The “children of Israel” takes on new meaning as the Palestinians are bludgeoned into a stupor that is yet another example of a shock and awe campaign. While Hamas is mired in old style guerilla warfare, Israel unveils the newest paradigms of military strategy. 

Dear George H. W. Bush (affectionately, '41'),

Regarding

FOXNews - Sunday, January 04, 2009: The first President Bush said he would like to see his other son, Jeb, become president one day, but if now's not the time he'd be an "outstanding senator."

...During an interview on "FOX News Sunday," the nation's 41st president said Jeb, the former governor of Florida, is "as qualified and as able as anyone I know in the political scene" to be president.

Absolutely, 41, absolutely! But first I hope you can be patient enough to help America address a couple of niggling doubts.

Thanks George, I expect nothing less than that you'll be gracious in response.  

First, there is the question of feasibility: Is it realistic to consider a campaign for Jeb without Bush dynasty guru and information technology master, the late Mike Connell, managing the electrons?

Sure, Karl Rove's still around but he's so direct-mail, while Connell was the man who translated Karl's knowledge into the Information Age.  Are you considering this factor?

George Bush Thinks
U.S. National Forests Are Best Used
For Housing Sub-Divisions

Israel launches assault across Gaza's borders

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 January 2009 01.03 GMT

Israel last night dramatically escalated its war with Hamas, sending troops and tanks pouring over Gaza's borders in a move designed to reoccupy parts of the northern Gaza Strip. Amid reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza, columns of military vehicles and what the army said was "a sizeable number of troops" moved across the border at several points, backed by an intense air and artillery bombardment.

The move followed the failure of a week-long air force offensive, which has claimed more than 460 Palestinian lives, to halt the Hamas rockets. More than 30 hit Israel yesterday, wounding three people. Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, said his country was a peace-loving nation but Hamas had given it no choice and brought the assault on the Palestinian people. "Now is the time to do what needs to be done," he said. "It won't be easy. It won't be short. I don't want to delude anyone." The government in Jerusalem ordered the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, suggesting the operation will be expanded further. The army said it expected to be in Gaza "for many long days".

Beijing strikes at dissidents

Clampdown on Charter 08's call for democracy also aims to gag parents of tainted milk children and Sichuan quake victims

David Stanway in Shanghai
The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009

China has launched a tough countrywide crackdown on a new network of political activists, writers and lawyers who have supported a bold new manifesto that presses for the end of one-party rule.

The group of 300 or so people had all signed Charter 08, which called for democracy and the rule of law in China and was named after the famous Charter 77 dissident group formed in cold war Czechoslovakia.

Charter 08 has been hailed as the most significant act of public dissent against China's Communist party since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests were brutally crushed in 1989. It was posted online on 10 December, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It condemned recent economic modernisation efforts as having "stripped people of their rights", and called for political reform and a new liberal, democratic constitution.

 Lawyer gets 5-cent IRS bill, 4-cent refund

James Howarth is a little confused by two letters he has received from the Internal Revenue Service.

So, he gets a letter containing a bill for 5-cents ... then gets a letter with a notice that he has a 4-cent refund coming.  Both letters were ... mailed. Just what is the cost of mailng a letter these days? Does the IRS have to pay postage? How many of these types of letters do you suppose get mailed by the IRS every year? 

Don't you think they could tell the computer to kick back any bills or refunds that are under $1.00? or $.50? The expense of printing the invoice (along with the accompanying payment coupons, etc) stuffing the envelope, mailing the letters ... cost us a whole lot more than the 5-cents the IRS would have collected.

[sigh]

Promoted. Originally posted 2009-01-03 12:14:17 -0500. -- GH

Last night, 1-02-009, on the PBS News Hour they held a discussion with "Frontline" correspondent and filmmaker June Cross who describes her documentary "The Old Man and the Storm" which will air on PBS's "Frontline" on Jan. 6th, New Orleans: Three Years After Katrina.

This is a timely documentary more than three years after Katrina and especially as to the way the Government has been handling that compared to the extremely quick bailouts of the financial institutions in the present economic collapse and at other times when the corporate elite demanded their political friends come to their aid. There are three short video's at the 'Frontline' site that I'm embedding below, the third one touches on just that, especially as to the promises made by the President bush and other Government Officials and to the rapidly failing 'free market' 'trickle down' economic policy of the GOP.

Promoted.  Image adjusted (shrunk) by GreyHawk to preserve page space.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Words matter. Labels matter. Although it has become vogue to say, "Voters are tired of labels" they remain powerful. How we define the meaning of those labels is critical. Those of us who call ourselves "liberal" have learned this the hard way. As a liberal activist who slogged, blogged and endured, I find myself reflecting about the word "liberal" and the abuse it's absorbed with Obama's inauguration less then three weeks away.

It seems like only yesterday I volunteered for the Dukakis campaign in college as my candidate defensively denied he was a liberal. At the time voters associated the word "liberal" with convicted rapists. In the last days of the '88 campaign, Dukakis finally declared himself a liberal and attempted to define it on his own terms. Alas, it was too little too late.

From 1968 through 2004, predatory conservatives successfully defined liberalism to mean unpatriotic intellectual elites living in ivory towers, spewing hate America first diatribes while celebrating permissiveness over responsibility, trashing God, empowering welfare recipients over those who work and advocating surrender to America's enemies. In other words, to be a liberal was to be un-American. This past year, liberalism wasn't necessarily made "cool" but the right wing's ability to distort it was undermined following eight years of George W. Bush's reign of indecency.

Hat-tip pmeldrum, who sent this in via email.

We're off to a rockin' start.

This is an Open Thread.