The Rag Blog

In their distinctive style of morbid humor, resourceful Baghdadis are circulating emails presenting their own personal assessment of the security situation in the capital. The detailed lists of what neighborhoods and areas are safe and what to avoid completely, because of Mahdi Army or Al-Qaeda activity or the random car bomb, are quite different from those found in Iraqi government or U.S. military statements. As many parts of the capital have become no-go zones for members of either the Sunni or Shia sect – or sometimes for both, it is a challenge for Baghdadis to identify areas where they are able to move freely and areas where they should better stay out.

The following is a translation of one such email making the rounds among residents of Baghdad and on Iraqi Web forums. The sarcastic email, which was written in Iraqi slang, attempts to classify the districts of Baghdad based on their level of danger. According to the author, the safest neighborhoods are the ones where the odds of staying alive are 50%:

The situation in different areas of Baghdad in regard to takfiri gangs of the new age: Al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, and their spiritual leaders – the forces of liberation.

fall into four different categories: safe, relatively safe, dangerous, and relatively dangerous. They are classified as follows:

– A safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 50%.
– A relatively safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 40%.
– A relatively dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 30%.
– A dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 20 to 10%.

MADERA, California (AP) — Raw, organic almonds form the basis of Karyn Calabrese’s garlicky nut pate, her vegan pie crusts and vanilla ice cream custards.

But under a new federal rule requiring that virtually all almonds be pasteurized to prevent foodborne illness, the Chicago restaurateur will have to substitute a new nut, or go to vast lengths to import her raw almonds from across the globe.

Industry representatives say tightening food safety rules to subject almonds to heat treatment will help expand the market for California farmers, who grow about 80 percent of the world’s almonds in a flat strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But the regulation, set to take effect September 1, has also angered everyone from organic farmers to followers of the restrictive raw foods diet.

“The almond is the king of the nut world and a main staple for raw foodists,” said Calabrese, whose elegant restaurants feature small plates of raw, vegan food, none of which has been heated above 110 degrees. “I haven’t even thought out what I’ll do because it’s just such a mind-blowing situation.”

Almonds have become increasingly lucrative as they’ve gained popularity with health-conscious consumers. California farmers expect to harvest 1.3 billion pounds of almonds this year, a bumper crop worth more than $1.4 billion.

Following Salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 that were traced to raw almonds, the Almond Board of California rallied for a federal rule requiring all almonds in the state to be pasteurized to keep bacteria from infecting the nuts while they dry in the orchard or while they’re processed.

“We consider it unacceptable to continue shipping a product that could contain a microorganism that could make somebody sick,” said Richard Waycott, president and CEO of the board, a marketing arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We’re really confident that this program is a win-win for everybody because it does not alter the product.”

In pasteurization — a process also used for milk, juice and eggs — the shelled and hulled nuts typically are laid out on a conveyor belt that passes them through a moist burst of steam to heat the kernels’ surface to about 200 degrees, killing any pathogens present. An alternative process sends the nuts into a chamber where they’re sprayed with propylene oxide gas.

Major almond buyers such as Mars Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and The Hershey Co. reviewed a study by the board to determine if the process impacted the nut’s quality, taste, texture and appearance, and found it had no effect, Waycott said.

Once treated, the pasteurized almonds are ready for sale and can be legally shipped throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico, said Michael Durando, chief for the marketing order administration branch at USDA.

Growers can apply for exemptions if they can prove that their manufacturing process — be it dry roasting, blanching or any other traditional treatments — achieves pasteurization. They also can sell small quantities of raw, unpasteurized almonds direct to customers at farm stands or at certified California farmers markets, but can face penalties if they’re caught selling more than 100 pounds a day to any one person.

That’s not enough volume for Berkeley-based Living Tree Community Foods, which soon will start importing its raw almonds from Spain to make its “living” nut butter. Company officials said its customers are concerned about the health effects of propylene oxide, a gas listed as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency on Cancer Research.

Federal guidelines found that extremely low residue levels of the gas had no harmful effects, Waycott said. But the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, asked the USDA to hold off on implementing the rule to solicit an independent study on the chemical.

The rule was developed over three years of careful discussions between industry representatives and agriculture officials, and won’t be reconsidered, Durando said.

Madera-based farmer Mike Braga, whose organic nuts are favored by live food fans and grocery chains such as Trader Joe’s, said he won’t break the law by continuing to sell raw almonds. But if customers aren’t demanding it, he said he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be able to freeze his almonds instead of pasteurizing them.

Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the “withdrawal of American troops” from Iraq, when what’s being proposed is the withdrawal of American “combat troops” or “combat brigades.” This isn’t a matter of splitting hairs; it’s the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term. American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.

There is, in fact, quite a gap between withdrawal from that embattled land and the withdrawal of some American troops, while many of the rest hunker down on the enormous, all-but-permanent military bases the Pentagon has built there over the last four years — while defending the largest embassy on the planet, now nearing completion (amid the normal woes that seem to go with American construction and “reconstruction”) in Baghdad’s heavily fortified but distinctly insecure Green Zone. And yet, thanks to the carefully worded statements of leading Democratic (and Republican) politicians now criticizing the Bush administration, as well as generally terrible reporting in the mainstream media, most Americans who don’t make it to the fine print or who don’t wander widely on the political Internet, would have no way of knowing that withdrawal isn’t withdrawal at all.

Schools have become hi-tech prisons. Children all across America and the UK are being conditioned to accept that they are not free and that they must submit to draconian laws and measures for their own safety. Soon enough children will not even know what it is like to act as a private individual within society. Don’t believe this? Read on.

All over the United States and Britain children are increasingly being subjected to measures that wouldn’t look out of place in maximum security prisons.

Everyday we post reports from mainstream news sources documenting this disturbing trend.

Today The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that schools across America are banning backpacks that are made of non see-through materials .

If students walking between classes want to use a backpack, it must be made of clear plastic or mesh so its contents can be seen at a glance. Cloth backpacks can be carried into the school in the morning but must be stored in lockers.

So the students should all now feel much safer due to the fact that they can all see each other’s personal items right? Wrong.

The move has unleashed a torrent of protest from some Wissahickon students, who say high schools are coming to resemble “prisons or police states,” in the words of one. Brandon Hemmen, a senior, said the clear bags will make it easy for thieves who already rip off students every day. And “bags will get mixed up; we’ll have to use name tags,” he added. “This is wrong. They can’t take all our freedoms away.”

A second item today comes from Security tech website Security Park which reports that Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania is to deliver the convenience and security of contactless payments by cell phone to students and the faculty.

Beginning in July, Slippery Rock University’s 8,500 students, faculty and staff will receive a new official campus ID card and a separate contactless token designed for use with their mobile phones.

Using either the card or the phone, they will be able to make payments at on-campus locations as well as participating merchants in the surrounding community….

The new mobile phone tokens incorporate the same standards-based contactless technology (ISO 14443) used worldwide by MasterCard, Visa and leading card issuers in the payment and identity sectors.

Good, prepare the kids first and then bring in the cashless society nationwide, with an ID card of course, which you will need to be able to buy and sell. We have long warned of the dangers of a cashless society putting total control into the hands of state regulated and private corporations and the break down of basic freedoms that it encompasses.

Still don’t feel there is anything to worry about in schools?

Do a prisonplanet.com google search on the word “school”, you will be confronted with literally hundreds and hundreds of news articles from the past few years that detail the police state takeover of schools all over the US and throughout the UK.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

“When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. “When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can’t work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks.”

“The VA has betrayed our veterans,” Sullivan said.

VA spokesman Matt Smith said Monday he could not comment on a pending lawsuit.

“Through outreach efforts, the VA ensures returning Global War on Terror service members have access to the widely recognized quality health care they have earned, including services such as prosthetics or mental health care,” Smith said. “VA has also given priority handling to their monetary disability benefit claims.”

The lawsuit comes amid intense political and public scrutiny of the VA and Pentagon following reports of shoddy outpatient care of injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere.

The complaint seeks to represent between 320,000 and 800,000 veterans of the Iraq war who lawyers say are at risk of having PTSD. Ultimately, a federal judge will have to decide whether the lawsuit is properly deemed a class action that adequately represents them.

As of March 31, roughly 52,375 Iraq veterans were evaluated at VA facilities for suspected PTSD, according to an internal quarterly VA report released Monday to The Associated Press.

“Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system,” the complaint says.

It asks that a federal court order the VA to make immediate improvements.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in San Francisco issued a strong rebuke of the VA in ordering the agency to pay retroactive benefits to Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and contracted a form of leukemia.

“The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame,” the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.

Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by Oct. 1 to return to the private sector. He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 2 1/2-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.

More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators.

Some veterans say that’s not enough. In the lawsuit, they note that government investigators warned as early as 2002 that the VA needed to fix its backlogged claims system and make other changes.

Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made “a mockery of the rule of law” by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.

Today, the VA’s backlog of disability payments is between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.

“While steps can and will be taken in the political arena, responsibility for action lies with the agency itself,” Melissa W. Kasnitz, managing attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, said in a telephone interview. Her group is teaming up with a major law firm, Morrison & Foerster, to represent the veterans.

“We don’t believe the problems will be fixed by the VA if we wait for them,” she said.

Gordon P. Erspamer, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, stressed that the lawsuit does not seek to make a partisan statement about the Iraq war but instead finally force action after years of delay.

“This is the worst it’s ever been for veterans, and it’s only going to get worse,” he said.

The lawsuit cites violations of the Constitution and federal law, which mandates at least two years of health care to injured veterans.

The veterans groups involved in the lawsuit are Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., with 500 members.

On the Net:

Copy of the complaint: http://www.mofo.com/docs/pdf/PTSD070723.pdf

Alexander Cockburn raises the pertinent question: When every antiwar event takes pains to offer its support to the troops engaged in an illegal and immoral war against a sovereign nation, why no one is offering similar support to those defending their homeland?

Lawrence McGuire, a North Carolinian now teaching in Montpellier, France, organized a meeting of antiwar Americans and various interested French parties there at which I spoke last fall. Since then, we’ve been discussing off and on the strange fact that while two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war in Iraq and want the troops to come home, the antiwar movement is pretty much dead. McGuire raises the matter of direct solidarity with Iraqis fighting the US presence in Iraq. In other words, support their troops:

“I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis recently. She talked about the ‘US military casualties’ and the ‘Iraqi civilian victims’ and it struck me that the grand taboo of the antiwar movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much less admiration.

“But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the US soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland. Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some degree recognizing that they should include ‘the Iraqi resistance fighters’ in their pantheon of victims (in addition to US soldiers and Iraqi civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to have a real movement.”

Now there are many obvious reasons why the direct solidarity with resistance fighters visible in the Vietnam antiwar struggle and the Central American anti-intervention movement has not been visible in the movement opposing the Iraq war. The “War on Terror” means-and was designed to mean-that any group in the US with detectable ties or relations with Iraqi resistance movements would be in line for savage legal reprisals under the terms of the Patriot Act. Another important factor: The contours of the Iraqi resistance have been murky and in some aspects unappetizing to secular progressive coalitions in the West, or so they virtuously claim.

But such cavils were familiar in the Sixties and Eighties too as huge chunks of the solidarity movement found endless reasons to distance themselves from the Vietnamese NLF or the Nicaraguan FMLN. That said, ignorance about the Iraqi resistance is somewhat forgiveable. This time there has been no Wilfrid Burchett reporting from behind the lines, and that has had consequences of the kind McGuire sketches out above.

The personal aspect of international political solidarity is not just the stuff of nostalgic anecdote. In the late 1980s the Central American resistance was constantly among us here in the United States in physical form. While Daniel Oretega and Rosario Murillo worked the Hollywood liberal circuit, the sanctuary movement sheltered militants and sympathizers in churches across the country and defied federal efforts to seize them. Labor organizers from El Salvador traveled across North America from local to friendly local. I can remember being at a picnic of a union local striking a door factory in Springfield, Oregon, southeast of Eugene, where a man from a radical labor coalition in El Salvador got a cordial reception from the strikers and their families as they swapped stories of their respective battles.

The other day I found in a box of old papers in my garage a directory to “sister cities”-towns in the United States that had paired with beleagured towns in Nicaragua, regularly exchanging delegations. The directory was as thick as a medium-sized telephone book. There were hundreds of such pairings and many were the individual pairing they led to. People’s Express, the “backpackers’ airline,” as it used to be called, would shuttle demure sisters in the struggle from Vermont or the Pacific Northwest to Miami, for onward passage to Managua and a rendezvous with some valiant son of Sandino or oppressed Nica sister liberated by North American inversion from the oppressions of Latin patriarchy.

Today there is no draft, a prime factor in stocking the Vietnam antiwar movement. This absence of the draft is certainly a major factor in the weakness of the antiwar movement. But though there was no draft in the Reagan years, there was certainly was that very lively political culture of anti-intervention in the 1980s.

It looked as though just such a vibrant left antiwar movement was flaring into life in 2003. But many of its troops have either veered into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about global warming or nourished an often unspoken resolve to vest all hopes in a Democratic presidency after 2008. The bulk of the antiwar movement has become subservient to the Democratic Party and to the agenda of its prime candidates for the presidency in 2008, with Hillary Clinton in the lead.

To describe the antiwar movement in its effective form is really to mention a few good efforts-the anti-recruitment campaigns, the tours by those who have lost children in Iraq-or three or four brave souls-Cindy Sheehan, who single-handedly reanimated the antiwar movement last year and now vows to run against house speaker Nancy Pelosi unless the latter stops blocking impeachment proceedings, or the radical Catholic Kathy Kelly, or Medea Benjamin and her “Code Pink” activists occupying Hilary Clinton’s office and ambushing her for youtube.

A simple question: Has the end of America’s war on Iraq been brought closer by the recapture of the US Congress by the Democrats in November 2006? The answer is that when it comes to the actual war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation of US soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America against the war. I don’t think there is much of an independent Left in America today, if there was, then Lawrence McGuire’s statement about the lack of solidarity with the Iraqi resistance wouldn’t be so obviously on the mark.

Meanwhile, Sami Ramadani offers insights into how the Iraqi resistance can bring together its disparate elements and turn events to its decisive advantage.

Yesterday’s Guardian report on armed resistance organisations in Iraq and their plans to form a political front was a fresh and illuminating snapshot of the most dangerous and far-reaching conflict of our times. By eschewing the usual cliches and bundles of distortions about any Muslims bearing arms, the report enriches our understanding of the best organised of the resistance groups active in parts of Baghdad and the areas up to and including Mosul, north of the capital. What they say indicates a major shift in tactics and strategy, but also reveals these groups’ achilles heels.

Politically, one of the most telling statements was from the spokesperson of a faction of the Ansar al-Sunna resistance group:

“Resistance isn’t just about killing Americans without any aims or goals … Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. Suicide bombing is not the best way to fight because it kills innocent civilians. We are against indiscriminate killing – fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy. They [al-Qaida] believe that all Shia are kuffar [unbelievers]- and most of the Sunnis as well … The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations – remember that the Americans brought al-Qaida to Iraq.”

The statement is significant in two respects. One is the fact that al-Qaida is being denounced openly, and the second is that the man making the statement is from Ansar al-Sunna, one the organisations that gained notoriety in its indiscriminate methods of fighting and sectarian ideology. Equally significant is the fact that the other faction of Ansar al-Sunna is being accused of working with al-Qaida.

One of the least sectarian of the seven groups forming the new alliance is the 1920 Revolution Brigades, whose leader, Harith al-Dhari, was assassinated recently by al-Qaida, according to Muthanna al-Thari, spokesperson of the very influential Association of Muslim Scholars. The leader of the AMS, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, is the assassinated leader’s uncle and the most influential of the anti-occupation Sunni cleric. Reversing earlier statements, Sheikh Dhari, has also become very critical of al-Qaida. His and other recent anti al-Qaida statements are fuelled by the enormous loathing that Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities have for al-Qaida and all sectarian attacks. Indeed, popular opinion in the streets of Iraq habitually accuse the occupation of backing al-Qaida to spread sectarian divisions and split the struggle against the occupation.

The seven groups are not only anti al-Qaida but also keen to distance themselves from the Saddamist wing of the Ba’ath party, led by Izz’at al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s deputy until the 2003 invasion.

Such political credentials should in theory make the task of unity with Muqtada Sadr’s movement less difficult. However, the resistance leaders who talked to the Guardian accuse Sadr’s Mahdi army of sectarian killings while ignoring the fact that most of the sectarian attacks have been aimed at Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. For his part, Sadr has conceded that his movement has been infiltrated by its enemies, including the occupation authorities. Referring to the climate of chaos and occupation presence, Sadrist spokesmen have often referred to “the ease with which sectarian crimes could be committed by anyone wearing black and claiming to be from the Mahdi army.”

Following the second attack on the Samarra Shia shrine, Sadr accused the occupation of being behind the attack – a position echoed by Sunni clergy and secular forces – and stressed unity with Sunnis. He later accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis. While it obviously suits the US to divide the opposition to its occupation of the country, Sadr’s own tactics are attacked for being one of the biggest obstacles to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics include on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists’ presence in parliament (in the sect-based Coalition List that won most of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections).

Though some of the criticisms of Iranian policies by the resistance leaders interviewed by the Guardian are based in fact, the seven groups’ hostility to Iran is still trapped within the old Saddamist-style anti-Iranian chauvinism that fuelled his eight-year war against Iran following the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah regime. Racist propaganda against the Iranian people lasted for a quarter of a century and permeated Iraqi society and its educational system. The US-led propaganda campaign against Iran has thus fallen on receptive ears. The US is happy to see Iraqis directing their wrath against the fictitious “presence of hundreds of thousands of Iranians fighting alongside the US forces to evict Sunnis from Baghdad and replace them with Shia” – in the words of one Iraqi victim of the occupation who, with her daughter, was forced to leave Iraq after the murder of her brother.

The seven resistance groups don’t appear to be facing up to the fact that effectively by far the biggest organised armed resistance group in Iraq is Sadr’s Mahdi army, estimated to be well over 100,000 strong – or that, in the absence of strong non-religious anti-occupation organisations, millions of people across Iraq are supporters of Muqtada Sadr’s anti-occupation message. US jets and helicopters are daily bombarding Sadr City in Baghdad and towns south of Baghdad. Thousands of Sadrists are in jail and the US is acutely aware that the Sadrists remain one of the biggest obstacles to controlling Iraq.

Last but not least, when talking about the resistance in Iraq it’s important to remember that most of the thousands of military operations that the Pentagon reports are carried out monthly against the occupation forces go unclaimed by any organisation. This confirms the impression that I and many Iraqis have that most of the armed resistance to the occupation is conducted by localised groups in the villages and cities of Iraq. Armed resistance to the occupation has much deeper and more popular roots than the politicians in Washington and London dare to admit. For admitting it, at least in public, means abandoning their much trumpeted “exit strategy”, otherwise known as having your cake and eating it. Having a pro US government in Baghdad, withdrawing most of the troops but keeping military bases in Iraq is not what Iraqis mean by ending the military and economic occupation of Iraq. Such an exit strategy will not stop the resistance and the sea of popular support that feeds and protects it.

Another two gay-bashing, Klan-loving, pulpit-slurping Republicans have disgraced themselves. But there is much more we can learn from the improprieties of David Vitter and Bob Allen.

Another Gay-bashing, Klan-loving, Pulpit-Slurping, Republican has disgraced himself.

No, make that two.

Let’s start with the Christian Coalition’s favorite son, Louisiana senator David Vitter.

There’s not enough Boudreaux Buttpaste in the world that can wipe-clean a career like Vitter’s– now better known as The Guy Who Frequents Prostitutes and Asks To Wear a Diaper.

Apparently the whores of New Orleans call him “Vitter the Shitter.” And don’t even ask about his love child — who, one can only hope, is kept well-stocked with Pampers.

I hate the way a hypocrite like this can drag the good name of kinky sex through the mud.

Vitter refuses to resign, of course. He and his wife took the neo-Antoinette position at their recent press conference: “Let them eat shit.”

David said God, and His Wife Wendy, were willing to move on — and so should everyone else. After all, he still has plenty of gay marriages to wreck, and black voters to disenfranchise! Let the man get on with his work!

But his better half upstaged him. Wendy showed up for the cameras in a low-cut leopard print dress and giant hoop earrings, to say she’s forgiven Davy for everything and it was time for the press to leave their family alone.

She needs more than sartorial assistance:

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse reporter: If her husband were as unfaithful as Livingston or former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”

I’m scared.

Watch the campaign videos of Vitter’s last election, where his wife asked him to change their baby’s nappie.

Read Jon Swift’s satire on how Gay Marriage Ruined Vitter’s Life.

Follow the Diaper investigation, load by load.

Or maybe you’ve been turned into a pillar of salt and find yourself unable to move.

Don’t worry, there’s another distraction. Vitter is momentarily overshadowed by Congressman Bob Allen of Florida. Allen is such a pest at the men’s public toilets that that it was only after the THIRD time (in an hour) that he waltzed in to make a play, that an undercover cop finally busted him for solicitation.

And gee, Bob was offering men $20 to go down on them. Jeff Gannon must be wrending his garments:

…The 48 year old Republican Representative was arrested today on second degree misdemeanor charges for solicitation for prostitution. And the twist is that he’s a married man, and was asking an undercover cop in a men’s room if he could pay him to give him a blowjob. It’s so GOP!

Allen was out for a little afternoon delight and got nabbed at noon in Titusville, Florida. “Officers say they noticed Allen acting suspicious as he went in and out of the men’s restroom 3 times. Minutes later, he solicited an undercover male officer inside the restroom, offering to perform oral sex for $20.”

He was first elected in 2000 and lists “water sports” as a hobby on his official state website.

The Christian Coalition loves loved Rep. Allen. Like Vitter (and Foley) and the rest of the Republican hypocrites, he was strong on the family values bullshit. In the last session of the Florida legislature, the Christian Coalition commends him for supporting their (extremist, hateful) positions 92% of the time. The Rainbow Democratic club also rates all the elected officials in the area. Allen? “Wicked Witch: Worst of the Worst.”

The headlines and photos say it all. I don’t know how The Daily Show could improve it. But I do have a couple of editorial comments:

1. Vitter’s defiance, to refuse resignation, is the default Bush strategy, the corporate-politics vamp. You refuse to take responsibility for anything, and deny the obvious. If they can’t force the scepter out of your hand, you hold on for dear life, and keep cashing the checks. You simply write your own reality.

2. A few sincere conservatives are calling for Vitter’s scalp. But not most of his base. If you read the Times Picayune comments and stories, you’ll see the general sentiment– most people haven’t budged from their original position, be it Democrat, Republican, or Indifferent.

The one thing that could change Vitter’s standing with his supporters, sad to say, is if evidence appears that Vitter is a “race-traitor.”

I wish I could laugh at such a quaint expression, but it’s very much alive in this man’s community. If Vitter is found to have had so much as a chaste vanilla kiss with a black woman over 21, he will be crucified by the segregationist, white supremacist freaks who put him into office.

This fear of “the unpardonable sin” may be why Larry Flynt still has a swarm of detectives interviewing the New Orleans sex trade to unearth the worst. Flynt’s not looking for more diapers — Louisiana good ole’ boys don’t care if Vitter walked around with a pacifier in his mouth — as long as his momma was white.

Perhaps the most Gothic twist on American racism is that it has sat out its “politically incorrect” phase by hiding its language under homophobia and sex-bashing, which is still (marginally) more palatable.

“Code-switching” is exactly what Jerry Falwell did in his “make-over,” along with all the other publicity-minded, “whites-only” conservative figures of the South.

In 1981, as he lay dying, Lee Atwater (Karl Rove’s mentor) confessed the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” to win elections. Note the use of the second person narative:

…You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”

[But] by 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like “forced busing,” “states’ rights,” and all that stuff.

You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things … and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

If I could raise Atwater from the dead, I bet he’d agree with me that when the GOP realized that “abstraction” didn’t raise the passion/votes they needed, they turned to abortion-screaming and gay-bashing.

Not because of sentiment or faith! — No, the South had a traditional tolerance for queers and hushed-up pregnancies — read your Tennessee Williams. But this new kind of sex-fiend pandering is a device to proclaim, “nigger nigger nigger” without mentioning the forbidden words.

Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, leader of the part of the Iraqi Baath party, says he is planning to call together Baathists and Iraqi islamist groups to consider forming a united front to “escalate the military resistance” to the occupation, on a common program of defeating not only the occupation itself, but everything that has been derived from it, including the government and the constitution, in order to make a clean start under occupation-free conditions. This was conveyed to Al-Quds al-Arabi by unnamed sources, who added that a rival Baath figure Ahmed al-Yunis, isn’t being invited, but that another big Baathist name is expected to attend, namely Fawzi al-Rawi, leader of a wing that is said to be close to the Syrian Baath party. It is hard to know what to make of the internal Baath comings and goings, and similarly it is hard to know what to make of the list of a half-dozen Iraqi islamist groups, none of which are familiar names. Overall, as Marc Lynch noted in his thumbnail tag on this item, it appears al-Douri is responding to the fact that he and the Baath party were left out of the group whose existence was announced yesterday in the Guardian piece. The program is identical: Defeat of the occupation and all that it brought with it, while at the same time being prepared to negotiate the withdrawal process.