I'm about half way through Jim Webb's new book A Time to Fight. It's a very good read.

These final words calling for a vote on the Senate floor have been uttered by the presiding officer, from a chair that oversees the entire Senate chamber.  If someone were watching the proceedings on C-SPAN or from the small visitors' gallery above the chamber, they would see a puzzlingly empty spectacle.  In most cases, only a few senators are on the floor, having spoken while standing behind one of a hundred desks that form a semicircle in front of the elevated platform where the stiff, seemingly bored presiding officer sits behind a parliamentarian, two legislative clerks, and a journal clerk.  With that, those observing might be forgiven for thinking that the debate they have just witnessed was nothing more than kabuki, a pantomime of stilted, false formality played out to deaf ears, as unheard and unremarkable as a tree falling in an empty forest.

But in almost every Senate office, indeed at almost every desk, the television sets and computer monitors are on, having followed the floor statements that precede the vote.  And much more has been done, well before the speeches began.  Committee hearings have been held.  Memos have been written.  Recommendations have been drafted.  Discussions and internal debates have taken place.  All that remains is for the individual senator to decide which way he or she will vote.  And withing fifteen or twenty minutes, depending on the rule attached to the legislation, that vote must be cast personally, a yea or nay offered to the roll clerk sitting just below the presiding officer.

Some votes are easy, either because they are perfunctory, such as judicial and military nominations that have been extensively scrubbed by trusted committee chairmen, or because they are procedural, calling upon a senator's loyalty to the party leadership, or because the philosophical arguments are clear.  Some votes are enormously difficult.  Many involve great stakes for the nation on issues that are far more complex than the inconclusive legislative answers that are being offered, a dilemma that many senators identify as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good."  Others involve deliberate traps by clever members of the opposing side, meaningless in their true impact because of procedural gimmickry but designed to soil the voting record of senators up for reelection and to provide fresh fodder for the bombast of the talk-show crowd.  Casting such "gotcha" votes, one cannot help but think of Rudyard Kipling's knowing lament in the classic poem "If":  "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ..."

Jim Webb, A Time To Fight

Paragraphs three, four, and five of chapter one, but there is quotable material on almost every page.

Pictures and reminders fill my office.  Samuel Cochran, B. H. Hodges, my parents, my wife, my brother and sisters, my fellow Marines from a time of brutal combat in Vietnam, my five children and one stepdaughter; those who went before me, those who were young with me and grew older by my side, and those who will be here long after I am gone.  They look over my shoulder as I work.  The give me balance, and a sense of accountability.  I owe those who went before me the kind of country they fought to create and wanted to perfect.  I owe those who served alongside me the kind of country we tried to protect.  And I owe my children the kind of country they want to see preserved and further greatened.

Two pages later.  Damn I wish I could write like that.

The blurker formerly known as ignorant bystander.

It's a history of McCarthyism in America, or more broadly, a history of the relationship between the US and the USSR.  Pretty interesting book.

I just finished reading Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

It's riveting and very eye-opening; not only does it look at American fundamentalism through an entirely different prism (much as Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine did for American capitalism) it sheds light on a whole new facet of American foreign policy.

Buy it!

Demand 9.11 Truth!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's anti-Islam diatribe is a piece of propagandistic crap. If you want to read something real about Islam, try reading something from Karen Armstrong, who is a well recognized and well-respected authority on religion, and who does not have an axe to grind about Islam one way or another. I recommend starting with her book A Brief History of Islam.

I am just finishing Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals."

Fantastic read.  Senator Obama seems, so far anyway, to be paralleling Lincoln.

I have on my bookshelf and have read "A Brief History of Islam."  Karen Armstrong is "the" authority in my view.

And by the way, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book is also a pack of lies. It turns out things did not happen quite the way she tells them.

She is not the only woman to make stuff up in order to jump on the islamophobia gravy train, nor is she the most brazen fabricator, but she is among those "former Muslims" and so-called "Muslim reformers" who have found a way to profit from the fact that Muslims have become the Communists of the 21st century.

 Jim Douglass has a fantastic new book out titled JFK and the Unspeakable...Why He Died and Why It Matters. A product of some 15 years of research, Douglass brings to light Kennedy's true turning to a deep vision of a peaceful and disarmed America and the opposition this created within the security state that ultimately killed him for daring to follow this vision. Kennedy was joined in this turning by Khrushchez who had realized within the hellish possibilities of the Cuban missile crisis that they had to join together to rid the world of nukes. Khrushchev communicated with Kennedy by long, hand written letters smuggled to him inside of newspapers. Douglass is also at work on books about the assasinations of Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. Three hundred and eight nine pages with one hundred pages of foot notes and not one unremarkable page ! Truly a deeply important book for today and the quest for a sane and peaceful country. It will change your view of history AND make you realize that we have to think about, and plan for the very real possibility of an attempt on Obama's life before the election. It was hard to type that last sentence, but, when you read Douglass' book, the same stark conclusion will become apparent. Obama is simply not the candidate that the security state can accept. To read this book is to both weep and hope.

I'm reading Cybermancy by Kelly something or other.

Fear will keep the local systems in line. -Grand Moff Tarkin -SLB-

Heh. I had to get a little goofy for a minute.

I just started White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger. So far, so good.

Hirsi Ali? Well, I don't dismiss her experiences or those she may have witnessed but I don't know if her methods will really help those women and girls who are abused. She's very willing to say bad things about Islam--and no doubt there are some very bad things about it, indeed, i.e. the obsession with virginity.

But of course, Islam is hardly the first or only religion to obsesses over virginity. If she's really fearless, she'd tell the folks fond of purity balls that theirs is a sick and perverted obsession. But that won't happen.

That said, I'd love to borrow your book. If I can play with my favorite Shih Tzu first. :)

Can't hear ya, Peach!

Booman, you might be interested in this critique of Ali. I have not had the time yet to read her myself. I'm currently avidly reading Avi Shlaim's Lion of Jordan. The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. It's throwing new light (for me) on the conundrum in the Middle East.

I stocked up through a book club about six months ago, but I haven't been reading much, outside of the net readings. It's still an interesting collection, and I have read some, and I hope to get back into the reading habit soon. Here's an extended list of readings for the last year or so (I'm including some pre-book club stuff at the bottom).

Secrets of the Kingdom; the inside story of the Saudi-US connection - Gerald Posner

American Theocracy - Kevin Phillips

The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Frank Rich

Conservatives Without Conscience - John Dean

No Place To Hide - Frank O'Harrow Jr.

It Can Happen Here; authoritarianism in the age of Bush - Joe Conason

Lies My Teacher Told Me; everything your history textbook got wrong - James W. Loewen

Fooled Again; how the right stole the 2004 election & how they'll steal the next one too - Mark Crispin Miller

The Republican War On Science - Chris Mooney

State Of Denial; Bush at war part III - Bob Woodward

Guns, Germs And Steel; the fates of human societies - Jared Diamond

SOME SLIGHTLY OLDER STUFF

What's The Matter With Kansas; how conservatives won the heart of America - Thomas Frank

Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man - John Perkins

ad bellum purificandum - Kenneth Burke