Paul Krugman talking sense on the Anti-Defamation League calling for a ban on the Ground Zero mosque:

First, this has been building for a very long time. I remember my first visit to Israel, in 1981; even then older Israeli academics, veterans of an earlier era (literally — many of them had fought in 1967 and 1973), would talk grimly about the Likud government and its harsh policies, saying things like “I feel as if we’re living under a foreign occupation.” And it’s only gotten worse since then.

Second, Beinart doesn’t talk as much as I’d like about how this relates to U.S. politics. As he says, American liberals, while they fiercely support Israel’s right to exist, can’t bring themselves to support the policies of Israel’s current government. So the Israel-is-always-right crowd has gravitated to people who don’t have any problem with the occupation — which means the American hard right, including the Christian right. And they seem oblivious to the fact that they are thus making an alliance of convenience with the enemies of tolerance.

Exactly. Last night on Hardball, I got to watch Mr. Campbell Brown aka well-connected neocon Dan Senor spewing a bunch of weasel-y nonsense on the topic. He’s a lifelong Republican operative who now is a “communications strategist”, and he’s very good at sowing divisive nonsense. You’d think Matthews might mention his current business, but oddly enough, he uses Senor’s former job titles to add gravitas:

Could I just point out that the fact any Muslim country allows a Catholic church to exist is a classic example of religious tolerance? I mean, there was this little movement called the Crusades…

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Now why would he think a thing like that?

A longtime employee of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has accused its leaders of racial discrimination after they fired him last month.

Keith Carter, who joined the NRSC in 1995, has charged Republican officials with creating a hostile environment for the two African-American employees who worked at the committee.

Carter, who is black, said he was referred to as “boy” and forced to clean up the feces of dogs white employees had brought to work.

He filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court on Monday.

Well geeze, Keith, SOMEBODY had to clean up the dog crap!

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I don’t think I’ll ever eat Gulf seafood again:

The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian has learned.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has come under attack in Congress and from independent scientists for allowing BP to spray almost 2m gallons of the dispersant Corexit on to the slick and, even more controversially, into the leak site 5,000ft below the sea. Now it emerges that EPA’s own experts have been raising similar concerns within the agency.

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of the whistleblower support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he had heard from five scientists and two other officials who had expressed concerns to their superiors about the use of dispersants.

“There was one toxicologist who was very concerned about the underwater application particularly,” he said. “The concern was the agency appeared to be flying blind and not consulting its own specialists and even the literature that was available.”

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Want to see if your street’s under water after the 15-ft rise in sea level? Click here! (Don’t forget to convert to meters.)

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When companies are cutting into the bone while still reporting record profits, we should take their excuses with a very large grain of salt.

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Ann Jones

There’s a remarkably speedy laundry and, as for the toilets and showers – I can speak only for those few designated “Female” – they were the best I’d seen anywhere in Afghanistan. A sign politely suggested limiting your shower to five minutes, a nod to the expense of paying for-profit contractors to hire truckers to haul in the necessary water, and then haul out to undisclosed locations the copious effluence of American latrines. (At Bagram, that effluence goes into a conveniently nearby river, a water source for countless Afghans.)

The other detritus from this expanding FOB is dumped into a pit and burned, including a staggering, but undisclosed, number of plastic water bottles. All this helps explain the annual cost of maintaining a single American soldier in Afghanistan, currently estimated at US$1 million.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making a case for filthy trenches. But why should war be gussied up like home? If war were undisguisedly as nasty and brutish as it truly is, it might also tend to be short. Soldiers freed from illusions might mutiny, as many did in Vietnam, or desert and go home. But this modern, cushier kind of pseudo-war is different.

Many young soldiers told me that they actually live better in the army, even when deployed, than they did in civilian life, where they couldn’t make ends meet, especially when they were trying to pay for college or raise a family by working one or two low-wage jobs. They won’t mutiny. They’re doing better than many of their friends back home. (And they’re dutiful, which makes for acts of personal heroism, even in a foolhardy cause.)

They are likely to re-enlist, though many told me they’d prefer to quit the army and go to work for much higher pay with the for-profit private contractors that now “service” American war. But the odd thing is that no one seems to question the relative cushiness of this life at war (nor the inequity of the hardscrabble civilian life left behind) – least of all those best able to observe firsthand the contrast between our garrisons and the humble equipment and living conditions of Afghans, both friend and foe. Rather, the contrast seems to inspire many soldiers with renewed appreciation of “our American way of life” and a determination to “do good things” for the Afghan people, just as many feel they did for the people of Iraq.<

I emphasize all this because nothing I'd read about soldiering prepared me for the extent of these comforts - or the tedium that attends them. Plenty of soldiers don't leave the base. They hold down desk jobs, issue supplies, manage logistics, repair vehicles or radios, refuel generators and trucks, plan "development" projects, handle public affairs, or update tactical maps inscribed (at certain locations I am obliged not to name) with admonitions like "Here Be Dragons" or "Here Do Bad Stuff". They face the boredom of ordinary, unheroic, repetitive tasks.

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May the wind take your troubles away….

Son Volt:

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Ryan Adams:

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Sheila Nicholls:

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I said earlier today that Rich Trumka was probably getting something from the administration in exchange for pushing disappointed rank and file to support the Dems in November, and I was right:

The U.S. Labor Department announced on Friday the United States will request consultations with Guatemala’s government under the labor chapter of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). This is the first such action by any U.S. administration against a trading partner.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statementthat the announcement “demonstrates the strong commitment of the Obama administration to enforcing our trade laws, including the obligation to respect workers’ rights.”

More than two years ago, the AFL-CIO and six Guatemalan unions filed a complaint with the Labor Department outlining the systemic failure of the government of Guatemala to enforce its own labor laws or to take reasonable action to prevent violence against trade unionists.

Last year, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) named Guatemala thesecond-most dangerous country for trade unionists. Colombia was first.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said that the action sends a strong message that the Obama administration will vigorously enforce labor obligations under the U.S. free trade agreements.

We are committed to ensuring that U.S. businesses and workers compete on a level playing field and that labor rights are respected in our trading partner countries.

In a report released last year, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center noted that in addition to the brutal repression of workers’ freedoms, Guatemala’s laws hinder workers from exercising their basic rights in many ways. Some laws criminalize legitimate union activity. Efforts to strengthen labor laws have been rolled back in recent years. Click here to read the repor

mercican

This is big. American companies won’t find it quite as easy to outsource jobs if they have to meet these standards.

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