!!

This week has been a joyful but scary Gore-o-rama, and its heartening because it reminds me that there are still some people in public life who are intelligent, curious, and funny, and who want to do the right thing. The ooze of Washington that has turned into so much worm eaten, rotted flesh needs a pretty complete turnover on both sides, with the Republicans needing to go for obvious reasons, and many of the Dems needing to go for their silence and complicity. Its been such a loss to have these horrible people in office, eating away at the national psyche, and its completely our own fault.
If the Hillary Clintons of this world cant figure out that the facade of centrist wont work then she needs to go too. Gone are the days of trying to pander to anyone. I just dont think that we should straddle the fence anymore, because the people who we are trying to appease are not going to change anyway. What have we smoothed over and what has it gotten us?
The uneducated idiots of this country are just plain agressively ignorant...with no desire to even look into the possibility that they are wrong. In the face of hard facts they still wont accept the truth.
I spent alot of time the past 5+ years trying to understand the mentality and closed mindedness there, but now Im just down to the truth of idiotic assholes who either only care for themselves and their money, or maybe they would be OK if they could ever admit that they had made a mistake. Its guilt by passivitiy, and Republicans havent cornered the market on that by any stretch!
The thing is that its not only about finance and the enviornment, its about our spirit and our ideals. How could we allow these people to tear into the constitution? What enabled the first Americans to withstand carving out a home for themselves and eventually fight wars based on their ideals? You have to feel pretty strongly about something to live through the winters that they had back then in hand built cabins...and to fight those wars. What happened to that sort of courage?
I'm not ready to give up on what those people fought for, even if some of it is outdated.
We have to stop running around in all different directions and find a solid path somewhere between anarchy and ...um....Hillary's maneuvering.
So, god help Al Gore to stay out of the hands of the handlers, and god help us if we end up with Hillary as a candidate, because she is leaning towards fake..and fake will not win out in the end.

Here is Krugman:

May 26, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

A Test of Our Character

By PAUL KRUGMAN

In his new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore suggests that there are three reasons it's hard to get action on global warming. The first is boiled-frog syndrome: because the effects of greenhouse gases build up gradually, at any given moment it's easier to do nothing. The second is the perception, nurtured by a careful disinformation campaign, that there's still a lot of uncertainty about whether man-made global warming is a serious problem. The third is the belief, again fostered by disinformation, that trying to curb global warming would have devastating economic effects.

I'd add a fourth reason, which I'll talk about in a minute. But first, let's notice that Mr. Gore couldn't have asked for a better illustration of disinformation campaigns than the reaction of energy-industry lobbyists and right-wing media organizations to his film.

The cover story in the current issue of National Review is titled "Scare of the Century." As evidence that global warming isn't really happening, it offers the fact that some Antarctic ice sheets are getting thicker — a point also emphasized in a TV ad by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is partly financed by large oil companies, whose interests it reliably represents.

Curt Davis, a scientist whose work is cited both by the institute and by National Review, has already protested. "These television ads," he declared in a press release, "are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate." He points out that an initial increase in the thickness of Antarctica's interior ice sheets is a predicted consequence of a warming planet, so that his results actually support global warming rather than refuting it.

Even as the usual suspects describe well-founded concerns about global warming as hysteria, they issue hysterical warnings about the economic consequences of environmentalism. "Al Gore's global warming movie: could it destroy the economy?" Fox News asked.

Well, no, it couldn't. There's some dispute among economists over how forcefully we should act to curb greenhouse gases, but there's broad consensus that even a very strong program to reduce emissions would have only modest effects on economic growth. At worst, G.D.P. growth might be, say, one-tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point lower over the next 20 years. And while some industries would lose jobs, others would gain.

Actually, the right's panicky response to Mr. Gore's film is probably a good thing, because it reveals for all to see the dishonesty and fear-mongering on which the opposition to doing something about climate change rests.

But "An Inconvenient Truth" isn't just about global warming, of course. It's also about Mr. Gore. And it is, implicitly, a cautionary tale about what's been wrong with our politics.

Why, after all, was Mr. Gore's popular-vote margin in the 2000 election narrow enough that he could be denied the White House? Any account that neglects the determination of some journalists to make him a figure of ridicule misses a key part of the story. Why were those journalists so determined to jeer Mr. Gore? Because of the very qualities that allowed him to realize the importance of global warming, many years before any other major political figure: his earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis.

And so the 2000 campaign ended up being about the candidates' clothing, their mannerisms, anything but the issues, on which Mr. Gore had a clear advantage (and about which his opponent was clearly both ill informed and dishonest).

I won't join the sudden surge of speculation about whether "An Inconvenient Truth" will make Mr. Gore a presidential contender. But the film does make a powerful case that Mr. Gore is the sort of person who ought to be running the country.

Since 2000, we've seen what happens when people who aren't interested in the facts, who believe what they want to believe, sit in the White House. Osama bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a mess, New Orleans is a wreck. And, of course, we've done nothing about global warming.

But can the sort of person who would act on global warming get elected? Are we — by which I mean both the public and the press — ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That's a test of national character. I wonder whether we'll pass.

Clinton's Anatomy...

It makes perfect sense to me that Bill and Hillary Clinton try to rendezvous every Sunday to watch Grey's Anatomy as according to Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times.
I dont know what it is, maybe some sort of creeping maturity, but I find Meredith Grey to be one of the most self centered beings in the world, and I wonder if our view into her psyche and her endless questioning self dialogue is supposed to mean that perhaps we are all a little like that? Like, maybe when we were 15 years old!
To me its just so much teenage angst played out as a coming of age story where the heroine steamrolls over everyone in her path with few repercussions, only to be forgiven for tearing everyone in her path apart and then to end up with a the quandry of which Mcdreamy to choose. I guess that life is like that when youre thin and beautiful, without much of a care in the world because your Alzheimers mother only shows up once a month for four minutes. I became tired of Meredith's whiney complaints at around the third show when I got this 'comeonalready!' feeling...and as my 15 year old neice became obsessed with the foibles of Ms. Grey, I was pretty finished. Life is just too short....
I wish that Meredith would address something more pressing than the medical ethics of I love Lucy-ish situations with patients who could hardly exist in the real world...I mean, comeonalready, a bomb in the chest with Meredith's finger on the trigger for a WHOLE SHOW!! At least David E Kelly throws in a socially relevant rant every couple of weeks in the midst of the outlandish and stupid "dramedy" on Boston Legal...comeonalready!!
So, on to Hillary's anatomy, where she just wants to see if she can make it to the top... because the handlers tell her she can and wouldnt it be great to be The First Woman President! I believe that at one time Hill had some good ideas, but honestly, now I get the impression that she is robotically moving towards the prize with no thought to what its going to mean if we have another 4 years of...them!
I stopped at the A&P on my way to the hospital yesterday to pick up some sushi for my boy and there was a ragged man in the parking lot collecting signatures for a candidate. I was hoping that it was for Lamonte, because I was due up at his office last week before the hospital nightmare started, and I wanted to speak to one of the volunteers, though I didnt really have time right then. The guy was collecting signatures for someone who I didnt know and who is a Libertarian. I told the guy that I was in a rush and didnt have time to discuss who the guy was. I didnt want to just sign anything, and Im a Democrat. he was shouting after me that it didnt matter what party I was affiliated with, that I could give the guy a chance to run for Governer. I kept going and the guy got glaringly angry and yelled after me that all I wanted was Democrats who keep spending SO MUCH MONEY....huh? Well, he was a little crazy and I dont agree with the Libertarian viewpoint, but how can anyone accuse the Dems of this after knowing the Bushies? Who wants to deflect even one vote from the Dems when getting some justice is on the table along with urgent matters of diplomacy, war, economics, and enviornment...not to mention dead bodies floating down the streets in an American city near you this summer!
I was really late and in a hurry to get to the hospital and I realized that the guy was a little off, but man, that was a little scary.
Its not that I dont want other parties and views, but I so strongly feel that we have to get the Dems in power before we go further. We all have to be behind that 100%.
So, that is where my Hillary thoughts come in. I dont like that she is pandering to the center and right so much and I feel like its pretty dishonest of her to sway from who she was...or to finally show her true colors after pretending all of these years...? I dont think that we are going to get anywhere without standing up for our principals and showing that what is the very foundation of Democratic ideology is in fact the moral and "Christian" road, if you have to put things in those terms. How these Neocons were able to wrestle that away is beyond me.
I am all for Al Gore at this point, and I havent seen him change much in his platform except to be more forthcoming and more hiself as he has distanced himself from the handlers. Theres something to be said for not caring much what people think, and his message hasnt changed in all the years we've known him. Sure, hes a bit of a stiff, preppy, nerd, but who cares? He may not be the guy who's motorcycle I want to jump on the back of, because I never went for the jocks when there were so many bad boys available, but he's incredibly smart and educated...the perfect person to try to restore our diplomatic relationships in the world and get us back on the path of what was the good. We've got to remember who we are as a country, and I dont think that involves so much just the chance of winning the lottery, rewarding CEOs, and becoming the American Idol (just in case we ever get our own personal shot at it,) as much as how we treat the least in our society and how we take care of our planet.
So I hope that Hillary glides to the side and embraces her job as Senator for another 4 years before she tries the waters at being "The First Woman President," because I dont think that she will make it, and her failure could mean disaster of major proportions for all of us.

Here is Maureen:

May 24, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Enter Ozone Woman

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Al Gore must want to punch Hillary Clinton right through the hole in the ozone layer.

At the National Press Club here yesterday, the New York senator finally took a passionate stand. After giving a courteous nod to her old rival Al as "a committed visionary on global warming," she purloined his issue and his revolution, going his Earth Tones in the Balance one better by wearing a blinding yellow pantsuit that looked as if it could provide solar power to all of Tennessee.

Apologizing for, while really wallowing in, her "wonkish speech," Hillary waxed rhapsodic about "unlocking the full potential of cellulosic ethanol" and getting "the low-sulfur diesel rule fully implemented." She droned on numbingly about carbon dioxide sequestration, biomass liquid fuel bases, "feebate" tax incentives, hybrid plug-ins, flex-fueled vehicles, continuous reheat furnaces, renewable portfolio standards, Danish wind power, Brazilian ethanol and Kyoto greenhouse targets. (And you thought she was incomprehensible on health care.)

She got so far down in the weeds — or switch grass — that she advised her listeners about weatherizing their homes and checking their tires to save fuel. "At every gas station," she chirped, "there ought to be a little sign which says, 'Have you checked to see if your tires are inflated to the right pressure?' "

She made it clear who's in power and who's in Cannes when she ostentatiously promised to take her motorcade back to Capitol Hill and introduce legislation for a strategic energy fund to jolt inert government and insatiable Big Oil into action.

Her timing is cunning. This is supposed to be Ozone Man's moment in the sun. His movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," opens today, buoyed by such raves that his supporters believe his green crusade could net him both a gold statuette and a white house.

He's being hailed as the new Comeback Kid, as New York magazine calls him, a passionate pedant. (Better than a compassionate conservative.)

Shaken by the Asian tsunami, Katrina, gas prices and a literally explosive Middle East, many Americans now see the environment and conservation as the scintillating, life-and-death subjects that Al Gore has always presented them as, rather than the domain of cartoonish sandal-wearing, tree-hugging, New Age-y, antibusiness wackos.

As John Heilemann notes in New York, the Gore boomlet is also driven by "the creeping sense of foreboding about the prospect of Hillary Clinton's march to her party's nomination." Hollywood's top environmental campaigner, Laurie David, a producer on the Gore movie, argued, "It's not time to experiment with trying to put in office the first female president or with somebody people feel is such a polarizing figure."

Some Democrats are secretly compiling data to prove that Hillary is unelectable to derail the notion that she's inevitable. Gore loyalists suggest that they could be co-front-runners — a couple of raccoons in a bag.

The two hall monitors have always bumped against each other, first competing to be Bill Clinton's co-president, and then over Democratic money in the 2000 election.

So we are left with the prospect of a race between these two Democrats (Al, a popularly elected president; Hillary, a co-ruler). Neither was president, but both think they have been. Al's a seeker and Hillary's a triangulator (or you might say she's inflating her tires to the right pressure). They have shared the problem of stiff, situational personae, when they seemed to wake up every morning trying to figure out who they should be, how they should appear or how they should position themselves. By fashioning their identities all the time, they condemned themselves to being seen merely as identity fashioners.

Hillary is keeping Bill at a distance so he doesn't overshadow her, contradict her, embarrass her or hurt her attempt to pander to the right. But Al, who says he and Bill have made up and are now brotherly, may want to embrace the Big Dog this time, realizing the cost of muzzling him in 2000 (and the cost of taking hired guns' advice to soft-peddle the environment).

Since Hillary and Bill often rendezvous to watch "Grey's Anatomy" on Sunday nights, that's a good time for her to soak up his unmatched political smarts.

But as someone in Bill's circle wryly told Mr. Heilemann, the boy can't help himself: "You can see him talking to Hillary one minute, then ducking into his study to take Gore's call and advise him on how to beat her."

What a contest: two ersatz ex-presidents vying for the support of a real one.

Time to go Joe....bye, bye...been not so good to know ya....

May 22, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Talk-Show Joe

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Friday was a bad day for Senator Joseph Lieberman. The Connecticut Democratic Party's nominating convention endorsed him, but that was a given for an incumbent with a lot of political chips to cash in. The real news was that Ned Lamont, an almost unknown challenger, received a third of the votes. This gave Mr. Lamont the right to run against Mr. Lieberman in a primary, and suggests that Mr. Lamont may even win.

What happened to Mr. Lieberman? Some news reports may lead you to believe that he is in trouble solely because of his support for the Iraq war. But there's much more to it than that. Mr. Lieberman has consistently supported Republican talking points. This has made him a lion of the Sunday talk shows, but has put him out of touch with his constituents — and with reality.

Mr. Lieberman isn't the only nationally known Democrat who still supports the Iraq war. But he isn't just an unrepentant hawk, he has joined the Bush administration by insisting on an upbeat picture of the situation in Iraq that is increasingly delusional.

Moreover, Mr. Lieberman has supported the attempt to label questions about why we invaded Iraq and criticism of the administration's policies since the invasion as unpatriotic. How else is one to interpret his warning, late last year, that "it is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril"?

And it's not just Iraq. A letter sent by Hillary Clinton to Connecticut Democrats credited Mr. Lieberman with defending Social Security "tooth and nail." Well, I watched last year's Social Security debate pretty closely, and that's not what happened.

In fact, Mr. Lieberman repeatedly supported the administration's scare tactics. "Every year we wait to come up with a solution to the Social Security problem," he declared in March 2005, "costs our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren $600 billion more."

This claim echoed a Bush administration talking point, and President Bush wasted little time citing Mr. Lieberman's statement as vindication. But the talking point was simply false, so Mr. Lieberman was providing cover for an administration lie.

There's more. Mr. Lieberman supported Congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair, back when Republican leaders were trying to manufacture a "values" issue out of thin air.

And let's not forget that Mr. Lieberman showed far more outrage over Bill Clinton's personal life than he has ever shown over Mr. Bush's catastrophic failures as commander in chief.

On each of these issues Mr. Lieberman, who is often described as a "centrist," is or was very much at odds not just with the Democratic base but with public opinion as a whole. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 40 percent of the public believes that we were right to go to war with Iraq.

Mr. Lieberman's tender concern for the president's credibility comes far too late: according to a USA Today/Gallup poll, only 41 percent of Americans consider Mr. Bush honest and trustworthy. By huge margins, the public believed that Congress should have stayed out of the Schiavo case. And so on.

Mr. Lieberman's defenders would have you believe that his increasingly unpopular positions reflect his principles. But his Bushlike inability to face reality on Iraq looks less like a stand on principle than the behavior of a narcissist who can't admit error. And the common theme in Mr. Lieberman's positions seems to be this: In each case he has taken the stand that is most likely to get him on TV.

You see, the talking-head circuit loves centrists. But a centrist, as defined inside the Beltway, doesn't mean someone whose views are actually in the center, as judged by public opinion.

Instead, a Democrat is considered centrist to the extent that he does what Mr. Lieberman does: lends his support to Republican talking points, even if those talking points don't correspond at all to what most of the public wants or believes.

But this "center" cannot hold. And that's the larger lesson of what happened Friday. Mr. Lieberman has been playing to a Washington echo chamber that is increasingly out of touch with the country's real concerns. The nation, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 simply because he was there, has moved on — and it has left Mr. Lieberman behind.

The Basement Snake

Well, the basement snake made a spring appearance yesterday morning, causing me to grab the camera and tip toe hop through the doggy poo patio to where he goes to hunt. I just found a new perfect skin shed from him in the basement rafter the other day, and it is huge; over 6 feet long and a couple of inches in diameter (I hung it by the back door over a picture of Mom...and, no, Im not religious...just collect icons and Day of the Dead stuff.) He is satin velvety black with a huge body and smaller head, (as these sorts of rat snakes get when they are older and well fed.) ....And he is grumpy if you mess with him, which, of course, I have to do! I love how heavy he is and how he tries to strike at me. He's been living down in the basement for the time I've been here (11+years) and probably longer because he was already big by the time I found him on the bumping wheezing old dryer, in the first winter I was here.
There are alot of his sort around here but he is the only one who actually lives in the house. His entrance is up and under the stucco in the side garden and then over the boulder that takes up half the basement and hes got the run of the place. He is definitely up through the walls because master contractor Guy Morrill didn't seal off the bottom framing in the basement and he leaves dropping and skins hanging out of the bottom of the pink insulation that is always sort of falling out around the edges. He seems to have all sorts of tunnels that he's made over the years since the renovation that gutted everything except the basement and stucco. Good old Guy Morrill did such a crappy job that I believe that my last words to him were "get the fuck off my land!"...And then he proceeded to get a lung cancer brain tumor and die within a few months, thus voiding the "lifetime warranty" that he promised. Ha!
It turns out that all of those Home Depot fixtures that he loved so much really do fail after 5 or 6 years...So here we are, basement snake and me, trying to get to the mice and rats and squirrels that find their way into the walls when you live in a place like this. I guess the fact that that I know distinctly the difference between the smell of dead mouse as opposed to rat or squirrel is testament to how far from Brooklyn I've come.
Speaking of Brooklyn, a crazy red haired lady ("junkie" says my Mom,) broke the windows of half of the houses down the mews where I grew up. She was screaming as she did it and had somehow gotten over the Italian Ironworks fences with spikes on top that are so popular in that old district. She was brandishing a 2x4 and my Mom's old neighbor said she opened her back door and yelled at her that she was calling the cops, but the woman was like a stone...crazy, crazy...So she shut the door and backed off. Anyway, after running down the row of houses screaming and breaking everything she could reach with the 2x4 she then vaulted over the spikes again and ran towards the Towers, which is a 100+ year old Victorian tenement with lots of wrought ironwork, that hangs right over the BQE. It was where we ran around as kids and I rescued stray cats from the basement structures. there were junkies on the roof and there was always some sort of tragic slaying or drug activity there. Now its million dollar condos...go figure...It shakes everytime a truck rumbles by on that underground part of the BQE. It was good earthquake prep for before I ever lived on the west coast.
Anyway, Mom was up here because my boy is in the hospital and she is trying to give me some moral support. I'm a little snappy with her, and, Mom if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but I cant look on the bright side of anything right now....Just sorry to be so snappy and thanks for being always patient. So, the distraction of NYC cops calling for information and statements was great, and the crazy woman confessed immediately ("junkie..." Mom says under her breath with disgust...) and she had already robbed 2 houses and found no real cash money so went berserk down the alley.
Luckily, this time Mom has some young architect boys as tenants and they were able to board things up before the maintenance guy, Emilio, could make it over from the nursing home across the street. Thank God for Emilio.
My childhood was full of incidents like this and Mom would always throw the door open and run out to help or fight or just to see what was happening. It was sort of scary, but Mom tends to run towards danger. We were robbed more than once, and at one point one of the junkie guys just stood on the fence and reached into the open window and took a whole mess of our records.
It was a pretty crazy neighborhood sometimes and the clash of the Mafia Italians and the Puerto Ricans seemed to have its line drawn right there in Cobble Hill for that time. But we were in the arty enclave with alot of single moms and visiting dads, artists, some Muslims and Hare Krishnas...Those were the days! I could go and hang out at the Hare Krishna Temple for dinner and then babysit for the Muslim woman with 5 kids who lived in the Towers at night. Bob Dylan references those neighborhoods in alot of his songs from those days...it was a bit of a suburb to the village and just across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Anyway, I'm trying to follow the Sunday AM morning shows and haven't read PJ Sauter's rundown, which is really my problem this morning. I'm being chased by Condi Rice ("look, they redid her hair again" says Mom, sounding actually excited...Geeze, what can you do with concrete?) and trying to find my boy, Johnny 2 Americas Edwards. If its not Gore's turn, I hope its pretty Johnny's....but I'm pulling for Gore, really, if he keeps being himself and stays away from the handlers that run these things.
The news is all good as far as how awake the American people are and how the immigration bill won't really go through.
I wish that Americans would realize that this is the shiny object that we are supposed to be mesmerized with instead of what's behind the curtain over there. This is not about stopping terrorism. Lets stop the hemorrhage of money into Iraq and figure out a sane way to protect ourselves. To deny that human being have always migrated to find a better life for themselves and their kids is insane. To tighten controls is probably the right thing to do, but spending alot of time being afraid of Mexico is crazy right now when we are going into Iran with our overextended military!
Lets hope that this week brings a big fat indictment for Rove! Lets keep the pressure on and hope that the early runoffs and primaries are showing a real trend towards Dems sweeping the floor with those fuckers!

here is Dowd a day late, because I'm still not even through with yesterday's mail, news, radio, television, or email....And today;s Rich.
Welcome back again to Frank Rich...You have been missed!!


May 20, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Make Poetry, Not War
By MAUREEN DOWD

It was a rough crowd for agents of American imperialism.

At the New School commencement at Madison Square Garden's theater yesterday afternoon, dozens of the red-and-black-gowned graduates and some faculty were heckling, cackling, hissing, booing, jeering, whooping, bolting, turning their backs and holding up orange signs that read, "Our commencement is not your platform." As for John McCain, he spoke about how the "passion for self-expression sometimes overwhelms our civility."

"We're graduating, not voting," one young man yelled.

"This is all about you," another called out. "We don't care."

A little while after the senator quoted Yeats about the fleeting nature of beauty, a student sarcastically called out, "More poetry."

First, Mr. McCain and the New School's president, Bob Kerrey, were slapped around by a student speaker, Jean Sara Rohe, a 21-year-old from Nutley, N.J., who sang a lyric from a peace song and then abandoned her original remarks to talk about the "outrage" over Mr. McCain's speaking gig.

"The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded," Ms. Rohe said, adding: "I am young, and although I don't profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous and wrong."

She continued: "And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."

The New School, of course, makes New York University seem like Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., where Mr. McCain kowtowed last weekend to Jerry Falwell, the looney-toon he formerly deemed an agent of intolerance. (Just as Rudy buddy-buddied with Ralph Reed in Atlanta.)

The ultraliberal kids at the New School, the pacifist Greenwich Village university, think of themselves as free-thinking rabble-rousers in a world where many college kids, complacently cocooned under iPods, don't even like to debate, much less protest.

When a rigid-faced Mr. Kerrey chided the audience for being rude, a young woman yelled out, "You're a war criminal!" And a guy chimed in, "Yes, you are!"

It was a remarkable tableau to see the two iconoclastic vets, their bodies beneath the black gowns still bearing broken pieces from Vietnam, being pilloried by kids angry about another endless war, faceless enemy and feckless defense secretary.

Senator McCain came to Mr. Kerrey's defense in 2001. That's when graduate students called for the New School president to resign and for Congress to investigate him because a Times magazine piece had revealed that he had led a Seals unit that killed up to 20 unarmed civilians, most of them women and children.

(The Pentagon is now investigating a case in Haditha, Iraq, where marines are accused of killing 15 unarmed Iraqis from two families, including 7 women and 3 children.)

Yesterday, Mr. Kerrey returned the favor, admonishing the students that when they are "heckling from an audience ... no bravery is required."

The Arizona senator did not depart from his text and engage the students, as Bill Clinton might have done, with a passionate exegesis of his stance. And, still trying to show that his temper is under control, he did not push back, as Rudy Giuliani might have.

He may have even found the screaming students useful, as a liberal hippie foil that will endear him to the evangelical base he's smooching up. Mr. McCain's adviser, John Weaver, talked dismissively of the West Village students, saying they should get out more and hear opposing viewpoints.

Mr. McCain's panderthon grew even more absurd this week. He let the Wyly brothers — the Texas businessmen who financed a $2.5 million ad campaign in 2000 trashing his environmental record, a move that enraged Mr. McCain and spurred him to call the Wylys W.'s "sleazy Texas buddies" — hold a fund-raiser for him in Dallas.

The senator may have wanted to give the same commencement speech at Liberty, the New School and Columbia as a way of showing those disillusioned by his snuggling with old enemies that he is still a straight talker, willing to say the same thing to Southern conservatives and Northern liberals.

But Bob Kerrey better summed up the feeling of many of us about the New McCain in the new issue of Men's Vogue. He mocked the senator's coziness with W., telling Ned Martel: "He kissed him! McCain let Bush's lips touch him. Yuck!"


May 21, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Rove Da Vinci Code
By FRANK RICH

IF we're to believe the reviews, "The Da Vinci Code" is the most exciting summer blockbuster since, well, "Poseidon." But the "Da Vinci Code" marketing strategy is a masterpiece: a perfect Hollywood metaphor for the American political culture of our day.

The Machiavellian mission for the hit-deprived Sony studio was to co-opt conservative religious critics who might depress turnout for a $125-million-plus thriller portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a fraud. To this end, as The New Yorker reported, Sony hired a bevy of P.R. consultants, including a faith-based flack whose Christian Rolodex previously helped sell such inspirational testaments to Hollywood spirituality as "Bruce Almighty" and "Christmas With the Kranks."

Among Sony's ingenious strategies was an elaborate Web site, The Da Vinci Dialogue, which gave many of the movie's prominent critics a platform to vent on the studio's dime. Thus was "The Da Vinci Code" repositioned as a "teaching moment" for Christian evangelists — a bit of hype "completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine," as Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun and current Hollywood screenwriter, explained to The Times. The more "students" who could be roped into this teaching moment, of course, the bigger the gross.

Ms. Nicolosi remains a vociferous opponent of the film. On her blog she chastises Sony's heavenly P.R. helpers for coaxing "legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham." But you do have to admire the studio's chutzpah, if the word may be used in this context. It rivals Tom Sawyer's bamboozling of his friends into painting that fence. The Sony scheme also echoes much of the past decade's Washington playbook. Politicians, particularly but not exclusively in the Karl Rove camp, seem to believe that voters of "faith" are suckers who can be lured into the big tent and then abandoned once their votes and campaign cash have been pocketed by the party for secular profit.

Nowhere is this game more naked than in the Jack Abramoff scandal: the felonious Washington lobbyist engaged his pal Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, to shepherd Christian conservative leaders like James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the Rev. Donald Wildmon and their flocks into ostensibly "anti-gambling" letter-writing campaigns. They were all duped: in reality these campaigns were engineered to support Mr. Abramoff's Indian casino clients by attacking competing casinos. While that scam may be the most venal exploitation of "faith" voters by Washington operatives, it's all too typical. This history repeats itself every political cycle: the conservative religious base turns out for its party and soon finds itself betrayed. The right's leaders are already threatening to stay home this election year because all they got for their support of Republicans in the previous election year was a lousy Bush-Cheney T-shirt. Actually, they also got two Supreme Court justices, but their wish list was far longer. Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist who invented Focus on the Family, set the tone with a tantrum on Fox, whining that Republicans were "ignoring those that put them in office" and warning of "some trouble down the road" if they didn't hop-to.

The doctor's diagnosis is not wrong. He has been punk'd — or Da Vinci'd — since 2004. Though President Bush endorsed the federal marriage amendment then, there's a reason he hasn't pushed it since. Not Gonna Happen, however many times it is dragged onto the Senate floor. The number of Americans who "strongly oppose" same-sex marriage keeps dropping — from 42 percent two years ago to 28 percent today, according to the Pew Research Center — and there will never be the votes to "write discrimination into the Constitution," as Mary Cheney puts it.

The real Republican establishment — including Laura Bush, who has repeatedly refused to disown the many gay families at this year's White House Easter Egg Roll — senses the drift of the culture. "Will & Grace" may have retired to reruns last week, but it's been supplanted by a gay "Sopranos" tough guy who out-brokebacks Jack and Ennis.

The religious right's hope for taming that culture is also doomed, however much Congress ceremoniously raises indecency fines in an election year. The major media companies, heavy donors to both parties, first get such bills watered down, then challenge the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement in court.

The mogul most ostentatiously supportive of Republican causes, Rupert Murdoch, may perennially fan the flames of a bogus "war on Christmas" on Fox, but he's waging his own, far more lethal war on the Christian right by starting a companion TV network this fall to match MySpace.com, his hugely popular and hugely libidinous Internet portal. Mr. Murdoch's new gift to America's youth, My Network TV, "will showcase greed, lust, sex," according to The Wall Street Journal. Conservatives fretting about his fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton don't even know what's about to hit them.

But for all these betrayals, Dr. Dobson and Company won't desert the Republicans come Election Day. If Mr. Rove steps up his usual gay-baiting late in the campaign, as is his wont, maybe the turnout of those on the hard-core right will eke out a victory for the party that double-crossed them not just on cultural issues but also on secular conservative principles (like fiscal responsibility and immigration-law enforcement). If so, they'll promptly be Da Vinci'd yet again. A Republican retreat on stem-cell research is already under way. If there's electoral fallout from the South Dakota Legislature's Draconian abortion ban — the Republican governor's job-approval rating fell from 72 percent to 58 percent in a single month after he signed it — the pro-life checklist in Congress will suffer as well.

Whatever happens in November, the good news is that the religious right leaders most stroked by Mr. Rove, many of them past 70, may no longer command such large blocs of voters anyway. As Amy Sullivan writes in the latest New Republic, Mr. Rove has reason to worry about "another group of evangelicals: the nearly 40 percent who identify themselves as politically moderate and who are just as likely to get energized about AIDS in Africa or melting ice caps as partial-birth abortion and lesbian couples in Massachusetts." The bad news is that no sooner does the religious-right base show signs of cracking in a youthquake than the Democrats trot out their own doomed Da Vinci strategy.

This idiocy began the morning after Election Day 2004, when a vaguely worded exit-poll question persuaded credulous party leaders that "moral values" determined their defeat (as opposed to, say, their standard-bearer's campaign). Their immediate response was to seek out faith-based consultants not unlike those recruited by Sony, and practice dropping the word "values" and biblical quotations into their public pronouncements. In the House, they organized, heaven help us, a Democratic Faith Working Group.

As the next election approaches, they're renewing this effort, to farcical effect. The Democrats' chairman, Howard Dean, who proved his faith-based bona fides in the 2004 primary season by citing Job as his favorite book in the New Testament, went on the Pat Robertson TV network this month and yanked his party's position on same-sex marriage to the right. (He apologized for his "misstatement" once off the air.)

Not to be left behind, Senator Clinton gave a speech last week knocking young people for thinking "work is a four-letter word" and for having TV's in their rooms, home Internet access and, worst of all, that ultimate instrument of the devil, iPods. "I hope that we start thinking some very old-fashioned thoughts," she said. (She also subsequently apologized, once her daughter complained, joining the general chorus of ridicule.) However "old-fashioned" Mrs. Clinton's thoughts, don't expect her to turn back Mr. Murdoch's campaign cash in protest against his steamy new TV channel.

The one New York politician even more disingenuous in this racket is Rudolph Giuliani. He outdid John McCain's appearance with Jerry Falwell by campaigning last week for Ralph Reed in the lieutenant governor's race in Georgia. Any religious conservative who mistakes "America's mayor," an adamant supporter of abortion rights and gay rights, for a fellow traveler is in desperate need of an intervention, if not an exorcism.

But that hypothetical, easily duped voter may no longer exist. Like the Bush era, the cynical Rove strategy of exploiting faith-based voters may be nearing its end. For proof, just take a look at the most craven figure in American politics: the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. To flatter the far right, this Harvard-trained surgeon misdiagnosed Terri Schiavo's vegetative state from the Senate floor, and justified abstinence-only sex education in AIDS prevention by telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he didn't know for certain that tears and sweat couldn't transmit H.I.V. But increasingly it's not only liberals who see through him. One of his latest stunts, a proposed $100 gas-tax rebate, provoked Rush Limbaugh to condemn him for "treating us like we're a bunch of whores."

When senators as different as Mr. Frist and Mrs. Clinton both earn bipartisan ridicule for their pandering, you have to believe that there's a god other than Karl Rove watching over American politics after all.

New York Times