Leadership Wanting on Iran/Iraq

IRAN and RUSSIA

Last spring, the United States called on all countries to stop all arms exports to Iran. Yet, the first of 29 Tor-M1 systems in a $700m deal have been delivered to Iran by Moscow. Hugh Hewitt points out the mixed messages being sent by Russia to Iran:

Iran must conclude that if Russia is willing to sell it the weapons necessary to defend nuclear facilities, it cannot really be intending to force the halt of construction on those facilities.

How long should Russia be allowed a "most favored nation" status in the UN? Former Senator John Edwards co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations task force examining U.S.-Russian relations with Jack Kemp last winter. When asked by Newsweek last March whether or not he felt that the Russians have been helpful on Iran, he replied:

If I were going to choose a single test for our relationship with Russia, Iran is the test. We're united with the Europeans on this, so it really matters what Russia does in the Security Council. If ultimately the Iranians reject what we're demanding—us and the Russians—then we also should be saying to the Russians: "You should stop this Bushehr project because you can't continue to help them develop a nuclear facility while they're obviously in the process of trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Photo: Bushehr - 400 km south of Tehran




Libertarian writer Bernie Quigley of Free Market News believes that ideas like NATO expansion with nuclear potential into "Holy Roman Empire territory when Russia was perceived to be weak" was 'a mistake of historic proportions' by the best foreign policy minds" and continues proving to be so. [see foreign policy minds who disapproved] Mr. Quigley says:

Its strongest proponent was Vice President Al Gore. But the greatest danger of One Size Fits All Federalism is what we are seeing today in the Middle East; the smallest and quirkiest of well-funded political tribes can conjure influence and commandeer the will of the entire 300,266,521 of us, as they have in Iraq.

Here we are - millions upon millions of citizens, an alleged democracy - beholden to the whims of any one tribe at any given moment. How could we have allowed this to have happened to ourselves - to our democracy?

William Hartung, Senior Research Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School, said this in May, 1998:

Senators need to know that voting for NATO expansion could have serious political consequences down the road, once the public understands the full risks and costs involved.

With our foreign policy mistakes coming home to roost in the embers of a failed Iraq and in the light of Russia's bold hypocrisy and betrayal on Iran, will it now be time for the leaders who supported NATO expansion to be held accountable for the reality of the results of such a policy?

_________________


IRAQ

"He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."

Sun Tzu
The Art of War

Consider this statement from Senator John Edwards from May, 2003:

One of the root causes of both the unease in the Middle East and terrorism is so many people in the Arab world live lives of hopelessness and despair. We have to make it clear that we care about addressing those root causes.... the political and economic stagnation in the Middle East and in the Arab world in general is astounding.

We can address the state sponsorship of terrorism in Iran, what Syria’s doing, Iraq, all of those issues, in a discreet way, one by one. But at the end of the day, unless over the long term we’re going to address the root causes of terrorism, we’re not going to get rid of the problem....the world needs to see America as a country that will reach out to them, that cares what they have to say, that cares about their problems, and that will work with them and the international community, including the United Nations, to solve the problems that exist in this world.

It is the only way that we’re going to be successful, number one. And it is the most effective way to keep the American people safe.

If keeping America safe is our goal in foreign policy, and if the solution is tied to addressing the hopelessness, despair, political injustice and economic stagnation for so many in the Arab world, then we have failed - and miserably so. In Iraq, over a hundred thousand American troops have fought, risked their lives, and died on a lost-track mission with no clearly delineated goals at the whim of the head of one tribal faction or another (depending on what day it is) in a place where our presence has exacerbated hopelessness, despair, injustice, extremism, and hatred. In short, it is an insurance policy for the perpetuation of terrorism.

Well over three years ago retired Marine General Anthony Zinni said "There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," we're in danger of failing."

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told the Army Times this week that the U.S. would have to slash combat forces in Iraq to 10 brigades by Christmas to keep the Army from breaking. Hope is not a strategy, but it should be a goal. Despair is not a method, but it is a real result of a misguided foreign policy that, as of tomorrow, will be a war that is longer than World War II, but with disastrous results. Generals are tap dancing around the fact that we need to leave Iraq to the Iraqis to not only let them decide their own fate, but also to remove our Military from the brink of disaster.

Recruiters hoping to appeal to military service in our society will never succeed while this blunder of major proportions continues in Iraq. A draft, if indeed reactivated, will have our children and their parents in the streets demanding for this insanity in Iraq to end. We'd be ignorant and remiss not to expect that reaction - take one look at the public opinion of this war. They all know it, too - the ones who generate the debate about the draft. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu advised

"Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys.
Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!"

What kind of father would mislead his children - telling them to expect roses and cheers - and then set them on a dangerous path with no clear plan for victory?

Happy Thanksgiving

My Brightest Days

My God, the spring of all my joys,
The life of my delights,
The glory of my brightest days,
And comfort of my nights.

In darkest shades if He appears,
My dawning is begun,
He is my soul's sweet morning star,
And He's my rising sun.



Sacred Harp 546
O.A. Parris, 1959
Isaac Watts,1707

I recommend Georgia10's post from today at Daily Kos on hunger and homeslessness:
Seeing the Shadows

You can read my response, which is related to today's Catholic feast of Pope St Clement I: The Shadow Is You and Me

Mainstream Wrongly Relying on Right Sources

From the Daou Report to Digby to Eric Boehlert to Media Matters To Glenn Greenwald to A Tiny Revolution, everyone's talking about the intellectual bankruptcy of the right wing and the mainstream media that, for some reason beyond reason, still allow the proven-idiot wingers to pump their news machinery.

A Tribute to JFK

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963

China HIV Cases Up by 30%

China HIV Cases Up Nearly 30 Percent

BEIJING (Reuters) - The number of reported HIV/AIDS cases in China has grown by nearly 30 per cent this year, state media said on Wednesday, warning the virus seemed to be spreading from high-risk groups to the general public. [..]

[..] As of October 31, 12,464 people have died in China as a result of illnesses associated with the HIV virus, Hao Yang, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Disease Control Bureau, said yesterday.

Hao added that virus appeared to be spreading from so-called high-risk groups to the general public.

Drug abuse accounted for 37 per cent of the cases reported in the first 10 months of the year, while unsafe sexual contact had caused 28 per cent, Hao noted, adding that these two activities had caused most of the infections. Before 2002, only 10 per cent of all infections were caused by sexual contact. [Reuters/Alertnet]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu's comments about the HIV/AIDS epidemic:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been asked about comments made by other religious figures that AIDS is "God's punishment" for sexual promiscuity or drug use. His response? An angry rebuttal: "If that were the kind of God we were told to worship, I would reject that God. My God is not a God who is so sadistic; why punish an innocent child?"
AIDS, he said is the new apartheid, the new enemy. "Let's stop playing around and roll up our sleeves and invoke the spirit that fought apartheid," he said. "We did it with apartheid, we can repeat it with AIDS."

In India, spiritual leaders, including Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Bishop Lawrence Pius Dorai Raj, have recently come together to fight HIV/AIDS, stressing the need for preventive care for a disease that has hit five million Indians. They discussed HIV/AIDS care, giving the much-needed prophetic voice to the stigma and discrimination related to the disease. Faith-based bodies have "historically provided a vital network for community based work". The voluntary Health, Education and Rural Development Society in India [known as "Vherds"] stresses that these groups should play the key role in "compassionate care" for HIV/AIDS infected.

A Prayer For AIDS Awareness

Weary from anger, fear and confusion
Wailing at the loss of audacious beauty -
The souls stricken with AIDS
I search.

In my risings, I search for the answers
Buried deep in the cold earth.
Why has become as useless
As battling the winds.

Hope scurries under my feet
She is present, but fleeting.
I trace her with my eyes
I do not want to lose sight.

I lay down
And beseech You
Spread over me Your canopy of peace
So I may rest and find wholeness in Your shards

I lay down
And look above
Where the memories have formed
A canopy embroidered as finely as the stars
I am renewed and will continue to ask You
Spread over us Your canopy of peace.


A prayer by Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Atlanta, Ga.

Bush 41 Defends Son Angrily at Abu Dhabi Conference

I feel badly for former President George H.W. Bush. As a parent, it certainly would not be easy to hear the kind of criticism that he heard about his son George W. at a leadership conference in Abu Dhabi. [ [Raw Story] I would imagine it would only be natural for Bush 41 to defend hisson, but the way in which he defended his son likely was not convincing to those global business leaders who voiced their concerns. Insulting current and future global business partners, calling them "nuts" over their real concerns that could have been addressed with reason isn't good for business or politics, plain and simple.

What happens when reasoning cannot work because there is no way of rationalizing what has happened? Is that why the elder Bush got so upset - because there was nothing else for him to have done or said? Why did Bush 41 decide to walk away from capitalism-in-globalization as if it was a sinful and greedy concept when he said to one audience member concerned that globalization was front-loaded to serve American interests:

"To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."

If I didn't know better, I'd say that Bush 41 seems ashamed to admit he's a staunch capitalist. What sense do we make of capitalism when we're not looking out for Numero Uno? Let's face it, his son's administration is far - about as far as you can get - from being identified as any bleeding heart socialists.

Bush 41 further insulated what most people already view as his son's secretive, non-transparent administration when he refused to answer questions because reporters were present.

Bush said the presence of reporters in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice, or, for that matter, what policies the bipartisan Baker Commission ought to urge the president to follow in Iraq.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do — tell you what advice I give my son — that would then be flashed all over the world,"

Bush said. "If it happened to deviate one iota, one little inch, from what the president's doing or thinks he ought to be doing, it would be terrible. It'd bring great anxiety not only to him but to his supporters."

Lieberman's New Communications Man Hates Bloggers

From Raw Story:

At his blog, Bull Moose, Wittmann has accused liberal and Democratic critics in the blogosphere of comprising "a left wing Cult of Bush Hatred."

"Because in the left wing universe, one must oppose everything the President supports," Wittmann wrote in February.

If a 31% presidential approval rating means anything, I guess that (fake Democrat) Senator Joe Lieberman's new communications director Marshall Wittmann must believe that today's booming majority of Americans is nothing more than a "big old left wing cult of Bush hatred." Wouldn't that make sense to you?

I don't hate President Bush. But I do hate hypocrisy. There's just no room for hypocrisy in today's politics. Worse, a communications director for any modern politician who starts out taking jabs at today's political bloggers at a time when most politicians are courting their favor has to be certifiably insane if they think they're doing their boss any favors.

Bush Gets An "F" For Moral Leadership on Sudan

Chad's falling off a cliff - and it's not a man I'm talking about. It's a nation. I'd wager that most people would have trouble finding Chad on the map of the world, but if there's one thing we surely have in common with the people who live in the African nation, it's that we are human beings. Even though you may live worlds apart, you can enter a young man's world at the point where you both understand what hatred means. Imagine your neighbors being hunted down day and night by people who want to kill you. When the innocent - the helpless and hopeless - lose faith in their fellow man to help them, there is little option but to fall victim to hatred, extremism, and violence.

We all can avoid this from happening if we want - if we will work together. If Chad collapses into civil war for years to come, there will be millions more deaths in surrounding nations. This kind of hatred and chaos has an easy way of spreading if it goes unchecked. As much and as hard as General Colin Powell tried when he was our Secretary of State, our White House either could not or would not act as a moral leader on behalf of people in this world who have no voice and are no better off than wild hunted animals under constant threat from the janjaweed in places like the Sudan-Darfur/Chad border region.

Two years after declaring a genocide in the region, the Bush administration is still only relying upon unsuccessful economic sanctions and has recently sent the new special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, on a dog-'n-pony trip to Sudan, where he met - low-key - with government officials and visit war-torn Darfur who have long refused to allow 20,000 U.N. troops to replace a poorly funded, ill-equipped African Union force of 7,000.

This is not moral leadership. The whole world's watching. People are dying in front of our eyes. We can delicately tap dance around the Sudanese govenment only for so long before the tap dance is seen as the greatest sin we could all ever have committed together.

Nichlas Kristof has a recommendation for those who aren't sure what they can do:

The most common question I get from readers about Darfur is: What can I do? The simplest answer is to write or call the White House and members of Congress. (See how your representative does on the issue at www.darfurscores.org). Imagine if Mr. Bush had made Darfur an important issue at the Asian summit meeting last week, if he had returned via Cairo for a meeting with Arab leaders, if he had dispatched Condi Rice to Chad to shore it up.

Beyond pushing our own government, we can write the embassies of countries like France and Egypt that could play especially crucial roles. The same is true of China, which provides Sudan the guns used to shoot children like Ismail. We in the news business, including Arab and European television networks, could use a few pokes to appreciate that genocide is newsworthy.

Related sites [for NYT Select subscribers]

NYT On the Ground
Darfur Videos
Kristof Columns

You can see, from the very latest news, that the U.S. is still not presenting a strong moral voice to stop this genocide.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he expected Sudan's government to respond within two days on outstanding issues of an agreement signed last week that would allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur. [..]

[..]The United States has said it is prepared to move to a "Plan B" for dealing with Sudan if no agreement is reached by Jan. 1, but has yet to specify what that would entail.

"We need to put a time limit on where this is going," presidential envoy Andrew Natsios said Monday, declining to describe what consequences Sudan would face if the deadline was not met. "Making threats is not a wise thing to do."
[AP]

Making threats is "not a wise thing to do"?

Boy, I wish Bush had believed in that theory during the lead-up to the insanely unjust Iraq War. The way I see it, this President makes threats when they're worth it to his political advantage and when we look to him for clear moral leadership in the world, all of a sudden it's not good to appear threatening.

This Olbermann Video Should Go Down in History

Keith Olbermann has made a statement on his MSNBC show that should go down in history as a defining moment when the public not only felt great dissatisfaction with a misguided, unjust, and failed war, but began to scream for the President conducting the war to take concrete steps to end the insanity immediately - before one more troop dies.

Watch it.





From YouTube

Muhammad Yunus on Jon Stewart's Daily Show

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, is one of my favorite public figures. He's a delightful, wise, and compassionate entrepreneur. In case you missed him on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last week, I found a video at YouTube. All people have the capacity for enormous creativity - even beggars. Yunus provides small loans to some of the poorest people in this world through microfinancing. Out of 7 million Granmeen bank microcredit loans, 97% of these loans have gone to poor women, many of them farmers in developing nations. In doing so, Yunus changes their lives for the better and shakes up the powers that be in the developing world. 80% of farmers in Africa are women and they aren't getting access to markets because they are women. To my way of thinking, Dr. Muhammad Yunus' idea is certainly a better idea than bombing other people's homelands in order to "bring them democracy."





I wrote a related post last September from the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative meeting. See CGI: Senator Clinton's Panel on Women and the Power of Economic Opportunity, where Citicorp's Ajay Banga suggested that, to build on Muhammad Yunus' new theory, large corporations can, in the future, show social responsibility by assisting smaller financial institutions to secure loans to enable them to facilitate microfinancing.

Hear NPR interview from November 21, 2006: Nobel-Prize Winner on the Power of Microcredit
Hear NPR story with Michelle Norris October 13, 2006

O, Mr. McCain - How Soon We Change

If there is one fact that has been evidenced by the need for the Baker/Hamilton-led Iraq Survey group, it is that for the first three years of the Iraq war, President Bush has failed to employ a strategy of diplomacy that would have included speaking with all nations to secure a level of international cooperation required to gain us an advantage in the overall war on terror. From the start of the Iraq war, Senator John McCain of Arizona has not been as strongly forthcoming on Bush's leadership shortcomings as we would expect a leader of honesty, strength and conviction should be.

It was just a little over two years ago at the RNC convention that Senator McCain heaped such unrealistic and undue praise upon Bush, saying:

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war...[Democrats] emphasize that military action alone won't protect us, that this war has many fronts: in courts, financial institutions, in the shadowy world of intelligence, and in diplomacy. [..] We agree. [..] That is what the president believes. That is what the president believes. And thanks to his efforts, we have received valuable assistance from many good friends around the globe..[...] Our president will work with all nations willing to help us defeat this scourge that afflicts us all. [...]And while this war has many components, we can't make victory on the battlefield harder to achieve so that our diplomacy is easier to conduct. This is not just an expression of strength. It is a measure of our wisdom. That's why I commend to my country the re-election of President Bush, and the...and the steady, experienced, public-spirited man who serves as our vice president, Dick Cheney.

Today on ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Senator McCain said that Iraq, on its present course - long and stubbornly held and defended by the Commander in Chief - is "doomed to failure."

This quote Senator McCain is in regard to our troops:

"They're fighting and dying for a failed policy."

It's getting closer to 2008. I'm sure that Senator McCain would like you to totally blank out what he said just over two years ago when we all could see that the Iraq policy was on the Nowhere Road.

How soon we change - the fickle - the ambitious.

Unless we're not supposed to take him at his word, it appears that Senator McCain had some horrific intuition in 2004 about what constitutes good, trustworthy, and solid national leadership. Look at the kind of leadership that he so fully supported in his public RNC Convention speech when he so strongly recommended Bush for four more years.

"I’m not sure that it’s turned into a civil war."

Senator John McCain on Iraq, Meet the Press, August 20, 2006

Either he couldn't be honest with us about the obvious shortcomings of the Bush policy on Iraq in 2004 or he honestly thought that the Bush leadership of the Iraq war was solid and worthy of his trust.

Either way, come 2008, Americans will want an honest president who would surely know poor leadership and immediately call it out when he (or she) sees it. Senator McCain loses on both ends of this spectrum.

Consider what I wrote on September 1, 2004:

I have not lost hope, but I've lost faith and trust in the Bush administration. I can't look, with realistic hope, to the future and imagine this leader, GW Bush, forming the strength-in-alliance necessary to defeat the terror that is stalking not only our nation, but the world. Some of the world's leaders are not acting in their own nation's behalf by joining in this fight, and while John McCain said we have every right to expect they should, GW Bush (who should be the one to set the best example for the world) has never found a way to convince world leaders to trust him.

I don't trust George W. Bush as our Commander-in-Chief. I believe he's an ignorant fellow who's in way over his head and that frightens me and by God, it should frighten you.

The question for 2008: Who will make us proud again?

The 2006 elections proved that Americans can no longer accept gray areas or hedging and equivocation on Iraq. Senator McCain has been guilty of the kind of willful perversion of reality that has driven clear-thinking citizens to vote for anyone other than Republicans. Too many times we've heard McCain refusing to call out the Bush administration on its dangerous incompetence. Yet, the closer we get to 2008, the more he backs away from his own public statements about supporting President Bush. McCain spoke highly of his trust in Bush's leadership on Iraq at the 2004 RNC convention, yet on August 20, 2006,

"It’s never been the right strategy as far as I’m concerned, since the beginning when I came back from my first trip to Iraq after every military person, including the British, told me that we didn’t have sufficient troops to control the situation."

Senator McCain, NBC Meet the Press, August 20, 2006

*yet he publicly upheld and praised the Bush strategy at the RNC convention almost two years after the war had begun.

he told NBC's David Gregory that he had anticipated many problems from the get-go because of the insufficient number of troops in Iraq. Why didn't he say so in 2004 when we all had a chance for different leadership? Because it would have come from a Democratic leader. In rational essence. that has made McCain a rubber stamp on the miserably failed Bush Iraq policy, even as his lips speak other words.

Hiding behind flowery rhetoric in his RNC Convention speech, a cleverly partisan Senator McCain gave Bush political power to perpetuate failure in Iraq. McCain should be made sorry that he ever sucked up to Bush. The right Democratic candidate in 2008 will chew Senator McCain up on this point in the 2008 presidential debates, providing that Senator McCain makes it that far. He could wind up humiliated mincemeat if the right Democrat knows how to deftly wield the political grinder.

My Son's Eagle Scout Project

In my town there's a lovely park with a lake where Canadian Geese gather by the hundreds at this time of year. Soon, as the November winds grow chilly and the days get shorter, they'll be heading further south.









The Eagle Project at Veterans Memorial Park at Gillie Lake

The project took place at Veterans Memorial Park at Gillie Lake. Many people who grew up in the area will remember it as Gillie Lake...a long time local watering hole. The 90 acre park’s center is a manmade lake stocked with sunfish and largemouth bass.


In the park there's an old one-room schoolhouse (Schoolhouse #1) that used to be one of the main public schoolhouses for area children in the area. It was moved here carefully from its original location and it's in the process of being restored. Today, it looks much better than the condition it was in when it came in on the flatbed truck.


A regular visitor to the park will now see a new sight when they come to look at old Schoolhouse #1. There are benches and new burning bush plantings and they were planned by my son, who chose to make the improvements and additions to the park as his Eagle Scout project.

My son has many people and organizations to thank for the help and advice he got along the way. Our village mayor Ed Fletcher, our town parks supervisor Tom Kehoskie, Mr. Weinberger and the VFW for their contributions, the Scouts and adult leaders without whom my son could never have completed his project, the lovely Red Oak Nursery who donated the plantings, and everyone who participated and attended the fundraising car wash last August.
Red Oak Nursery, Camillus, N.Y.


Below are photos taken on the day of the project.

Mitt Romney Will Have a 2008 Friend in Clear Channel

Rochester Turning reminds us how Italy's richest man Silvio Berlusconi got himself elected. Now it's Mitt Romney's turn to try it in the United States.

A comment from someone named James at Rochester Turning:

Clearchannel just recently went up for auction. Mitt Romney's Bain Capital bought it along with Thomas H Lee Partners, but I'm not sure who owns them. The rumor on the Street was that there might be regulatory problems because the firms own positions in other media companies, but I'm not sure which ones. Article is here and Wikipedia for Bain Capital is here.

Chris Bowers has more. He says:

Mitt Romney buys a media empire. I can't argue with what will probably be an effective strategy, but I can fear for American Democracy.

Should we be prepared for All Mitt all the time?

The blogger known as grayslady says she thinks the story's not really that much of a story, claiming that Romney fully divested himself of his shares in Bain. Says "grayslady":

I'm not suggesting that Lee will try to influence the broadcasting, especially since the venture capital companies, Lee and Bain, will not be putting in their own management team, as they often do in a buyout. Since the Mays are part of the purchase group I anticipate no change in Clear Channel's policies.

Many Rivers To Cross

I found one of my favorite songs on YouTube today.




Many Rivers To Cross
Jimmy Cliff

Too Funny Not to Post

Wal Mart HQ Unfairly Smears John Edwards

Hey, Wal Mart - Apologize for Swift-Boating
Senator John Edwards!


Wal Mart is wrong here. Simply wrong for what they have done. They need to apologize and clarify a story they released to the press that seems to have been specifically engineered to unfairly damage the former Senator and VP candidate's reputation.

Dave Johnson: Wal-Mart Engineers a Smear of Edwards

Daily Kos: Who Should You Believe, Wal-Mart or John Edwards?

When I see a major corporation trying to take the heat off themselves by creating a false impression about a popular citizen-leader who is speaking out against their unjust policies, I have to strike that corporation off my list of businesses with which I choose to deal.

So, it's Goodbye, Wal Mart for me. The way I see it, they've shot themselves in the foot by deliberately, and with harmful intent, making a stupid and false attack on a leader that millions of Americans greatly admire.

How interesting that the story came out the same day that Senator Edwards participated in a nationwide public conference call in opposition to Walmart's policies toward its employees. Senator Edwards was active in his pursuit of fairness for all Americans who work for Wal Mart. Edwards has obviously been targeted as an enemy of Wal Mart for having been active in the Wake-Up Walmart campaign and tour. This kind of retribution looks very, very bad for Wal Mart, a corporation that boats a little yellow smiley face while stabbing an honest man in the back for merely questioning their policies.

Imagine if John Edwards had been a Republican in this situation (or just another spongy and Corporate-compliant hypocrite like so many of our "leaders" today). Imagine this was a "leader" who was perfectly willing to look the other way as Wal Mart failed to pay employees enough to support a family, forced those employees to work off-the-clock, and failed to cover over 775,000 employees for healthcare, (1 out of 6 Wal Mart employees have no health care coverage at all). We never would have heard a word about this so-called incident. Wal Mart would have not even worried about a need to drum up a story that raised all these false impressions. The problem Wal Mart has with John Edwards is that he possesses the character of a true leader with real moral conviction about defending justice for the American worker.

What's next? Is Wal Mart going to start a rumor about me in my own community when I write to my local newspaper about my concerns regarding the economic justice they deny to their employees every day? What scum - truly. What scum has come out of the Wal Mart headquarters today. (Do I sound disgusted?)

Whether you like John Edwards or not, anyone willing to fall into the trap on this Wal Mart swift boat story is saying that they are perfectly willing to go the way of Senator John Kerry's excruciating 2004 electoral loss. Wal Mart is acting like one of those 527 groups who attacked Senator Kerry in swift boat ads back in 2004 - for which Kerry never supplied adequate self-defense or comeback. It was painful to see his campaign falter when we knew he was a brave defender of our nation and its troops during the questionable Vietnam conflict.

Regardless of what you politically think of John Edwards, think about who is attacking him and why they are doing so. If you think Wal Mart has a long way to go to provide economic justice to its employees and if you understand how Wal Mart has made it own unique and terrible contribution to poverty in this country, then we should remember to fight back instead of believing Wal Mart over a citizen-Democrat named John Edwards.

John Edwards does not intend to destroy Wal Mart. He is appealing to them to treat their workers more fairly. He did not deserve this attack upon his character. It was based upon innuendo and what I view as a deliberate misleading.

Wal Mart's swiftboat story is akin to a 527-style political campaign ad. It was started by a corporation's headquarters - with free advertisement by a malleable press looking to stoke controversy. As we approach 2008, I see this as a dangerous situation for any political leader who has the guts to tell the big corporations that they're wrong.

What are we going to do about it? I'm taking Wal Mart off my Christmas-shopping map. (And I'm one of those people who says "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays.")

A commenter at Huffington Post named "laughingalltheway" who, in my view, is deliberately acting publicly in concert with the Wal Mart headquarter's smear campaign against John Edwards asked:

Does anyone think that the staff member got this for Edwards on his own initiative?

I replied:

First, get your facts straight. It wasn't even the staff member. It was a citizen that was classified as a "volunteer." It comes to me as no shock that a person who wants to do something nice for a leader he respects might get overzealous and think he can throw the leader's name around (without the leader's knowledge or consent). That doesn't make the leader himself culpable or involved in any way. To assume so is REALLY is stretch.

You fell for Wal Mart's attempt to suck you in and believe that Sen. Edwards went shopping at Wal Mart vicariously through another person. If Edwards was telepathic (like that other John Edward), he may have known what was happening. But he didn't.

So let's not turn this into something it's not.

Wal Mart had best beware. I'm a citizen in New York State who just witnessed the overwhelming victory of Eliot Spitzer's campaign for Governor. He won because he was a champion - bold, fair, tenacious and courageous, against any corporation who thought they were so well-protected by corrupt government that they could not be held responsible for unfair practices. I don't see Senator Edwards' mission for justice as any different. The public greatly respects leaders who demand the kind of justice and fairness that is made manifest by food on their table, a college education for those who desire it, and regular trips for doctor's and dental check-ups for themselves and their kids as a rule rather than a miraculous exception.

* Go here to see a leter I wrote to radio show host Ed Schultz. On his Friday show, he played right into Wal Mart's version of the story and all of its false impressions. Wow. What a disappointment Mr. Schultz is on this issue.

The bottom line is this: Wal-Mart tried to smear one of its fiercest critics.

____________________

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 24, 2006 - ONE FULL WEEK AFTER THE STORY WAS DEBUNKED:

A website called Morningstar is not only perpetuating a myth that one Google click could have told them was already debunked a full week ago, but they're asking othes to spread the disinformation. Why would they do something like that? It surely doesn't say much for their credibility!

O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen

"O Mary Don't You Weep"
Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band

John Edwards A Guest on Daily Show and Letterman

Elizabeth Edwards has sent an email to members of the online community at the One America Committee to remind them that not only does her husband, former Senator John Edwards, have a new book for you to read, but that he will be a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS this Friday night.

Because I am really proud of what John has done in his new book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives, I want everyone to hear about the book and to read it. You'll get a chance to hear about it when John appears on The Late Show with David Letterman this Friday.

Home comes out in bookstores today, and all his proceeds from the sale of the book will be going to charity. He has already made a donation to Habitat for Humanity, which is helping to build new homes and new life stories for families in North Carolina and on the Gulf Coast. John got the idea for the book during his 2004 presidential campaign after he visited his first childhood home in Seneca, South Carolina. When the little wooden house was later featured in a TV ad for his campaign, people everywhere stopped him to share their powerful memories of home.

No matter where we lived -- or, in my case, how many times we moved -- home has the same place in almost everyone’s heart: a place where we wanted to be or where we felt most secure. It is where -- through good times and bad -- we grew the wings that allowed us to be the adults we are today. Just hearing the word "home" triggers memories of family stories, learning right from wrong, and building the confidence to someday step out into the larger world. And John's book captures this and captures too the varieties of ways we continue to carry our homes with us as adults in sixty personal essays and pictures of childhood homes. About half are from well-known people like Tommy Franks, John Glenn, Sugar Ray Leonard and Rick Warren. The other half are from less well-known people that we discovered right here in our online community...

*An exerpt from the email sent by Elizabeth Edwards

An excerpt from the book Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives by Senator Edwards can be read here.

Also, don't miss Senator Edwards on Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central tonight.

Reid Remains Senate Majority Leader

New leadership roles in the 110th Senate:

Senator Patty Murray of Washington is new Conference secretary.

Chuck Schumer of New York is vice chairman of the caucus as well as retaining his seat as DSCC chair.

Harry Reid will retain the position of Senate Majority leader, which means that Senator Hillary won't be taking it, which means that Senator Hillary has most likely decided to run for President, which really will come as no surprise to most of us.

The Hill is reporting that Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) will move up from Democratic conference secretary to succeed Sen. Clinton as head of the Democratic Steering Committee. They term the move as Hillary "clearing the deck" for a 2008 run.


Kos has posted a listing of who's taking the new seats.

My Sunday Comment - Disgusted by Today's Meet The Press

As we approach 2008, I suspect that the trend in the mainstream media will be to lead the American people toward a gooey center where conviction gets lost in a political mixing bowl of soft, inert, and easily soluable ingredients. I got that impression after watching the line-up of guests on Meet the Depressing Press today. I saw 2004 RNC Convention Bush-cheerleader John McCain continue to beat up on the losing 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (long after Kerry rightfully apologized for his weird joke) and Joe Lieberman making inexcusable excuses for his attempt to muzzle critics of the miserably failed Iraq war. These two men, McCain and Lieberman, seem so full of ego and ambition to me - so 2008 starry-eyed - that they seem perfectly willing to toss principle aside for popularity. Is that what Americans want from their leaders?

I am quite certain that the results of Election 2006 showed, if nothing else, that principle matters to the American people. After decades of the Republican majority-led perpetuation and support of a radical rightwing takeover of the people's government, it is the people who have worked their tails off to take their counrty back. It's ordinary citizens who have learned to overcome big D.C. lobbyists' campaign contriubutions and mainstream media misleading and inefficacy. The people have worked to take back their elections. They didn't work that hard to hand the power back to those who fail to take the people's convictions seriously.

We have a heck of a lot of work to get done - election reform, raising minmum wage, getting a universal health care plan, protecting Social Security, supporting and finding a new place for Labor in today's changing economic world, fair trade, a good education for all Americans children, an alternative energy policy that really works, getting America out of the President's mess in Iraq, and protecting our rights and freedoms. The question is - will men determined to be men of no strong conviction - being aroused by a strong and strange compunction to shy away from their party on issues if they appear to be "too partisan"...will they be the right men (or women) to lead us in the necessary swing back toward progress in our country? We have a long way to go and I believe we need a leader who is not afraid to say exactly what he (or she) means.

President Bush is a leader who has fiercely stuck by his principles, and his principles, if you are to judge by electoral results, are not in concert with the principles of the American people. If you noticed, Jim Webb didn't win Virginians over by shrinking from principle or the party with which he consciously chose to run. Most of the Democrats who were elected to power this time were elected by people (Independents, Republicans, and Democrats) who were searching for the kind of conviction that would be strong enough and reasonable enough to overcome and overturn the wrong-minded convictions of a President and his Republican rubber-stampers who've hurled our nation in what they believe is the wrong direction.

Listening to Joe Lieberman bragging about his win in Connecticut with 70% of Republicans voting him into power while only 33% of Democrats gave him their support made me wonder what this "Independent Democratic" ticket he ran on really means. He acted like a proud peacock for the fact that he could side with Republicans in the Senate at any time he personally felt like it. He called it speaking for the people of Connecticut, which is true, because most of the people of Connecticut who voted for him were Republicans. He was bold enough to infer that his new "Independent Democrat" status entitled him to still be a Democrat while acting as a perpetual threat to Democrats in the Senate to make things go Connecticut's way and I could clearly see it was because he is entirely beholden to the Republicans who carried him overwhelmingly to victory in his State. Joe can claim victory, but no matter what label he slaps on himself, he can't claim victory as a Connecticut Democrat. If you look at who brung him to the dance, Lieberman can only claim resounding victory as a Connecticut Republican.

Joe Lieberman is the embodiment of the "Democrat Lite" that we all bemoaned back in 2000. He is not a friend of the national Democratic party. He is far more of a threat. I believe that, in the light of truth and fact, that he is now and will have to remain a friend to the Connecticut Republicans who kept him in power.

If there's one thing I'll say about President Bush, it's that he's been a leader of strong conviction, as a leader should be. (Although we realize that a great leader should be a lot of other things that Bush is surely not.)

It used to be an accepted political adage that "strong and wrong" was better than "weak and right". That view changed in the court of public opinion when too many American troops began to die with no qualitative measure of progress in the Iraq war, which was revealed over time to have been an absolutely unnecessary and poorly executed national nightmare. Former President Clinton recently said that "Stop and think" might be the new and far more appropriate twist for conventional politcal wisdom.

What about "Stop and think"? John McCain boldly and proudly defended the leadership of President Bush in his speech at the RNC Convention in 2004 - a time when most Americans were already waking up to the fact that the Iraq war was a failure in the making. If these middle-of-the-roaders of weak conviction like McCain and Lieberman are such believers in patriotism over partisansip, why did Lieberman try so hard to muzzle critcism of the President when the Iraq war was not being properly led - - and why did McCain so vociferously defend and promote Bush as a great Commander in Chief in late 2004 when he (and we) damned well knew he wasn't? (It didn't take a rocket scientist.)

We Americans are sick to death of hypocrisy. McCain and Lieberman act as if conviction is some kind of a disease, for Pete's sake. These are two of the biggest political hypocrites on the political scene today. When Pastor Ted Haggard's hypocisy was found out, he was forced to step away from leadership. How do you explain to the American people the kind of political hypocrisy being practiced by egotists who prize the vote over conviction or principle? The average television viewer won't easily pick up on the hypocrisy when the Tim Russerts of the mainstream media hand the big fakes the gigantic megaphone in the very same week that the citizens of this nation cried out for a sea change in the power center of America that would reflect their own convictions. At a time when Americans were interested and should have been getting an opportunity to see and hear their freshly elected new Congressional leaders, Russert trotted out the old guard. What a snooze!

To me, Lieberman represents the kind of "change" that James Carville wanted to see when he recommended that Tenessee's losing Harold Ford (who I truly respect and wish would have beat Bob Corker) take Howard Dean's place as chair of the DNC. This suggestion did not reflect well on Mr. Carville for all of us Democrats who were inspired to get out the vote and to win by Howard Dean. Mr. Carville easily forgets that the Democrats - the real and everyday people of the party in their respective states and communities - voted Howard Dean into his position. Mr. Carville forgets that the Democrats actually won this time. Hello? We won! Seeing Mr. Carville immediately going out and drumming up division in the party is a move that I personally resent. Election 2006 showed that money does not necessarily equate to wins (although it certainly doesn't hurt.) I could hardly believe my ears when Mr. Carville made his insulting suggestion. To suggest tossing Howard Dean over money would bring all of us right back to the old network that lost so many elections for Democrats. The McAuliffe machinery was the most well-oiled of all time, but if I asked the Democrats to show me the victories from that period of time, they'd be hard-pressed. It wasn't Terry McAuliffe's fault - he was damned good at what he did (and a Syracuse homeboy to boot) - it was the strategists's fault. Without a strategy to motivate and inspire your grassroots people in local elections, all the money in the world will get you absolutely nowhere. When it came to motivating the real people and building up the party where it counts most - in the hearts of citizens in communities across the 50 states, make no mistake: Howard Dean was the man.

Joe Lieberman motivated a whole new Republican base in Connecticut. Is that where all the money generated by a non-Howard Dean will take us? If so, I don't wanna go, Joe.