I hear that the war-with-Iran crowd is determined that Israel attack Iran this fall and that the United States give its blessing. Check out this column from Friday by American emigre and rightist Caroline Glick who writes for the Jerusalem Post.

In the column called "Time's Up on Iran," the Netanyahu confidante writes, "The question then is whether Israel has the ability to effectively attack Iran even if the US opposes such a strike. Based on open source material, the answer to this central question is yes, Israel can launch an effective strike against Iran....With each passing day, Iran moves closer to the bomb and closer to initiating war on its terms. The international community will do nothing to preempt this danger. Israel must act. Fighting a war on our terms is eminently preferable to fighting one on Iran's."

But the lobby is determined that America support an Israeli strike if Israel decides to "go." Israel needs US permission to fly over Iraqi airspace which George W. Bush refused to give (Cheney was furious). The lobby (and its media acolytes) hopes Obama will yield on that point, pushed as he will be by key Congressional Democrats (themselves galvanized into action by the lobby). Check out the schedule on AIPAC's upcoming "Summit" (will Reagan and Gorby be there) to see where its head is at.

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Yesterday, War Department Secretary Gates excoriated the Associated Press for publishing a photo the the dying Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard in Afghanistan (above left). WTF! For those of you with short memories or who were not alive in 1968, I can tell you that photos of dying American soldiers in Vietnam were a regular part of the day's news.

Have we become so squeamish, that we can't handle the truth of a war we chose to fight? I'm well aware that the main "lesson learned" from Vietnam as far as the Pentagon is concerned is--"Don't let the news media show Americans dying". So we "embed" reporters and photographers and control their output. And supposedly independent news sources like the New York Times can write about Gates fury while hewing to his censorship regime and not showing the picture, supposedly because the soldiers parents didn't want the picture shown. Was that even a consideration of news editors in 1968?

How can we ever make a collective decision about the wisdom or folly if this war, if our news media decides its role is to protect us from the reality of the war?

The Obama administration today lightened travel and remittance restrictions for US-based relatives of Cuban citizens residing in Cuba.

The limit on relatives is noted at "second cousins."

Hooray! -- not.

OK -- it's some progress. But this is progress that the Cuban-American right wing wanted.

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Last month, an annual ritual of high-level diplomacy was convened in L'Aquila, Italy by a group familiar to most of us: the Group of Eight leading industrialized powers (or G-8). More accurately, these world leaders held a series of summits within a summit. The G8 met on the first day, then the G-14, G-17, and G-16. Because some leaders were included in only one of these combinations, a total of 24 presidents and prime ministers passed through L'Aquila.

This rotating cast, what has been described as a "variable leadership," points toward the need for the reform of summitry to deliver better diplomatic results. Each of the configurations in Italy had its own purpose, to be sure--ranging from an ongoing consultation between the G8 and emerging powers, to a group of major economies discussing global warming, to a joint agricultural initiative with African nations. But the flurry of consultations also showed that the club of 20th Century powers is still improvising its response to 21st Century political realities. Instead of pulling other influential nations into an updated forum for global leadership, the old guard is trying rather unceremoniously to hedge its bets - maintain the old club and create new ones, as convenient.

The ambiguity is only heightened by the upcoming summit of the G-20--scheduled for September 24-25 in Pittsburgh--a group that until late-2008 convened finance ministers rather than heads of state. Not only is the future of the G-20 and its relationship to the G-8 undefined, but the Pittsburgh meeting will be the fourth summit of these groupings in less than a year, prompting concerns about summit fatigue. At least one G-8 country, France, has signaled its plan to expand to a G-14 when it takes its turn as host in 2011.

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With amazing rapidity, an extremely serious debate has erupted in Washington over whether the war in distant Afghanistan can be won, and therefore whether it is worth continuing to try to fight it. The apparent skulduggery that surrounded the recent elections certainly contributed to that, by making it suddenly seem even more improbable that a 'nation-building' program could be successfully completed any time in the foreseeable future.

Tuesday, the weighty paleo-conservative commentator George Will weighed in, arguing in the WaPo that it's "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan"

Tuesday, too, the NYT editorial board hosted an entire discussion on the topic of "Is It Time to Negotiate With the Taliban?" The answer, from just about all their eight expert contributors, was "Yes".

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Glenn Beck and the rightwing is hunting scalps-- and their prime target is Van Jones, the "green jobs" White House advisor who was formerly head of the organization Green for All. They are going after Van Jones, attacking him for professing himself in the past as a "radical", "revolutionary" and studier of Karl Marx. (See this FoxNews "raw data" about Jones or this Glenn Beck rant).

All of which is true. Van has a long history of being a left advocate working in a variety of organizations. Which is why it's even more important that liberals and moderates of good faith stand up to defend him. McCarthyism was not bad because it falsely accused moderates of being radicals. McCarthyism was bad because it made having any form of left views a bar to public service, from policy to being a teacher.

President Obama has explicitly filled his administration with a broad diversity of views, with many of the key positions held by establishment moderates from the corporate world. Van Jones is one viewpoint represented among many voices in the White House, yet the Becks of the world want to make anyone holding left views or having a history of sympathetically reading the "wrong" books forbidden from public service.

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After 11 years at Israel Policy Forum, I am moving over to the Media Matters Actions Network to serve as Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy -- with special emphasis on Israel, Iran, etc.

My move is part of a general trend toward making Middle East policy not a boutique issue but a mainstay of liberal politics and journalism. I have long believed that it is impossible to be a liberal (or progressive) and yet support Middle East policies that perpetuate the deadly status quo. With Media Matters joining this fight, we can help progressives of all stripes understand that supporting occupation and settlements (or wars with various regional players) is antithetical to a progressive world view and, most important, is bad for America.

I look forward to my move. I am also grateful to IPF which was my home for 11 years and enabled me to "make a name for myself" on this issue. And, I'm deeply grateful to Josh Marshall who made me a blogger. If Amb. Joe Wilson had not decided that Josh and I should meet over lunch, this move would not have happened.

By the way, I will still blog here (I can't abandon my friends or my uh, non-friends). Plus, being associated with Josh Marshall is a privilege. Josh is an incredible guy, a real mensch. He is a guy who is almost anachronistic in his (almost intimidating) integrity. Emerson would have loved him.

MM press release follow and here is ATTACKERMAN (Spencer Ackerman's) brilliant tweet on my move. "MJ Rosenberg, father of Hot97's Peter and scourge of AIPAC, leaves Israel Policy Forum for Media Matters."

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Nancy Youssef at the McClatchy Washington Bureau has really good National Security sources and she points to the possibility that Joe Biden and NSC head James Jones may bring a voice of reason to the Afghanistan debate.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media, said Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the U.S. can't make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al-Qaida. Biden's office declined to comment.

"I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier," a senior Pentagon official said. "We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war."

Word is that Biden has been suggesting a move towards a counter-terrorism strategy that would rely on drones and small special operations teams to continue to rout out Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan and Western Pakistan. According to Youssef, Jones has already told General McChrystal not to ask for more troops. I have written before about Biden's healthy skepticism about Karzai and his corrupt regime. The parallels between our situation with Karzai and the equally corrupt Diem regime we were stuck with in Vietnam are spooky.

Other than making sure Al Qaeda doesn't reestablish training bases in Afghanistan, we have no overwhelming national security interest to support another ten year occupation of the country. Pulling troops out and instituting a counter-terrorism strategy would be totally consistent with President Obama's pledge: "And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals--to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies."

Now is the time to change policy and get out.

I went to MoveOn's candlelight vigil at the corner of Central Park across from Columbus Circle in New York City last evening. Possibly there were 400 people at the peak, some holding candles. Most, as you'd expect, were middle-aged or older, but there was a sprinkling of the younger, including a man who had open-heart surgery at 26. Citizens went to the microphone, told their horror stories,some quite gripping, of medical woe, of insurance refusal, and so on. Some read snippets from other people's horror stories.

A perfectly sweet day for a rally, personal, nothing strident or threatening. Personal stories. Americans love personal stories.

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There are lots of folks who are frustrated with Montana Senator and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus at the moment -- mostly on health care issues. One of the odd bottom lines for Max, however, is that the more frustrated Dems are with him on policy matters, the more solid his support is in Montana.

But I want to raise another issue that is not about policy -- and is about abuse of power and pushing the investigatory part of "advice and consent" in presidential nominations to outrageous levels.

According to multiple sources, there is a staffer on the minority side of the Finance Committee who is going to absurd levels investigating the financial backgrounds of Obama administration nominees who fall under the jurisdiction of the committee.

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The 2009 battle over health care reform is soon going to come to a head in national debates and legislative specifics. President Obama will re-set the agenda when he speaks to Congress, and in all likelihood sheer survival instincts will prompt Democrats in both House and Senate to generate some legislation that can be taken to conference and finally signed by the President. For progressives, it is already clear that the final result, if anything at all, will be much less than we hoped -- and perhaps much less than might have been possible if this battle had been better waged from the grass roots to the White House.

But that is the way it always is: there are compromises and half-measures in the end. The issue for progressives right now is how can we push for compromises that open doors politically, that promise to get all Americans covered somehow and spur interest groups in the future to work for shared arrangements that can manage costs.

Rather than remain fixated on one mechanism -- the "public option," make or break -- progressives need to be clear about principles for weighing trade-offs and compromises. And we need to think about how future developments might unfold from half-steps taken now. This kind of over-time thinking is tough in a 24-hour news/blog cycle and in an atmosphere where ephemeral polls are given too much weight. But it is vital,

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Phil Weiss attended a town meeting in Brooklyn hosted by Congressman Anthony Weiner, one of the two or three most right-wing (on Israel) members of either House.

But, after listening to Weiner endorse everything Israel has ever done, or will do, Weiss (actually his colleague Adam Horowitz) concluded that Weiner doesn't really much care about Israel.

Why? Because after perfunctory bowing and scraping to the lobby (and sucking up to his right-wing Jewish audience) Weiner moved from robot to ball of fire when the discussion turned to health care reform. Weiner did not care that the rightwingers in the audience were against him, he fought hard for Obama and for universal care. All the passion he did not demonstrate on Israel, he demonstrated on health care.

And the difference. Weiner very likely doesn't much care about Israel or Jewish matters (he is engaged to a Muslim which is some indication that he is not as small minded as he pretends to be). So, if he doesn't care, why not say what he needs to say to keep the lobby and his loudest constituents happy?

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August is over, thank God. For Democrats, it was the month from hell.

But things are looking up.

In the upcoming Vanity Fair, Levi Johnston tells all (or as much as he knows) about his almost in-laws and they are more utterly hypocritical than even I imagined.

Palin won't survive this because -- no matter how you cut it -- this teenager is infinitely more credible than Palin. He has no reason to lie. He can sell a book even if he told how wonderful the Palins are.

My favorite part. I was one of those (like Andrew Sullivan) who thought that baby Trig was not Bristol's but Sarah's. My friends said I was a conspiracy nut. And, it turns out, I was wrong. Trig is Sarah's but Sarah tried to get the kids to agree to pretend that Bristol's kid, Tripp (the one she had with Levi) was Sarah's too, to avoid bad press on a pregnant Bristol.

So I was only kind of wrong.

Not every horrible thing we believe about the right is correct. We may be off by 5-10%.

There is a lesson in this for us all. Do not mess with a 19 year old jock. He or she definitely will get you back. And another thing: this is America. The hunky teenager will prevail. With the kind of agent who got him into Vanity Fair, he'll leave the Palins in the dust. Besides, we MSM liberals are rooting for him. The kid can't lose.

PS If this issue intrigues you, check this out.

Misrepresentation to protect corporate interests has become just the knee-jerk reflex of the rightwing. They don't seem to think they can win any argument based on promoting alternative proposals as more effective or ideologically more appealing-- they just seem to immediately reach for the distortion.

So the AFL-CIO and some allies came out with a proposal for a tiny tax on stock transactions -- about one-tenth of one percent of each transaction -- an amount that individual investors making long-term investments would barely notice. The goal is to raise revenue off the large-scale traders like Goldman Sachs and discourage high-frequency traders using computers to game the stock market. "High-frequency trading is estimated to earn about $20 billion in profits for the nation's biggest investment firms, who guard the their practices zealously."

And of course the rightwing immediately just labels the proposal as the "AFL-CIO's Tax on Your 401(k)"

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Yesterday, I hosted General Anthony Zinni for a discussion on his views on national security decision making, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the broader Middle East, and President Obama's approach to foreign policy.

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I wonder what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Senator Jim DeMint, or the right-wing "tea party" crowd would say if they lived north of Los Angeles and their homes were threatened by wildfires.

I live in Pasadena, California where, only a few miles from my house, firefighters are currently battling the intense wildfires. These courageous government employees are risking their lives - two have already died - to save others' lives and properties. Since it began a week ago, the fire has swept through 121,000 acres - an area almost the size of Chicago. Residents of thousands of homes have been evacuated and many more are on alert. By any standard, the 3,600 fire fighters have done an outstanding job under extremely harsh conditions. Fire officials, meteorologists and others from many municipal and county governments, as well as the state and federal governments -- including the National Weather Service and the U.S. Forest Service - have seamlessly coordinated their efforts.

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Dan Savage, who writes the "Savage Love" column, is a take-no-prisoners commentator. He describes the Republican "Birchers and Birthers" like Michelle Bachmann as "bat crap crazy" and excoriates Democrats for "lying down" when they should be fighting back.

Tonight he said on Olbermann that he believes that the right's goal is the assassination of the President and that all the talk about "death panels" and the rest is designed to set the stage for murder.

It was a shocking statement and Olberman quickly said that not all rightwingers are hoping for a Presidential assassination. But Savage didn't apologize. After all, if you portray Obama as a man who would convene death panels to euthanize the elderly or the disabled, then, to the right's way of thinking, he may have to be stopped. If he's Hitler, if he's a baby killer, as the right claims he is, then his departure would be no loss.

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James Zogby, the Arab American civil rights activist and long time Democratic party power player, is furious.

The State Department is continuing to allow Israel to discriminate against Arab Americans who travel to Israel (and territories controlled by Israel). Contrary to US policy (which demands that foreign states provide equal protection to all Americans traveling abroad) we allow Israel to decide which Americans are acceptable and which are not.

"Israel, "writes Zogby, "appears to have defined, for itself, three categories of U.S. citizenship: American Jews, whom they see as having 'birthright advantages'; most other U.S. citizens, as long as they have no known connection with Palestinians, who are respected and protected; and then, finally, Arab Americans whose rights as U.S. citizens Israel does not fully recognize."

Read the Zogby piece.

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This past week, Israel was afforded the visit by a group called "The Elders," comprised of former heads of state and moral leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Avnery, a former journalist and Knesset member and today, in his mid 80s, a leader of Gush Shalom, which is a fairly far left portion of the peace camp, writes a response to calls for global activists not to use an international boycott against Israel. He writes this for the Palestinian news agency, Ma'an and it can be accessed on line, but considering Avnery's prominence on the left in Israel and the respect he yields, too, among 'post-Zionists,' anti-or non-Zionists, in addition to many on the Zionist left, I am reprinting it here on the jump. It is, I think, an eloquent argument to the left on why Israel is not South Africa.

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I don't often say this, but George Will gets it exactly right.

But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums? U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters. Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

This column is causing great controversy on the Right, but almost no comment from Progressives. Have we forgotten how Lyndon Johnson's obsession with Vietnam poisoned the legacy of his domestic accomplishments?
This is where Obama has to make his bones. Get out of Afghanistan.

Steven Brill has a long essay in the New Yorker about the long process required to fire teachers in New York City. Now, any discussion of due process, whether in firings or criminal justice, inevitably can stack the deck by focusing on the guilty while ignoring those protected from arbitrary abuse by the process. Which Brill does of course.

But what I find most telling about Brill's account is that, like most stories about union rules and contracts, there is not really any serious discussion about WHY union members vote for such contracts. Is Brill arguing that the majority of teachers like having bad teachers among their numbers? Is he arguing that the majority of teachers approving the contracts care about children less than administrators? Actually, Brill says almost nothing about the motivation of teachers in the union in his whole piece.

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The neocons are getting ready for another war. The same crowd that helped get us into Iraq are desperate for war with Iran (and for many of the same reasons).

Former Vice President Cheney now says publicly that we could have had war with Iran already if only President Bush hadn't balked. Bush not only refused to sign off on a US attack on Iran but, in the closing days of his Presidency, refused to allow Israel to bomb Iran. (The man deserves our gratitude for that).

But the neocons (led by Cheney, Bolton, Feith, Perle, etc) haven't given up. They do not expect President Obama to go to war.(They despise him ). But their hope is to force him to permit Israel to attack as soon as it deems diplomacy a dead end.

How do they intend to get Obama to authorize what Bush nixed?

Easy. Get Congress to tighten the screws on him.

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Suppose that a prominent member of Congress were to press for spending an additional $450 billion a year over the next three years on infrastructure projects. Suppose that they did this at a time when the unemployment rate was near 4.5 percent, the definition of full employment used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and in most econometric models.

The CBO modeling of this proposal would show that infrastructure spending would lead to almost no increase in employment. It would show that the effect of the additional spending would be higher interest rates, which would crowd out investment and other forms of expenditures. The spending would also raise the deficit and lead to larger interest rate burdens on our children.

This prominent member of Congress would undoubtedly be denounced as irresponsible on the editorial pages of the Washington Post and by other respectable pillars of the Washington establishment.

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There is only one person who can carry the torch for Ted Kennedy. It is his widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy.

She;s qualified. She's been a very successful lawyer and was a political activist before marrying Kennedy.

But, of course, the main reason she is the only one who can do the job is that she was Teddy's spouse and partner. Her presence in the Senate -- fighting for Kennedy's lifelong dream -- would have a powerful effect starting with shaming the Republicans into some semblance of civility.

Can they really bellow about death panels in front of Victoria Kennedy? Can they really keep lying about socialism and the rest?

I suppose they can but it will be harder.

Additionally, she knows the issue backwards and forwards.

There is no other possible choice for the seat. Anyone else -- Barney Frank, Ed Markey, whoever -- can run for the full term. But the one person who can make a difference on health reform this session is Mrs. Kennedy. She has to accept the appointment.

Anyone who knows New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson knows he can be a handful, can be complicated, and can too often want the story about him more than others. Those are characteristics of most who aspire to the presidency.

However, this week during his trip to Cuba allegedly for agricultural trade promotion reasons, Governor Richardson demonstrated why he is such a vital national asset in America's diplomatic game.

Richardson has a knack for dealing with the harder challenges in international affairs -- often extracting American captives from totalitarian regimes but also understanding that in some cases what the game is about is not getting some journalist or innocent released from a gulag but rather using that engagement to create "possibilities" in America's engagement with that nation that did not exist before.

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Let's get a few things straight:   

  Until last year, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's health care bill (co-authored with with Cong. John Dingell) was a bill known as Medicare for All.   Not expensive private insurance for some, but Medicare [a public insurance plan] for All.

  Senator Kennedy encouraged candidate and then President Obama to make health care for all his first priority - during the campaign and as he took office. 

  And Ted Kennedy remained in charge as his HELP (Health, Education and Labor and Pension) Committee wrote -- and then passed - a new health care bill with a strong public insurance option for those who want it. 

I feel the need to remind people of all this because conservatives and especially Republican Senators are trying to promote the idea that if only Ted Kennedy were still actively involved in the health care reform effort, he could have gotten the Democrats to fold and embrace a weakened "bi-partisan" compromised health reform strategy.  And some are urging that the best tribute we could construct to the great man's memory is to pass such a watered-down health bill that could win the support of a large number of conservative Republicans. 

 

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I spent yesterday afternoon at the Capitol waiting for the arrival of the late Senator and the entourage.

It was hot as hell. We waited over 3 hours. The only excitement during the miserable wait was the appearance of Sen. Byrd of West Virginia who twice got roaring ovations from the crowd.

The power of redemption.

The old Ku Kluxer who opposed the civil rights acts redeemed himself in recent years, especially by his vigorous opposition to the Iraq War. And we love him for his love of Kennedy.

Byrd, who deposed Kennedy as Majority Whip back in the 1970's, became Kennedy's friend and ally. I'll never forget how he openly wept on the Senate floor when he spoke of Kennedy's illness.

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