From the Times of London

It is a case of the Blair that didn’t bark. Why hasn’t the Prime Minister publicly condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza? Most British — and many Israeli — citizens are horrified when they see the devastation wreaked by Israeli bombings.

The world will be full of sympathy for the benighted residents of Lebanon who had thought, at last, that their country had secured itself a stable, peaceful democratic future. Half a million of them have been forced from their homes because two Israeli soldiers were taken hostage. That hardly looks like justice.

Journalist groups condemn Israeli attack on Lebanon tv stations

This is why the US is losing its credibility

The Israeli bombing of Lebanon by warplanes, artillery and naval ships has become indiscriminate. Western TV stations are all showing clearly that the targets attacked have nothing to do with Hezbollah. They are targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, which was built after the civil war. The targets being hit are civilian. Dozens, including women and children, are being killed on a daily basis.

Yet the liberal blogosphere is conspicuous by its silence.

It’s been crickets from them. Oh, a few gasps about the invasion, but no direct criticism of Israel that I’ve seen.

“I’ve noticed some clucking in the right-wing wrongosphere about silence from the major left-wing blogs on the situation in the Middle East,” [Matt] Stoller [of MyDD] wrote on Saturday. “There hasn’t been silence, but there has been humility in the face of a fast-moving situation that is difficult to understand.”

Au contraire, The august Times of London, hardly a bunch of lefties, seems to have no problem understanding it. So why can’t netroots? Stoller’s comments are evasive.

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the The New Republic and a general critic of bloggers, rejected the “complexity” explanation.

“Why would you expect complexity from bloggers, left, right, or Martian?” Wieseltier wrote in an email to the Forward. “They are not in the complexity business on any issue. Maybe the problem is not complexity but complication — the way in which sympathy with Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, and therefore with the use of force, might complicate their lives in progressiveland, where they live.”

He’s wrong on the first point, plenty of blogs run in-depth articles with lots of complexity. But his second point, that these liberal bloggers back Israel but won’t say so in public, is quite on target. It also demonstrates how tepid and hypocritical the Anti-war Lite stances of these blogs are. Y’know, they sort of oppose the Iraq War, saying, golly, we need a better, smarter war without Bush in charge, like this is some daring, heroic stance for them to take. Yet now they tacitly back the grotesque invasion of Lebanon by Israel, oblivious and uncaring that both wars are fueled by the imperialist policies of the US.

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Statewide Stage 1 Emergency Notice [200601616]

The California ISO hereby issues a Statewide STAGE 1 ELECTRICAL EMERGENCY Notice, effective 07/22/2006 13:12 through 07/22/2006 20:00.

Reason(s): Due to the loss of a large resource and high loads across the CAISO control area.

Operating Reserves are currently, or forecast to be, less than amounts required by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council. If Operating Reserves deplete further, the ISO will declare a Stage 2 Electrical Emergency and may begin curtailing Interruptible Loads.

2:00 pm. It’s 106 here in the San Fernando Valley, the 17th day in a row over 100, a new record. And it’s 119 in Palm Springs.

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U.S. speeds up bomb delivery for Israel

They don’t learn, do they?

In Iraq, civil war all but declared

Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general

The neocons have started two disastrous wars, yet now are launching a third. Slow learners, aren’t they?

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The extreme heat blew out transformers all over the San Fernando Valley Friday at 5:45 pm. The power company said it’s a Level 2 which means at least ten hours until it’s fixed and that the outages are directly attributable to the heat.

So, we’re blogging from a nearby hotel. When Sue called to make the reservation, she asked, do you have power and do you have in-room wireless? They did, so here we are, fully aware that those who can’t afford hotels will swelter tonight in the dark.

A few days ago, Polizeros was down twice because of power outages in Utah where the server is. Now the outages are here.

Temperatures today and Sunday will be even higher, well above 100, which certainly means there could be more outages.

Oh yes, all the computers, cable modem, and router are unplugged at home and the a/c is off. Don’t want power spikes frying the equipment when the power comes back on.

Written 10 pm, Friday night. By the time this is posted, let’s hope the power is back on. (Update: Sat. 8:12 am, the power came back at 9 pm in our area according to our next door neighbor. However, today will be 106 or so and power isn’t back yet in all areas…)

[tags]power outages, blackouts[/tags]

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Unlike Dubya, Condoleezza Rice knows what words mean.

Rice said “We do seek an end to the current violence, and we seek it urgently. More than that, we also seek to address the root causes of that violence, so that a real and endurable peace can be established.”

Endurable.

Possible to be endured; tolerable or bearable. capable of being borne though unpleasant; “sufferable punishment”

I’m guessing she’s not personally planning to endure any of the suffering.

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Centrist Democrats ponder how to counter netroots

The Democratic Leadership Council (whom are barely centrist, more like the right flank of the party) are meeting to ponder what to do about netroots, the group loosely led by DailyKos, who have pounded Sen. Lieberman so hard that he may actually lose the senatorial primary in Connecticut on Aug. 8.

Thus, netroots is now inflicting serious damage on mainstream Democratic Party leadership. It’s a given the DLC will counter-attack by sliming, attempting to buy off, red-baiting, and doing whatever they can to destroy netroots, who now arguably pose a threat to them.

Is netroots prepared for this? I doubt it. They suffer from twin delusions; 1) That they can take over the Democratic Party and 2) that they can do it using the net alone. For a group trying to take over the party (their avowed goal) they’ve seemingly gone out of their way to make enemies when they could have made allies instead, a serious (and amateur) blunder. Party insiders now will not ever let them in, and they don’t have the clout or numbers to force their way in. Nor do they have the organizing chops, as everything they do is net-based and thus divorced from the real rough and tumble world of politics.

I’ve blogged before about their tepid politics, and their canonization of Saint Ned, he who will slay the Lieberman ogre, is over the top.

Mayor Daley the First of Chicago famously said, “this ain’t beanbags, politics is a contact sport.” Netroots, however well-intentioned, is about to discover this firsthand.

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Orcinus, one of the best investigative sources into the extreme right, details a growing rift within the ranks of the Minutemen over how $1.6 million in contributions has been spent with no apparent accountability.
From the Washington Times

A growing number of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leaders and volunteers are questioning the whereabouts of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in donations collected in the past 15 months, challenging the organization’s leadership over financial accountability.

Many of the group’s most active members say they have no idea how much money has been collected as part of its effort to stop illegal entry — primarily along the U.S.-Mexico border, what it has been spent on or why it has been funneled through a Virginia-based charity headed by conservative Alan Keyes.

It’s also a given that other political rifts are happening within the Minutemen too, given the recent cleansing scrub of their image, something sure to enrage the hard liners who don’t want moderation, no matter how contrived and phony it actually is.

[tags]Minutemen[/tags]

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