Atrios: The Big Money

And Joe Lieberman's war continues:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says that $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

Documents Reveal Secret Talks Between U.S. and Armed Iraqi Resistance

by Tom Hayden

Failures on the battlefield and in the recent American elections are propelling the Bush Administration to consider significant changes in Iraq policy. Having placed the Shiite majority in power, the Administration now wonders if the country is being delivered to Iran. Having fought the Sunni-led insurgency for three years, the Administration wonders if negotiations are the only way to reduce American casualties.

MYDD: Take Your Time, Speaker Pelosi

by Matt Stoller, Fri Nov 24, 2006 at 07:21:30 PM EST

I'm getting quite irritated at the immediate reaction among white male liberal DC kewl kidz (and Maureen Dowd) to discern catty motives on the part of Nancy Pelosi. Digby's noted it before, but it's not stopping. Look at the first two paragraphs in an email that Josh Marshall reprints on Pelosi and the Intelligence Committee from a reader called 'RY'.

Don't assume that there's a strategic logic, however inept, behind the delay in the selection of the Committee Chair. If she knew what to do, she would do it. The problem is: a) She hates Harman; 2)Hastings is blatantly inappropriate (and thus will not be selected, no matter how much the CBC squawks); 3) alternative selections to Harman seem strained.

Revealed: How Food Giants Use 'Dirty Tricks' to Target Children

by Martin Hickman

Big companies stand accused of selling junk food to children behind their parents' backs with a variety of "underhand" tricks, despite claiming only to use responsible marketing methods.

A report yesterday from the consumer organisation Which? found that a dozen multinationals had been using up to 20 different marketing ploys to push unhealthy products. Some companies bypassed parental control by using new technology such as viral marketing campaigns which encourage children to e-mail each other cartoons or spoof adverts with a brand message. Others offered free toys or ran promotional tie-ins with popular children's films.

Pelosi’s Ascendancy in House Puts a Close Liberal Ally in the Spotlight

By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: November 25, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — In a friendship stretching over 30 years and many plane trips to Washington from their neighboring California districts, Representatives Nancy Pelosi and George Miller have become so close that, as colleagues say, they finish each others’ sentences.

So it was not surprising that, when Mrs. Pelosi faced the first test of her role as speaker-elect of the House of Representatives, Mr. Miller was in the background, pushing her to back Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania to replace her as Democratic leader over the more centrist candidate, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who had been her No. 2 for four years.

Can Dr. Evil Save the World?

Posted on Nov 24, 2006

The Pentagon’s favored weaponeer, right, has a proposal to stop global warming—without burning less oil, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of mainstream proposals. And it’s so crazy it just might work. It also might destroy the planet in the process. Interested?

The Next Act: Will the Republicans’ Mid-Term Loss Hurt Chances of a War on Iran?

In a new article for the New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports Vice President Dick Cheney told a White House meeting one month before the mid-term elections that a Democratic victory would have little effect on the administration’s decision to go to war. But plans for a military option were made “far more complicated” by a secret CIA report which has found no conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Hersh joins us from Washington. [rush transcript included]

Digby: A Very Special Turkey

For those of you who, like me, are spending Thanksgiving in the company of rightwingers, here's Rush Limbaugh's version of the pilgrim story to remind you that that your dinner table conversation could actually be worse than it is:

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

Digby: A Win For Moderation

This is what it's come to:

Despite his work for a Christian pregnancy counseling group that opposes contraception, the physician who yesterday began overseeing federal family-planning programs has prescribed birth control for his patients, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman said.

Out of all the doctors in the country they had to pick one for whom it was necessary to issue a statement like that one. I never thought I'd live to see the day when birth control would once again be a subject of controversy. It's quite stunning. After all, I'm old. This one, at least, seemed settled.

Digby: Becoming Goldstein

Perhaps some of you already came across this amazing essay in the American Conservative, but I had missed it. It is written by a lawyer and writer named Austin Bramwell, who was, until recently, a director and trustee for the National Review. It's an impressive analysis of the failure of the conservative movement and one that I guarantee you will find very interesting.

Here's a little excerpt:

The movement’s leaders may be better informed, but they have no clearer idea of what they actually think. What they need is analysis: the skeptical tradition extending from Machiavelli to Hobbes, Hamilton, and Burnham that seeks to understand the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be. Analysis, however, requires intellect, but the movement’s mainstream, perhaps to avoid embarrassment (some mainstream figures favorably compared Bush not just to Ronald Reagan but to Abraham Lincoln), has increasingly ostracized its brightest minds.

Digby: Customer Service

It looks like the big money boyz are starting to get nervous:

The United States ranks worst in welcoming foreign business travelers and tourists, due to bureaucratic headaches and rude immigration officials, a survey showed.

The survey by the Discover America Partnership, a business group from the travel and tourism industries, said the cold welcome for visitors could hurt the US economy.

"The US entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers from visiting the United States -- and damaging America's image abroad," the group said in a statement.

Digby: Shorthand

The other day I was listening to Al Franken and Jonathan Alter chatter about a speech they'd heard President Clinton deliver at a dinner for the 20th anniversary of Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. (This is the speech in which he said "people didn't give Democrats a mandate.They gave us a chance.")

Franken made the interesting observation that in a room filled with journalists he was the only one taking notes --- which explains why there was so little coverage of the event and the speech.

Digby: Hand Off

Atrios links to this post by Robert Reich in which he says that McCain wants higher troop levels in Iraq because it will raise morale. Ok.

But he also says something else that I think is important and have been meaning to discuss:

I think McCain knows Iraq is out of our hands – it’s disintegrating into civil war, and by 2008 will be a bloodbath. He also knows American troops will be withdrawn. The most important political fact he knows is he has to keep a big distance between himself and Bush in order to avoid being tainted by this horrifying failure. Arguing that we need more troops effectively covers his ass. It will allow him to say, “if the President did what I urged him to do, none of this would have happened.”

Digby: Shake Your Floozy Patch

From Missouri:

A Republican-led legislative panel claims in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.

The report from the state House Special Committee on Immigration Reform also claims "liberal social welfare policies" have discouraged Americans from working and encouraged immigrants to cross the border illegally.

Digby: Sweet Neocons

Watching all these neocon rats racing to fling themselves off the sinking Republican ship is an amazing sight to see. On Blitzer's show yesterday they were all over the place, blaming everyone but themselves for the disaster in Iraq.

Ken Adelman is heartbroken to find that the administration is dysfunctional and incompetent. David Frum just wishes the president had followed through on the words David Frum had put in his mouth.

Digby: Toxins

From Newsweek:

Old CW: First woman Speaker will be Rayburn redux.
New CW: Botox bumbler blows first play.

This particular Mean Girlz theme didn't spring from nowhere. It's coming directly from Frank Luntz:

LUNTZ: I always use the line for Nancy Pelosi, "You get one shot at a facelift. If it doesn't work the first time, let it go."

This must have focused grouped well among their target wingnut pigs because, as I previously noted, Queenbee Dowd generously shared this one with the whole world today (before she went off on a sexist rant of her own):

Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and eloquent Republican lawyer who argued the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, was warming up the rabidly conservative Federalist Society crowd for John McCain with a few sexist cracks about Botox.

Dollar Falls as Concerns Grow About Economy

By JEREMY W. PETERS and CARTER DOUGHERTY

Published: November 24, 2006

The dollar dropped sharply against a broad range of major currencies today, and the euro broke through the $1.30 mark for the first time in a year and a half, highlighting concern about the strength of the American economy.

The dollar’s losses came during a thin trading day in which the British pound rose to its strongest value against the dollar in two years. The Japanese yen and the Swiss franc also gained at the dollar’s expense.

Frank Rich: It's Not the Democrats Who Are Divided

The New York Times

Sunday 19 November 2006

Elections may come and go, but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town's conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry.

Right now the capital is entranced by a fictional story line about the Democrats. As this narrative goes, the party's sweep of Congress was more or less an accident. The victory had little to do with the Democrats' actual beliefs and was instead solely the result of President Bush's unpopularity and a cunning backroom stunt by the campaign Machiavellis, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, to enlist a smattering of "conservative" candidates to run in red states. In this retelling of the 2006 election, the signature race took place in Montana, where the victor was a gun-toting farmer with a flattop haircut: i.e., a Democrat in Republican drag. And now the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.

Ballots Favored Dems

By Jim Stratton
The Orlando Sentinel

Wednesday 22 November 2006

Sarasota's "undervotes" were examined in 5 state races.

The group of nearly 18,000 voters that registered no choice in Sarasota's disputed congressional election solidly backed Democratic candidates in all five of Florida's statewide races, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of ballot data shows.

Among these voters, even the weakest Democrat - agriculture commissioner candidate Eric Copeland - outpaced a much-better-known Republican incumbent by 551 votes.

The trend, which continues up the ticket to the race for governor and US Senate, suggests that if votes were truly cast and lost - as Democrat Christine Jennings maintains - they were votes that likely cost her the congressional election.

Paul Krugman: When Votes Disappear

You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real possibility of a highly suspect result. What would we have done if the Republicans had held on to the House by a narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that a combination of vote suppression and defective — or rigged — electronic voting machines made the difference?

Fortunately, it wasn’t a close election. But the fact that our electoral system worked well enough to register an overwhelming Democratic landslide doesn’t mean that things are O.K. There were many problems with voting in this election — and in at least one Congressional race, the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race to the wrong candidate.

Bush’s Strange Vietnam Visit

Posted on Nov 22, 2006

By Joe Conason

What may be remembered someday as one of the strangest moments of George W. Bush’s presidency took place last week in Vietnam, when he chose to mention the American defeat there in the same breath as our failing occupation of Iraq. That comparison is often made by his critics, and often elicits irritated rebuttals from the White House.

Yet now the president himself was explicitly drawing a connection between those misadventures—and drawing a lesson that could only dismay anyone who remembers what really happened during that war in which he so famously avoided serving.

Senate Democrats Revive Demand for Classified Data

By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: November 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Seeking information about detention of terrorism suspects, abuse of detainees and government secrecy, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are reviving dozens of demands for classified documents that until now have been rebuffed or ignored by the Justice Department and other agencies.

“I expect real answers, or we’ll have testimony under oath until we get them,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who will head the committee beginning in January, said in an interview this week. “We’re entitled to know these answers, and in many instances we don’t get them because people are hiding their mistakes. And that’s no excuse.”

NYT Editorial: The Spoils of Defeat

Published: November 24, 2006

The departing Republican majority in Congress is about to leave the nation a memorial to its own shameful history as the grand enabler of record debt and deficits. G.O.P. leaders are preparing to walk away from their most basic constitutional responsibility — passing a budget. Instead of finishing work on government spending bills needed for the next year, they’re reported to be planning nothing more than a cut-and-paste, short-term continuing resolution. That will allow them to run out early from their lame-duck session, leaving the mess to the incoming Democrats in January.

Stopgap resolutions create a budget autopilot that does not allow for shifting conditions and costs in education, housing and other major agencies. Administrators warn that it will cause cuts in school breakfasts and shelter for the poor. There is no need for this angst except that Republican strategists plotting a comeback clearly want to pour sand into the Democrats’ agenda even before they take the gavel.

Gates & the Iran Arms Sales

By Robert Parry
November 23, 2006

In November 1987, as the Reagan administration was still scrambling to contain the Iran-Contra scandal, then-deputy CIA director Robert M. Gates denied that the spy agency had soft-pedaled intelligence about Iran’s support for terrorism to clear the way for secret U.S. arms shipments to the Islamic regime.

“Only one or two analysts believed Iranian support for terrorism was waning,” Gates wrote in articles that appeared in the Washington Post and Foreign Affairs magazine. “And no CIA publication asserted these things.”

Nuclear waste dump faces new roadblocks

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 24, 2:26 PM ET

WASHINGTON - When Congress targeted Nevada as the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground, the state didn't have the political power to say no. Twenty years later, the most ardent foe of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is about to become Senate majority leader. Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's new job, which gives him control over what legislation reaches the Senate floor, could deal a crippling blow to the already stumbling project.

Among Reid's first acts after this month's election was to convene a conference call with home-state reporters to declare Yucca Mountain "dead right now."

An Electronic Canary

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, November 24, 2006; Page A41

Americans can be grateful that Sarasota County is in Florida and not in Montana or Virginia.

There's nothing wrong with Sarasota, a lovely place. But if the voting snafus in the contest for Florida's 13th District had hung up either of this year's two closest Senate races, we still would not know which party had won control of the Senate.

No Thanks to Thanksgiving

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted November 23, 2006.

Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited -- and condoned -- by the very men we idolize as our 'heroic' founding fathers.

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

37 percent of U.S. births out of wedlock

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer
Tue Nov 21, 6:52 PM ET

ATLANTA - Out-of-wedlock births in the United States have climbed to an all-time high, accounting for nearly four in 10 babies born last year, government health officials said Tuesday.

While out-of-wedlock births have long been associated with teen mothers, the teen birth rate actually dropped last year to the lowest level on record. Instead, births among unwed mothers rose most dramatically among women in their 20s.

The Draft: No Solution to Social Inequality

By Steve Gilliard, AlterNet. Posted November 22, 2006.

Progressives are drawn to Charlie Rangel's call for a draft, but a draft only inducts people. Class determines what job they will be assigned once they are in the military and, often, how happy they will be.

"You bet your life," says Charlie Rangel when asked if he's still prepared to reinstate the draft. With the Democratic takeover of the House, the 18-term representative from New York is slated to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee giving him a powerful seat from which to push his legislation.

As recently as August, word that the Marines were calling up their last line of reservists had reignited draft chatter for the first time since Rangel's previous draft push during the run up to the 2004 elections. "This move should serve as a wake-up call to America," said Jon Stoltz, former Army captain in Iraq and head of VoteVets.org, who called it "proof that our military is overextended," and "one of the last steps before resorting to a draft."

Employers who perform background checks hire more black workers

A new study in the current issue of the Journal of Law and Economics finds that employers who choose to perform criminal background checks end up hiring more black workers – especially black men. Employers who systematically check criminal background during the hiring process are 8.4 percentage points more likely to have hired a black applicant into their most recently filled position.

"The results are consistent with the proposition that in the absence of a criminal background check, employers use race to infer past criminal activity, especially employers with a strong stated aversion to hiring ex-offenders," write Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown Public Policy Institute), Steven Raphael (University of California, Berkeley), and Michael A. Stoll (University of California, Los Angeles).

Arianna Huffington: Early Advice for '08 Hopefuls: Beware the Consultants!

So another season of Dancing with the Stars has ended -- but fret not ballroom fans, the Democrats' '08 presidential waltz is already underway.

Performing a deft two-step, John Edwards and Barack Obama have adopted the running-for-president-under-the-guise-of-a-book-tour approach, with Edwards earning extra style points for saying of Obama: "I hope he runs.

David Corn: Democrats and Withdrawal from Iraq: Asking Too Much?

For Democrats, here's the bad news: now that they have won control of Congress, they are expected to not only criticize President Bush's policies in Iraq but to derive a solution to the mess he has created.

On Thursday morning, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with several journalists, including yours truly. In his opening remarks, he outlined his plans. He noted that he will compel senators to work longer hours and dramatically expand the Tuesday-through-Thursday-at-noon work week that has become routine in the Senate. He said he would cut back on recess time. The first bill he intends to introduce as majority leader, he declared, would target sleazy campaign tactics, and he pointed to the misleading robocalls and false campaign literature used by Republicans in the final days of the recent congressional elections. He then turned to Iraq and called for some form of a "phased withdrawal."

Ken Adelman: A Rat Abandons a Ship of Fools

Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006.

By Ken Silverstein.

Sources

“Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush,” was the headline of a front-page Washington Post story yesterday that detailed how former Iraq hawks have broken with the Bush Administration over the war. Exhibit A was Ken Adelman, a onetime Reagan Administration official and “onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust,” who has fallen out with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, and who told the Post that “the President is ultimately responsible” for the “debacle” in Iraq.

Military Documents Hold Tips on Antiwar Activities

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI

Published: November 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that “a church service for peace” would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding “nonviolence training” sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

New Survey: Iraqis Want a Speedy U.S. Exit -- and Back Attacks on Our Forces

By E&P Staff

Published: November 21, 2006 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK Past surveys have hinted at this result, but a new poll in Iraq makes it more stark than ever: the Iraqi people want the U.S. to exit their country. And most Iraqis now approve of attacks on U.S. forces, even though 94% express disapproval of al-Qaeda.

At one time, this was primarily a call by the Sunni minority, but now the Shiites have also come around to this view. The survey by much-respected World Public Opinion (WPO), taken in September, found that 74% of Shiites and 91% of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave within a year. The number of Shiites making this call in Baghdad, where the U.S. may send more troops to bring order, is even higher (80%). In contrast, earlier this year, 57% of this same group backed an "open-ended" U.S. stay.

CACI: Torture in Iraq, Intimidation at Home

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted November 21, 2006.

Dogged by serious allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq, a leading profiteer from the Iraq war engages in intimidation campaigns against journalists in America who seek to expose its practices.

Consider the unique problems faced by the corporate suits at CACI International, a defense contractor whose services have included "coercive" interrogations of prisoners in Iraq -- interrogations most people simply call "torture."

Think about the image problems a major multinational corporation faces after becoming inextricably linked with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, a firm whose employees have contributed to the iconic images of the occupation of Iraq -- the symbols of American cruelty and immorality in an illegal war. What can a company like that possibly do to protect its brand name after contributing to the greatest national disgrace since the My Lai massacre?

Realtors: Home sales fall in 38 states

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
1 hour, 35 minutes ago

Sales of existing homes fell in 38 states during the summer, led by steep declines in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California, as the once-booming housing market showed further signs of a steep slowdown.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales dipped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.27 million units nationwide, down by 12.7 percent from the same period a year ago.

The declines were the largest in once-booming areas of the country. Sales fell by 38 percent in Nevada, 36 percent in Arizona; 34.2 percent in Florida and 28.6 percent in California.

In all, nine states had sales declines in the summer of 20 percent or more compared to the third quarter of 2005.

Send in the Subpoenas

By Ron Suskind

Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page B01

Senate Foreign Relations Committee aides debated last Tuesday whether to call deposed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the hearing table for a public flogging. The decision was no -- at least for now. Later that day, I bumped into the incoming committee chairman, presidential hopeful Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said that while there was "extraordinary malfeasance" born of the Iraq crisis, he was planning to stay clear of all that. "That's looking backward," he said. "I'm in the 'action plan' department."

The Baghdad Billions

First broadcast November 2006

Iraq has become a vast financial black hole.

Since the war began in 2003, the Americans have spent around $30 billion of their money - and at least $20 billion of Iraq's own money - in rebuilding the country. But where has it all gone?

Mark Gregory has followed the money trail from Iraq to Washington via a kebab shop in Jordan.

He discovers that there have been allegations of fraud, mismanagement and corruption on such a gigantic scale that much of the money is now untraceable.

Rep. Frank offers business a 'grand bargain'

Reduced regulations for more job benefits

By Michael Kranish and Ross Kerber, Globe Staff | November 19, 2006

Representative Barney Frank has proposed in a series of meetings with business groups a "grand bargain" with corporate America: Democrats would agree to reduce regulations and support free-trade deals in exchange for businesses agreeing to greater wage increases and job benefits for workers.

Frank, the Newton Democrat who is in line to chair the House Financial Services Committee, has struck a conciliatory posture with financial-industry leaders in recent years. But since the morning after Election Day, he has moved quickly to lay out an ambitious plan to try to end the political stalemate between Republicans and Democrats on broad economic issues.

Molly Ivins: Those unknown unknowns

Creators Syndicate

AUSTIN - There's been so much in print about how Daddy 41's people are back in the saddle that I was terrified when I saw a photo of Dan Quayle among the pack. If they've called back Quayle to lend intellectual heft, we're dead ducks. Fortunately, it was just a file picture of Quayle with the old team.

It does seem that we might be going back to the typical modus operandi of The Family. Poppy Bush has helped Junior out of the Vietnam War, his failures in the oil business and other efforts all of his "adult" life.

Unfortunately for us and for the world, the people from the first Bush administration who initially joined this administration were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Not exactly the most diplomatic, forward-looking, helpful people to be guiding Dubya.

WP Editorial: Reform on Detentions

Democrats will now have the chance to curtail the Bush administration's human rights abuses.

Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page B06

EARLIER THIS fall congressional Democrats made only a token effort to stop passage of deeply flawed Bush administration legislation on the detention, interrogation and trial of "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism. First they hid behind a group of Republican moderates who tried to modify the law's worst aspects; when that resulted in a bad compromise, they gave up serious opposition rather than risk being accused of being weak on terrorism in the run-up to an election. Having won that election, the Democrats now have a second chance to temper the administration's excesses and to insist on accountability for past crimes. It ought to be at the top of their agenda.

Robert Lipsyte, How the Republicans Lost the Garage

Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, How the Republicans Lost the Garage

The 2006 election season ended on November 7 with the crowning of a new Congressional champion, the Democratic Party. Today, less than two weeks later, the NASCAR season ends with the Ford 400 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida and the crowning of a new Nextel Cup champion. In the piece that follows, Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sports columnist (who covered Nascar for years) and author most recently of the striking Young Adult novel, Raiders Night, explains just how curiously linked the two events are.

When I was a youth, I worked for a while in a small, tinker-toy industrial strip in Hayward, California, with skilled young printers who were also fervent racing car enthusiasts. They could offer brilliant interpretations of how our world worked without ever leaving the universe of cars. Lipsyte, one of the best sports writers we've had, has the same skill. Back in September in "Shooting Up on Jock Culture" he explored for Tomdispatch readers the deeper meaning of the steroid scandals. He is now officially this website's sports columnist. Expect a new column every second month. The Super Bowl is, to mix sports metaphors, on deck. Tom

Driving Values
By Robert Lipsyte

1. It's the Car, Stupid

"I hate that term, NASCAR Dads, it's narrow and patronizing, but it's about time Democrats showed some sensitivity to the stock car culture." -- David (Mudcat) Saunders, political consultant.

The Democrats won the Senate and the House because the Republicans lost the garage.

Four years ago, mad political scientists created Nascar Dad to combat Soccer Mom. The result was as epic as Beowulf versus Grendel's Mother. We know how both those battles came out. And now we also know that Nascar Dad, like the great Scandinavian mercenary, began to wonder if he was protecting the right mead hall.

Ohio fundraiser gets 18 years in prison

By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago

TOLEDO, Ohio - A former GOP fundraiser at the center of a scandal-plagued state investment in rare coins that helped Democrats seize power in the midterm elections was sentenced Monday to 18 years in prison.

Tom Noe, a prominent coin dealer accused of taking at least $2 million, was convicted last week of theft, corrupt activity, money laundering, forgery and tampering with records.

Digby: Gleichschaltung

In an unprecedented transparent attempt to severely limit the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech of low-wage Houston janitors and their supporters, a Harris County District Attorney has set an extraordinarily high bond of $888,888 cash for each of the 44 peaceful protestors arrested last night. Houston janitors and their supporters, many of them janitors from other cities, were participating in an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting in the intersection of Travis at Capitol when they were arrested in downtown Houston Thursday night. They were challenging Houston's real estate industry to settle the janitors' strike and agree on a contract that provides the 5,300 janitors in Houston with higher wages and affordable health insurance.

Digby: Shrinking The Kewl Kidz

I have long written about the Washington press corps as a bunch of "Mean Girls," "Kewl Kidz" and the like, often drawing criticism from women who think that I am being sexist by using the terms I use. (I even got a thorough rhetorical thrashing from one of the blogosphere's most famous feminist scolds for using the term "Heathers") Mostly I assume we all "get this" on an instinctive level because it's something we've either observed or experienced in our childhoods and so it is a very quick way to understand the phenomenon. I have thought about writing a long post to explain the social psychology that underlies it and never got around to it.

Digby: Speaking Of Zombies

We've recently been informed that Kissinger has been wandering around the white house like the ghost of Christmas in Cambodia. Until last week the Ford administration was ably represented by the Don and Dick Comedy hour. The Second Coming of Jimmah "Divahn the willowthevoters" Baker more than makes up for the previous shunning of Daddy's boys. But it turns out that with the Iraq Study Group we not only have retread Robert Gates, we also have Ronnie Raygun's top legal consigliere from his earliest days in California politics, former Attorney General Ed Meese, who is emerging from the primordial conservative slime he went back to after Ronnie left office.

Digby: Radical Quacks

I looked at tristero's post yesterday about Bush's stealth appointment of Dr. Eric Keroack and laughed nervously, but I had no idea how totally deranged Keroack really is.

Alternet has some slides from his Powerpoint presentation on the "depletion of Oxytocin" that supposedly afflicts women who have sex with too many different men. (Yes, this freak is going to be paid by you and me to spread this ridiculous swill.)

Digby: TV Democracy

Christy at FDL posted this amazing TDS moment of zen featuring Laura Ingraham saying that because millions of Americans enjoy watching Jack Bauer of "24" it means we have had a national referendum on whether Americans support the beating of terrorism suspects.

This is a very interesting development. It would seem that Ingraham is saying that popular culture can be used as a proper guage of what Americans truly believe.

Zakaria: McCain’s Plan For More Troops ‘Just Willing More American Deaths’

This Morning on ABC, commentator and foreign policy scholar Fareed Zarkaria slammed John McCain’s plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq, saying it “will not work.” Zakaria explained that “we have enough troops” but the Iraqi government won’t let them “go after the militias.”

According to Zakaria, sending more U.S. troops to Iraq in this context is “just willing more American deaths.”

When is a Crime so Great it Shouldn’t be Acknowledged?

by Robert Shetterly

Before the votes were even counted, a strange chorus arose, like toads from the swamp, from every point on the Democratic compass --- so persistent, one might even think it choreographed --- croaking in a dire basso, “Now’s the time to work on fulfilling the Democrats agenda, not the time to hold anyone accountable for the massive corruption or the extraordinary lies that got us into this mess.” Let’s be moderate, let’s be wise, the toads all intoned, let’s don’t disintegrate into partisan bickering about who’s responsible. And, pullleeeease, don’t even utter the word impeachment. No, no, no, let’s repeal the tax cuts for the rich, raise the minimum wage, enact universal health care, raise the mileage on our cars, sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, reduce the debt, fund our schools, fix social security, and work in a bi-partisan way toward an exit strategy from Iraq. All very sensible. Every single one of those things needs to be fought for if we want to have economic and social justice.

Daily Kos: Bush Has Lost The War On Terror

by DarkSyde
Sun Nov 19, 2006 at 07:46:22 AM PST

Henry Kissinger now says it's not possible to win in Iraq:

WaPo -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. ... In a wide ranging interview on BBC television, Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors including Iran if any progress is to be made in the region.

Kissinger is only the latest to accept the reality that this war, judged by many combat experts to be ill-conceived from inception and subsequently bungled to an extraordinary degree, is unwinnable.

Tehran can sit back and watch its tormentors sweat. But the US and Britain must start from diplomatic ground zero

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday November 15, 2006
The Guardian

For axis of evil, read axis of hope. The frantic scrabbling for an exit strategy from Iraq now consuming Washington and London has passed all bounds of irony. Help from Syria and Iran? Surely these were the monsters that George Bush and Tony Blair were going to crush, back in 2003? Surely the purpose of the Iraq adventure was to topple these terrorism-sponsoring, women-suppressing, militia-funding fundamentalists in favour of stability, prosperity and western democracy? Can the exit from Iraq really be through Tehran and Damascus? Was that in the plan?

I remember asking a western intelligence officer in Baghdad, six months after the American invasion, what he would advise the Iranians to do. "Wait," he said with a smile. Iran has done just that. If I were Tehran I would still wait. I would sit back, fold my arms and watch my tormentors sweat. I would watch the panic in Washington and London as body bags pile up, generals mutter mutiny, alliances fall apart and electors cut and run.

NYT Editorial: A Bad Choice for Social Security

Published: November 19, 2006

A day after the midterm elections, President Bush announced that he had deputized Henry Paulson Jr., the secretary of the Treasury, to work with the new Congress on reforming Social Security. Mr. Paulson would bring formidable deal-making skills to the task, honed over years as a top investment banker. In an interview with The Times after the announcement, he stressed the importance of bipartisanship. “We were going to have to build a consensus, no matter who won the election,” he said.

But then Mr. Bush nominated Andrew Biggs, a zealous advocate of privatizing Social Security, to a six-year term as the next deputy commissioner of Social Security. The nomination puts Mr. Paulson in a tough spot, raising questions about whether Mr. Bush really wants to build a consensus for Social Security reform.

Big Conference on Warming Ends, Achieving Modest Results

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: November 18, 2006

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 17 — The yearly United Nations conference on climate change ended Friday with only modest results after delegates failed to establish a timetable for future cuts on pollution linked to global warming.

Despite nearly two weeks of meetings, which drew 6,000 participants to Nairobi from around the world, the delegates could not agree on a number of issues, especially how to move beyond the Kyoto Protocol, which requires cuts in emissions by most industrialized countries but expires in 2012.