The GOP, Crack Cocaine & Third Parties

If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, to use the old aphorism, then Pete Abel is a moderate who has been mugged by his own party, in this case the right wingers who have tried to tear down the Republican Big Tent.

Abel, who blogs at Central Sanity and co-blogs with me at The Moderate Voice, is fighting back and plans to devote his considerable energies to regaining the moderate Republican high ground in the run-up to the 2008 election.

Besides actually putting his money where his mouth is, Pete also is (gasp!) capable of changing his mind, that rarest of qualities in the political arena.

He acknowledges in a post titled Involvement, Not Quantity, Is the Answer, that until quite recently he felt that there needed to be more than two major political parties in the U.S. for the system to work.

But Pete says he now realizes that:

"The problems [with the system] arise not when we have two major parties, but when one of them controls both Congressional chambers and the White House, effectively locking up two of the three branches of government and all-but-eliminating one of the most inspiring concepts encoded in our Constitution, namely, the concept of checks and balances . . . The key is to ensure that we have at least two equally viable parties from which to choose. And that requires attention and focus and commitment on the part of the electorate – first, to the parties that are versus the parties that might be."

It is not my intention to beat up on Pete, but I think he takes the equation only about two thirds of the way. The other third?

The trend toward the homogenization of the major parties, the result of which is that it is increasingly impossible to tell Democrats from Republicans.

The primary reason for that is simple:

Both parties are addicted to money and beholden to the special interest groups -- big pharma, health-insurance companies, the defense industry, and so on -- that provide buckets full of it to run their campaigns, underwrite their political conventions and scratch their various itches.

Until either or both parties are cured of that addiction -- and I simply don't see it happening -- neither party will be truly viable for me.

Meanwhile, Gottlieb over at My Left Wing embraces the emergence of a third party and gives the Dems a well-deserved kick in the slats:

"The point of any third party is not to win an election against the two-party Borg, but to do what is right. Moral conscience is more important than political expediency. This would seem a no-brainer, but, no, it appears the majority of so-called 'liberals,' 'progressives' or 'Democrats' are willing to take baby-steps to end a prolonged, illegal, irresponsible and immoral war declared by a coup d'etat installed imperial presidency with delusions of hubritic grandeur with nothing to show for their dreams of vainglory but tragic consequences.

"If any evidence is needed to immediately begin a mass independent populist movement to check our runaway government that has lost its moral compass, common sense and fiscal conscience, it is the betrayal of the Democratic Party to the vast majority of voters that returned it to power in November 2006 to accomplish one thing quickly. <>"The Democratic Party is not worthy to receive the support of any card-carrying liberal."

More here.

Finally, Jurrasicpork at Welcome to Pottersville sticks it to the GOP, correctly noting that it is disingenuous to blame all of its ills on a deeply unpopular president:

"[A]t this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security — and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.

"Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even wider when — not if — more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of power emerge.

"But polling data on the issues . . . suggest that the GOP’s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man’s disastrous reign.

"For the conservatives who run today’s Republican Party are devoted, above all, to the proposition that government is always the problem, never the solution. For a while the American people seemed to agree; but lately they’ve concluded that sometimes government is the solution, after all, and they’d like to see more of it."

More here.

Grace Kelly: The Lady & The Tramp

While there may be better actresses, Grace Kelly has long been a favorite because of an attraction that I have found hard to resist: A girl-next-door beauty that barely masks a deep sexuality.

Surprised?

You shouldn't be. This sexuality is what kept drawing director Alfred Hitchcock back to a woman who made her greatest films with him and eventually chucked stardom to become a real-life princess and then die in a mysterious car creash.

Now comes "True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess" (St. Martin's Press), a new tell-all book by Wendy Leigh.

Leigh's extensive interviews a quarter century after Kelly's death reveal what has been only hinted at:

Kelly was a sexual predator who had simultaneous affairs with numerous co-stars, turned a blind eye to husband Prince Rainier's many daliances and had an unrequited crush on David Niven.

Click here for an interview with Leigh by a former colleague, April Lisanti.

Another Big Oops For the Gray Lady

The New York Times has put up a correction stating that a Sunday Magazine article onthe problems of returning woman Iraq war vets included Amorita Randall, a woman who did not serve there but apparently believes that she did.

I mention this not to just bring further embarrassment on the Gray Lady, which makes an unconscienable number of major boo-boos these days, but because I blogged extensively last week on the article and included this Katy Grannan photo of Randall.

Back in the day, I did hundreds of military records checks on Vietnam veterans because of the (albeit) rare instances in which a trooper claimed to have served in the war but did not. So I do have to ask how the hell did the Times fact checkers fail to establish that Randall had never done a tour in Iraq?

Hat tip to Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise

Newspapers & The Philadelphia Experiment

Newspapers are powerful. Or were. Many of the big guys — the LA Times, NY Times and the old Knight-Ridder newspapers — put people in charge who could not handle the power. That is the real problem here.

-- DON SURBER

Can a slick public relations man with a controversial past, no publishing experience and a pocketful of big ideas rescue Philadelphia’s two foundering daily newspapers?

My answer is “Who the hell knows?”

But nearly a year after a group of investors led by Brian Tierney purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News after raising $150 million in equity, I am looking at that question in a new light and willing – in fact, desperate – to give him a chance of succeeding.

This is because the city’s two fine daily newspapers are dying slow deaths. They may not expire next month or next year (the News is the more vulnerable of the two), but both are toast without an enormous shot of adrenalin.

That is for two reasons:

* Aside from the people who still work there, ink-stained wretches like myself (who toiled at the Daily News for 21 mostly happy years) and nostalgia freaks, there isn't a lot of concern that these two community pillars have lost so many readers and are in such bad shape. People are too busy reading blogs, watching Fox News, getting the latest on their cell phones, or simply don't give a rat's ass about what's going on beyond who will be the next American Idol.

* While the media world has changed in dramatic ways outside of newsrooms, newspaper editors by and large have done a terrible job of adapting, let alone forcing change. And, as blogger Don Surber notes in the delicious quote atop this post, too often do a lousy job of exercising their considerable power.

The result in Philadelphia is that both the Inky and News, change averse cultures to their cores, have been painfully slow to fully embrace new media like the Internet, blogging, video and interactive do-dads that offer just about the only opportunity to win back readers and advertisers that they have lost and attract new ones.

* * * * *

Before we get back to Tierney, let's take a look at how these two newspapers got into such dire straits:

The Inky once covered the world with a savoire-faire that earned it 17 Pulitzer Prizes. The News won a couple of Pulitzers, as well, and made its mark by covering Philadelphia in a way that was so intimate and so street smart that editors from out-of-town papers flocked to its newsroom to try to understand -- and emulate -- why it had such a deep bond with its readers.

Although advertising revenues and readership were down and the new media was giving this old media fits as the old millennium gave way to the new, both papers made money. In the Inky's case, buckets and buckets of money. But this wasn't enough for a self-aggrandizing asshole by the name of Anthony "Tony" Ridder, chief executive of Knight Ridder, the newspaper chain that owned them.

Back in the day, Knight Ridder was the class of U.S. newspaper chains because of its commitment to excellence. Even in its waning years, KR's national and international reporters were putting out a great product, including stories on what was really going on in Iraq when The New York Times and other mighty mights were still drinking the White House Kool-Aid.

But at some point the balance between putting out that quality product and getting Knight Ridder's stock price up tipped in the direction of Wall Street. Ridder -- who more than earned my moniker as the Darth Vader of the newspaper industry -- was the tipper in chief.

Ridder eventually put KR on the auction block and the now considerably leaner Inky and anorexic News were rescued by the Tierney-led investment group. The papers would be locally owned for the first time in forever.

Tierney has cut way back on expenses, canned the Inky's lackluster editor and has demanded deep job cuts from already depleted newsrooms. A strike that would have further accelerated the papers' demise was narrowly averted when the Newspaper Guild blinked.

Tierney has not, as feared, messed with the editorial content of either paper, but otherwise has given anyone who cares about the papers' future a major case of heartburn.

* * * * *

Why then am I rooting for Tierney?

It is not because of my personal experience with him as a News editor, which was entirely negative.

Tierney was a power in his own right as head of the region's largest public-relations agency, and his clients included the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The archdiocese believed that it was unaccountable, and whenever an article would appear that was even remotely negative, although accurate, Tierney would push back ferociously as the church's local junkyard dog.

No, I want him to succeed because he’s the only horse in this race and seems determined to shatter the cocoon in which the papers’ editors and reports have worked in for so long, something that I was unable to do as a mid-level editor who had diagnosed the disease and believed he had a cure.

As Jason Fagone writes in an article in the April issue of Philadelphia magazine, it may be only an outsider like Tierney who can fix what ails the papers:

“[He knew how far the papers lagged behind the ad industry’s best practices. He also knew that the Inky was too important to avoid. If you were buying media for a client, you couldn’t buy around the Inky. For Tierney, it was infuriating, because as America was becoming this paradisical place for entrepreneurs, an entrepreneur’s autobahn, there was this tanklike thing blocking the road, with thousands of guys like Tierney riding the clutch behind it, in their black Benzes, yelling stuff that would have made their grade-school nuns turn red — and what’s worse, the Inky acted like it knew it was this immovable tanklike thing, and didn’t care.”

As for the journalists themselves:

“The way they thought was so alien to Tierney. Most of them seemed happy to be semi-anonymous cogs in a big, important machine. . . . Journalists weren’t journalists anymore. They were brands. That’s what the New World of media was all about: bytes and brands. Tierney didn’t create the New World. He just lived there. And now that he, Brian Tierney, not some distant dysfunctional corporate overlord, had control and responsibility for these papers, he’d make sure his journalists learned to live in the New World, too.”

Tierney, who describes himself as more like Tony Soprano than Tony Ridder, wants to accomplish that by:

* Encouraging (but, he says, not forcing) reporters to take cameras with them to assignments and to blog, a dramatic redefinition of what reporting has long been all about.

* Introducing the Inquirer Express, a one-page capsule version of the day’s top stories. He has brought in Bill Marimow, an esteemed Pulitzer-winning former Inky reporter, to direct this and other initiatives.

* Overhauling the papers’ dreary websites and adding slick new sites like Phillycars.com.

* Dumping the papers’ job-search ad partner in favor of the considerably hipper Monster.com.

Fagone does not hide his enthusiasm for Tierney’s ideas, which he says “strike me as creative, economically sensible, coherent, ambitious . . . ”

I agree, although I am concerned that Tierney has not moved quickly enough to stanch the bleeding.

In any event, years of slashing and burning by Ridder and his crowd at the corporate level and change-resistant management at the local level will make it exceedingly difficult to return these two great newspapers to their former glory by reinventing themselves while not forgetting what made them great to begin with, and that simply is the only way they can succeed.

Even the return of Marimow may be problematic. As Fagnone notes, he’s “an Old World Guy trying to do a job with a New World allocation of resources.”

But if Brian Tierney’s Philadelphia Experiment is to succeed, that will have to happen.

And Then There's Samuel Zell

Brian Tierney and Samuel Zell would seem to be soulmates.

Like the new owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Zell has no publishing experience but sees the newspaper industry as an "inefficient" market.

Zell, who has made billions in real estate, is in negotiations with the Tribune Company, which owns some once hot newspaper properties, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun.

More here.

The Sheep Shall Lie Down With the Lions

Why are these men smiling?

The news that the leaders of Northern Ireland’s dominant rival groups have met face-to-face for the first time and agreed to form a joint administration for the long troubled province is an historic breakthrough. If it sticks.

The sitdown between Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and the Rev. Ian Paisley, the Protestant leader, came more than four years after Northern Ireland’s local government was suspended in October 2002 after a dispute over espionage activities by the Irish Republican Army.

I'm not quite ready to exhale on this one, but Buckarooskiddo at Make It Stop! Make It Stop! puts the agreement in an appropriate historic context:

"Think anti-Communist crusader/Red baiter Richard Nixon going to China in the early l970s, Anwar Sadat heading to Jerusalem in the early l980s, for that matter Reagan summiting and reaching agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Cold War waned. Those are the kind of analogies appropriate to the agreement . . .

"Some will say this means the IRA and Catholics 'lost,' since their goal was not just to force the British army out of northern Ireland, but to bring about the union of British northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. In truth, though, everybody won in this outcome, because the future of the region will now be resolved peacefully, through the democratic process, with the consent of the governed. And that qualifies as a genuine miracle, a shaking of the earth, if you consider the 3,000 victims of this conflict, the years of poverty and dislocation, the blighted lives and the unremitting bitterness on both sides . . . I often believed that it was hopeless, that this conflict was a geopolitical fact for the forseeable future, like the Cold War. I'm so happy to be proven wrong today.

"Look up into the sky towards the east . . . I think you might see some green and orange pigs flying on the horizon."

More here.

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

It was a beauty, but was never used. Click here to find out why.

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against—a club of insiders who seem to think that they’re better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

-- DAVID IGNATIUS

A key aspect of the U.S. attorney purge that often seems to get overlooked--by those who argue that the firings were business as usual and no different from the removal of USAs at the beginning of a president's term--is the change to the Patriot Act that was quietly inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter at the behest of the Justice Department.

As close followers of the scandal know, the Patriot Act provision, in essence, transferred the power to appoint interim USAs from the federal district courts to the attorney general and allowed the attorney general to install interim USAs indefinitely, thereby bypassing the Senate confirmation process.

Only the naive or willfully blind would see the Patriot Act amendment as a distinct and separate action from the purge itself.

-- JOSH MARSHALL

This is such a stupid, unnecessary scandal. Not since some carny deliberately climbed into a cannon and shot himself at a brick wall has there been a better example of self-inflicted stupidity. Doesn't Gonzales need to spend more time with his family?

-- JONAH GOLDBERG

Ségolène Royal will find it difficult to work with Britain's Conservative Party as president of France, her significant other told the Daily Telegraph. She also rejects Margaret Thatcher as "ruthless" and says that Tony Blair hasn't been sufficiently socialist for her tastes . . . [I]n this case, Royal hasn't even bothered to visit the ally at all, an unusual omission for a French presidential candidate -- especially one who has decided that she can ignore a good chunk of their electorate. That makes her right about one thing: she's no Margaret Thatcher.

-- CAPTAIN ED MORRISSEY

Wal-Mart is now denying reports that they are planning on setting up their own bank. Wal-Mart wanted to open bank branches in all their stores until they realized: "Wait a minute. We sell guns, too."

-- JAY LENO

Since the release of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s dramatic confessions, moral outrage at the extent of his crimes has been mixed with doubts. Can his claims be trusted? What if he confessed to more than he really did, either because of a vain desire to be remembered as the big terrorist mastermind, or because he was ready to confess anything in order to stop the water boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques”?

If there was one surprising aspect to this situation it has less to do with the confessions themselves than with the fact that for the first time in a great many years, torture was normalized — presented as something acceptable. The ethical consequences of it should worry us all.

-- SLAVOJ ZIZEK

The president has been told countless times, by a secretary of state, by members of Congress, by heads of friendly governments — and by the American public — that the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has profoundly damaged this nation’s credibility as a champion of justice and human rights. But Mr. Bush ignored those voices — and now it seems he has done the same to his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, the man Mr. Bush brought in to clean up Donald Rumsfeld’s mess.

Mr. Bush rejected that sound advice, heeding instead the chief enablers of his worst instincts, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Their opposition was no surprise. The Guantánamo operation was central to Mr. Cheney’s drive to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts, and Mr. Gonzales was one of the chief architects of the policies underpinning the detainee system. Mr. Bush and his inner circle are clearly afraid that if Guantánamo detainees are tried under the actual rule of law, many of the cases will collapse because they are based on illegal detention, torture and abuse — or that American officials could someday be held criminally liable for their mistreatment of detainees.

-- THE NEW YORK TIMES

As currently interpreted the Geneva Conventions only apply to individuals bent on destroying America. Individuals who blow up elementary schools, kidnap children, attack churches and mosques, kill invalids in wheelchairs, plan attacks on skyscrapers in New York, behead journalists, detonate car bombs with children to camouflage their crime, or board jetliners with explosive shoes -- all while wearing mufti or even women's clothing -- these are all considered "freedom fighters" of the most principled kind. They and they alone enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention. As to Americans like Tucker and Menchaca or Israeli Gilad Shalit -- or these fifteen British sailors for that matter, it is a case of "what Geneva Convention?"

-- WRETCHARD

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

-- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

Some lessons are forgotten despite our best efforts and intentions, especially if we allow cynicism to color our view of life and humanity.

-- JACK GRANT

Photograph by Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Cartoon du Jour

Ben Sargent/Universal Press Syndicate

Yet Another Reason To Kill All the Lawyers

Read why here.

Love Your Pets, But Try To Keep It Simple

Kiko and Kimba are fine, but Zephyr (top) is fighting for his life

Kiko and Kimba threw up a couple of weeks ago after splitting a tiny can of wet cat food purchased at Trader Joe's. Wet cat food is a rare bribe . . . er, treat that the Dear Friend & Conscience gives them for being such sweet and semi-obedient fur balls.

Mild concern over their upset tummies turned to a near freak-out when the Menu Foods pet food recall hit the news, but we were relieved to see that the stuff that they ate was not on the lengthy list of the 60 million-plus cans and wet pouches being recalled.

While the cats at Kiko’s House apparently are okay, a lot of other critters haven’t been so fortunate. The toll of dogs and cats who have died of renal failure, are at death’s door or will need expensive therapies if they are to survive because of traces of aminopterin, a rat poisoin, in the products processed by Menu continues to grow.

Hundreds of pets may die as a result, including Zephyr, a cat in British Columbia, and investigators are not ruling out sabotage. (Meanwhile, Menu is now offering to compensate owners for their vet's bills.)

The DF&C and I have fed all kinds of critters over the years – horses, goats, deer, birds, you name it – and our rule of thumb has been to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

That means nothing more than a carrot or sugar cube for horsies and zero table scraps for doggies and kitties, although I admit to slipping Kiko and Kimba a piece of freshly cooked shellfish from time to time.

The DF&C and I read the ingredient and nutrition information labels of the food we give our animal friends, and insofar as cats are concerned, we have stayed with Purina Cat Chow (and Kitten Chow when applicable) for many years. These dry foods are not full of additives, have high protein content and are reasonably priced.

Maybe it’s simply dumb luck and the recall monster will rear its ugly head at Purina some day, but there hasn’t been any reason to switch to other brands, let alone boutique or specialty labels that do lavish TV advertising and charge an arm and a leg.

The fact of the matter is, dogs and cats do not need fancy foods or, in most cases, meat-rich diets. Some, in fact, thrive on vegetarian diets like their owners because they get enough protein. If you have any doubt about this, consult your veterinarian. If your veterinarian doesn't seem to be hip to animal nutrition, find another vet.

You also should be aware that there are different schools of thought on pet foods: The DF&C and I are steadfast believers in kibble over wet food and no red meat, period. Meanwhile, some people advocate just the opposite.

While we're on the subject, there is another problem out there in household pet land: An epidemic of obesity that mirrors the epidemic in the two-legged population. Much of this has to do with lifestyle (lazy owner doesn't exercise lazy dog), but it also is diet driven.

So please, pet lovers, KISS. Okay?

Rudy Giuliani: Hypocrite Be Thy Name?

Allowing that times change and minds occasionally do too, hypocrite is a much overused word in the political lexicon.

But it is difficult to not tar presidential wannabe Rudy Giuliani with that label because of his mad dash from being a darling of gun control advocates to a suck-up to the anti-gun control crowd that dominates the Republican Party.

New York’s tough gun-control laws are a big reason that the Big Apple has gone from being a crime-ridden urban wasteland in the 1980s to a remarkably safe place with one of the lowest big-city murder rates, and Giuliani can take major responsibility for that happening because he tirelessly crusaded for gun control during his two terms as mayor from 1994-2001.

Trouble is, the man who once spoke out forcefully on handgun control at a Washington, D.C., rally (see photo) with Senator Charles Schumer and James Brady, who was shot in the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, is playing to the lowest common Republican denominators in his long shot bid (in my view, anyway) to take over the White House.

Whereas Giuliani once advocated sweeping federal gun-control laws, he now says that should be up to the states.

I have nothing against personal possession of a limited number of firearms in one's castle (ie., a man's home is his castle), but too many states have pitifully weak firearm laws that pretty much allow people to buy and have as many guns as they want, as many kinds of guns as they want, and to pack heat just about anywhere they want.

Worst yet, Giuliani has gone weak in the knees over support of the most sensible of control-control legislation -- an assault weapons ban.

More here.

Photograph by David Scull/The New York Times

5 Candidates to Succeed Alberto Gone-zalez

Kvatch has put up a tip-top list of candidates to succeed Attorney General Alberto Gone-zalez over at Blognonymous. I cast my vote for Mr. Burns.

More here.

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

A crowd gathers for filming of final "Sopranos" scene. More here.

The President has addressed it. The Attorney General's an honorable man. He's a decent man. He should be given a chance to explain and everybody should sort of give him the benefit of the doubt and allow him to explain.

-- RUDY GIULIANI

Alberto Gonzales has to go. I say this with no pleasure -- he's a decent and honorable man -- and without the slightest expectation that his departure will blunt the Democratic assault on the Bush administration over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. In fact, it will probably inflame their blood lust, which is why the president might want to hang on to Gonzales at least through this crisis. That might be tactically wise. But in time, and the sooner the better, Gonzales must resign.

-- CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

At the end of all this is the simple truth that Krauthammer understands -- this was not a battle that the administration needed, and it came at exactly the wrong time. The Department of Justice made matters exponentially worse by changing their stories and unnecessarily damaging the reputations of the attorneys involved. At some point, Gonzales has to have some responsibility for this foot-shooting escapade.

-- CAPTAIN ED MORRISSEY

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against—a club of insiders who seem to think that they’re better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

-- DAVID IGNATIUS

In 1973 the Senate voted to suspend funding for American military operations in Vietnam; the next year, Congress voted to cut off aid to the embattled government in Saigon. Some of today's commentators argue that those votes devastated the Democratic Party in the mid-1970s. But if so, the Democrats had a strange way of showing it. They won the 1974 midterm elections in a landslide. Two years later, Jimmy Carter grabbed the White House. To be sure, Watergate played a major role in those victories. But if the party's efforts to end the war weren't the primary reason for its success, they certainly didn't hurt.

-- PETER BEINART

For John Edwards, the illness [of wife Elizabeth] injects an element of uncertainty into his campaign. And that’s not a plus, because the last thing he needs right now – during this crucial phase, when activists are trying to decide who to work for, when donors are trying to decide where to send money – is the perception that he might not go the distance.

On the fund-raising front, Edwards is already lagging behind Clinton and Obama; it’s hard to see how the news about his spouse will help him close the gap. Democratic donors will undoubtedly sympathize with his personal challenges, but that won’t prevent them from making cold-eyed assessments about their own money. And given the front-loaded primary schedule, clustered around a slew of major states voting on Feb. 5, a candidate probably can’t survive without first having raised a great deal of money.

-- DICK POLMAN

News that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer has returned, this time in a "treatable but incurable" invasion of her bones and one lung, gave me pause yesterday, all the more because she and her husband John firmly rededicated themselves to his campaign for the White House.

I've never believed that John Edwards will be elected president in 2008, for the sad--probably shameful--reason that he's too substantive in his politics and too shiny in his appearance. Edwards' positions ring too sincere, too true, too deeply rooted in solutions. In politics, there's something off putting about that.

-- SHAMANIC

Dogs wag their tails to the right when they see something they want to approach, and to the left when confronted with something they want to back away from, say researchers in Italy. The finding provides another example of how the right and left halves of the brain do different jobs in controlling emotions.

-- Via DEB’S WEB

Photograph by Richard Perry/The New York Times

I Had the Strangest Dream Last Night

Rick Danko (left) and some other guy

. . . in which Rick Danko, the Dear Friend & Conscience and I were standing outside the Sarah Street Grill in the Pennsylvania Poconos as a light snow fell.

Danko was about to go inside to play the second of two sets. There was no soundtrack in my dream, which is unfortunate because Danko had a beautiful voice whether speaking or singing, and sing he did as an inestimable vocalist and harmonizer, as well as a kick-ass bass player, for The Band.

The strange thing about this dream is that it actually happened. February 1999, to be exact.

Although Robbie Robertson got most of the attention (or I should say hogged it), I always thought that Rick was the heart and soul of The Band. It was he who found Big Pink, the pink painted house in Woodstock, New York, where Bob Dylan did some of his finest early writing, and he who provided the powerful bass backdrop no matter the style of music, and The Band had a slew of 'em.

Rick was in bad shape by the time the DF&C and I had that chat. Alcohol and drug abuse had taken its toll. His liver had pretty much packed in and he was so weak that he played most of both sets sitting on a stool.

Rick would leave this mortal coil a few months later. I hope he is doing well wherever he is, and I thank him for stopping by last night.

* * * * *

Come to think of it, maybe I had the dream because of all the airplay a that “The Endless Highway,” a Band tribute album is getting.

Tribute albums are much in vogue, and in the case of this one, reveals that The Band’s repertoire not only holds up well in the hands of folks like Jack Johnson, Lee Ann Womack, Death Cab For Cutie and The Roaches, it positively sparkles.

More on the album here.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

By Leopolis. More here.

Howcum I Still Don't Feel Safe . . .

. . . even though the U.S. spends as much or more on defense as the rest of the planet combined?

In 2005, for example, the U.S. spent $518 billion on the military expenditures, while China spent a measly $81.5 billion.

Just asking.

Photograph by Mario Leko

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

JOHN AND ELIZABETH EDWARDS

So, despite earlier reports, Edwards will not suspend his campaign. Good for him. The diagnosis is not as dire as it seemed only a little time ago, it seems. And if anyone did not know of Elizabeth Edwards' extraordinary character before, they do now. What I saw in this press conference was the reality of family values - not the rhetoric, not the divisiveness, not the politics, just the reality of an actual family dealing with real issues. We all face such issues. Cancer survivors and their families know it all too well. So do those of us who live with HIV, diabetes, Parkinsons and many other diseases that patients can now live with, rather than die from. In this, John Edwards is doing a public service. He was admirably candid about his wife's cancer being treatable, if not curable. That paradigm is increasingly common - and it's affirming to see someone in public life live through it so positively, so admirably and so passionately. She shouldn't give in to it. One key to surviving serious illness is to live positively and candidly while you treat it. With HIV, I learned to repeat to myself a triad that was essential to surviving any serious medical condition: Own it, face it, beat it. That's what the Edwardses did today, and they will help a lot of people through their example.

The campaign should go on, as life goes on. The cancer should neither help nor hurt it. But I will say this: Elizabeth Edwards is a truly remarkable human being. And her marriage is an inspiration.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

As an American Jew, I've long felt fundamentally alienated by the apparently hawkish majority. What I'm finding is that the hawkish majority is no majority at all, but a loud, bullying minority. That the majority position -- negotiations, peaceful foreign policy, etc -- has been painted as borderline heterodox is upsetting, and it's time more attention was paid to widening the perceptions of Jewish public opinion in order to match the reality.

-- EZRA KLEIN

The current House Democratic angst over Iraq seems to have been scripted by Aaron Sorkin. One can almost hear his zippy dialogue, straight out of West Wing, transported this time to Capitol Hill, where the Democratic lawmakers no doubt would be speed-walking down the cavernous corridors, all the while debating in Tracy-Hepburn fashion the tradeoffs of purity versus pragmatism, ends versus means, ideals versus compromise.

But it would appear that the House Democrats are not in the mood for cheeky wit, given the fact that they have already spent most of this week acting the way Democrats tend to act when forced to make a national security decision. They have been speaking with a multiplicity of voices about Iraq ever since President Bush launched his fact-challenged push for war nearly five years ago, and they’re still doing it today – even as they are preparing for their first substantive war vote since taking control of Congress.

-- DICK POLMAN

Unable to get even 50 votes to pass its anti-Iraq war bill through the Democratically-controlled Senate, the Democratically-controlled House has been holding a fires ale of pork. (Mmmmm, roast pork.) Whether you are pro- or con- on the bill itself, this should rankle.

-- VON

If people in New Orleans and environs are feeling depressed at the pace of reconstruction they should take heart from Iraq. Unlike New Orleans, Iraq has not dropped off George Bush’s radar screen and nonetheless things continue to go badly on the reconstruction front.

According to the most recent quarterly report by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, there is precious little to show for the $21 billion Congress put into the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction fund created in 2003. Eighty percent of the money has been paid out. Seventy five million has been spent to rebuild the pipelines crossing the Tigris River at the Fatah pipeline crossing and not one pipeline has made it across. Parsons Corporation was paid $243 million for construction of 150 medical clinics. It completed 20 of the clinics. It received $72 million for construction of a police college in Baghdad that had to be closed because of sewage leaking from the ceiling.

-- CHRISTOPHER R. BRAUCHLI

. . . What’s striking in reading through the Justice Department e-mail messages is that senior people in that agency seem never to have thought about the proper role of politics in their decision-making. They reacted like chickens with their heads cut off when this scandal broke because they could not articulate the differences between a proper political firing and an improper one.

Moreover, they had no coherent sense of honor. Alberto Gonzales apparently never communicated a code of conduct to guide them as they wrestled with various political pressures. That’s a grievous failure of leadership.

-- DAVID BROOKS

By all means let us work diligently toward a society where greenhouse emissions are limited as much as possible. Let’s get the nuclear power industry up and running full bore. Let’s fully fund research into hydrogen alternatives to the internal combustion engine. Where possible, let’s encourage solar, wind, geo-thermal, and other alternative forms of energy (fat lot of good it will do since the savings in emissions would be minimal in the United States). And let’s start a massive educational campaign to inform the public of what each American can be doing to limit their “carbon signature” on the planet.

But at the same time, let’s tell Al Gore and his hysterical friends to put a sock in it. Their moralizing and politicizing the issue not to mention their filthy smears of not only skeptics but anyone who doesn’t buy in to their end of the world scenarios (some of them contradictory) is making the rest of us sick to our stomachs. Dismissing skeptics as shills for the oil and gas industry is outrageous demagoguery and indicates that, like religious zealots, it is impossible to challenge their beliefs in a rational, reasonable manner.

-- RICK MORAN

[Chris] Matthews grilled [Tom] DeLay about passages in his book where he apparently ripped into fellow corrupt Texan Dick Armey, eventually asking the Hammer about describing Armey as “drunk with ambition.” DeLay denied writing that. "I wrote that he was ‘blinded by his ambition." Matthews starts flipping though the book and finds the "drunk with ambition" quote and reads it to Bug Man. And DeLay keeps denying it. Finally, Chris hands the book to Tom and tells him to read it himself. DeLay looks down, pauses, and says "I don’t have my glasses." What a clown. That’s beyond lying. It’s delusional.

-- RYELAND

The Emmy-winning sitcom “Maude” would never even make it onto broadcast TV now. Its bold storylines about race, abortion, feminism and drugs would have the typical 2007 network executive balled up in a corner, cradling old “Touched by an Angel” tapes.

-- JILL VEJNOSKA

Photograph by Jason Tucker for The New York Times

Iraq: Suffer the Little Children

The Beit al Amen Orphanage is Baghdad is a last refuge for many children who have lost their families to sectarian violence or were deeply traumatized by witnessing car bombings and shootings.

But the orphanage, subject of an ITN television documentary earlier this week in the U.K., is due to close on March 30 because of a lack of funds. The man who runs the orphanage says he will take the children into his own home rather than see them on the streets.

You can watch the GuardianFilm documentary online here. And if you, like me, are moved to make a donation, you can do so through one of the following addresses:

The Baghdad Orphanage Fund
c/o The Guardian Newspaper
119 Farringdon Road
London EC1 3ER

The Baghdad Orphanage Fund
c/o ITV Television News
200 Grays Inn road
London WC1X 8XZ

Woman Soldiers: Photo Kerfuffle Update

Suzanne Swift's mother has weighed in on the "controversy" over this photograph of her daughter that accompanied a New York Times Magazine article on how women returning home from the Iraq War have had to struggle with the violence they experienced, sometimes in the form of sexual assaults.

I cross-posted my Kiko's House rant of yesterday regarding feminists who are attacking the photo as being cheesecake and sexually exploitive at The Moderate Voice, where I co-blog.

That post elicited a goodly number of responses, including this one from Suzanne's mother:

"Well, there is a long story behind this picture. Suzanne was threatened with another court martial if she went through with this photo shoot and restricted to base.

"I agree that it is a weird pose for them to use, let alone take in the first place for this type of story. It has nothing to do with feminism for me, it just does not reflect the issues at hand, or does it?

"As a mother, it frustrates me the way people criticize Suzanne for her tattoos. Like girls that have them are asking to be raped. People need to remember that she was wearing her uniform in Iraq covered in sand and dirt.

"Sorry, I was just getting over this stuff then this picture came out and I feel as if I have to defend her all over again."

Yes, the photo does not reflect the issues at hand, and the kerfuffle over it doesn't either while making some self-described feminists seem downright petty.

I cannot stress enough that any blogger is entitled to blog about whatever she chooses, and there are a wide and often engaging variety of subjects at the feminist-centric blogs that I read and include in my blogroll.

But I cannot recall reading about the issues -- and they are damned important ones -- raised in the Times Magazine article at any of these blogs. That said, I am willing to stand corrected if anyone can point me in the right direction. Credit will be given where it's due.

Photograph by Katy Grannan for The New York Times

Cartoon du Jour

An oldie but a goodie from Michael Ramirez/The Los Angeles Times

The Great Unraveling of the Reign of Bush

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

-- George Walker Bush, January 20, 2001

For a while, it was good to be king.

Although he was born into privilege and had the advantages of access and wealth, George Bush had been a mediocrity at everything he did.

As a last resort, his father hired Karl Rove, an up and coming Republican operative, to tutor this smirking son of the oil patch on the nitty gritty of politics. Rove worked his magic, the son was elected governor of Texas and then as had the father himself, president of the United States -- if only by stealing an election.

It was so good to be king that when terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a farm field in western Pennsylvania eight months into his reign, there was a groundswell of support for him not seen in the land since the Pearl Harbor attack. While the younger Bush had play-acted being presidential, he had done nothing of substance since his inauguration, but that didn’t matter. The homeland was under siege and he was given a mandate akin to that granted FDR as America entered World War II.

It has been all downhill from there. And while the Great Unraveling of the Age of Bush should not be surprising when you understand the man, his motives, his handlers and their motives, the slow-motion collapse of his presidency has been extraordinary.

A MATCH MADE IN ROVIAN HEAVEN

While running a big state like Texas certainly was not a cakewalk, George Bush was pretty much unprepared to run the U.S. But in a match made in Rovian heaven, he was surrounded by experienced helpmates such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

These men had three things in common: Enormous egos, a belief that they were God’s chosen leaders, and a worshipful embrace of neoconservatism. They had champed at the bit for eight long years while a most unregal Lothario by the name of William Jefferson Clinton blinded the citizenry to a cowardly foreign policy that had made a once strong America into a global laughingstock. The son of Arkansas trailer trash had accomplished this feat through doing stuff like reforming the welfare system, retiring the federal budget deficit and presiding over an unprecedented economic boom.

Like him or not (and he was reviled by the neocons and longtime Washington insiders alike), Clinton had substance and a keen intellect. The younger Bush, who was and remains notoriously uncurious about his realm and all that is beyond its shores, had neither attribute. He was an empty vessel and the neocons were going to fill it.

Into this empty vessel went the Bush Doctrine and other ingredients from the neocon laboratory. This stew was spiced with the dogma of a Christianist right wing well along on its crusade to tear down the Republican Big Tent, and stirred mightily by Rove, whose modest title of White House deputy chief of staff belied his powerful position as the president’s consigliere.

The Bush Doctrine was nothing less than a war cry with its emphasis on unilateral military pre-emption, overarching global superiority and a commitment to extending American-style democracy – at point of gun, if necessary. Diplomacy was out; bellicosity was the coin of the realm. All that the president’s advisors needed was a war and the 9/11 attacks were the perfect cover under which to start one.

But behind this neocon cum Christianist ascendancy lurked the demon spawn of political self perpetuation – accumulating and keeping power for its own sake – a gross perversion of the notion that power can be perpetuated, as FDR was able to do, through incisive leadership, an abiding respect for American values and by simply doing good.

It was the bad karma (how else to say it?) and certainly not bad luck or lucky Democrats that suffused this ascendancy that would eventually – and I believe inevitably – trigger the Great Unraveling.

THE DEMON SPAWN IS UNLEASHED

Once unleashed, that demon spawn did what demon spawns do. It grew and spread from the Oval Office to the Justice Department to Defense and State -- and eventually insinuated itself into virtually every nook and cranny of the administration.

This contagion can be blamed in particular for the denouement of the neocons’ lust for war – the fundamentally deceitful, wretchedly planned and pitifully executed invasion and occupation of Iraq – a bloodbath that has become a sucking chest wound on the Bush presidency.

The demon spawn reared its ugly head in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, in the stillborn nomination of a mediocrity by the name of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, in turf battles between the CIA, FBI and NSA, in attacks on habeas corpus and the other pillars of American jurisprudence, in the mockery of the separation of powers, in the blizzard of petulant presidential signing statements, in the obsession with secrecy, in the approval of torture and trashing of longstanding international covenants, in the yawning indifference to the environment and the growing gap between rich and poor, as well as in the ongoing U.S. attorney scandal, an undiluted example of politics over policy.

And perhaps most grotesquely, in the near collapse of the systems that care for physically and mentally wounded soldiers when they return to the king's realm from Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, the king and his court, the very people who endlessly exhorted us to support the troops and called traitors the people who opposed the Iraq war, betrayed the troops in battle and again when they returned home.

For a while, it was good to be king. But now George Bush has reaped the whirlwind.

He has abrogated his oath of office. He has failed to make good on any of his promises of significance. He has hastened the end of the long Republican hegemony in Washington. He has brought neoconservatism to its knees. He has lowered the U.S.’s standing in the world. And he has even betrayed a father who saw politics as a way to keep his misanthropic son out of further trouble. What a cruel joke has been played on the American people!

At least it won’t be terribly long until the king’s successor inherits the throne, as well as the god awful mess that George Walker Bush leaves behind when he flees back to the oil patch to await the harsh judgment of history.