Audiobooks for your ipod, based on public domain works from project gutenberg:

LibriVox is the largest of several emerging collectives that offer free or inexpensive audiobooks of works whose copyrights have expired, from Plato to “The Wind in the Willows.” (In the United States, this generally means anything published or registered for copyright before 1923.) The results range from solo readings done by amateurs in makeshift home studios to high-quality recordings read by actors or professional voice talent.

At its worst a free audiobook can sound like a teenager reading aloud in high school English class. At its best it can offer excellent sound quality and skilled narration infused with a passion for the text. In between is a world of competent readings, sometimes spiced with affected accents, mumbled words and distant car horns and reflecting all manner of literary interpretations.

Reminds me of that final scene in Fahrenheit 451...

...of Katrina.

And, if you didn't catch Spike Lee's doc on New Orleans, you should. It's terrific. Clearly the highlight is the two guys who told Cheney to go F himself during the veep's little photo op.

Kudos, gentlemen.

That's Joe Lieberman, on CNN today, speaking about his view on Iraq. Isn't that the essence of his whole problem?

Everything about Iraq has changed. The justifications have fallen apart. The lies exposed. The incompetence made all to clear, with 2613 U.S. troops killed as of today. A civil war has started (which Lieberman called a "semantical"), and we're caught in the middle. Bush's political tactics have changed -- it's not stay the course, but "adapt to win." Democrats have changed, becoming much more brazen with their criticism. The People of this country have changed, with an unprecendented 61% opposing the war.

Everything and everyone has changed because of the reality of Iraq.

"My position on this has not changed."

All but Lieberman.

Milton Glaser, appearing on NOW, 7.1.2005:

BRANCACCIO: Is this button one of yours?

MILTON GLASER: That's one of my buttons.

BRANCACCIO: Yeah, so it says, "Dissent Protects Democracy." I mean, that's a lot of burden for dissent. In what way?

MILTON GLASER: Well, I think it's a rather simple-minded idea that if you examine government, those that have the least dissent are those that are most totalitarian. That is, in fact, the manifestation of dissent that defines democracy, 'cuz it means that there are oppositions to power that are freely expressed and that minority opinion is also considered to be worthwhile. Generally speaking, dissent comes out of a sense of fairness that something is wrong. Power is being used unfairly, and there has to be some manifestation or complaint about it.

BRANCACCIO: If you look through the book that goes with the exhibit that you wrote with Mirko Ilic, there's a lot of heavy duty political images. But it prompts a question: What's the difference between dissent and propaganda?

MILTON GLASER: Well, it's an excellent question actually. And I think there is a difference, which is to say in dissent the dissenters have, it seems to me, the obligation of referring to a central truth and an idea of fairness and a complaint about power.

In propaganda, you have no such obligation. You don't have to tell the truth. You certainly are rarely complaining about power. You're simply expressing ideas that you want to enter into the system in order to persuade people to do something.

BRANCACCIO: And clearly the government in power can't dissent by definition but they can produce propaganda.

MILTON GLASER: They can indeed. But you wouldn't talk about a government dissenting from anything fundamentally, because they are the power. So there is this inevitable dialectic relationship between power and dissent. And those of us who value dissent see that as a manifestation of democratic health.

Well, there go some talking points. Lieberman apparently doesn't have this wrapped up by a longshot.

What seems clear from the ARG poll is that Lamont's got lots of room for growth among "Undecided," but people have seem to made their mind up about Lieberman. 

That leaves very little Joementum left in this one, no?

Times:

Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign and backed an international conference to find a way out of the crisis in Iraq.

Wow. John Kerry didn't think of that in 2004, did he?

Lieberman...also criticized some fellow Democrats.

No shit. Imagine that.

He said several Democrats are trying to impose a "litmus test" on the party.

Yes, we are. Anyone delusion enough to come back from Iraq and say We're Winning!!! enough times to have Bush quote him in all his speeches is out. That's the test.

"With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq," he said Sunday.

Respect? Grueling? Someone as incompetent as Rummy, with the blood of thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians on his hands, deserves no respect. But that's the kind of "tough talk" we get from Lieberman, huh? That'll show em.

Lieberman said the Bush administration should have sent more troops into Iraq "to secure the country."

Again, no shit.

If Lieberman has our back, we'll be out of Iraq in 20 years -- 30 tops.

McCain (via atrios):

"The administration has done the wrong thing for the last 3 and a half years which leaves us with no option other than staying the course."

"Most Americans, when they're asked if they want to set a date for withdrawal, say no."

The latter, a lie. The former doesn't make a bit of sense.

How much longer will the myth of McCain live on?

Good piece in the NYT about the continued influence of political Islam in the Middle East:

The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings across Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.

...There is a wide diversity of views and agendas under the pan-Islamic-Arab umbrella. But as is often the case in politically aligned movements, those differences are easily papered over when that movement is in the opposition.

...“People have come to identify themselves more as Muslims during the last five years in response to the U.S.-led ‘war on terrorism’ which Egyptians frequently feel is a discriminatory campaign targeting Muslims and Islam worldwide.”