Just when you thought Bush and Cheney might have to rethink starting World War III, Matt Rotshschild has to spoil your mood.  Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, writes:

Hold on a second here.

The risk of Bush attacking Iran is not yet over.

When the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out earlier this week, a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that Cheney and the hardliners have lost, and so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Well, I’m not exhaling at the moment.

Because I still believe Bush and Cheney are going to do the deed.

And he may well be on to something.

If there’s one thing our own, DC-based Axis of Evil learned in the runup to the Iraq war, it’s that if one argument doesn’t work you should just keep making others, until you wear down the resistance and something finally sticks.

And if it turns out later that you were wrong or lying about it, so what?  

Will bombing be enough?  Sending ground troops might be problematic, since most of those available are bogged down in another quagmire at the moment.  And World War III will be a bit of an overstatement when it turns out Iran has no nukes and little ability to fight back.  So maybe, despite Bush’s hype, it’s just another dirty little war.

Rothschild posits that Bush will simply switch gears and find another reason to attack:

“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” [Bush said.]

Note well that he didn’t say Iran will be dangerous when it acquires such a weapon, but prior to that, when it acquires the knowledge to make one. That’s a big difference, and it shortens the timetable laid out in the NIE, which doubted Iran would have such a weapon until 2015.

Who knows when Iran will have the “knowledge to make” one? Maybe it has that knowledge already and lacks only the technical sophistication…

He reiterated that “Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace,” adding: “My opinion hasn’t changed.” And he remained as macho as ever in boasting that he wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire such a weapon while he’s around.

There’s more.  And it doesn’t read like paranoia.

The Materials Research Society fall meeting at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston has come and gone.

http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec.a…

This materials convention features the most advanced research in the creation of tomorrows industrial materials.  Seminars have titles such as”Atomic Layer Depsition-Fundamentals and Applications in Nanotechnology and 3D structures” or how about “Interfacing Quantum Dots, Metallic and Magnetic Nanoparticles with Biology” plus scientific equipment vendors show their wares.  Our lab deals with industrial materials so at the suggestion of my boss several of us went. This particular society and convention was new to me even though in 20 years I have attended many other similar events.

This convention had all of the interests and benefits of any other large scientific show. For example, there was a diverse mix of trade show displays and talks with familiar salesmen, scoping out new capabilities and technology used in other industries. In general, it was a very good take.

But.

The most eery of all feeling hit me before we called it quits.  

Where is everybody?  This is a major big city, big time convention and attendance seemed to be off.  As I thought back, recollecting recent years the nagging though intensified.  Yes, attendance has been off for quite some time now.

It was an emotional break.  Not so much escaping the lab for a day but escaping the anal retentive accountants and business policies they generate.  These are the things that are increasingly taking the joy out of something pure, the science.

It seems that a lot of people are misunderstanding a specific moment in Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech today.  In a speech nearly devoid of intellectual content, he did say one substantive thing; but unfortunately, rather that paying attention what his words meant, the blogosphere and also the talking heads on TV are completely misconstruing it, indeed flipping its meaning around 180 degrees.

I’m refering to this assertion:

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.

Person after person seems to be taking this to mean that, according to Romney, Atheists can’t be free.  But that’s not what Romeny meant; in fact it’s nearly the opposite of what he meant.  Romney was here interpreting a previously-offered quote from John Adams and asserting a specific thesis on the nature of humanity and political liberty.

Romney’s point was that people, on their own, can’t be trusted with political liberty.  People are too chaotic, too libidinous, too unpredictable, to be granted full autonomy in the absence of an outside  religious check on their actions.  A government that does not impose its will upon the desires of a population requires another institution that will, in order to keep things from spinning out of control.

Let me explain.  Here’s what Romney said.

Minute 2:50 of the “Faith in America speech:

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us.  If so, they’re at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the creator, and further they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom.

In John Adams’s words, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Our Constitution,” he said, “was made for a moral and religious people.”

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.  Religion opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God.  Freedom and religion endure together or perish alone.

Now, I’m not familiar with John Adams, particularly, but it seems like I ought to say at least this much.  Here is what Adams said, more fully:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Keeping with this aside for the moment, Adams also said that the US governments were not religiously inspired.

Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses . . .

So much for the aside.  What’s pertinent here is not Adams but Romney, and the claim that this Presidential candidate was making, when he used Adams’s words.

When Romney said “freedom requires religion” he was asserting that human freedom is too unruly to be left alone; humanity too unpredictable to be left to its own devices.  A system of government must either impose restrictions on its population or else rely on another institution which does.  Any government relying on merely human spiritual and philosophical resources will surely fall into a ruinous and chaotic decadence.

No other “freedom” is sustainable for our benighted species.

We can’t be trusted with ourselves; much less can we trust other people.  In a similar vein, we are told that “radical Islamists” “hate us for our freedom”.  Romney, I assume, doesn’t hate us for it, but he assuredly thinks something needs to be done about it.

That’s what Romney meant.  It was a substantive, philosophical point about humanity.  That it was utterly disgusting and wrong-headed is no reason not to attend to it, or take it seriously.

I realize that political speeches, especially speeches not directly concerning policy, and especially coming from Republicans, make one’s eyes glaze over.  But this moment was worth noticing, and worth debate.  It’s too bad that everyone has misconstrued it.

I’m sure you already know…. don’t wRECk the pony party

So… (I recently learned from davidseth this is a jewish way to start a paragraph!)

Nightprowlkitty had a neat essay about haiku’s, or pops…. and since I had nothin’….

I thought I’d try to continue the puppy theme with my haiku effort.

(I want to warn you I’m pisspoor at poetry & don’t remember the rules of haiku!)

Your haiku’s can be about anything, of course… and you don’t have to haiku.

tumbling growling running

wet noses, sloppy kisses

Puppy pile up

fur-people friends

understand everything

yet never think worse of you

soft and good to burble on

rotund replete asleep

fat puppy belly

“Psychology 101 ain’t working. It’s just not working. I understand the issues, I clearly see the problems, and I’m going to use the NIE to continue to rally the international community for the sake of peace.”

And with that he gave an unconvincing little jump and stalked off.

I recognize that speech having given it many times myself.  It’s the Ghostbuster speech-

See you on the other side Ray.

I want to tell you a fairy tale–

…

At about the same time (one year ago), a new NIE on Iran was meandering through the intelligence community. A senior U.S. intelligence official told me last week that the report was prepared to say with a “moderate” degree of certainty that Iran had stopped its nuclear-weapons program, but the information wasn’t very conclusive. That finding would have put the U.S. in the same camp as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – deeply concerned about the Iranian efforts to enrich uranium but skeptical about the regime’s efforts to fashion that uranium into a bomb.

…

Iran has an opaque and nearly impenetrable government structure, and it’s hard to know who exactly controls the levers in that country. There are two of everything. There is a popularly elected President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and a – more powerful – Supreme Leader (Ayatullah Ali Khamenei). There is an Iranian army and a – more powerful – Revolutionary Guard Corps. As recently as two years ago, a senior U.S. diplomat told me, “We don’t know anything about what goes on inside that government.” But that has changed fairly dramatically in the past year. A special CIA Iran-analysis group, which calls itself “Persia House,” was split off from the agency’s Middle East regional analysts. A major effort was made to recruit human intelligence sources inside Iran. And then, in June and July, the new Iran assets began to pay off. Some of the information may have come from an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps general named Ali Reza Asghari, who defected to Turkey in February. But a senior U.S. intelligence official assured me, “It was multiple collection streams. You don’t get a ‘high’ degree-of-probability assessment without multiple sources.”

In August, National Intelligence Director McConnell ordered CIA Director Michael Hayden to have ready by Labor Day a new intelligence estimate reflecting the latest information. Hayden said he needed more time. McConnell set a Nov. 30 deadline. Because some of the information sources were new, Hayden decided to launch a “red team” counter-intelligence operation to make sure that the U.S. wasn’t falling for Iranian disinformation. In late October, the Persia House and red-team analysts offered their findings to Hayden and his deputy, Steve Kappes, around the coffee table in Hayden’s office. The red team found that the possibility of Iranian disinformation was “plausible but not likely.” That assessment led two of the 16 intelligence agencies, but not the CIA, to dissent from the final “high” degree of certainty that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003. On the other hand, there was general agreement on a “moderate” finding that Iran had not restarted the program. The National Intelligence Board met and reached its conclusions on Tuesday, Nov. 27. “The meeting took a little more than two hours,” a senior intelligence official told me. “There have been times when it has taken multiple meetings that went on for hours and hours to reach a consensus, especially when dealing with one of Iran’s neighbors.”

Hayden and his senior Iran analysts briefed President Bush on the new NIE on Wednesday, Nov. 28. But it seems apparent the President made little effort to figure out how his Administration could leverage the shocking candor of the intelligence report to his advantage in dealing with Iran. “He could have said to the Iranians, ‘This document shows that we’re not rushing to war. We’re not out to get you,'” said Kenneth Pollack, a National Security Council staff member during the Clinton Administration and author of The Persian Puzzle. “‘But we – and the rest of the world – are very concerned about your uranium-enrichment program, and so let’s sit down and talk about it.'”

Sure reads like one of Tom Clancy’s lesser works doesn’t it?

That’s because this particular piece of fiction comes from Joke Line who only wishes he was a writer like Clancy.

Now other parts of the blogosphere have focused on this-

Oddly, Bush didn’t seem to ask for a delay in the release of the report. He could easily have requested a few weeks for his Administration to chew over the import of the NIE, discuss it with our allies, organize a new diplomatic initiative to negotiate with the Iranians. As it was, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns briefed the U.N. Security Council members who had been considering a new round of sanctions against Iran about the same time that word of the NIE broke in the press. When it did, the Chinese, who had seemed surprisingly ready to approve the sanctions, started backing away from that position.

including BarbinMD over at dK and Satyam at ThinkProgress (w/ Morning Joe video of Joke joking with Joe).  Hat tip to Atrios for the ThinkProgress link.

The angle I approach it from is last week’s exposure of Joke Line as nothing but the worst kind of Village Stenographer, a willing mouthpiece with no more skill or intellect than a parrot, a mere dictaphone and access puppet.

Joke Line writes what they want you to hear.

Now one of the shiny objects the Village Idiots want you to focus on is just exactly this mindless speculation “Why, why oh why did they release it now?”  Tweety and all the other MSNBC airheads were so all over this last night.

This meta argument is to distract you from the fact that they have been lying about the nuclear threat from Iraq for the last year.

At about the same time (one year ago), a new NIE on Iran was meandering through the intelligence community. A senior U.S. intelligence official told me last week that the report was prepared to say with a “moderate” degree of certainty that Iran had stopped its nuclear-weapons program, but the information wasn’t very conclusive. That finding would have put the U.S. in the same camp as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – deeply concerned about the Iranian efforts to enrich uranium but skeptical about the regime’s efforts to fashion that uranium into a bomb.

This is also why I find meta arguments about whether there was a ‘change in tone’ in August largely off point.  Jane Hamsher (Lieberman’s Role in Spreading The Good Word About Iran) almost gets it when she points out that-

February 2007: NIE completed; Cheney objecting to content

February 7: Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ali Reza Asgari arrives in Turkey; he disappears there, and is presumed to have defected or been kidnapped; in March he was reported to be cooperating with western intelligence

then she gets all wrapped up in the details of how it could possibly be that the White House didn’t know and when didn’t they know it.

The same meta lie fairy story that Joke Line is feeding us.

Because whether they knew in July or August or October or last week isn’t the point.  A year ago they had an NIE that essentialy agreed with the IAEA.

They have been lying all along.

buzz-it!

Admittedly I did not apply the philosophy below to my own local elections this year.  But this is the method I followed to help a Progressive Democrat win in Western New York.  The candidate had been posting some things on a site I ran and I noticed his campaign site needed help.

1. Make sure your coding is correct so that the search engines will be able to index your site properly.  Your site should be ready to go before you announce, if not make it a priority ASAP as media articles referring to you will sometimes include links to your site and you don’t want it to look like a mess. Yes a blog is a must.  An events calendar is also very helpful as people feel welcome to join in the fun right away.

2. Post photos of the candidate interacting with people at local events.  At the same time begin advertising the site in every conceivable location, if the site is broken down into issues register those sections of the site with indexes that are related to the topic, register news feeds with aggregate sites and search for local engines and link lists.

3. Reach out to bloggers and local radio.  No bloggers in your particular town?  Find the nearest progressive bloggers and radio hosts and float the idea of an interview and ask them if they know of anyone in your district.  Take the time to read through their posts and  get a sense of which issues are important.

4. Search your competitor’s dirty secrets, everyone thinks to do this on the national level but not always on the local level.  Voting records, corruption, past statements on important issues etc.

5. For the bloggers, posting funny pics can go a long way as they become viral.  I posted a piece that had an important impact on the Gillibrand race.  Your insights will have a much bigger impact on local races if local people can find them.  Make sure your blog is set up properly for your district, or consider starting a new one just for the particular campaign you are interested in helping.

6. When the site has a good flow going, advertise again, do another wave based on the new information being exchanged on the site.  Paying for advertising online is up to the campaign, if the bloggers have done their job there should be little need, if the competitor is doing it however, examine where their ads are popping up and see if you can outsmart them with placement and message.

7. Be friendly to your IT guys, they will be friendly to you, piss them off and look out friend.  Never make an enemy of someone trying to help you win.  Invite them to live blog events which you know will have a good turn out and focus on the community.

8. If one IT person can help to win one election for the democrats…imagine what several IT people working together could do?  Think about it Dems….please.

This diary is going to consist primarily of partisan invective and vitriolic ad-hominem attacks.

It is intended to be divisive of the enemies and unifying for the base of the Democratic Party.

By “Surrendercrats” I mean Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and to some extent, John Edwards.

I’m deliberately leaving a bit of wiggle room for John Edwards because of the top three candidates whom are all uniformly disappointing, John Edwards is not as bad as Obama, whom himself is not as bad as Hillary.

I won’t vote for Hillary, but I probably would vote for Obama because he doesn’t have two terms of insulting the base of his party under his belt like the Clintons.

Ok, those are the “Surrendercrats”.

Kucinich stands in stark contrast to the “Surrendercrats”.

I sure like the way “Surrendercrats” sounds, BTW. I also call them “Republicrats” and “Bush-boot-licker-crats” as well.

Kucinich is the opposite of a “Surrendercrat”. Kucinich raps John Edwards for his vote for the Iraq War, the Patriot Treason Act. Kucinich raps Obama for voting to fund the Iraq occupation without any accountability from Bush. Kucinich raps Clinton for being the war-pimping skag and Bush-lover that she is.

Kucinich stands head and shoulders above his rivals. He is a DEMOCRAT. They are Surrendercrats.

Now, about the Bourgeoise Bloggers, Impeachment Obstructors, Sell-Outs, and enablers of the Surrendercrats…

These people tend to be “A-list” bloggers with over 100,000 visits per day. These bloggers have become shills for the Surrendercrats. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is a fine example of a Bourgeoise Blogger of the Blogger Aristocracy.

Markos is and always has been against impeachment. Why is that? Could it be related to the fact that he was once a registered Republican who worked for Henry Hyde?

Since when do real Democrats welcome Republicans to lead us by the nose against our better judgment? Markos is a sellout.

Also, Atrios is a wuss who only made the faintest noise in favor of impeachment.

There are other big bloggers who are also very weak and undeserving of their traffic.

They are our opposition now and they will remain our opposition after 2008. They have shown that they are sunshine patriots who are willing to sell out the constitution in favor of a little ad-revenue and higher traffic to their blog.

I’ll finish this screed with praise for Kucinich, long may he reign.

I beseech all readers of this diary to do the only ethical thing and to support Kucinich as he works to impeach Bush, Cheney, and humiliate the Surrendercrats who enable Bush and Cheney, and to make the Bourgeoise Bloggers who enable the Surrendercrats eat crow as they so richly deserve.