Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently declared he wasn’t “America’s man in Iraq” and he may have been trying to prove that today when he ordered American troops to dismantle checkpoints around Sadr city. Al-Maliki’s move came after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said this morning that he was closing off the neighborhood to the Iraqi governmet until US forces pulled back.

Iraqis in the neighborhood celebrating, dancing and chanting al-Sadr’s name. And probably firing guns into the air. They seem to like that kind of thing.

No response yet from US officials, but they can’t possibly be happy.

Time Magazine’s Mike Allen reports from the White House today that top Republicans–like President Bush and Karl Rove–insist there is a way for them to hold onto the House and Senate in the election next week. Allen reports on several strategies the Republicans are using, including campaign appearances by Bush to energize Republicans and dipping into their formidable war chest. What seems like their most credible effort is the GOP’s effective use of absentee ballots before election day and get out the vote efforts on election day. Allen reports that in state’s like Ohio, the Republicans are building on the machine they put in place for the 2004 election.

Meanwhile the NYT is reporting (complete with a colorful graphic) on a below the radar but nonetheless important part of the election–the battle for control of state legislatures. As the Times points out, control of state houses will be especially critical after the 2010 census, when Congressional districts will be redrawn in the state capitals. The split between Democrats and Republicans is almost unbelievably equal–the Ds have 19, the Rs 20 and 10 are divided. Even more striking–there are a total of about 7,400 seats in the US and the Democrats control only 21 more than the Republicans.

An embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has authorized the establishment of a new Pentagon public relations effort. A memo describing the office says it will be modeled after a political campaign–like Bill Clinton’s “rapid response” machine. Construction has already begun in the Pentagon and new staff are reportedly being hired, although their desks have been walled off from the rest of the press office to keep them from view.

The Pentagon says the new office will seek to “set the record straight” on issues that, presumably, they feel the media is getting wrong. We know one Pentagon official who definitely feels that way:

Rumsfeld has complained bitterly that the press focuses too much on bad news coming out of Iraq, and not enough on progress being made there. As an example, during a trip to Nevada earlier this year, he said he was deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in “manipulating the media” to influence Westerners.

“That’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said during a question-and-answer session at a naval base.

According to the CNN story, the new office will focus on booking Pentagon-friendly guests on TV and radio talk shows, produce letter-to-the-editor and develop a New Media outreach, including producing videos for You Tube.

Does this mean we will soon be seeing Rumsfeld starring in new Evolution of Dance video?

Actually, judging by his last press conference, maybe it would be better if he spent a little time in an undisclosed location:

In a comment that may rival “I voted for it before I voted against it,” John Kerry, campaigning in California for the Democratic candidate for governor, urged kids to study hard because “If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” White House spokesman Tony Snow was ready this morning when reporters asked him about the remark, saying “Senator Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who’ve given their lives in this. This is an absolute insult.”

And so the battle was joined:

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran and Bush’s rival in the 2004 presidential election, fired back, saying Bush and his administration are the ones who owe U.S. troops an apology because they “misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it.”

“This is the classic (Republican) playbook,” Kerry said in a harshly worded statement. “I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did. I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium.”

ABC’s political blog ads this quote:

“I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.”

Here’s the video of Kerry’s speech:

A reversible birth control drug for men is showing some promise when given to rats. The drug, called Adjudin (who thinks these names up?) was injected into male rats and they were put in a cage with females. Not just any females, actually, but virgin female rats. After they got done pinching themselves to make sure they weren’t dreaming, the males mated with the females but pregnancy did not ensue. The drug lasted for twenty weeks, after which time the females started to get pregnant.

The drug works by interfering with the process of sperm cell creation and the researchers said they could see no adverse side effects. Still, a version for humans is years off.

KFC’s announcement that they are switching to a soybean based cooking oil that has no trans fats was big news yesterday, but raised a number of interesting questions. The first is, how replaceable are trans fats? There seems to be considerable debate. A CBS story quote Robert Reeves, who has the enviable title of President of the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, as saying it’s not easy to find a replacement and only in the years ahead will non-trans fats be developed that do the same job. The story mentions fats from palm, cottonseed, canola and sunflower oils as potential candidates. But Reeves says it’s hard to get them to perform exactly like trans-fats (which, and I’m not 100% sure about this, are styrofoam based.)

On other hand NBC’s chief medical correspondent, Dr.Nancy Snyderman, said on last night’s Nightly News said there is no reason to have trans fats in our food–they aren’t needed, they are easily replaced and they are “toxic.”

The other issue is how much should the ingredients in food be regulated. The NBC piece sited efforts in New York City and Chicago to ban trans fats. Brian Williams and Snyderman talked about this last night, and the doc said although there is public debate about the issue, in the end she thinks trans fats will be banned. It does seem a little big brotherish, but keep in mind that in countries in Europe where tran fats have been banned or highly regulated, McDonalds still thrives and makes very tasty french fries.

In the wake of yesterday’s story about how many US purchased weapons have gone missing in Iraq, a story in this morning’s WaPo casts a grim light on how much damage those guns are probably doing. According to US military officials cited in the article, 70% of the Iraqi police have been inflitrated by militias. The assesment from Americans on the ground in Iraq isn’t pretty:

“How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don’t even trust them not to kill our own men?” asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure we’re ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence.”

Iraqis paint a similarly bleak picture:

“None of the Iraqi police are working to make their country better,” said Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani, chief of police for the western half of Baghdad. “They’re working for the militias or to put money in their pocket.”

It is against this background that the Pentagon failed to keep track of hundreds of thousands of weapons that they provided the Iraqis, and of those weapons they did attempt to trace at least 14,000 have disappeared.

I kept reading…looking for the good news–some small sign that although things are dismal now, there is hope. I found none:

When Shaw asked what the police in Mansour were doing to reduce the violence, the major said: “There is nothing the police can do. The only solution is to create a government that will take away the militias. Then everything will be fine.”

The major, who asked to be identified as Abu Ahmed because he feared for his safety if his full name was published, sat in a closet-size room that he hardly ever leaves. Orange-and-brown sheets covered a tiny bed next to his desk.

“I can’t go home or I’ll be killed,” said Abu Ahmed, who sees his children only when police officers can bring them to the station. He sighed as he looked at photographs of two recently assassinated officers. “And it’s getting worse. So much worse.”

“I think I must quit soon,” he said quietly.

Arabi Araf Ali, a police officer in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police do little more than pick dead bodies up off the street. In the station’s parking lot nearby, a colleague washed off a police truck that had just been used to retrieve the corpses of five Shiite men slaughtered that morning. Brain matter littered the ground.

The media is often accused of only reporting the bad news in Iraq. Perhaps there is some truth to that. But if the assessments by the Iraqis and Americans interviewed for this article are accurate, it’s hard to imagine what kind of good news could wipe away the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

General Motors has been losing money—big money—for some time now. Try out these numbers: $115 million in the the third quarter of this year alone. That actually looks pretty good, compared to the $1.7 billion loss in Q3/2005. Executives at GM have a plan to change that, though, and it involves saving about $9 billion by closing factories and laying off workers. Cutting expenses is only one side of the equation and no amount of belt tightening is going to do what the company really needs to do: start producing cars that people want to buy. And executives at GM think that the kind of car people want to drive might just be electric.

Toyota has made heaps of money with hybrid electric cars like the Prius. Honda has done well, too, once they got past the two-seat Insight and started producing hybrid Civics and Accords. But GM has lagged far behind and now they are trying to play catch up with some bold initiatives. According to Bloomberg the company is getting set to announce a comprehensive hybrid development program which will include a plug-in electric hybrid that you can recharge at any electric outlet. Of course one of the biggest sticking point in a plug-in car is what happens when you can’t stop somewhere to recharge–so even that vehicle will have a gas engine to help out batteries on long trips.

GM’s first hybrid came out this fall and they plan to start offering 11 more of it’s models as hybrids in the next few years, according to the Bloomberg story.

What’s interesting about this–what I think it the most important aspect to this story–is that GM is adopting this strategy because it makes financial sense. Hybrid cars are better for the environment and have long been seen as something car companies should produce and people should drive in the same way that we should all eat at least five servings of fruits or vegetables every day: because it’s good for us. That paradigm has shifted and auto manufacturers are catching on to the fact that it makes good business sense to build these cars because they are affordable, they are economical and the public does want to buy them. Now some auto manufacturers have been a little slow on the uptake (I won’t mention any names but their initials are G.M.) but there is no denying the realities of the market place.

But was it GM who “Killed the Electric Car” in the first place? Here’s the trailer from the movie:

Michael Winship

When I was in the second grade, there was a girl in another second grade classroom who had cerebral palsy. When we passed by the door on our way to assembly or the cafeteria we could see that, unlike all the other pupils, she sat behind an enormous electric typewriter — to kids of our era, a contraption as sci-fi as time travel.

Her motions were jerky and convulsive. Of course, being the ignorant little charmers we were, there were jokes and imitations, whispers that she must be retarded or something.

Rush Limbaugh does the same thing. Of course, the difference is, WE WERE SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Doubtless, you have heard by now of the brouhaha ensuing when old Rush impugned the integrity of Parkinson’s Disease-plagued Michael J. Fox and the political spots he made on behalf of candidates supporting stem cell research.

The ads show in grim detail the effects of the disease and the medication the performer takes to fight it. To which God’s gift to the ether responded by jerking around spastically in his chair and announcing that Fox “is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act.”

Limbaugh, in the immortal words of Marx — Groucho — I’d horsewhip you, if I had a horse.

(Nonetheless, Rush, if you’ll supply the horse’s behind, I’ll figure out a way to come up with the rest.)

This whole Fox smear is, of course, just one aspect of the down and dirty, nasty, childish, embarrassing media slugfest that is American electoral politics. But as Michael Grunwald reported in Friday’s Washington Post, “On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything…

“The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.”

Not surprisingly, given either the self-righteous and priggish or leering, giggle-and-point, infantile attitude of many of those involved, lots of the accusatory ads deal with one aspect or another of, gasp, S-E-X.

There’s the National Republican Campaign Committee ad accusing New York State Democratic congressional candidate Michael Arcuri of spending tax dollars by calling a fantasy chat line from a New York City hotel. Apparently, an aide — not even Arcuri himself — was calling the state Division of Criminal Justice and misdialed the prefix code. The billing records are pretty clear. Cost to the state: $1.25. Humor value: priceless.

Then there’s the ad against a Wisconsin Democratic congressman claiming “Rep. Ron Kind Pays for Sex!” with “XXX” stamped across it. Congressman Kind opposed a move to prevent the National Institutes of Health from supporting peer-reviewed sex studies — research in human sexual behavior, reviewed and evaluated by teams of expert scientists.

Other Dems have been accused of connections to a child rapist, the National Man/Boy Love Association and of supporting funding for the easy abortion of African-American babies. According to the Post, a voice in the ads, which have been used in some two dozen congressional races, says, “If you make a mistake with one of your ho’s, you’ll want to dispose of that problem tout de suite, no questions asked.” (That ad can be heard here and a list of all the ads by this PAC is here.)

The race card also was played in the most notorious political spot of the year, funded by the Republican National Committee (RNC). It attacked Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., an African-American, and featured a bare-shouldered blonde squealing, “I met Harold at the Playboy party!” The ad ended with her winking, “Harold, call me.”

As Hilary Shelton, head of the NAACP’s Washington office told the Los Angeles Times, “It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women.”

The commercial also included a fake, sleazy looking Hollywood type saying, “So he took money from porn movie producers. I mean, who hasn’t?”

Who hasn’t, indeed. Josh Marshal of the website Talking Points Memo noted that the RNC “is a regular recipient of political contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, the owner and CEO of Marina Pacific Distributors, one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States.” One of the production companies whose films Marina Pacific distributes gained notoriety when it was discovered that several soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division were involved in its porno tapes. All were disciplined; four stood court-martial, did time and were dishonorably discharged.

Oh, and don’t get me started on Republicans and gay marriage.

Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein sums it up this week: “The Republicans unleashed a series of ads painting the Democrats as sex-crazed, homosexual-loving, porn-perusing — and in the case of the novelist and Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, porn-writing — perverts.” He refers to Republican Senator George Allen’s release last week, via the GOP-obsequious Drudge Report, of steamy excerpts from his opponent Webb’s literary oeuvre. The Senator has thus widened the field and is now running against fictional characters.

All of this is a distraction from what desperately needs to be addressed by next Tuesday’s vote. You want to know what real pornography is? It’s the vice president’s disingenuous comments about waterboarding and other forms of torture. It’s American servicemen and women placed in harm’s way by tragic miscalculation. It’s an Iraq so deadly people are afraid to leave their homes for fear of abduction or murder. It’s a botched war in Afghanistan and a world that holds us in greater contempt than ever before.

It’s children left behind and dirty air and abuses of the constitution by the executive. It’s the $260 billion deficit: when this administration talks about cutting it, I’m reminded of the fireman who’s a closet arsonist.

It’s kickbacks and bribes and naysaying scientific research on stem cells and global warming. It’s attacking the lame, the halt and the needy and making the lie as American as apple pie.

Monday’s Washington Post quoted Karl Rove shrugging off possible losses next week as no great calamity to the conservative cause. “1938 was a huge wipeout for the Democrats,” he said. “Do you think that was the end of the New Deal?”

Of course, if Rove had been around then, there wouldn’t have been a New Deal at all. Think about that as you enter your polling place.

Dirty, isn’t it?

copyright 2006 Messenger Post Newspapers

_________________________

All newspaper editors want to know what their readers like. If you would like to read this feature in your local newspaper, please do not hesitate to share your enthusiasm with your local newspaper editor.

NOTE: Two of the TV ads and the videotape of Rush Limbaugh are posted just below this column and you can watch them there. The radio ads (aborting African American babies, etc.) are linked directly from Michael’s post.

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