Last night the BBC aired the first of a three-part documentary.
Fucking fantastic.
If you can, please watch it.
The first part was divided between the origins ofthe DC neoconservatives and the Bin Laden school of let's blow up the world to save it.
The Bin Laden crowd -- whatever.  They're starting from so far outside my world I have nothing to say about it and it wouldn't matter if I did.  It was interesting, but I was much more interested in "our guys".

June 23, 2004 --
WASHINGTON -- First Lady Laura Bush yesterday told an online campaign chat that she won't be debating Democrat John Kerry's wife Teresa -- just competing with her on cookie recipes.
"Fortunately, Mrs. Kerry and I don't have to debate. Our husbands will be doing plenty of that. I think the only debating we'll be doing is over who bakes a better cookie!" the first lady wrote in the chat on the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site.
Family Circle is running a competition on whose cookies are better -- Mrs. Bush's oatmeal chocolate chunk or Mrs. Kerry's pumpkin spice. In the last three presidential races, the cookie poll accurately predicted the outcome.

Take the poll, but ONLY AFTER ACTUALLY BAKING AND TASTING THE COOKIES!

Family Circle 2004 Election Cookie Cookoff

And, by the way, the reports from Afghanistan, at least the ones I get, are very encouraging. You know, we've got people who have been there last year and have been back this year report a different attitude. And they report people have got a sparkle in their eye.

And women now all of a sudden no longer fear the future but believe that we're there to stay the course and we will help a free society emerge.
Both of which, a free society and a free Afghanistan, are very important to a future, a future world that is peaceful. Because freedom is the bulwark of the value system inculcated in those countries.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101126/

Assessment: Feith Reacts to Criticism
NPR's Alex Chadwick talks to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. They discuss recent developments in the war in Iraq, and the plan for Iraq's transfer to civilian control outlined in President Bush's speech on Monday. Feith also responds to a recent Day to Day segment that featured Chris Suellentrop, who severely criticized Feith's work. Listen to the segment.

Kolbe was one of 22 people in Howard County who filled out a paper ballot in the March 2 primary election rather than use the new touch-screen voting machines, and whose votes were thrown out.

Under the touch-screen system, those 22 paper votes didn't count, county elections officials said.

Kolbe, who voted at Bryant Woods Elementary School in Columbia, said she requested a paper ballot on election day because she did not trust the electronic system.

Although an elections official handed her a paper ballot, told her how to fill it out, and even placed her finished ballot in an official-looking "lockbox," nobody told her that the ballot didn't count, Kolbe said.

"I did not vote with the intention of not voting," she added.

Kolbe has appealed the decision to discount her vote to the state board of elections.

Elections officials said they allowed people to use the paper ballots because they wanted to ensure that everyone who wanted to cast a ballot did so. However, state regulations barred them from counting those votes, the officials said.

I enjoyed Frank's One Market Under God.  I'm out of the country and have been unable to find a copy of this month's Harper's Magazine, so I was happy to find this excerpt.  It's about how rural voters (in this case Kansas) vote against their own iterests.  Not much on why really, but if you've ever lived in Middle America it will paint a familiar picture.
I often think we're going to have to live learn the lessons of the Great Depression all over again.

US supremo boasts of 'con job'

As Mr Bush, facing an election in November, accused Democrats of pushing "economic isolationism", US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick bragged to the Senate finance committee how little the US had opened its key markets to Australian farmers under the new free trade agreement.

Cheap shot I can't help making:  that Zoellick is one handsome guy!

Here's some background on Zoellick and this administration's hypocrisy on trade policy.

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