Monsignor Joseph Champlin/American Catholic.org
We Can Move Toward Harmony
Truths Jews, Christians and Muslims Hold in Common


These points are important for us, as a nation, to remember as we move into an uncertain future with those whom we wish to retain as our allies. It's also personally imperative for the sake of harmony that we focus our understanding on what we share as human beings vs. what drives us apart. I hope my secular-minded readers will indulge me.

Excerpts from the section entitled "We Can Move Toward Harmony":

The 10 spiritual commonalities shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims are indeed remarkable. But it would be inaccurate and naïve not to recognize that real differences do exist. Moreover, years of conflict have generated, among some, intense bitterness, hatred and mistrust.

Despite those divisions, if we know and understand each other better, then it should be easier for us to love one another more. Religion, instead of being a source of division, could become a basis for unity.

For such a positive global development to take place, we need to take some practical domestic steps. Individuals can educate themselves through print publications or Web sites such as the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs , Jewish-Christian Relations and the Middle East Policy Council.

Families might discuss these 10 spiritual commonalities to deepen their own awareness and appreciation. Parishes could arrange for visits to both synagogues and mosques. Dioceses might facilitate public dialogue among Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders.

Each of us needs to take the important step of praying individually and with others "that we all may be one" (see John 17:21), just as our loving God has envisioned us from the beginning.

Msgr. Joseph M. Champlin, a widely published author, exchanged pulpits with a local rabbi two years ago, preaching in the synagogue, while the rabbi spoke at a Sunday Mass. This was a first for both their 150-year-old congregations. Last year, Msgr. Champlin invited Dr. Anis Obeid, raised as a Druze Muslim, to describe the basic articles of that religion at a Sunday Mass at Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Syracuse, New York, where the author is rector. Those exchanges and the tragedy of September 11 led to this article.

U.S. Newswire
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Files FEC Compliant Against Grover Norquist, Ken Mehlman;
Alleges Violation of Federal Campaign Laws Over 'Master Contact List'

-[The group is] alleging that Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform and Bush-Cheney '04 violated federal campaign laws. According to The Washington Post, Norquist gave Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Bush- Cheney '04 a "master contact list," including the names and information of conservative activists in 37 states compiled by Norquist over a period of 5 years.
-CREW's complaint alleges that both parties, Norquist and Mehlman are in violation of the law regardless of whether Americans for Tax Reform or Norquist personally contributed the list. Americans for Tax Reform is a corporation and campaigns are prohibited from accepting contributions from corporations. According to FEC regulations, Bush-Cheney could not accept the list if it came directly from Americans for Tax Reform.
-"The public needs to know that no one, including the President of the United States, is above the law. FEC laws are clear and must be followed,"

See Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington website.

See Forbes.com: "Did Bush-Cheney '04 Break Campaign Law?"

Grover Norquist is one of the "Think-Tank Bottom Feeders" (as described in this tongue-in-cheek Austin, Texas-based column).

Among the brightest lights was anti-tax absolutist Grover Norquist, who called his co-panelist Dick Lavine a "Bolshevik," defined taxation as "taking money from people who have earned it and giving it to those who haven't earned it" (presumably the latter would include guests of the tax-exempt, "nonpartisan" TPPF), denounced graduated tax rates as "the [mass murderer] Richard Speck approach," and advocated abolishing public schools altogether: "Don't raise taxes, and don't fund monopolies!" The assembled elected officials – when not attacking "politicians" – generally took a more moderate line. Rather than abolish public education outright, they simply intend to starve it to death.

Salon.com (subsc. or free one-day pass req.)
Hitting the mainstream media:
Bush's Missing Year
In 1972, George W. Bush dropped out of his National Guard service and later lied about it. With the media finally paying attention, will he now come clean?

JWR/Omer Bartov
Did Hitlerism Die with Hitler?

....those who foolishly think that doing away with Israel, not least in a "one-state solution," would remove anti-Semitism had better look more closely at the language of these enemies....
Hitler taught humanity an important lesson. It is that when you see a Nazi, a fascist, a bigot, or an anti-Semite, say what you see. If you want to justify it or excuse it away, describe accurately what it is that you are trying to excuse away. If a British newspaper publishes an anti-Semitic cartoon, call it anti-Semitic. If the attacks on the Twin Towers were animated by anti-Semitic arguments, say so. If a Malaysian prime minister expresses anti-Semitic views, do not try to excuse the inexcusable. If a self-proclaimed liberation organization calls for the extermination of the Jewish state, do not pretend that it is calling for anything else. The absence of clarity is the beginning of complicity.

Washington Post
Auschwitz Under Our Noses

Come Fly With Me!

"Come fly with me,
let’s float down on Air Force Two
In Cheney land, there’s a huntin' strand
And you’ll shoot a duck or two
Come fly with me, Antonin,
just me and you..."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks. The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney's bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.

Bohemian Mama Blog
I might like John Kerry as Nominee More If.........
Bohemian Mama originally posted this on her diary over at Kos and there are some spirited comments. She says she's "glad people are at least talking about things", and she's "always wanting to learn more."

I understand exactly how she feels.

My question is--what lesson didn't he learn from Viet Nam that would have lead him to miss the important fact that Bush was surely going to take pre-emptive action against Iraq? Kerry must have known the UN would just be, for Bush, a polite stop-over visit with a step-over attitude. We all knew it...why didn't he?

Related article: Salon.com (subsc. or free one-day pass req.)
Will Deaniacs pull a Nader on the Democratic Party?
Some of the insurgent's supporters say they're going to take their idealism and go home --- but most of them will probably get over their bitterness and support the nominee.

Jake Tapper/ABC news
Stealth Negativity?
Recording Reveals Kerry Operative Dissing Dean in Campaign Call

Caught on Tape

But two nights ago, Cornell College psychology professor Suzette Astley, a Dean volunteer in Lisbon, Iowa, received a phone call from a Kerry's Cedar Rapids headquarters — in which, she says, a Kerry volunteer had some less than kind things to say about Dean regarding his foreign policy experience, being from a largely white state, and so-called "environmental racism."

Since a documentary filmmaker was staying with Astley, the exchange, which has been confirmed by the Kerry campaign, was caught on videotape.

"Does your candidate know that you're saying these kinds of things, unsubstantiated claims on the phone representing Sen. Kerry?" Astley asked 19-year-old volunteer, Jacob Thomas, on the tape, a copy of which was obtained by ABCNEWS.

Soon, she asked to speak with Kerry's regional field supervisor, with whom she launched a complaint.

"I am just really offended by the call I got tonight," she said. "The person who was talking to me was taking things out of context, repeating unsubstantiated reports to me, and I find that really offensive."

Democrats: This is the time to look at yourselves most honestly

A righty-writer at World Net Daily hopes that "the RNC provides a 24x7 cable show for McAuliffe and, in the interim, invites all those outraged with yet another clownish moment from the Alfred E. Neuman of American politics to skip the getting mad and go straight to the getting even via a donation" to the Bush campaign."
While the AWOL situation deserves mainstream media treatment (see the actual/true story here), you cannot treat it lightly and clumsily. Talk about gaffes from Howard Dean....Terry McAuliffe tends to act like a verbal bull in a China-shop while a more detached demeanor would suffice. I am more than a bit angry with McAuliffe myself for what I watched him fully allow to happen with the Howard Dean candidacy. His actions (or failure to act when Dean rightly appealed to him about professionaly interfering in all the unfair media treatment) led me to suspect that he was a biased party chairman. Comments I have heard from him and Carville and Begala since that incident have further fed that suspicion.
Although it is a harsh statement by WorldNet Daily columnist and I'm not inclined to drink the koolaid of Bush-defenders, when I read this following statement, some of it "hit home".

"McAuliffe's decision to deny that service in the national guard is service in the military – even as thousands of national guard have served in Iraq – is a blunder larger than any of his others, and trafficking in discredited urban myths gives you a glimpse of McAuliffe's desperation to turn the conversation to anything except Kerry's way-left voting record, or his role in the Dean meltdown, or the failure of Wes Clark to capture any significant support outside the loon caucus."

I hope Democrats will take a good, hard, honest look at themselves and understand that the Peter Jennings of the so-called "liberal" media will not let sleeping dogs lie. Jennings was the one who started this Michael Moore-deserter baiting. The Democrats had best find just the right way to get the truth out there and shut up the mealy-mouthed media-baiters while they can. Situations like this could easily spin out of control. Judging from McAuliffe's treatment of Howard Dean in his own party's primary, I can't say I have faith he'll understand what he needs to do.

New Yorker Magazine/Comment
BLAME GAME
What Hutton and Kay reveal

....as Seymour M. Hersh has reported in this magazine, senior members of the Bush Administration did press the intelligence agencies to provide evidence supporting the President’s claim that Iraq represented a grave danger. Other journalists have made similar charges.
We know that Vice-President Dick Cheney, who continues to insist that some W.M.D.s might be found, visited the C.I.A. several times before the war for face-to-face meetings with Iraq analysts, and that senior Pentagon officials were running their own intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans. Until a full account is provided, the suspicion will remain that in Washington, as in London, the handling of intelligence had more to do with persuading the public to support a war that had already been decided on than with calmly assessing threats. Whatever finally emerges, the C.I.A. should not be used as a scapegoat. Intelligence, by its very nature, is usually uncertain and often wrong. It should always be treated with skepticism and caution, two attributes that were, and are, conspicuously missing from the Bush White House.

Top four reasons Bush and media can't claim they were 'misled'

And Cheney appoints his own interrogator! ;)
Hey! Some fair investigation that'll be!

Madison Capital Times
Dean treated badly by most media

What if we lived in a parallel universe where Howard Dean was actually treated fairly by the media?... a place where Dean would be treated like the other candidates - criticized for his mistakes, complimented for his accomplishments and, above all, treated seriously when he discusses issues.....How would a Dean candidacy be faring today if the press gushed over him as it does John Edwards, or forgave him his trespasses as quickly as it does John Kerry, or overlooked the disorder in his organization as casually as it does the daily disaster that is Joe Lieberman's so-called campaign?
Dean has made mistakes, to be sure. But those mistakes have been amplified by a 24-hour-a-day news cycle, by late-night comics, by an Anybody-But-Dean army of cable television and talk-radio talking heads, and by Washington-centric newspaper columnists who never understood or particularly approved of Dean's decision to show up uninvited at the top of Democratic polls in late 2003.

....Democrats quietly admitted they would probably vote for Kerry or Edwards - candidates who just weeks ago were dismissed as losers but are now regularly referred to as "electable" by the media pack....
It is true that every disintegrating presidential candidacy since that of John Adams in 1800 has blamed the media for its decline. But in this case, Dean's complaints appear to be more credible than those of most damaged contenders.
How do we know? (SEE ARTICLE!)

NY Times
U.S. Comptroller General Warns About Magnitude of Deficits and Fiscal Risks
This is not a particularly sexy issue, so you won't see a lot about it on CNN. I suppose the likes of Grover Norquist and George W. Bush are just as glad it's not a hot, juicy story like Kobe, Condit, sharks, or mountain lions. They can quietly destroy our Social Security, Medicare, and other socially beneficial programs much easier this way. US Comptroller General David Walker realizes this is not an easy topic for the typical American to want to wrap their minds around. He warns that, if Americans are not educated and accurately informed, they may find themselves in fiscal peril before too long.

Long-term simulations from the legislative agency I head, the General Accounting Office, paint a chilling picture. Even before the new drug benefit was enacted, these simulations showed that by 2040 current policy could require a 50 percent reduction in federal spending or a doubling of taxes to balance the budget.

As Jefferson pointed out, truth and transparency are even more essential in the public sector. Government services -mail delivery, food inspection, Social Security and defense, to name a few - directly affect the well-being of every American. But sound decisions on federal programs and policies are nearly impossible without timely, accurate and useful information.

A top-to-bottom review of government activities to ensure their relevance for the 21st century is long overdue. From a practical standpoint, our elected representatives are not likely to get too far out in front of the American people when addressing complex and controversial issues. These fiscal risks, however, are a long-term problem whose impact will not be felt for some time. The understanding and support of the American people will be critical in providing a foundation for action.
A national education campaign to help the public understand the nature and magnitude of the long-term financial challenge facing this nation is essential. After all, an informed electorate is indispensable for a sound democracy. Young Americans especially need to become active in this discussion - because they and their children will bear the heaviest burden if today's leaders fail to act.

Washington Post Blasts Bush Budget

The Bush administration's 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disingenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting and irresponsible governing...To keep running up these deficits is to stick future generations with a tab they won't be able to afford. The administration presents itself as blameless victim.. it doesn't take into account continuing costs in Iraq and Afghanistan...The biggest distortion is to present a snapshot of 2009 and stop there. Making the tax cuts permanent would cost $132 billion in the coming five years, but $936 billion through 2014. How Mr. Bush can adhere to this reckless course is the true "subject of concern."

The Hill
Grassley oddly confident about catching bin Laden "before November 2nd election"
I find all this certainty to be very, very strange. I have the distinct impression, from this and other stories I've read recently, that the Bushies have known where bin Laden is for a long time and have purposely held off capture until it can fit their political agenda.

“Obviously, he’ll be caught between now and the election,” Grassley said Monday when asked if he’s disappointed that Osama bin Laden hasn’t been killed or captured.
“I think they’re on his trail now in a way they haven’t been all year,” Grassley said.

SEE: "Hmmmmmm....they are apparently"sure"of where Osama is now...why not go and grab him?"

Washington Post
George McGovern Speaks About 1972 and 2004

Isn't the big lesson of 1972 this: Beware a president whose campaign dishonesty got him expelled from office shortly after his landslide win? Is winning an election worth dishonoring the nation? Am I the one who should be ashamed about 1972?

It has always seemed to me that the leaders who are the quickest to send our boys and our young to war are those who have never known war themselves.

I'm proud of my war service, but today I'm more interested in peace. I certainly don't want any more wars like the one in Iraq -- a country that posed no threat to us and had nothing to do with Sept. 11, 2001. There seem to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

CONGRATULATIONS, JOHN EDWARDS!!!!!!
Senator Edwards is the projected winner in the South Carolina primary.

CONGRATULATIONS, WESLEY CLARK!!!!!!
General Clark is the projected winner of Oklahoma.

Well, well..Look what's hit the mainstream
For the Record
Bush's Guard Service In Question
Democrats Say President Shirked His Duty in 1972
It only took them four years.
Wonder if they'll ever mention this?
Or this?
There's always this...and this.
That he received an honorable discharge is not a testament to his honorable service, but rather one that indicates that he received preferential treatment not available to those being charged with AWOL and desertion today.

Woman gives up her career to be
First lady
Geez-
Why couldn't Judy Dean have been so lame?

on the trail
From the Mouths of Babes
General Clark's son speaks out about the corrupt political press
By Chris Suellentrop

"Of politics, he says, "It's a dirty business, filled with a lot of people who are pretending to be a lot of things they're not."
"It's not the media's job to get his message out. The media's job is to sell advertising."
The media's horse-race coverage is all that matters, and by skipping Iowa, Clark got left out of the horse race. "It's all horse-race questions," he says. "My favorite was Dad wearing a sweater in New Hampshire one day. Maybe he was wearing a sweater because he was cold."
But why has the president gotten positive coverage while the Democrats have gotten negative coverage, in his opinion? "It's about access. You know that you'll be denied access if you actually cover things honestly."
"I'd like him to win today. If he doesn't win, I don't want him to stay out there," and "What did we get on the news for this weekend? A speeding ticket in Oklahoma. You gotta be f*cking kidding me."

JWR/Jeff Dunetz
ON GROUNDHOG DAY-
Groundhogs and human rodents

Why should Punxsutawney Phil get all of the attention?


These are strong words. I think we owe them a good listening and we should heed the pain that lies behind the cutting wit. How can we, as American citizens, become healers in our own right?

..Phil is just one example. All across the world there are ceremonies just like the one in Punxsutawney — ceremonies, where people trust animal behavior to indicate the future....There is the one that takes place in Ramallah on the West Bank. The Ramallah rodent is named Palestinian Yassir.....Yassir the Moneyhog is worshiped in Europe, because his primary role is killing Jews...Another ceremony that uses a rodent as a seer is the one in France .The animal in this one has had many names. The latest is Judenphobe Jacques. If Jacques poke his head out of his hole and sees Jewish people living in peace, we will have six more years of horrible anti-Semitism....
During the UN Party, all the delegates gather around a small hole and out pops Kantseenuthing Koffi. If Koffi sees Jews dying he goes back into his hole and closes his eyes.....There are so many other events that people don't know about, there is Mousears Michael who is so afraid of being recognized as Jewish, he pokes his head up from a tree atop of a castle and if he sees a Jewish shadow he runs from his background and we have 6 more months of ABC News' anti-Israel Bias...... One of the newest prognosticators is known as Passiveagressive Powell. Passiveagressive he helps predict US Foreign policy. Passiveagressive Powell has been known to trade Israeli lives for Arab oil. Every time Israel ties to defend herself he pokes his head up from the fence between US and Mexico (that's a good wall) and if he needs something from the Arab world we get six days of condemnation.....

I have one comment---remember who Powell works for. I recall his performance at the U.N. to make the (suspected false) case for the attack upon Iraq, which not only set back the peace process, but endangered the people of Israel. At the time, I thought to myself: a very un-Powell performance. It was then I realized he had become the loyal and willing puppet of the Bush administration.
May I suggest BlastIraqatAnyCost Bush?

Pressure, pressure!!
James Carville said two
(of the "Big Five") should have gone after last week's primary....

It didn't happen, though. And I'm glad.
My state (New York-the one hit on 9-11) won't even have a chance to speak until March.
Our hero-attorney-general Eliot Spitzer's endorsement of Kerry (announced yesterday in New Mexico) is going to be one of Kerry's greatest endorsements.
Should Kerry succeed, I recommend Spitzer for the AG spot. Kerry will owe him big-time.

About the other candidates dropping out after two states....
Give us a chance to speak, Carville and McAuliffe!
Give us a choice.
There were 48 other states in America last time I checked.
You are for a healthy (small 'd') democratic race...aren't you, now!?

CARVILLE: I think of the big five, two will be gone tomorrow. Whether they drop out -- whether you drop out or not doesn't matter -- but if two people finish far behind here, it's going to be pretty hard for them to raise money; it's going to be hard for their supporters to stay with them.

And there's a great sense among everyday rank-and-file Democrats, "Hey, if somebody does really well here, let's get, all get behind them and make this person nominee." And by the same token, these guys have been working hard -- Sen. Edwards and Dean -- you can't force people out of this thing too early, but somebody has to show ability to get votes in order to stay in this thing. You can't just stay in this thing forever.

Thomas Friedman says....
"Personally, I don't believe the Bush team will pay a long-term political price for its faith-based intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Too many Americans, including me, believe in their guts that removing Saddam was the right thing to do, even if the W.M.D. intel was wrong."

I wonder how we might reconcile that opinion with the President's approval rating, which has dropped from the 60s to the 40s since capturing Hussein? How does that jibe with the fact that, on the most recent poll taken of the president's performance on Iraq, the disapproval rate rose from 36 to 53?

Making a case for Bush/Justifying War:
Who Said This?
"You're talking about delivering the arsenal he has...he might still have all of those barrels of evil stuff, the biochemical weapons...chances are he has those weapons but he doesn't have the power to deliver them...It is particularly in light of what happened on September 11, 2001 and the fear that there are evil people out there, some of whom may have consorted with Saddam Hussein in the past, that would get together and use some of these chemical weapons -- if they're in Iraq -- on U.S. citizens....
September 11, 2001 was not hypothetical, nothing hypothetical at all...We know there are people out there willing to do the dirty deed and we also know Saddam Hussein has had contacts with these people in the past. ...
We know from Czech intelligence. Czech intelligence says that an Iraqi met with Mohammed Atta twice. ...
The FBI and CIA say the situation is not clear but Czech intelligence says it is. And why it is that the only person, only Arab leader that Usama bin Laden likes and approves of and speaks highly of is Saddam Hussein, why?
We talked to representatives of Al Qaeda here in 1998 shortly after the bombings of those embassies in Africa. The only Arab leader -- I spoke to them personally, the only Arab leader they were willing to praise, not to condemn, was Saddam Hussein. Why?
[The case has] been made not only by Usama bin Laden himself but by representatives of Al Qaeda to me personally on air. We've got the tape. I can show it to you...
They both want the destruction of the United States. You don't think they do? You don't think Usama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein want the destruction of the United States?
That's the point, the fact that Usama bin Laden has had, or is suspected to have had contacts, well, just a suspicion when thousands of American lives are at risk. Isn't a suspicion alone enough to really act upon?
You don't have to be told who lost the war in 1991. Who lost? It was Saddam Hussein. He signed these agreements as a result of his loss so that he could keep his nation in power. The conditions laid out by the U.N. were agreed to by the Iraqis. 95 percent was destroyed but five percent could not be accounted for.. That's a lot of potential biochemical weapons...for a madman like Saddam Hussein, to have 5 percent of that arsenal is still a dangerous thing...
...it would take six months to rebuild those facilities. So they could have built that. They could have built that four, six times over... isn't that a risk that we have to be particularly cognizant of, and if the Iraqis won't allow our inspectors unfettered access, isn't our only option to go in there and take out Saddam? Richard Butler was a spy for the United States, not an independent U.N. weapons inspector? The United States has admitted that they used Richard Butler as a pawn in an intelligence operation thwarting the neutral interests of the United Nations? Knowingly allowing them neutral reputation of the United States -- United Nations to fall by the wayside in order to work with United States intelligence is nothing that he's ever admitted to...
They say they want death and destruction for the United States. The vice president of Iraq said it is the duty of Arabs anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world, to attack U.S. interests and U.S. individuals. This is the vice president of Iraq. You just admitted it is a dictatorship. We have clear rhetoric coming from Iraq. Arabs have the duty to attack and kill Americans even on U.S. soil. They are saying that. It is conceivable, is it not, that they have created in the four years since we have been there quite a stockpile of chemical [and] biological weapons. Why do you think it is that they did that?
Who do you trust more, President Bush and the case he is making against Saddam Hussein, or the rhetoric coming out of Iraq? Coming out of Iraq or that coming out of President Bush?
Why it is that we should not believe Richard Butler who was chief weapons inspector, or believe people like the former nuclear scientist who worked on Saddam Hussein's campaign who says he still has an active policy to get a nuclear weapon and has other capabilities -- why should we not believe all of these other people and believe you?"

*answer below..in comments section*