Bushworld - and other things...

 

I think that is a good depiction of Bush … accurate.

“When things start getting out of control, people start shooting,” said police Capt. Richard Lockhart.

Somewhere in 2003 I read a reference that violent crime in the US was on the verge of an uptick – that it likely would not be significant enough to be an issue in the 2004 election cycle, but would hit for the next one.

Tonight I read this from Reuters:

A 2005 Federal Bureau of Investigation crime report, issued last month, showed violent crime increasing for the first time in four years in 2005, up 2.5 percent from the year before, with medium-size cities and the Midwest leading the way.

While New York, Los Angeles and Miami still are enjoying drops in crime, smaller cities with populations of more than 500,000 are raising the alarm, posting an 8.3 percent rise in violent crime in 2005. Nationwide, the murder rate rose 5 percent — the biggest rise in a single year since 1991.

After dramatic declines in murder rates in the 1990s, some cities dropped programs that emphasized prevention and controls on the spread of guns, often citing budget cuts.

And with this little bit… considering we have just seen a massive display of what giving up city programs – for “security” – bought us… a very bad deal was struck post 9/11.

Explanations vary — from softer gun laws to budget cuts, fewer police on the beat, more people in poverty and simple complacency. But many blame a national preoccupation with potential threats from abroad.

“Since September 11, much of the resources that were distributed to crime-fighting efforts in Boston and other major cities were redistributed to fight terrorism,” said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University.

“The feds had supported after-school programs. They had supported placing more police officers in crime hot spots in major cities. These federal efforts were reduced,” he said.

On other fronts, Lieberman calls himself a “devoted Democrat“… hmmm.  In 2004 Bush used “discerning Democrat” to indicate the sort he wanted to vote for him… that was the catch phrase he and Zell used as they campaigned together.  Lieberman is in the right part of the alphabet, at least.

I felt then that Joe voted for George.

As to who Lamont votes for… a dicier deal even. [thanks D Throat] 

Tom Swan, Mr. Lamont’s campaign manager, said that a “mutual acquaintance” had helped organize the dinner, where a handful of others were also present.

“They talked about what the U.S. could do to help Israel,” Mr. Swan said, declining to provide further details.

Both Joe and Ned are well within the pro-Israel bosom of the party.  Loaded with asps as that bosom is.

They can have each other.  And the party, parties.  Both parties insist, absolutely insist, on this deadly blood oath with Israel.

 

Uri Avnery…

[T]HIS WAR has no name. Even after 33 days of fighting and six days of cease-fire, no natural name has been found. The media use a chronological name: Lebanon War II.

This way, the war in Lebanon is separated from the war in the Gaza Strip, which has been conducted simultaneously, and which is going on unabated after the cease-fire in the North. Do these two wars have a common denominator? Are they, perhaps, one and the same war?

The answer is: certainly, yes. And the proper name is: the War for the Settlements.

The war against the Palestinian people is being waged in order to keep the “settlement blocs” and annex large parts of the West Bank. The war in the North was waged, in fact, to keep the settlements on the Golan Heights. [...]

The solution is on hand: we have to remove the settlers from there, whatever the cost in wines and mineral water, and give the Golan back to its rightful owners. Ehud Barak almost did so, but, as is his wont, lost his nerve at the last moment.

It has to be said aloud: every one of the 154 Israeli dead of Lebanon War II (until the cease-fire) died for the settlers on the Golan Heights. [snip]

We can be sure that Lamont as candidate to be #100 in the club has said little more than, “rest assured of my support for Israel”.  Nor would he diverge from the script.

We are up to our necks in a most unholy contract.

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UPDATE, 1:00 pm

- Israel -

And we have to fess up to that and realize that unless we get our hearts involved in this, as well as our minds, we’re not going to be able to stand up and do our duty as American patriots and face down this situation and say to our government,

“Enough. Enough. No more carnage. Bring our troops home from Iraq. And reign in this Israeli government that is using your helicopter gun ships, your fighter-bombers, your tanks, etc.”

Dahr Jamail interviews Ray McGovern…

   [N]ow, imagine our surprise, those of us who knew about the crazies, when we found them in the key policy-making positions. Not only they, but the likes of convicted felon Elliot Abrams, who is running our policy toward the Middle East right out of the White House as Deputy National Security Advisor, right now as we speak.

    So it seems to me what has happened here is that they have, together with the infamous Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal … Cheney/Rumsfeld and this coterie of neo-conservatives plus Elliot Abrams, who fits that category, had decided, “Well, we’re going to input the rest of that famous study that several of them wrote back in 1996, called, ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.’”  [...]

     So, it’s not a big effort to go and put PNAC in your URL line and download some of the documents from the Project for the New American Century and the “Clean Break” study, and you will see that all of this was very well presented to Netanyahu when he was elected Israeli premier. In the first instance, it was too radical even for Netanyahu, and that’s saying something.

    Well, this is the policy that is being implemented now. You can read it, it’s in the text: “We will go after Lebanon. We will find a pretext which will justify us going after Lebanon big time. Next, Iran. Next, Syria.”

And of course Iraq came in the preceding paragraphs. The plan is laid out there. Anyone who doesn’t take that seriously dismisses it at their own peril.

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UPDATE, 1:40 pm

- Lebanon -

Noticed this over at Angry Arab, from The Daily Star:

MARJAYOUN: Mohammad Ali Qobeissi, a member of the National Council for Scientific Research, said on Sunday that a crater caused by an Israeli munition in Khiam contained “a high degree of unidentified radioactive materials.” Qobeissi, along with Ibrahim Rashidi from the Faculty of Sciences at the Lebanese University, have inspected the crater – which is 3 meters deep and has a diameter of 10 meters – in the Jlahiyyeh quarter in Khiam, with a Geiger-Muller radioactivity counter and nuclear material detector. [snip]

And this snip from an entry at Angry Arab:

[T]he daily Haaretz quoted an unidentified military source as saying, “We were really lucky the operation did not end with 10 commandos killed.” Some commentators described the raid as another black mark for the Israeli military, already under severe criticism for its conduct of the Lebanon war.

Writing in Yediot Aharonot, Amir Rappaport said, “The operation was intended to be absolutely secret and the mere fact that it was revealed and even claimed casualties is proof of its failure. “The skirmish between the commando troops and the Hezbollah fighters, which was not planned, also displays Israel to the world as though it violated the U.N. resolution. Absurdly enough, the mission that ran into trouble was also intended to allow Israel to provide proof later on that Syria, Hezbollah and Iran were not honoring the agreement.””

But Al-Akhbar newspaper in Beirut has a different account. It talks about a deliberate deception plan by Hizbullah. Hizbullah apparently lured those “commandos” by orchestrating a convoy of cars to mislead Israel into believing that Shaykh Muhammad Yazbak was in the area.

posted by As’ad @ 11:21 AM link

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