Or, I should say, we would if we were more attuned to the inner workings of American politics. The reality is that the average European on the street couldn't name five US Senators if his or her life depended on it ("Er.. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and... Arnold Schwarzenegger?!"), much less a former Governor of Vermont turned chairman of some obscure abbreviation starting with a D in Washington.
  The point is, those of us who do know something about Howard Dean love him, and if he ever becomes a household name over here (all the way in -08, anyone?) he'll be the belle of the ball in the Old World. Not because he reminds us of ourselves like John Kerry, bless his heart, did.

  But because he reminds us of you. Of America, the way it ought to be.

 Oh dear.

 Imagine if you will, and I suspect you do, the look on Joementum's face when this peach of an endorsement reaches him. In it none other than Rick Santorum laments the state of affairs, where 'people play politics' so that:

good men like Joe Lieberman lose elections because of it, which is a tragedy.

Again -oh dear. If you glance over your shoulder and find you're backed by Rick Santorum, you have to ask yourself if the game is not well and truly up. And the opportunity to 'bow out gracefully' has passed you by.

Apologies for the hit-and-run diary, I'll leave further musings of the Zen-like perfection of 'Santorum for Lieberman' over to you.

  I bet the commie despots of China will be happy to hear from the very heart of capitalist, freedom-loving USA that they have finally arrived: Neal Cavuto, in one of his ramblings, bestow them with the highest acclaim, the pinnacle of prestige for any nation: SUPERPOWER.

 In what seems to be a hint from the Blair administration, the Scotsman reports that the UK will not back any military action against Iran, and that Blair has said as much to Bush's face. This is just the sort of pressure you would expect from America's staunchest ally to get the message across: if you attack Iran, you will have to go it alone. The UK won't be suckered into another quagmire, and where John Bull won't tread, Uncle Sam walks alone.
 This severe weakening of the alliance that brought us Iraq, along with the rumblings from within the Pentagon at Rumsfeld and his NeoCon-approach to waging wars and various conservatives defecting from the battle-line leaves me thinking this is what's happening: Bush and his puppet-masters have decided to go to war with Iran. But the grown-ups won't let them.

 In Sweden we have a sense of being regarded as somewhat stupid by other people. Honest, nice and, well- pushovers. There is a saying in German that goes "Die dumme Schweden"("The stupid Swedes", not "Die, stupid Swedes!" as an American might guess!) which is in fact only used in Sweden by Swedes, and is accordingly mostly indicative of our view of ourselves as not-so-wise in the ways of the world. Rightly or wrongly(rightly most Norweigans , Danes and Finns will contend), we've had a sinking feeling of being a laughing-stock, less than respected by other, smarter nations. All this was a part of the past, I thought, a remnant of our time as a backward, isolated outskirt of Europe. Nowadays we're high-tech Cosmopolitans right in the thick of cutting edge lifestyle and culture, such as... er, producing a lot of the world's bland pop-music (Sweden is the no 3 exporter of music) and IKEA. Anyway, nowadays the Swede has reason to regard himself as internationally competitive in a shrewd and almost nauseatingly clever way.

 Following the somewhat surprising entry of John Kerry into the dKos-community I wrote a diary in which I basically said that he was a sterling presidential candidate and the fact that he lost reflected poorly on the American public, rather than on himself. In it I included a poll asking whether the Kossacks would consider him for for -08. It ended up with "No.Effing.Way." beating "Sure, now that he's a fellow Kossack", but only by a few votes (a few hard-core Lieberman-followers also had their say...). The fact that it was even conceivable for a large chunk of this community to back Kerry surprised me, having followed the general mood here. On the other hand, Russ Feingold, whom I am not really that familiar with, being a European and all, seems to be the darling of dKos. So -how do they compare in a head to head? And what are their respective strenghts and weaknesses (especially Feingold's, since I don't know that much about him)?

  I'm probably well outside the dKos mainstream here, but I think Kerry was a sterling presidential candidate. Being European I am naturally more attuned to his somber, dullish persona than you glib Yanks but I do understand what he lacked to win: charisma and the ability to project conviction and energy. Having said that, he would have made for an incredibly uplifting contrast to Bush and even Clinton as president. Boring but substantial, intelligent and thoughtful, if reserved and aloof. No pizzazz but gravitas. I even like the way he speaks: that solemn,serious intonation you'd expect from a Roman Senator in ancient times.  Come to think of it, I could easily picture him wearing a senatorial toga,  monotonously droning on and on in latin and fitting in quite well. A doofus like Bush in a toga, struggling to form a single coherent sentence? Cato and Cicero would have been aghast, perhaps introducing the term "tardmonkey" to classic parlance.

"Mr President! Why, for the love of God and Country, have you put this great nation is such a state of feebleness and impotence that the mullahs of Iran can openly defy us and make a grab for nuclear weapons? How has this happened under your watch? How can you defend spending our armed forces in Iraq, which was at worst a second rate threat to us, when that force was needed as never before to loom over Teheran, a fanatical and steadily growing source of real danger and challenge. Will you, Mr President, in the end have facilitated that mushroom cloud, used as a pretext for the Iraq invasion?"

This, my friends, is the silver-bullet that could destroy the legacy of president Bush and discredit Republicans for a generation in terms of foreign policy.

Let me be uber-clear here: Bush is a dim-wit led by the hand by a bunch of cynical, selfserving powerbrokers and moneymen whose interests only rarely coincide with what's best for the world or even the US. This diary will in no way be an apology for these people, but rather a reflection of circumstances that lead me to believe that they will, out of pure egotism, not attack Iran. Not that they wouldn't want to. But things have changed, so much so in fact that a substantial number of the enablers of the current situation would likely act to thwart an expansion of the conflict. It's far better for a lot of the powers that be to hold on to a precarious but possibly tenable position in Iraq, than to gamble for greater gain in Iran, at truly lousy odds. After all, the good Halliburton-folks aren't doing much business in Vietnam, are they?      

I wasn't aware of this, but it seems the GPS-technology which is used all around the world for positioning with help from satellites is controlled by the US military. This of course gives the US government an opportunity to potentially control events around the world. Just think: they want Jaques Chirac dead, so they manipulate the GPS-thingie in his limo to drive him off a cliff! What to do to prevent such a terrible event, we Europeans ask?

Although I can't claim to have been watching Faux all that much lately I have picked up on what seems to be a strange antipathy to the Kong-movie. You know, you get the feeling that the big monkey's a Democrat running for office and they use their typical slant-machine to make him look bad.

English is a second language to me but I think the term 'fucktard' is a correct way of describing John-'five-in the-noggin'-Gibson. Correct? Anyway, I saw him pushing his War-on-Christmas "theory" yet again. It all seems laughable and moronic enough to be comletely ignored, but this is the way the wingnuts manage to rally their troops, isn't it? Their attempts to create anxiety among their base and muddy the waters on more important issues don't have to be coherent and intelligent. In fact quite the reverse is true. Remember the presidential election last year which they won by diverting attention to the 'culture war' and swiftboating Kerry.
 What, pray, would be an effective way to counter this blatant fund-raising scheme of the religious right?