Oooh, nuance!

I'm under the weather and too busy to breathe, but...this news made me cry.

A confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that his government would support a division of Jerusalem, which is reportedly a key component of an Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be made at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference next month.

As part of recent negotiations between the sides, Deputy Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon has proposed turning over many of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Ramon said the Palestinians could establish the capital of a future state in the sector of the city, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

In return, Israel would receive the recognition of the international community, including Arab states, of its sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the existence of its capital there, Ramon said.

On Monday Ramon said even hawkish elements of Olmert's coalition, like Cabinet Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party, would back such an Israeli concession. The centrist Labor Party would also support the proposal, Ramon said.

One of the most shameful legacies of the Bush Administration has been its refusal to do anything to resolve the problems in Israel. There were some half-hearted efforts at the beginning - remember the "road map?" - but essentially, all has been quiet on the Chimp front for the entirety of his presidency. But as the article suggests, the Deciderer has changed his strategy. The United States has finally become involved, and all of a sudden, progress appears to be happening.

If you really want to fight a "global war on terrorism," get to the root cause. With the exception of Al-Qaeda, most of the groups we designate as terrorists - Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. - are active because of the existence and actions of the Israeli government. Whatever side you are on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resolving it takes the impetus for these groups away. A sane administration would realize that.

But we all know that an administration that prides itself in not talking to "evildoers," that is seriously considering using nuclear weapons on a country that has not attacked us, that invades and occupies countries for their natural resources, that exists mostly to move wealth from the poorest to the richest in America...well, how long is it till 2009 again?

Security. It's a word that has permeated the consciousness of Americans to oversaturation since (say it with me now) Nine Eleven Changed Everything. But what does the word "security" really mean, especially when you combine it with the word "national"?

Security used to mean many things, all of them positive. You got a college degree, you got a good job, you bought a house and had 2.5 kids, and you retired with a nice pension. While all this was happening, you were able to afford gas and food for your family, and could even save money for vacations without re-mortgaging your house. You were never without electricity, and when you drove over a bridge, you didn't worry that it might collapse underneath you.

When you died, you felt secure that your kids would have the same, or an even better, standard of living, because you had faith that your government was doing its job - the job of improving security for its constituents.

Such was the American Dream, until Ronald Reagan and his conservative followers came to destroy the New Deal policies that had strengthened the middle class and allowed the dream to exist.

Poof! Before you could say "The government IS the problem," the economy tanked, we got mired in Afghanistan and created Al Qaeda, the multinationals began conglomerating and our media started to consolidate. News began degenerating into infotainment and propaganda. Think tanks blossomed that told us that the government was bad and corporations were good, and that loving the so-called free market was a substitute for political awareness. Pundits from these thinktanks began appearing on every channel to wage their particular form of class warfare and to demonize liberal ideology. Our manufacturing and service jobs began vanishing overseas, and our pensions suddenly became unsecured, easily lost when unscrupulous, greedy mega-corporations like Enron, WorldCom and many others used the funds to cover their illegal accounting practices.

Given the obvious effect conservative policies have had on national security, it would seem obvious that if you want to feel secure about your life in America, you would make sure to elect liberals like FDR, not conservative Presidents like Reagan and the Bushes, and Congresscritters like Newt Gingrich's class of 1994. But until quite recently, Americans seemed to feel that Republics were "stronger on national security" than Democrats - and even now, the margin of favorability between the two parties is very slim. How in the world did this happen?

One of the worst things the conservatives (especially gifted framers like KKKarl Rove) have done to this country has been their Orwellian destruction of the English language. The word "security" is no exception. When an elected official, pundit or journalist says the words "national security" now, they usually refer to "fighting terrorism by means of endless war". As if the only way our nation can be secure is to go to war against non-state actors who, in reality, are responsible for far fewer deaths than the automobile industry!

The real tragedy for America was not 9/11, but the reaction to it by our benighted Deciderer-in-Chief. Had Al Gore been inaugurated president in 2001, I firmly believe 9/11 would not have happened (the 9/11 Commission agreed that the attack was preventable.) However, had we been attacked by Al Qaeda during a Gore presidency, there is no way that Mr. Gore would have used such an attack as an excuse to terrify the country into accepting more and more egregious erosions of our national security. Among the outrages we have suffered are:

• tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations, which steal money out of the pockets of the working class;


• destabilization of our infrastructure by refusing to invest in it or regulate its upkeep;


• ignoring real threats to our country and focusing on billion-dollar boondoggles like missile defense (which Condi Rice was set to speak about on 9/11) and the illegal invasion of Iraq;


• deliberate invasions of our privacy and a huge increase in identity theft which oddly seem to go hand in hand;


• allowing the rule of law, which protects Americans against their government, to become almost completely non-existent; and


• allowing predatory lending practices and prohibitive health care costs to bankrupt Americans.

For the sake of national security, it's time to stop accepting the meaningless slogans of Fear and Loathing, Inc., and remember that national security can only be provided by liberals. Conservatives do nothing but lead us down the path to endless war, and there is nothing less secure than that.

Why, oh why don't the Democrats in Congress listen to me? Okay, a little snark there, but STILL! I told them what this FISA "modernization" crap was all about...legalizing Bush's NSA spying program (at least, the one we KNOW about).

The "conservative" Democrats in the House and the Senate were just terrified enough of being called Weak On Terrorism to capitulate to Bush's strong-arming over the weekend. And guess what?

I am extremely depressed that the Bush Administration, after all the lawbreaking it has done, was given such broad powers by Congress. As Senator Russ Feingold says on the Huffington Post today, the lessons of the Patriot Act have still not been learned by some Congressional Democrats. He and his non-insane compatriots will try to rectify this horrible legislation when Congress comes back from recess in September.

I don't believe that Democrats and Republicans are the same. The majority of Democrats voted against this bill, whereas almost every Republican voted for it. But, I do believe that some Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, and should be pushed out of office by true progressives.

Did your representative put his or her rubber stamp on this atrocity? Find out...and let them know how you feel about them, especially when they're up for re-election!

The charming and talented Sinfonian declared*** today, the six-year anniversary of the August 6, 2001 PDB declaring "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.", a blogswarm day, to make sure we remember how Bush et al. knew it was coming. ***(OOOPS - Sinfonian informs me that he did not originate the blogswarm - that honor goes to Blue Gal and Ripley. But he gets linky goodness too because his post was hawt.)

Well, far be it from me to miss a good blogswarm, even if I am fashionably late to the party as usual!

August 6, 2001 was the day that Bush could have finally paid attention to the pressing issue of terrorism. When he took office, outgoing president Bill Clinton told the Deciderer that he should be watching out for Al Qaeda. He even asked for a special report on Islamic terrorism to be prepared and delivered to Bush. That report - the Hart-Rudman report - was given to George in February of 2001. (You know - the same time that Condi Rice and Colin Powell were stating on TV that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not a threat to America?)

But given the Chimp's ego and general hostility to all things Democratic, it's really not a surprise that he ignored these early warnings from the man on whose carpet he would soon be pooping. George did what he always does - he delegated the anti-terrorism work to someone else (Dick Cheney, who held zero meetings on the subject between George's inauguration and September The Eleventh Two Thousand and One). Then, despite multitudinous warnings from intelligence services in not just America, but France and Germany as well, that a major terrorist attack was coming in the fall of 2001, the strong, protective daddy of our dreams...went on vacation.

You would think that the August 6, 2001 PDB would have finally awoken the Chimp from his nappy time. But of course, it didn't. And America has suffered countless hurts to our national psyche, discourse and democratic institutions since then.

So give some bloggy love to this horrible anniversary. Think about it, talk about it and write about it. And above all: never forget that They Knew and Did Nothing. So much for Republican "strength on national security."