His death was the first of a president in our living rooms–the motorcade, the rifle shots, the disarray in Dallas, the dazed swearing-in of his successor that night, the on-camera murder of the assassin two days later and then the funeral with our eyes and hearts transfixed by the beautiful young widow and two small children.

We are so inured now to TV wakes with old news clips and talking heads that it’s hard to imagine how hard and how deeply John F. Kennedy’s assassination struck a nation that had been moved by his youth, wit and optimism, all gone in an eyeblink and shown over and over again in slow motion.

The pain went so deep that, as a magazine editor, I published an article by a psychiatrist telling how he and his patients talked of practically nothing else in the days and weeks that followed, how JFK’s death had taken over their psyches and became entangled with their inner lives.

For months after that Friday, I would awake from sweat dreams of the motorcade, book depository, silent screams, slow-motion lunges at a relentless assassin, saving JFK at the last moment.

Such rescue fantasies came naturally to generations marked by the central image of “Catcher in the Rye”: children “standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.”

Holden Caulfield couldn’t save JFK, and neither could we, but every November 22nd, those dreams come back to haunt us.

Cross-posted from my blog. More about President Kennedy and November 22 HERE.

The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well. Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration. And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that we’ll not only not cut back on the social safety net but that it will incrementally increase and periodically boom. The “compromise” solution is massive deficit spending.

Unsustainable? Obviously — and it’s doubly sad, considering we’ve done this to ourselves.

Short of a massive national sea-change in attitudes and expectations, we’re well on the way to self-destruction…. and as much as I like Joyner’s “poisoned well” analogy, my mind keeps visualizing little hamsters running on a wheel.

I hate being a hamster, but I’m afraid I don’t see a way out at the moment.

My better half’s reaction towards folks working in our financial institutions is common place in western society at the moment. They are the modern day villains, the Nazi’s of our time (a bit strong?) – heck, if I was running for office I’d try and paint my opponent as a bank sympathizer the first opportunity I got.

Now with the dust settling and the majority of countries recovering– I want to ask, who is really to blame for the down fall of the world’s economy? The reason me and my woman argued is because I put the blame squarely on people like myself, and my girlfriend, and her friend at her work, and her friend’s lecturer – the blame has to go to everyday people. Main Street (as you Americans put it) is to blame.

Ok, maybe not all of it, but it has to own up to its fair share. What…to soon?

I find it fascinating that we are debating about how greedy banks have been, how investment bankers have no morals and how Dick Fuld is the devil himself.

Come on now.

What about people that bought mortgages they can’t possibly afford? What about buying a car that you can’t possibly make the payments on? Why is Obama getting the blame on a culture that was in place during Clinton’s time?

Banks and bankers exist only to make money, fact. I learned that when I was 12 years old. They are not there to be the beacons of society, they are there to make money. They are not there to be leader of men, THEY ARE THERE TO MAKE MONEY. Their greed is a survival mechanism. Their immorality is the difference between them ending up like Lehman Brothers or Barclays. I know it’s hard to swallow that the Chief Executive of (insert bank name here) isn’t looking out for your well being but that the reality of our capitalist system.

I know what I can and cannot afford. I would love to buy a flat and maybe a new car, but I can’t afford to so I have to make do with living with my mother (I’m still 23 give me a break) and riding in my rusty Corsa. Do I grumble about it? Yes! Do I look on enviously at my banker friend who is back to making a killing? Yes! Do I hate him for doing his job well? NO!

We are living in a world where no one wants to take responsibilities for their actions. I am hugely disappointed in Obama and Brown for not showing real leadership on this issue. I agree, fixing banking regulations is a must to make sure that a collapse of that magnitude never happens again, but changing people’s habits is a much more pressing issue. Changing the idiotic premise brought on by Clinton that everyone should own a house would be a great start.

I want a politician to treat me like a human being, tell me the truth, don’t simplify the issue. “Prime Minister Brown, what are you going to do about me and my fellow greedy Britons who helped to bring on this financial mess?”

Don’t just address the politically palatable – make us eat the vegetables as well.

Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” joked that he was “really annoyed” to discover Williams’ quick wit when he first invited him on in 2003.

“Nobody likes a guy who can do a real job and your job,” said Stewart, calling the notion that news anchors shouldn’t show a sense of humor “a false ideal.”

“It’s a silly thing to keep bottled up,” he said. “It won’t necessarily perjure your other work.”

Williams’ levity may surprise viewers who see him as the consummate newsman. He’s made six trips to the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq and received numerous awards for his on-the-ground coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (This week, he received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University.)

It’s working for him. After two straight seasons of ratings gains, his newscast is up again this season. And he’s clear about limits. He canned a satellite appearance from Afghanistan on Leno after 14 Americans died in helicopter crashes that day.

All Democrats and Independents voted Yes. All Republicans voted No.

Max Baucus flew in from Montana, where his mother is apparently very ill, to vote Yes. That deserves great respect and thanks, and my strongest hopes go to Sen. Baucus and his family for his mom’s recovery.

Debate will begin on the Senate floor the first day at work after Thanksgiving break.

Now that we’ve gotten some of the Chinese reaction to president Obama’s trip, it’s time to start sampling the reaction of the rest of the world.

This article by the great Thomas Klau of Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland is not encouraging – and points out that without the U.S. able to exercise effective leadership, it’s time to grapple seriously with stronger global institutions.

According to Klau, President Obama’s China visit signals that a moment the Europeans have dreaded for hundreds of years has come when he writes:

“At least since the time of Napoleon, we Europeans have lived with a somewhat fearful suspicion that China will likely wake up one day as a giant of global politics. Now that time has come.”

As far as what the trip shows about the United States, Klau is even less sanguine, and more than a little “peeved” that Obama is treating Beijing better than he does the European Union:

“Obama’s China visit was more than a passing episode. It most likely documents the definitive end of a historic epoch, in which the foremost Western power was able to present itself internationally as the ultimate authority on good government and good business, without incurring more than the weak protestations of those who were comparatively unsuccessful. … the turnaround year of 1989 [year the Berlin Wall fell] marked the beginning of the end of a historic era – an era in which Western concepts of good governance and good business almost entirely dominated the global discourse. If things stay this way because China continues to do splits between free and un-free politics, the Tiananmen Square massacre will be, unfortunately, the 1989 event with the strongest influence on the future.”

“We are slowly beginning to get used to this new, post-American world. Peeved, we see that the globally more modest United States treats its coolly-controlling lender China with greater care than it does the European Union.”

By Thomas Klau*

Translated By Stephanie Martin

November 19, 2009

Germany – Financial Times Deutschland – Original Article (German)

After the cool treatment of Europeans, now comes a soft stance toward China. During his first visit to Asia, U.S. President Barack Obama, sober as always in his approach to foreign policy, has drawn his conclusions about the reorganization of the global power arena. In accordance with the wishes of the Chinese leadership, human rights rhetoric was almost entirely missing from Obama’s public statements. Behind closed doors he may have made demands on some key issues like Iran; in public, however, anything that may have suggested America as school master and China as the one receiving instruction was avoided.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Seizing on a quasi-government task force’s report this week recommending that annual mammograms start at 50 rather than 40, the GOP has gone into full outrage mode.

“This is how rationing begins,” warns Rep. Marsha Blackburn. “This is the little toe in the edge of the water. This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician.”

Never mind that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius immediately made it clear that the US Preventive Services Task Force “is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations” and who neither “set federal policy” nor “determine what services are covered by the federal government.”

“The task force has presented some new evidence for consideration,” she noted, “but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action.”

In fact, the recommendation has provided a starting point, as it was intended to do, for debate of the issue, rather than a mandate, and has met heavy resistance from physicians and patients as well as the American Cancer Society.

Read the rest of this entry.

BREAKING @ 3 pm ET: Senate Democrats have secured the 60 votes needed to move the bill forward to floor debate. Details at Politico.

Here is a live streaming video feed of the Senate health care reform debate. The actual vote on whether to let the bill come to the Senate floor for debate and amendments is expected between 8 and 9 pm EST. This live video will remain at the TOP of TMV until after the coverage completely ends. Underneath the video you’ll periodically see some links to news stories and blogs of various opinions on the debte. So keep checking back. And here is the debate at this moment:

12:55 – Landrieu thinks something are wrong with the bill. First she thinks the tax credits for small businesses are too small and need to be expand. She wants more tax equity for those who are self-insured. She is rightly worried about the possibility of premiums going up between now and 2014. She is against the current public option. She wants a trigger, like the one promoted by Snowe.

12:50 – Landrieu begins by praising Wyden and his efforts to create the Wyden-Bennett plan that she co-sponsored. She says she will vote to let the debate move forward, but her vote is not a vote for the underlining bill. It is only a “vote to move forward.” She said it is clear that doing nothing is no longer an option. Landrieu plans to “stay focused like a laser” on bringing down cost for small businesses. Landrieu is pro excise tax on employer provided health insurance.

12:35 – Cantwell makes a strong case for her basic health plan and says she hopes to work to expand it. It is not a public option but it is basically how the health exchange should have been designed to begin with. The state creates the design of a good health insurance plan (co-pays, benefits, deductibles, etc). Insurance companies bid to offer this insurance plan to all the people in the basic health plan program. The state approves several of the lowest bids and individuals can choose from any of these approved insurance providers. Read more about the “basic health plans” here.

--THE CONSERVATIVE VIEWPOINT: Be sure to check in with Ed Morrissey who has “an open thread” (which reminds me I need to pick up my torn pants at the tailor’s) on the debate. Here is a small taste of what is up there as this is written:

Update (AP): The big question mark, obviously, is Blanche Lincoln, but it’ll be worth watching Nelson’s, Lieberman’s, Bayh’s, and Landrieu’s floor speeches too to see what demands they’re willing to issue publicly for their support going forward. As for tonight’s vote, it’s sort of a free kick for conservatives. Granted, 97 percent of Senate bills that pass this hurdle end up being enacted (so keep calling!), but most bills aren’t remotely as politically fraught as this one. Everyone expects Lincoln to cave and give Reid the 60 he needs — read Jay Cost’s excellent easy peasy three-point analysis for why it’s easy for Blue Dogs to say yes this time — but if she’s sweating now, she’ll be melting down before the final winner-take-all cloture vote a few weeks from now. Notes Cost, “The fact that these Democratic moderates are actually spending time ‘pondering’ whether to vote against starting debate is a sign that they are very skittish about this bill.”

Long story short, tonight is low risk and potentially huge reward. If Lincoln bugs out and the vote fails, it’ll be a nuclear humiliation for the Democrats and will have a lot of people suddenly believing that ObamaCare is un-passable.

Update (AP): Stressing that her yes vote today in no way guarantees a yes on cloture next time, Landrieu says she’s ready to proceed. All eyes on Lincoln now. The Louisiana purchase worked.

–New York Times: A Holdout Will Support Democrats’ Health Bill
–The Huffington Post plans to offer updates by Twitter. Check HERE to see when and if they are posted.
–Crooks and Liars has an open thread.
–The AP reports that now that Mary Landrieu is in and all 40 Republicans will vote against allowing the bill to go to debate and amendments, the sole holdout is…Nebraska’s Blanche Lincoln.
--Nate Silver:

Needless to say, it would have been very, very bad news for the Democrats if the motion to proceed to debate on their health care plan had failed tonight. But I’m not sure how newsworthy this really is. The potential hold-outs, like Lincoln and Ben Nelson, are going to have much greater leverage later on, when the bill nears its second major procedural hurdle: the cloture motion to proceed to the final vote.

And there’s some bad news for Democrats too: Lincoln has joined Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman in making a fairly explicit threat to filibuster a bill that contains a public option. Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, sounds a little bit more open to compromise. But this impromptu Gang of 3 — Lincoln, Nelson, Lieberman — could be a tough one for progressives to penetrate.

--Scared Monkeys:

Harry Reid obviously paid off the last two remaining Senators, as AP calls them, centrist Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Make no mistake about it America, that means you Arkansas and Louisiana, these two are not centrists. No centrist would ever have allowed debate to go forward on this 2074 page piece of trash bill. We all now that Landrieu was paid off with the $100 million provision on page 432 of Reid’s bill. Remember when Obama said he was going to change the way Washington, DC does things and usher in a new era of hope and change to the political process Inside the Beltway? Guess that can go down as one more lie as the quit pro quo payoff to Mary Landrieu for her vote can attest to that.

Landrieu and Lincoln, please do not lie to your constituents or the American people. Your cloture vote all but ensured passage of this healthcare bill that will subjugate Americans to a government controlled health care system.

–Daily Kos’ McJoan:

Of course, Lieberman could pull a Lieberman, and change his mind on this one just for the hell of it (and because he hasn’t been in the headlines very often lately), but for now there’s no drama left in today’s vote.

Now the real fight for a real public option. In agreeing today to continue debate on this bill, Lincoln vowed essentially to join a Republican filibuster.

For years, our medical system focused on the individual. The thinking was, even if only one life was saved, everyone should get tested. But the new studies show not everyone needs screening. In fact, too much screening can do more harm than good.

Dr. Louise Russell studies preventive care at Rutgers University. She says patients have to change their mind sets. Think about the odds of finding lethal cancer… She says patients need to trust the odds and not get screened if they’re not at increased risk — if they don’t, say, have a family member with cancer.

Doctor Otis Brawley is the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. He disagrees with the mammogram recommendations. He says even if one life in a thousand is saved, it’s worth it… A lot of patients feel the same way. They don’t care about the big picture.

Doctor Robert Aronowitz teaches the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. He says it’s hard to change that way of thinking. But people can put themselves in danger. Unnecessary cancer treatment can cause anxiety and even death… Aronowitz says that applies to all kinds of preventive treatment — from screenings to drugs that are supposed to prevent disease.

There is reason for optimism.

Today the Senate is expected to hold a key health care reform vote. And if President Barack Obama has a bundle of political clout riding on this vote, so does Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid, in an increasingly tough (some pundits suggest seemingly fruitless) battle for re-election who was never a darling of the Democratic party’s liberal wing, could be in a weakened position unless when the votes are counted it turns out that he had gathered the needed 60 votes on a cloture vote. Eyes will be on him and Democratic centrists and — as always — on Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Demmies. But the question is going to be: did Reid do his homework or will the day end with him and Obama looking further weakened? One key Republican sounds as if he is betting that Reid has lined up the votes:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will get exactly the 60 votes he needs to pass healthcare reform legislation through its first test [today], Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said Friday.

Reid on Thursday scheduled a cloture vote on a motion to proceed yesterday. The vote is the first crucial test the healthcare bill will face in the Senate.

“My guess, that’s all it is, is that it would be exactly 60 to exactly 40 but we’ll see,” Vitter said on MSNBC this morning. “I think he probably does [have enough votes] for this first pivotal vote.”

Reid has refused to predict whether or not he will get the necessary votes to pass the measure. “We’ll find out when the votes are taken,” he said when asked on Thursday about his chances of success.

Vitter is a staunch opponent of the bill.

But the Hill also notes this:

Two others Democrats potentially could be absent from the vote on Saturday night. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus is currently in Montana tending to his ailing mother. Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.) has experienced health problems all year.

The Politico also thinks that — from Reid and Obama’s point of view — it is looking good:

Two Saturdays ago, Pelosi passed health reform on a squeaker of a House vote. Today, Reid can’t spare a single Democrat as the Senate decides whether to start debate. If not, President Barack Obama’s reform hopes suffer immeasurable harm.

That said, things were looking good at daybreak, as Reid can be reasonably confident of 59 votes, with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) a yes vote and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) leaning yes. The holdout: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who has been a fan of reform generally but faces a tough 2010 re-election fight.

In theory, Reid’s job should actually be easier than Pelosi’s. The House voted on final passage. Reid is just asking the Senate to begin debate. But the vote is more than that – it’s a test lab for the ideas, arguments and battle tactics that both sides will carry into an epic showdown over health reform next month.

The debate runs all day with the vote scheduled for 8 p.m.

So is it a slam dunk? Hardly:

Democratic leaders are optimistic of success, but they need every Democrat and both independents to vote “yes,” and two moderates remained uncommitted ahead of the roll call, which is expected around 8 p.m. EST. The vote will determine whether debate can go forward on Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2,074-page bill to dramatically remake the U.S. health care system over the next decade.

…..The two Democratic holdouts are Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. A third centrist, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, announced Friday that he’d be supporting his party on the test vote, while cautioning that it didn’t mean he’d be with them on the final vote.

“It is not for or against the new Senate health care bill,” Nelson said. “It is only to begin debate and an opportunity to make improvements. If you don’t like a bill, why block your own opportunity to amend it?”

The Republicans are expected to vote as a solid block. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calls it a “monstrosity of a bill.” Reid insists everything is full paid for.

Ezra Klein sees an irony in this debate:

Little will illustrate the absurdity of the filibuster as neatly as tomorrow’s vote. This is not the vote to pass the bill. It’s the vote to begin considering the bill. Changing the bill. Amending the bill. Recall that the purpose of the filibuster is to protect debate and ensure that members can make their opinions heard and ensure they have an opportunity to add their ideas to the legislation. Tomorrow, however, 40 Republicans are expected to use the filibuster to close off debate and ensure that no more opinions are heard nor changes considered. The right to unlimited debate has become a tool for cutting it off.

ABC NEWS points to these five questions that will determine the ultimate fate of this bill.

The Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argues that passing health care reform is not only vital to health care but to the overall success of the Obama administration — including how it is perceived by other countries abroad. Some excerpts:

Is American democracy in paralysis? That question emerged at a conference of big thinkers and experts in various fields organized last week by Foreign Policy magazine, our sister publication.

To an extent, the question reflects an America-in-decline-ism that becomes fashionable from time to time, especially when the U.S. economy is dragging. The United States always has turned out to be more resilient than the pessimists expect, while the supposed advantages of less democratic rivals (the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Japan in the 1980s) have been trumped by the rigidities of one-party rule. This decade’s juggernaut — communist China — also faces challenges that may become more evident with time.

Yet as health-care reform sputters and lurches toward an uncertain finish line, the question is understandable. Foreigners see a Democratic Party that supposedly is alarmed by climate change, that decisively captured the White House and both houses of Congress a year ago — and yet that will send an administration to a crucial conference in Copenhagen next month with little but hopes and promises. Now there is talk that cap-and-trade legislation will wait until not just next year but the next Congress.

He rattles off other problem areas: Obama has been unable to fill most judicial posts and has not even submitted names for many of them; labor law reform is on hold; immigration reform is in limbo; and Afghanistan policy awaits an official…policy:

Meanwhile, American power seems powerless to bend events in Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, Sudan, Congo or even tiny Honduras to our south.

Underlying all is the nation’s growing debt — to other countries and to future generations. The retirement system (Social Security) and health insurance for the elderly (Medicare) are headed for bankruptcy, with state and local pension funds and the federal pension insurance fund not far behind. Pretty much everyone understands that the government must spend less and tax more, but the system seems incapable of taking a first step in either direction.

And didn’t candidate Obama promise to fix the college football Bowl Championship Series?

He goes through a bunch of institutional, political and 21st century media reasons that might partially explain all of the above, then argues:

Whichever explanation appeals to you — and no doubt they all contain some truth — the perception of paralysis increases the urgency of passing health-care reform. Failure would damage the Obama presidency, and it would also deepen the fear, here and abroad, that America is stuck.

Paradoxically, though, it also increases the urgency of doing health-care reform right. If Congress and the administration manage only to extend expensive new benefits, without improving the health-care system or controlling rising costs, it will be an achievement — but not one that will long reassure anyone concerned about the U.S. ability to get things done.

Which means a lot of people are watching to see if Harry Reid did his homework. If he hasn’t then he and Obama could face political detention..

The cartoon by RJ Matson, Roll Call, is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction strictly prohibited. All rights reseserved,

Let’s first look at one of the questions Rick asked. Could we put 1.6 million soldiers in uniform to take up arms in defense of their country today? For the moment, let’s leave aside the politics and sociology and just look at the logistics. Yes, if the need and threat were great enough and our government could impress that upon the populace, we certainly have the manpower available to dredge up such a force. But we wouldn’t. Not for lack of will, but for lack of need. That’s simply not how we fight anymore. There are a couple of powers left in the world (primarily the Russians and the Chinese) who could seriously challenge us, but none of us have much interest in that sort of a doomsday scenario. The other opponents who we seem to express any interest in fighting are far smaller and simply don’t stand a chance against a full blown military assault by the United States.

Think back for a moment to the beginning of the current Iraq war. (And for that matter, the same may be said for the original fight in Desert Storm.) Yes, we did actually engage in a real “war” in the traditional sense of the word, with the government of Iraq. It lasted roughly six weeks. (And it only took that long because we had to stop and ask directions so often because none of the signs were in English.) We lost, in relative terms, only a handful of soldiers. The real losses we encountered came later during the peace keeping and “stabilization” efforts in the cities, long after we had defeated the Iraqi army and taken control of their capitol.

We don’t fight battles the way we did in World War II. There are no vast armies, moving in formation across foreign lands to charge into the fray with equally large masses of men. We monitor the movement of troops and armor from space and send in our high tech air power in advance to pound the enemy to a pulp long before the grunts on the ground show up. And forget about any fixed weapons batteries or collections of mobile armor such as tanks. We take them out with missiles, stealth fighters and Blackhawks long before the troops arrive. I say this not to denigrate the work and sacrifice of our troops today and in these modern wars, but as a simple observation. In open battle, our troops today are called on more to do “mop-up” work than to engage in any land battles with enemy forces of sufficient size to wage a pitched battle. So a 1.6 million man army would be more of a hindrance than a help in the wars we fight today.

We’re a high technology force, against which the simple, dog-face ground troops of most nations stand no chance. This is why they adapt strategies which many of us label as cowardly, running and hiding out of uniform among civilians, and fighting with improvised explosive devices. They can’t compete with us, so they adopt the strategies of the Vietnamese, the Somalians, and others who have found varying degrees of success through guerrilla tactics. For our part, we don’t have much use for gigantic columns of troops trundling across foreign lands in the numbers we deployed across France so long ago.

At the other end of the scale is the possibility of such a war with Russia or China. Again, it’s unlikely that massive armies of ground troops would be effective. Those enemies are equally high tech and would deploy hellfire from above on any such assemblage of troops and armor. Plus, there is the always extant threat of nukes bring broken out if things begin to go badly for either side. Destruction can be carried out on a far more massive scale than the death which can be dealt by a few thousand men carrying rifles. These would be far more massive and potentially world ending wars, but they would be fought primarily in the theater of technology. The idea of an actual land invasion of either China or the United States seems improbably in the extreme.

Now to the other major question: do we have the will as a nation? Are we made of the same stuff that molded the Greatest Generation? Again, I think the will is still there, but the threat would have to be real and understandable by the vast majority. Unlike the WW2 era, people are better informed and perhaps more skeptical of the government’s actions and motives. (Which is a good thing, by the way.) We don’t automatically accept the government’s call to arms and feel free to debate the issue at length. But if we were faced with an actual threat to our nation from a strong opponent, much the same as we drew together as a nation on Sept. 12, 2001, I believe we would rise up as we have in the past and do what needed to be done.

As to having “the right stuff,” this is a question which probably doesn’t need to be asked. Soft times make soft men. Hard times produce grizzled warriors. When the time came and it was “do or die” our forces would be molded into the warriors we required. Great deeds would be done, tragedies would unfold and the stories would write themselves over the ages to come.

But I don’t believe it’s ever going to happen. We have a few, big school hall monitors on the planet. If two smaller countries start a war, the big kids will condemn the action, convince the rest of the world to condemn it as well, and stop it from spiraling out of control, nation to nation, as it did in WW2. If one of the big nations such as the United States goes to war against a smaller one, such as Iran, it will be another case of enemies who slip away into the night and fight us one car bomb at a time in the streets of their cities. And if two of the big parties do decide to go all in, it will be a high tech war of destruction more than armies of individual men with rifles and grenades.

And more’s the pity, really. If we did have to face the massive scale of personal carnage that we saw back in the day, we might think a bit longer and harder before going to the mat. But the world has grown up and moved on. We just don’t fight that way any more.

I think the article is a fair represntation of Bachmann, though the writer’s characterization of the Sixth District, which stretches from the state’s Eastern border across the northern suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul to Central Minnesota shows his liberal bias and disdain for suburbs. What it shows is how Bachmann, like Sarah Palin has become the face of the GOP (hence, City Pages’ cover which looks like the cover to Sarah Palin’s book) and how that has some people worried and others estactic. Eva Young, who for the last several years has headed a blog on Bachmann, shares what she thinks are the main points of the cover story:

…many worry that those and similar remarks are detrimental to the national Republican Party’s credibility, which is why not everyone inside the GOP is thrilled at the prospect of Bachmann becoming the face of their party. One senior Republican strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity, concedes that there’s some trepidation within the GOP establishment.

“I can tell you she has a few quiet detractors within the Republican Party,” says the strategist. “Put it this way: There’ve been some who’ve raised an eyebrow over the things she’s said.”

Nevertheless, GOP higher-ups have shown no effort to muzzle Bachmann, which suggests she fills an important role. Looking on the other side of the political aisle, the DFL, for all its squawking about Bachmann, has benefitted financially from her ravings as well.

“There are certainly people inside the DFL who think she’s good for the party,” says Jeremy Powers, a DFL chair in Bachmann’s district. “Some think fighting for the Sixth District isn’t worth it, because the sum advantage of having her around is better than ousting her.”

It’s a point DFL Party Chair Brian Melendez concedes but doesn’t endorse.

“While obviously I like being able to raise money against Republican candidates, and while I like for there to be a convenient boogeyman like her, the price of having an ineffective representative for an entire congressional district is just too high.”

Bachmann also surprisingly took part in an interview with the City Pages that is also worth a read. It doesn’t shed any new light, but it still shows a good glimpse of the person representing the Sixth.

Crossposted at Republicans United

By most measures, Hezbollah’s Man in Iran Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour should be a hero — yet he now faces some severe critics and staunch enemies there. Why?

In a must-read piece on RealClearWorld, Meir Javedanfar, RCW’s Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst and a regular contributor to RealClearWorld and co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran, says its due to a factor that underscores the complexities of modern Iran:

Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour is, after all, the Iranian who established Hezbollah in Lebanon. The first man who tried and failed was Mostafa Chamran…..In 1982, Mohtashamipour succeeded where Chamran had failed by convincing the new Hezbollah movement to accept Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious authority. The rest, as they say, is history.

You would be forgiven for thinking that Mohtashamipour is treated like a hero in Iran, but the reality is quite different. Many conservatives hate him; despite the fact that he created what many believe is Islamic Iran’s most successful political and military ally in the Middle East. The reason is simple: he is a reformist.

On many occasions, security guards have had to ward off physical attacks against him by neo-conservative students and Basijis who have no problem declaring their undying love and appreciation for Hezbollah. Yet they can’t stand Mohtashamipour, because he wants reform within the system. On one occasion in the mid-90’s, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the governor of the Ardebil province, Mohtashamipour had to be pulled away from a mob of ultra-religious students by the the future Iranian president. Mohtashamipour took refuge at Ahmadinejad’s house until the next day, when he was able to return to Tehran.

The recent unrest in Iran has made life more difficult for Mohtashamipour. During a recent visit to Damascus, he was shadowed and harassed. Not by the Mossad or the CIA, but by allies of Ahmadinejad. He was not left alone, even when he visited the Sayyida Zeinab shrine. At one point he was even told “you wouldn’t dare return to Iran” by the operatives shadowing him around the city.

The treatment of Mohtashamipour provides the West with a strong indication of the roots of Iran’s current erratic behavior. When the Iranian founder of Hezbollah is treated this way because he disagrees with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, others who stand in their way have much more to worry about.

There’s a lot more, so read it in full.

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