In the spirit of my high school years, which were spend debating Weber carburators vs. Solex and Holley, I want to point out that we just got Verizon fiber run to our house.

15Mbps downloads…ooooh…speedy…

Yes, I am a geek.

Patterico lays out – in his inimitable prosecutorial style – the case that a LA Times story on Iraq was not only wrong, but maliciously and lazily so.

He says:

So I can’t tell you whether it’s true that the L.A. Times is repeating propaganda from a stringer with ties to insurgents.

But I can tell you this: I don’t have the resources of the L.A. Times. Yet in my spare time from my full-time job, using widely available resources on the Web and contacts built up through blogging, I probably got a more accurate picture of what happened in Ramadi on November 13 than the paid reporter for the L.A. Times did.

and he’s understaing his case. I’ve watched him work on this over the last few days, and I’ll tell you that – in his spare time, apart from his day job and time spent with his family – he’s done original reporting and laid out the truth better than the LA Times with it’s vast resources, layers of editors, and commitment to journalistic excellence.I’m stuck trying to figure out why until I pull down a borrowed copy of Richard Avedon’s portrait book “The Sixties” – which I’d love to blog about – and saw this:

Gloria Emerson
New York Times Correspondent
Saigon
April 1, 1971

Vietnam is just a confirmation of everything we feared might happen in life. And it has happened. You know, a lot of people in Vietnam – and I might be one of them – could be mourners as a profession. Morticians and mourners. It draws people who are seeking confirmation of tragedies…

Once I got so desperate – the Americans had started bombing Hanoi – I ran to the National Press Center where they gave the briefings…a forty year old woman running through the streets in the middle of the night…and I wrote on the wall in Magic Marker, Father, forgive. they know not what they do. And I don’t even believe in God. Who is Father? Father, forgive, they know not what they do. But there were no other words in the whole English language.

If they found out it was me they would have sent me home. New York Times correspondents must not go running around at two o’clock in the morning writing, Father, forgive, they know not what they do. But afterward I thought how there’s no way…no one, no one to whom you can say we’re sorry.

[ellipses in the original]

There’s something here to discuss…

For the Iraq/Domestic policy post I’m working on, I’d love to collect cites that support or refute these two positions:

* That the Administration and Republican Party have tempered their policies toward Iraq in order not to make the war too “apparent” to voters – and to try and maintain their electoral advantage.

* That the Democrats have tempered their responses and positions on Iraq – and kept from fully formulating a policy on Iraq – in order not to risk this last election.

I’m digging, but any help is always appreciated….

I apologize for being absent – I’ve just started three new projects in the last three weeks (maybe four today), am dealing with some (mild, amusing) family tumult, and a couple of outside business issues that have become pressing (two good to great news, one disaster avoidance).

I swear that I’ll do the Domestic/Iraq piece over the weekend – or I’ll forfeit my right to make fun of Keith Olbermann for his lame and historically ignorant smackdowns until July of 2007.

Meanwhile, I’m pulling together the recipes for dinner tomorrow and about to start cooking.

I’m thankful for many things in my life. For family – TG to the boys, to their moms and all the love that they have all lavished on the three young men, to my mom, her fella Tom, and my brother and sister-in-law. For friends – who live here and the ones who visit, and the ones we visit far too seldom. For work, and the stuff and comfort that it has bought. For all the fun I’ve had (Vegas, baby!!).

I’m thankful for those who have put themselves in harm’s way and are spending this weekend in far away places away from the comforts of hearth and home. They are there with the intent of defending us and making the world better – whether you’re thankful for the ones who gave the orders or not, you ought to be thankful for the troops who risk everything trying to carry them out.

I’m thankful for this community as well. In some ways, I’m more thankful for the folks who criticize and engage me than those who just pat me on the back (although I appreciate those as well). When you finish this, take a moment and think about everyone around you and how lucky each of us is for the care and regard we get from others.

I’m thankful for it all, and tomorrow let’s all celebrate together.

Take a look at Ali Eteraz’s Aziz Poonwalla’s post on Israel-Palestine.

It’s interesting, and positive…but will it get any traction? I’m doubtful.

And it isn’t as if peace is an intractable solution. In fact it is quite simple: resolution of the conflict requires genuine sacrifice by both parties. The ideal framework would be along the lines of the Taba accords and the King Abdullah proposal. It will require that the Palestinians abandon the right of return, and accept some form of financial recompense in its stead to only those displaced families whose property claims can be verified. It will require that Israel dismantle all settlements in the West Bank, and relocate the settlers. It will require that a administrative body with authority over joint issues such as water rights and transportation be established. It will require NATO security guarantees of Jerusalem as a open city, the capital of both nations. It will require peace through diplomacy with Syria, with Damascus granted economic trade rights, security guarantees, and teh return of the Golan Heights in return for total cessation of military and financial support for Hizbollah. It will require bilateral normalization of diplomatic relations with every Arab country. It woudl require Israel to eventually be invited to join the Arab League and begin to interact with its neighbors as a neighbor and member of the regional identity, not a Western satellite. It will require Arab nations to carry Israeli satellite television as part of their media feeds and absolute sanitzation of all anti-Semitic rhetoric in their educational systems.

As to the issue of the West Bank and Golan Heights; they were nominally held after ’67 to provide Israel with some defense in depth – some land on which to fight a land war.

The military challenges to Israel no longer look much like columns of Syrian tanks. While I’m doubtful that the political changes Ali is discussing will happen – it’d be interesting to see what it would take to crack the door open.

Democrats – abandon their short-lived challenge to the “Culture of Corruption” in Congress, as Nancy Pelosi pushed for pork-hound and Abscam-tainted Murtha for Majority Leader.

GOP – bring back Trent Lott to the leadership, proving that there are no positions so reprehensible that they disqualify an insider from a position of power.

And I loved seeing John Moran (D-MBNA) stand tall in support of his man Murtha. Yup, we’ll wipe out that ‘Culture of Corruption’, indeed.

It’s going to take a firehose to clean that place up…

I took some grief for my Examiner piece on Joe Lieberman – the one where I said he’d win and the netroots crowd pulling for Lamont were basically feathering their nests?

Here’s Kos (hat tip Mickey Kaus)

Finally, I’m not afraid of money, and I’m putting it to good use — the abandonment of Scoop and a massive ground-up redevelopment of Daily Kos to be the ultimate blogging platform in the world, and the establishment of a corps of “fellows” to do great activism.

More details on those projects will emerge in December, but bottom line is that I won’t cry if Chevron or anyone else wants to help fund the rise of a professional netroots activist class.

It’s not that he’s wrong to do it. It’s just that I was right when I said that it was about the jobs.

I like Jim Webb, even if the Kossaks do too, and while he ran a worse campaign than he should have, he ran a good enough one to win.

I’m happy that he’s started his Senatorial career with a shot across the bow in the WSJ on the increasing ossification of American society:

America’s elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own self-interest. A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the U.S. differently than other “First World” nations, and that white-collar jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far been ravaged by outsourcing and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that “unless a solution is found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk of a protectionist backlash” in America that would take us away from what they view to be the “biggest economic stimulus in world history.”

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The “Wal-Marting” of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The good news is that he gets that there’s a problem. It’s a problem that I’ve written about more than a few times, and see as one of the two or three biggest ones we face today…behind Islamism, in case you’re wondering.

The bad news is that he’s walking close to the line of economic nationalism – and when I think too far down that path, I can’t decide if I want to point him at Smoot-Hawley or King Canute. S’not gonna work.

But there are things we can and should do, in tax policy and corporate governance policy to temper the advantages for the managerial class (and the investor class) in wage-shifting. But I need to finish my Iraq post first…

I’ve been preoccupied with work, a side project (a search widget I’m playing with along with Biggest Guy, who’s displaying alarming technical acumen), and dealing with the server issues here.

So here’s a blogging bleg – what other good-sized sites do people know that are running MT? I’ll poker around and look but don’t have time for sustained research this week.

Part II of “Iraq Is F**ked” is in process…just taking longer because of all the distractions.

Sorry – just back from a wonderful weekend in Las Vegas with TG and blogger, SOA-goddess, ExposureManager.com-goddess Kerry Dupont who scored some Cirque de Soleil tickets and was kind enough to share them with us.

First, we had another comment spam attack which nailed our server this weekend. We’re working on it, and this fix may improve things. Meanwhile we have the comment filtering set on “max” which has been trapping a lot of legitimate comments in moderation – apologies for that, and I set them all free. We’re working on the problem.

Vegas was lots of fun; we saw “O” and “Zoomanity”. O is – as always – stupendous and worth a trip on its own. Zoomanity – not so much. I will confess to having occasional licentious thoughts about some of the more …flexible… Cirque women. And a show based around that could be fun. Zoomanity isn’t that show. 25% Cirque magic, 75% traditional Vegas topless review. Bah.

However, food and company made up for it. TG is the best travel companion ever. And we ate at – Emeril’s, Chinois (at the Forum?), and a little place called Mon Ami Gabi.

I’d go back to all three.