After coming home to central NJ earlier this week from a great trip to Austin to see friends and attend Netroots Nation, I am spending this weekend back visiting my parents in the Philly suburbs.  My parents are registered Republicans, but aren't frothing wingnuts and don't like the situation in Iraq, etc.  They are still suspicious of Obama, though, especially his "plan to tax Social Security" (which, being retired, is the main thing they talk about).  

This morning, my mother shoved a copy of "The Bulletin" under my nose, and insisted I read the editorial by Herb Denenberg about "Reasons Not to Vote for Obama".

The New York Times ran a really horrifying story yesterday on Daniel Pipes' successful campaign to oust Debbie Almontaser as the principle of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn.  

While we debate endlessly about the race card in the Dem primaries, it's alive and well on other fronts: There is an anti-Semitism already strong in this country that now targets Arabs instead of Jews.  

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Yesterday's New York Times shows how Arab educator Almontaser and the Kahlil Gibran International Academy were sabotaged by the Sun and the Post, and, yes, the Department of Education. The future of our world, and our hopes for peace and understanding, rest with our seeing other people as people, and not as inherently worse than we are. This kind of racism is affecting all of us. read the article, substitute "Jew" for "Arab," and you'll see what I mean.

Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School

More below the fold.

The New York Times has a cautionary tale of how mainstream hate masquerading as patriotism can destroy projects designed to promote peace and understanding.  The front-page article - Her Dream, Branded as a Threat - is a sad tale of an idealistic educator whose vision of a school for teaching NY City kids Arabic was ruined by a hate campaign organized by the well-known neoconservative "scholar" Daniel Pipes.

Perhaps i should first explain the title. It comes from Daniel Pipes and his review of Jonah Goldbergs "liberal Fascism".

The full quote:

Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive. If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.

Yes, that is the right way to go. To compare a fascist leader of Italy to Joseph McCarhy, that makes sense..how?After the flip you will understand. Or you will learn to understand!

The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right of Americans peaceably to assemble…but not, evidently, their freedom from detention, interrogation, and fingerprinting after dispersing. Or so a US Court of Appeals has ruled.

In Washington, House Minority Leader John Boehner is struggling to rebrand a downtrodden and disheartened Republican Party in time for the 2008 elections.  It's no wonder.  Its agenda stymied and burdened by an unpopular war and an even less popular President, the GOP is being pulverized in the polls.  And with its evangelical base splintered and big business supporters jumping ship, the only message seemingly uniting Republicans is disdain - of immigrants, of blacks, of gay Americans and above all, Muslims.  The GOP is now the Party of Hate.

Daniel Pipes used to be an expert on the Middle East. Whether you agreed with him or not you had to respect his opinion and his command of the basic facts about the region. He knew the facts, even if his interpretation didn't agree with yours.

Not any more. Here's what he wrote on October 9 this year:

preemption justified the invasion of Iraq before Iraqis had attacked the United States

[more below]

You start seeing goofy hysteria posted up at sites we don't often visit.

As'ad Abu Khalil has a short posting up about totalitarian Islam's threat to the west.

Please take note of the host site, and who is talking here, this lecture comes in two parts, is lenghty, and requires RealPlayer.  Join me below the fold for a bit more. (hat tip to As'ad)

A few days ago, I had an interesting experience. I put up a negative and critical comment on a diary, which started out, Daniel Pipes? In return I received a page of retorts about my ignorance concerning this man’s glowing credentials and contributions. Since what I had heard about Pipes and his work on college campuses was entirely negative, I looked him up. This is what I found out (first diary so please be patient).

Kangaroo Congressional Hearing

by M.J. Rosenberg

reproduced with permission

M.J. Rosenberg’s Friday column , for the Israel Policy Forum, discusses the warm reception IPF members received for their moderate, dovish views during a recent visit to Capitol Hill and a hearing by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle East that disappointed by not having a witness to rebut Daniel Pipes.

continued

We have numerous reports by the media on how all the rich kids got out of the Vietnam War, including George W. Bush. Their comments weren’t just theoretical; they really did get out of war while they sent poor kids to get ground up like hamburger meat. If there was something really unacceptable about that, the media wouldn’t say it with a smile and a nod, but that’s how they’re saying it, I am starting to believe they are proud of the fact or just feel very, very safe, they nor their children will ever serve in any war.

All the neocon warmongers seem to have one thing in common. The media forgiveness card.

The self-titled and self-appointed Middle East analysts on the government-run Fox News channel are talking about how we need more war, a wider war, and a bigger war.

The tireless Daniel Pipes has solved the mystery of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Mr. Pipes argues that the reason we failed to find Iraq's WMD is that they were moved just before the war. The answer was so simple - it was right there in front of us. Thank heaven that Daniel Pipes was on the case even when the last man from the Iraq Survey Group had packed his bags.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.
- Dr. Evil (Austin Powers - International Man of Mystery)

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

These guys put the chicken in chicken hawk. Enjoy your journey into the healing powers of delusional thinking.

Here's a small sampling from the very tasty chicken hawk menu: