I seem to have missed the fact that Ahmad Chalabi's daughter Tamara had an online diary in Slate this week. "Tamara Chalabi is an author," Slate helpfully informs us, relegating any mention of her famous father to the third sentence of her author bio, and it's clear that the many, many influential people in her circle would agree that she got the diary published strictly on its merits. The New York Observer tells us about some of those people:

As of this week, the pundit class has a new and well-connected member: Tamara Chalabi, the daughter of Iraq's deputy prime minister, Ahmad Chalabi.

Ms. Chalabi, fresh off a Harvard Ph.D. in history, has a book due out next month, The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon, from Palgrave Macmillan. On Dec. 12, Slate began publishing a daily diary of her reports on her father's campaign for prime minister.

Besides her family ties, Ms. Chalabi has some powerful help on the launching pad. Washington uber-hostess Juleanna Glover Weiss, a registered lobbyist at the Ashcroft Group and a former spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney, has set out to introduce Ms. Chalabi to editors.

Ms. Glover Weiss -- whose soirees draw media and political figures from Campbell Brown to Paul Wolfowitz -- met with Ms. Chalabi two weeks ago at a Caribou Coffee in downtown D.C. The get-together was the suggestion of mutual friends at Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, the lobbying firm that employs Jeffrey Weiss, Ms. Glover Weiss' husband.

Mr. Weiss currently represents Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.

Since the meeting, staffers at The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Hotline have received entreaties from Ms. Glover Weiss on her new protegee's behalf.

Ms. Glover Weiss said the advisory arrangement is informal, and that Ms. Chalabi isn't paying for her networking services.

"She clearly has a strong academic background and has interesting things to say about the role of religion in Middle Eastern society," Ms. Glover Weiss said by phone on Dec. 13. "I was happy to help her get to know folks."

On Nov. 15, Ms. Chalabi's father attended a party that the couple hosted for Entifadh Qanbar, the deputy military attache to the Iraqi Embassy, at their $1.5 million Washington home; other guests included Richard Perle, former C.I.A. director James Woolsey and Christopher Hitchens.

Ms. Glover Weiss said she had not read the Slate diary and had not contacted editors at the online magazine.

If I were a paranoid liberal, I'd say that this collection of boldface names was the true axis of evil, the real cabal, the Octopus. I'd say that their collaboration -- on this and, er, other matters -- was rather sinister. But I'm not one of those silly moonbats. I'm sure Tamara's pulling herself up strictly by her own bootstraps, and all this socializing is just a testament to her pluck. And I'm sure her intricately interwoven circle of new friends are just convivial ladies and gents who merely enjoy one another's company.

Tuesday:

The Army has exceeded recruiting goals in the first two months of this fiscal year, reversing a trend that had some Iraq critics saying the armed services branch was "broken."
 
The Pentagon yesterday said the Army signed up 5,856 recruits in November, 5 percent above its goal. It previously announced the Army also exceeded its target in October, the first month of the 2006 fiscal year....

Today:

The Army met its recruiting goal for November by again accepting a high percentage of recruits who scored in the lowest category on the military’s aptitude tests, Pentagon officials said Thursday....

The Army exceeded its 5,600 recruit goal by 256 for November, while the Army Reserve brought in 1,454 recruits, exceeding its target by 112. To do so, they accepted a “double digit” percentage of recruits who scored between 16 and 30 out of a possible 99 on the military’s aptitude test, said officials who requested anonymity.

Last month, the Baltimore Sun reported that the Army reached its recruiting goals in October by accepting 12 percent from these low scorers, known as Category IV recruits....

The annual limit is 4% from these categories. If the percentage they're accepting is in the double digits two months in a row, they've got a problem -- no, we've got a problem.

(Via DU.)

I really, really don't want to rise to Vincent Gallo's bait. I don't want to get into questions about whether the actor/director/button-pusher (and self-proclaimed Republican) is or isn't being ironic at the bottom of this page, where, in the course of offering his own sperm for sale (for a million dollars), he writes:

Mr. Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr. Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration. In fact, for the next 30 days, he is offering a $50,000 discount to any potential female purchaser who can prove she has naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone who can prove a direct family link to any of the German soldiers of the mid-century will also receive this discount. Under the laws of the Jewish faith, a Jewish mother would qualify a baby to be deemed a member of the Jewish religion. This would be added incentive for Mr. Gallo to sell his sperm to a Jew mother, his reasoning being with the slim chance that his child moved into the profession of motion picture acting or became a musical performer, this connection to the Jewish faith would guarantee his offspring a better chance at good reviews and maybe even a prize at the Sundance Film Festival or an Oscar.

Instead, I'd like to thank right-wing bloviators everywhere for spending the last two decades whining about "political correctness." You've made it inevitable that some attention-seekers who want to seem brave and edgy and countercultural and daring will choose to spout off this way, knowing that you're out there, helpfully denouncing anyone who's outraged by bigoted language as fascistic, narrow-minded, and uncool. Gallo is your baby. I hope you're proud of your handiwork.

(Via salto mortale. Another charming Gallo quote here.)

Thank you, Keith Olbermann.

We're all supposed to be thrilled about the high Sunni turnout, but Juan Cole flags this quote from an AP story:

In Fallujah, the former Sunni insurgent stronghold overrun by U.S. forces in November 2004, hundreds packed a high school polling station, with many saying they saw the vote as a way to not only get rid of the Americans but to also get rid of the Shiite-dominated government.

"It's an extremist government [and] we would like an end to the occupation," said Ahmed Majid, 31. "Really the only true solution is through politics. But there is the occupation and the only way that will end is with weapons."

Even in insurgent bastions such as Ramadi and Haqlaniyah, Sunnis were turning out in large numbers.

"I came here and voted in order to prove that Sunnis are not a minority in this country," said lawyer Yahya Abdul-Jalil in Ramadi. "We lost a lot during the last elections, but this time we will take our normal and key role in leading this country."

There it is in a nutshell: Violence is still an appropriate response to the U.S. occupation; Sunnis really should be running the country again; Sunnis are the true majority in Iraq and all the demographic studies that say otherwise are anti-Sunni lies.

Do you really think the new government can possibly satisfy the many Sunnis who believe some or all of this?

Please remember: Social unrest doesn't require a 51% majority. A determined minority of Iraqis -- a determined minority of one ethnic group -- can keep the country in chaos if there's enough dissatisfaction. There's just no reason to believe that everyone will say, "Oh well, we wanted thus-and-such, but elections were held and we lost, so c'est la vie." But that's precisely what all the right-wing American cheerleaders you're hearing right now seem to believe.

Have a burning desire to know what movies conservative college students are watching? Here, I'm told, are the Top Five:

1. The Passion of the Christ
2. A Man for All Seasons
3. Lean on Me
4. Cheaper by the Dozen
5. Death Wish

Wow. One of these things is not like the others.

That's a rather neck-snapping U-turn at #5; after that the list continues, and we linger in the Action-Adventure section of the video store:

6. Red Dawn
7. Dirty Harry
8. The Outlaw Josey Wales

Then, bizarrely, we get

9. Zulu

(I'd barely heard of it either. Capsule description: "Heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, 139 Welshmen fight off 4,000 Zulu soldiers.")

Then, another U-turn:

10. PCU

("The state of modern colleges, summed up in an excellent comedy showing the ridiculousness of the politically correct mob.")

OK -- I'm looking at a list that includes Cheaper by the Dozen and Zulu and I'm struggling to find the common thread. Then I recall these lyrics by Randy Newman:

Americans dream of gypsies, I have found
Gypsy knives and gypsy thighs
That pound and pound and pound and pound
And African appendages that almost reach the ground
And little boys playing baseball in the rain

Yup, I think that just about sums up the mindset of the kids surveyed for this list -- assuming they exist and the list isn't just some middle-aged right-wing content generator's idea of what virtuous kids should be watching. The list, by the way, is courtesy of the Campus Leadership Program, a division of Morton (Purple Heart Band-Aids) Blackwell's Leadership Institute.

So the turnout in Iraq is high and the right-wingers in America are waving those big inflatable We're Number One fingers and shouting "IN YOUR FACE, DEFEAT-AND-RETREAT LIBERAL LOSERS!!!" -- and meanwhile I'm reading Dexter Filkins in The New York Times, who's running down the basics of what happens next, and I'm thinking: Oh yeah, this is really gonna work.

...The cleric-led Shiite coalition is expected to get the largest number of votes but to fall short of capturing enough seats to enable Adel Abdul Mahdi, the group's probable nominee for prime minister, to form a government....

Arrayed against the Shiite bloc is likely to be a largely secular group of parties led by Ayad Allawi, the former Baathist and secular Shiite who has attracted a large following of Sunni Arabs. Along with the Sunni Arabs, Mr. Allawi is hoping to bring in the two major Kurdish parties....

Yet even Mr. Allawi's coalition, if it comes together at all, is not expected to gain an absolute majority, at least not initially.

...Some Iraqi political leaders predict it will take weeks, or even months, for such a government to emerge....

But wait -- there's more:

The formation of the next Iraqi government is expected to be further delayed by the requirement of a two-thirds majority vote for the election of a "presidential council" of a president and two vice presidents that will nominate a prime minister for parliamentary approval. In practice, that means that any Iraqi leader hoping to form a government will effectively need a supermajority....

And, of course:

Further complicating matters is the special mechanism to amend the new Constitution. Under that mechanism, which Iraqi leaders accepted to stave off another Sunni boycott, a commission is empowered to recommend changes to the new Parliament, which could approve them with a two-thirds majority vote. Some political candidates, particularly the Sunni ones, say they intend to withhold their support for any new government without specific guarantees on changes in the Constitution.

So the mere existence of a government in Iraq that's regarded as legitimate by all groups will require multiple compromises, and some of the make-or-break compromises must be by two-thirds majorities. Hell, in America we can't get two-thirds majorities on anything these days, and we've been doing this democracy thing for more than two hundred years.

Which might explain why, elsewhere in the Times, David Sanger cites the "somber tone" of briefings Bush has been receiving in recent days:

Military commanders have described possible situations that range from the best case -- drawing American troops down to about 100,000 before the American elections in November -- to keeping them at far higher numbers if the new Parliament turns to chaos, civil war threatens, or political leaders are assassinated.

Got that? 100,000 troops in November is the best-case scenario. You want a timetable from the administration? There's your timetable.

Onward to victory!

Karl Rove's handpicked choice to run against Hillary Clinton is displaying just about as much compassion as Rove's most famous candidate:

Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro was seen giggling and chatting outside a Bronx church after the funeral Mass for slain Police Officer Danny Enchautegui -- spurring outrage from cops.

One officer brusquely told her to "shut up," prompting Pirro to zip her lips and snap to attention just after the flag-draped coffin holding Enchautegui was placed into a nearby hearse.

While grim-faced Finest stood ramrod-straight, Pirro drew glares from the hero cop's fellow officers when they spotted her giggling and chatting with state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer).

"She should have kept her mouth shut and showed some respect," said one disgusted high-ranking member of the NYPD.

Fumed another officer: "It was bad timing. Everyone is waiting for the family to leave. The family is trying to be strong. We're all still in formation. It was out of line."...

If you haven't been keeping up, Pirro's Senate campaign is going so badly that there's a desperate effort under way to get her out of the race -- an effort that involves not just Republican leaders but also her own husband. But Pirro's like a defiant bank robber surrounded by cops -- she refuses to surrender. The leadership wants her to run for state attorney general -- polls say she'd lose that race, too, but not as badly. And to think it was only a month ago that the same GOP leaders were forcing her strongest Republican rival to drop out of the Senate race.

I haven't even gotten to the governor's race, in which there'll be a big primary battle, but state party leaders prefer ex-Massachusetts governor William Weld -- even though he's enmeshed in a scandal involving a bankrupt college he used to run.

The national GOP is still a force to be reckoned with, but the local 'Pubs really are the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Peggy Noonan today, on Bush's recent Iraq speeches:

One of the things I think the president communicated most effectively, if mostly between the lines, was the sense that some decisions a president faces don't promise good outcomes no matter which way he comes down....

And one such was: To move on Saddam or not?

Peggy Noonan, March 24, 2003:

This is what the American victory in Iraq is going to mean:

It is going to mean, first, that something good happened.... The coming victory is going to be the biggest good thing that has happened in the world, the West and the United States since the twin towers fell.

If you have any prescriptions to fill, you might want to get them filled by December 31, before Bush-induced chaos breaks loose in every drugstore in America:

Insurers reported government delays in handling applications for Medicare's new prescription drug benefit on Tuesday....

Because of the delays, insurance executives said, they have not been able to issue identification cards to some who want to enroll, and they cannot guarantee that cards will be sent to all people who sign up before Jan. 1, when the program begins.

Pharmacists said that some beneficiaries might have difficulty taking advantage of the new drug benefit if they showed up at pharmacies next month without identification cards...

Among the complaints:

Angela Feig, a spokeswoman for a consortium of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans offering drug coverage in Iowa, North and South Dakota and four other Midwestern states, said they had received applications from 89,000 Medicare beneficiaries. But Ms. Feig said: "We have not sent out any identification cards. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has to conduct a verification process to confirm that applicants are eligible to enroll. We are working with the government to complete that process." ...

89,000 beneficiaries. No cards. Eleven working days before the deadline kicks in. And that's just one plan in seven states.

Oh, but not to worry: A Medicare spokesman says pharmacists can verify each cardless beneficiary individually via computer. Oh yeah, I bet that process will also go swimmingly.

Let me just remind you that Bush signed the Medicare bill two freaking years ago. The Bushies have had a while to figure out how to make this work.

If I were a GOP member of Congress, I might think twice about conducting any town meetings in my district in the first few weeks of January.

Awww, isn't this cute: a videoblog post in which new ABC News co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas, who's in Iraq, watches Iraqi commandos learn jiujitsu moves and learns some of the tricks they're being taught:

Today in our second day in Baghdad we spent a lot of time watching the Iraqi police commando units training, getting ready to take over for security here in Iraq. These commando units have been really controversial. A lot of Iraqis here have said that they are bullies, and they're sort of gangs that are roving around the city....

We saw the Iraqi forces learning all sorts of different tactics, wrestling tactics, to help maneuver suspects. I learned how to apply a choke hold -- a blood choke, it's called. It's supposed to render someone unconscious within five seconds. I can tell you, having had it done to me for one second, it's extremely uncomfortable, but maybe it'll come in handy, I don't know, knowing that, someday, in advance...

As Vargas notes in a separate story, the commando unit in question is the Wolf Brigade:

Gen. Rasheed Mohammed, the Wolf Brigade's commander, says his unit is effective and, at times, brutal.

"We don't have eavesdropping or electronic monitoring," he said. "And sometimes we have to be aggressive to come up with a confession from a detainee. Of course, you should not torture."....

Oh, yes, of course:

... The men described to the lawyer how they suffered systematic torture for 27 days while being held by the Wolf Brigade in a Ministry of Interior building in the district of al-Ziyouna in Baghdad. They claimed that they were beaten with cables, received electric shocks to the hands, wrists, fingers, ankles and feet, received cigarette burns to the face, and were left in a room with water on the floor while an electric current was applied to the water. The men signed confessions claiming responsibility for five other bomb attacks in other districts of Baghdad. However, when the lawyer investigated these five alleged bomb attacks at police stations, he obtained documents showing that these attacks never actually took place....

Of course you should not torture:

...She said the elite Interior Ministry force known as the Wolf Brigade arrested her....

After she had spent 11 days in solitary confinement, two men appeared at her cell door, blindfolded her and dragged her away. "Shut up! We will tear you to pieces and throw you in the river if you utter a word," she claims they said.

She was taken to a room where interrogators confronted her with a man she says she had never met before. The man said he had sex with her and that she gave him money and explosives to attack Americans.

"How can you say such things?" she asked him when the officials weren't looking. He raised his pants and showed her blood running down his legs, she claimed. "I knew he said this because he was tortured."

She was then blindfolded again, handcuffed and gagged as about six men whipped her with electric cables for 15 minutes, she said....

It was very shrewd of the U.S. to spoon-feed this little martial-arts demonstration to Vargas. Anyone who watched the story on last night's news or who sees it on the Net will hear about "brutal tactics" on the part of the commandos and think, "Oh -- choke holds that temporarily knock you out. That's not brutal -- that's just tough. Why are the liberals whining?" Lots of Americans already hear "torture" in reference to Abu Ghraib and other prisons and think, "Torture? Naked monkey piles? That's just a college fraternity prank." The same propaganda principle applies here.

Vargas says "brutal" and "bullies," but she never mentions the allegations of unambiguous torture cited above -- nor does she note that the Wolf Brigade and other commando units have been linked to extrajudicial executions, perhaps including that of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi journalist who was murdered shortly after he coauthored this Knight Ridder story that mentioned the Wolf Brigade in the context of revenge killings. Given the standards of TV journalism today, you wonder: Does Vargas even know about these things? Does she know anything about the commando units apart from what she learned, probably, in a brief cram session just before doing this report?

"Supporting the troops":

Hampered by an increasingly combative relationship with Congress, the Pentagon is expected to seek savings from its payroll rather than making deep cuts in major weapons programs in its next long-range plan.

... Officials said Rumsfeld is considering several options for cutting personnel costs, including:

-- Eliminating 40,000 Air Force jobs over the next six years, including active duty, civilian and reserves.

-- Cutting up to three National Guard brigades, each of which generally has about 3,500 troops.

-- Scaling back plans to increase active Army forces.

...President Bush's proposed budget sought $111 billion for personnel costs this year, more than one-fourth of the $420 billion he requested for the Pentagon, not including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan....

****

For eight years, Clinton and Gore have extended our military commitments while depleting our military power. Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces, and so little given to them in return. George W. Bush and I are going to change that, too.... help is on the way.

--Dick Cheney speech at the 2000 Republican convention

THEY GOT THEIR MONEY'S WORTH

Median compensation for CEOs of big companies is up almost 150% since Bush took office.

Notice the slight increase from 1999 to 2000 (the last two full years of the Clinton presidency) -- and then the big leap in 2001. I seem to recall that 2001 was kind of a bad year, for a lot of reasons. For these guys, apparently it wasn't. Neither were any of the years after that.

If you want a rough comparison of what ordinary people are going through, look at the far-right portion of this graph.

... I believe that the main reason the execution of Tookie Williams won't be executed is because Schwarzenegger knows full well that as soon as Tookie's death is announced there will be riots in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. The huge media exploitation of this story has made drop-dead sure of that. There are thugs just waiting for an excuse ... not a reason, an excuse. The rioting, of course, will lead to wide scale looting. There are a lot of aspiring rappers and NBA superstars who could really use a nice flat-screen television right now.

--post yesterday at the blog of right-wing talk-show host and best-selling author Neal Boortz

Well?

In L.A. everyone seems to be behaving. And it was calm last night. Hope you're not too disappointed, Neal.

A couple of stories in the past couple of days link Iraqi torture chambers and death squads to Iran.

First, from Knight Ridder:

The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

...The officials, some of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of violent reprisals, said the Interior Ministry had become what amounted to an Iranian fifth column inside the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, running death squads and operating a network of secret prisons.

...Badr's leader, Hadi al-Amari, has denied maintaining ties to Iran, but in a fit of anger during a recent interview with Knight Ridder he admitted as much while striking out against U.S.-backed secular Shiite politician Ayad Allawi.

"Allawi receives money from America, from the CIA, but nobody talks about that. All they talk about is our funding from Iran," he said, raising his voice. "We are funded by some (Persian) Gulf countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We don't hide it." ...

And then there's this, from The Washington Times:

An Iraqi general formerly in charge of special Interior Ministry forces said yesterday that a senior Iranian intelligence officer was in charge of a network of detention centers where suspected insurgents were routinely tortured and sometimes killed.

Gen. Muntazar Jasim al-Samarrai ... said the Iranian intelligence officer, Tahseer Nasr Lawandi, works directly under the Kurdish deputy minister, Gen. Hussein Kamel, and is known throughout the ministry as "The Engineer."

...Mr. Lawandi, who had been a colonel in the Iranian Mukhabarat intelligence service, was granted Iraqi citizenship May 12, 2004, and awarded the rank of general, Gen. al-Samarrai said by telephone from Amman, Jordan, where he moved his family after two attempts on his life.

The Iranian officer not only masterminded interrogations, tortures and executions at the prisons, but also would take part in torture sessions, often using an electric drill, Gen. al-Samarrai said....

The general said Mr. Lawandi had worked with the minister and deputy minister to form a special security service to run the detention and interrogation operation and a separate group called the Wolf Brigade to capture suspects and bring them to the secret locations -- usually under cover of darkness....

A few months ago, Stephen at the right-wing blog the Politburo Diktat read an earlier Knight Ridder story and gushed:

One of the most encouraging reports from Iraq I've read in recent months. If the war there is to be won, it will be the Wolf Brigade and similar Iraqi forces that win it.

Torture? Ties to the Iranians? If all this is true, I hope you're happy now, Stephen.

(Knight Ridder link via Antiwar.com.)

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD

...reassures the nation:

President Bush: ... Every morning I look at the newspaper. I can't say I've read every single article in the newspaper. But I definitely know what's in the news. Occasionally, I watch television. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but it's occasionally. I'm working at that point, as are you. But I'm very aware of what's in the news. I'm aware because I see clips. I see summaries. I have people on my staff that walk in every morning and say, "This is what's -- this is how I see it. This is what's brewing today," on both the domestic and international side....

[Brian] Williams [of NBC News]: But you, yourself, said to a reporter, I think it was Brit Hume, that you'd prefer to get the news orally from your aids?

President Bush: Well, that's one way to look at it. I mean, I read the newspaper. I mean, I can tell you what the headlines are....

Good grief.

Does anyone else think it's weird that the Bush speechwriting shop simply copied five paragraphs from last week's speech and plopped them into today's speech without really changing a word?

According to the White House transcript of today's speech, Bush said this, starting in the third sentence of paragraph 7:

The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists and Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein. They reject an Iraq in which they're no longer the dominant group. We believe that over time most of this group will be persuaded to support a democratic Iraq led by a federal government that is strong enough to protect minority rights, and we're encouraged that many Sunnis plan to actively participate in this week's election.

Last week he said this, starting in the second sentence of paragraph 12:

The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists and Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group. We believe that, over time, most of this group will be persuaded to support a democratic Iraq led by a federal government that is strong enough to protect minority rights.

The two speeches are almost a verbatim match for four more paragraphs, and then the first sentence of a fifth.

The riffs were the same in the speech on November 30, but at least the wording was different.

****

New York reporters couldn't figure out how [Huey Long] expected to get space [in the papers] with the same gag every time he came to town, but now I think I understand. He was from a country that had not yet entered the era of mass communications. In Louisiana, a stump speaker still tells the same joke at every stop on a five-speech afternoon. He has a different audience each time, like an old vaudeville comic, and Huey just hadn't realized that when a gag gets national circulation it's spoiled.

--A. J. Liebling, The Earl of Louisiana (1960)

GEE, I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY BEFORE

Thought-provoking question from righty columnist Debbie Schlussel's denunciation of Memoirs of a Geisha at Frontpagemag.com:

Selling sex for money--if that's not prostitution, what is?

Good point!

"Finally, a WASP riot ..."

That's what Lucianne Goldberg says about the rioting in Sydney, Australia -- Goldberg or whoever ghostwrites the little blurbs at Lucianne.com in her name. The full blurb is

Finally, a WASP riot as beer soaked beefy Aussies bash Muslims at beach

There's lawlessness in Sydney -- and she's digging it.

Here's some of what she's cheering on:

...Drunken mobs within the crowd yelled racist chants and chased down and bashed people of Middle Eastern appearance at the beach in an extended show of violence.

Police and an ambulance crew were also assaulted as racial tensions peaked.

A total of 25 people, including two ambulance officers, were injured and about 40 cars were vandalised at Maroubra as the unrest spread to other beachside communities....

--NEWS.com.au, 12/12

... Far-Right groups accused of links to neo-Nazis have admitted mobilising more than 100 people to join the mob of drunken people on the rampage at Cronulla.

Three ultra right-wing organisations -- Australia First, the Patriotic Youth League and the Newcastle-based skinhead group Blood and Honour -- handed out pamphlets at the rally....

--The Australian, 12/13

...A group of neo-nazis are circulating a race-hate video of the riots, declaring all non-white people should be evicted from Sydney's beaches. Dubbed The Battle for Cronulla, the video was posted on the white nationalist website Stormfront and had yesterday been downloaded about 400 times....

--The Advertiser, 12/13/05

Er, you'd think Ms. Goldberg might think twice before making common cause with the likes of Stormfront ("White Pride Worldwide"), good pals of the virulent anti-Semite David Duke. Ah, but there are no limits when you want to bash Muslims and piss off liberals.

The rioters were responding to a series of violent attacks -- criminal acts that warrant a response from the cops, not crowds of drunken louts. And, yes, some young Arab men are fighting fire with fire. I'm not going to defend criminal violence or rioters on either side. Lucianne, however, only dislikes riots when the "wrong" side is rioting.

E-mail: Editor@LcomHQ.com

****

UPDATE: If you want to know more about what's going on in Australia, check out the links at 12thharmonic Blog. (Thanks to Norwegianity for the tip.)

****

UPDATE, TUESDAY: The Lucianne link worked yesterday only, so here's the Yahoo cache version of the page (which will probably work only today).

****

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: Try this.

YIKES

Via Memeorandum and the blog of right-wing columnist Cathy Seipp, I just discovered Mary and Steve Van Nattan's startling site C.S. Lewis: The Devil's Wisest Fool -- a multi-page attack on one of the Christian Right's biggest heroes from a Christian Right perspective. (Albeit a fairly nutty Christian Right perspective.)

The Van Nattans -- these folks -- live in Tennessee. Steve tunes and repairs pianos and likes coffee. The Van Nattans also have religious views that aren't exactly broad-minded, as Seipp notes:

I did learn an interesting new word meandering around Van Natten-land: "King James Only-ist," which means a person who thinks anyone who reads a version of the Bible other than the King James one is a heretic who's going to hell. The Van Nattens, apparently, are King James Only-ists who think someone like Pat Robertson is a dangerous backslider.

And as for C. S. Lewis,

the Van Nattens think, among other things, that Lewis is actually a pagan Sun God-worshipper and occultist, not a Christian, although they suspect that the famous Anglican was also a secret Catholic -- which in their view is just as bad as being a pagan.

Er, yeah -- in a bit of throat-clearing before they get down to business, they note that John F. Kennedy died on the same day as Lewis and that

Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore.

Er, okay. Glad we got that cleared up.

A mere summary of this site can't impress upon you its riches, so here are a few highlights:

The time is long past due to cry out against this wicked man's unspeakable Baal worship.

****

p.156 The mice came to chew away the ropes that tied Aslan to the stone table upon which he had been ritually sacrificed by the witch. Lewis strongly emphasizes the sun rising in the "East" (note: capitalization) as the mice chew through the ropes to free him for his resurrection....

Anyone that is at all familiar with the true origins of Free Masonry or mysticism, also knows that the "the East" is a significant point. "Eastern" religions are mystical religions. The East represents ...BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. Revelation 17:5 ... He went from the north (where God dwells; Psalm 48:2, Psalm 75:6), to the East -- Babylon and sun worship!

****

The word "ass" appears in 4 of the books. Being British, it probably did not mean the same to him as it does to Americans (as a swear word), but he could have left it out, especially since he only used it four times and did use "donkey" in other places. However, considering the filthy state of his mind, it is possible that he thought this cute.

****

LETTER FROM A READER-- Sept. 16, 2000

Dear Steve,

I was browsing thru your site after my previous e-mail and came across this in your section on C.S. Lewis: One of Lewis' favorite pubs, "The Eagle and Child," familiarly known as "The Bird and Baby." This inn-sign is actually a representation of the pagan god Zeus/Jupiter in the form of an eagle carrying off a boy called Ganymede to Olympus to serve as a sexual plaything. I don't know whether that was why Lewis was attracted to it, but it can hardly be coincidental that such a foul and disgusting image should be associated with a pub frequented by such a person as Lewis.

****

Wow.

The Catholic-bashing, in particular, interests me. I've said for a while that there's a lot less anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism among right-wing Christians than there used to be, but maybe I've been naive to think so. Conservative Protestant leaders certainly make common cause with right-wing Catholic and Jews, but I'm not sure everyone has gotten the memos -- more and more I'm thinking that the old animosities have just been papered over and are ready to surface at any time. (And sometimes the leaders get testy as well -- witness the Reverend Donald Wildmon's recent statement that his people might withdraw their support for Israel if the Anti-Defamation League doesn't stop criticizing evangelicals.)

I'm sure even the leaders would turn on one another if they all succeeded in crushing secularism -- the only question is whether the tensions might flare up now, while the different groups still think they need one another in their war against us. I've assumed the alliance was fairly strong -- hell, I thought Ratzinger's Catholic Church was hell-bent on becoming just another right-wing Protestant denomination -- but now I'm not so sure.

(Amygdala has more to say on the Van Nattans.)