Austin Cline shows the Republican alternative at Jesus' General. Open Thread below...

Digby excerpts part of MLK's not very well known speech on Vietnam, you know the war that Bush says Iraq isn't:

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic wa...read on

And then she says:

Change a few words and that could have been said today about Iraq, no? It was incendiary at the time, when post WWII America was actually far more reflexively jingoistic than it is today (if you can believe that.)

Empire Burlesque:  Hype v. Hyderabad.

At MaxSpeak, Max Sawicky’s proposal for an “intelligent immigration policy.”  At No Comment, a less intelligent but more modest proposal from Glenn Beck: convert Mexicans into cheap alternative fuel.

All Spin Zone: The Fairness Doctrine is still dead.

Lukery Land: A short course in scandal management, from Bandar Bush to Sibel Edmonds.

Pandagon: Most white people would charge a cool million to give up TV forever – but they’d be willing to switch races for ten grand or less.  (Has Clarence Thomas switched already?)

If you go to church on Sunday / And cabaret on Monday, join the Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

Guest blogger Simbaud will go to bed hungry tonight . . . unless you help.  Send your leftover infoscraps to: Simbaud AT gmail DOT com.

Holy cow. This is a VERY big deal. If you are a Maryland resident, you may want to get on the phone right now to find out from your Secretary of State how they can assure clean elections.

Baltimore Sun:

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

[..]In the wake of the problems, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and other politicians renewed their call to jettison the equipment. The governor has urged state voters to request absentee ballots, although use of the paper alternative raises different concerns about fraud.

A spokesman for the governor said the apparent distribution of the voting-machine software was troubling. Read on...

Tipster MrEMan reminds us of the problems experienced during the September primary and BradBlog points us to a letter by Governor Erlich expressing a loss of faith as far back as February of this year. And yet, to the disadvantage of all voters, nothing has been done.

Reuters:

The United States thanked Syria on Tuesday for going after gunmen who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus but ruled out any immediate improvement in the frigid ties between the two nations.

Four men shouting Islamic slogans tried to blow up the embassy in Damascus, but their car bomb failed to go off. Syrian security guards killed three in a shootout and captured the fourth. The state news agency SANA said a Syrian guard was also killed.

"The U.S. government is grateful for the assistance the Syrians provided in going after the attackers," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "We are hoping they will become an ally and make the choice of fighting against terrorists."

But a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of his comments, said relations between the two countries were unlikely to change much in the near future.

He said the Syrian response "was their duty. The alternative would have been bad for U.S.-Syrian relations." Read on...

Winning hearts and minds in the Middle East every day...

Of course, the Malkin crowd gleefully enjoys the torture aspect to the story, but Sullivan makes some sense:

These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court. I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

Duncan:

It's increasingly likely that the whole British plot wasn't much more of a big deal than the idiotic nonsense in Florida awhile back. Certainly as of yet there's nothing to indicate that FULL PANIC MODE AT THE AIRPORTS and cable news' return to 24 hour OH MY GOD THEY'RE GOING TO BOMB THE SHOPPING MALLS mode had any justification whatsoever....read on

A lot has been written about John McCain's sudden courting of Jerry Falwell in the last few weeks so that he can try to win over the extreme Christian right that permeates the GOP these days. Let's take a listen to what Falwell and Pat Robertson said right after 9/11 on the 700 Club.
Download | play -QT

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way-all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

How can McCain suddenly say that Falwell is not an agent of intolerance? I haven't heard them apologize for their statements.

SFGate has more back in '01.

Daniel sent me this video and says: He's calling senators & newspapers immature, saying we're acting like teenagers dependent on their parents. Hey, Ben; If you really want to talk about dependency, let's talk about how big oil has resisted efforts for alternative fuels. Or how they're dependent on their buddies in the White House for deregulation that circumvents the legislative process, and insures that those nasty environmentalists don't get a say in what goes on in your industry? Tell us, Big Oil, who's YOUR daddy?!

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Wasn't Ben an actor also?

What's the matter with Kansas? Again!

WaPo:

"Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I'm like, 'No problema.' " But that conversation turned out to be a big problem for the staff at the Endeavor Alternative School, a small public high school in an ethnically mixed blue-collar neighborhood. A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school....read on"

More and more hate filled racism is filling our country every second and this is just the beginning over language... You know that the "speak English only" John Gibson rant is coming soon.

Inherit the Wind-Part II

Can I get a cheese steak with that?

Eleven parents of students at a Pennsylvania high school are suing over the school district's decision to include "intelligent design" -- an alternative to evolution that involves a God-like creator -- in the curriculum of ninth-grade biology classes...read on

Circus Clowns are everywhere.