Editor’s Note: Amazingly, just weeks ago, major outlets of the U.S. news media – including the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times – were running neoconservative screeds about the glorious success of George W. Bush’s Iraq War “surge” and baiting war opponents for lacking “realism.” Now, with U.S. casualties again spiking and American troops bogged down in Iraq indefinitely, there have been virtually no prominent articles taking the neocons to task for their lack of realism in failing to see the security risk their policies have created, a fact that the Independent Institute’s Charles V. Peña notes in this guest essay:

U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday decried his critics' calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as comparable to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War Two.Bush's comment in a speech to Israel's parliament appeared to be a swipe at Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama, who has advocated meeting leaders of traditional U.S. foes such as Iran and Cuba without preconditions. It also followed a visit to the Middle East by former President Jimmy Carter in which he met Hamas leaders, who are shunned by Israel and Washingtion, and urged efforts to draw the militant group into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Bush used his speech to ratchet up his rhetoric against Iran, saying Washington stood by Israel in opposing what he called Tehran's "nuclear weapons ambitions".

"These races were not in New Jersey or New England, where Republican erosion has taken place over the last decade. They were in the heart of the Bible Belt, the social conservative core of our coalition," Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) fretted in a 20-page memorandum given to House Republican leaders yesterday. "Members and pundits, waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and Independents will snap back to the GOP, fail to understand the deep seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party."

Republican have been sighted admitting, after their defeat in the special election in the First District of MS, that their brad is broken. But they don’t get it, and nobody has stepped forward admitting why it is broken, that THEY BROKE IT! They’re instead walking around still saying “Not Me” like a small child who just broke his mother’s lamp.

Once upon a time, I studied the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi -- until, that is, I realized I would never locate my "chi." At that point, I threw in the towel and took up Western exercise. Still, the principle behind Tai Chi stayed with me -- that you could multiply the force of an act by giving way before the force of others; that a smaller person could use the strength of a bigger one against him. Now, jump to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath -- and you know the Tai Chi version of history from there. Think of it as a grim cosmic joke -- that the 9/11 attacks, as apocalyptic as they looked, were anything but. The true disasters followed and the wounds were largely self-inflicted, as the most militarily powerful nation on the planet used its own force to disable itself. Before that fateful day, the Bush administration had considered terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda subjects for suckers and wusses. What they were intent on was pouring money into developing an elaborate boondoggle of a missile defense system against future nuclear attacks by rogue states. Those Cold War high frontiersmen (and women) couldn't get enough of the idea of missiling up. That, after all, was where the money and the fun seemed to be. Nuclear was where the big boys -- the nation states -- played. "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.…," the CIA told the President that August. Yawn.

The problem facing American forces in Iraq is not so-called "sanctuaries" alleged to be operating in Iran, but rather the reality that the United States in engaged in an unpopular, and increasingly brutal, occupation in Iraq that cannot win regardless of what is transpiring in Iran. This occupation is being resisted by Iraqis, not Iranians. Bombing Iran, or worse, launching cross-border operations by US ground forces, will not reduce the will of the Iraqis who fight for their homeland and way of life.

President George W. Bush told Israelis on Thursday they were a "chosen people" who can forever count on American support against enemies like Hamas and Iran. On a day when Palestinians remembered homes and land lost as Israel was created in 1948, Bush made only fleeting reference to their aspirations for a state of their own in a speech marking Israel's 60th anniversary that was laced with references to God. Speaking of the "promise of God" for a "homeland for the chosen people" in Israel, Bush told the Israeli parliament after a visit to the Roman-era Jewish fortress at Masada: "Masada shall never fall again, and America will always stand with you." He predicted the defeat of Islamist enemies Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda in a "battle of good and evil".

Banking analyst Meredith Whitney blasted Citigroup's turnaround plan yesterday, saying the financial giant is so deep in a black hole that even renown physicist Stephen Hawking could not help the ailing company. "We wish [Citi's] management team all the best in their ambitious endeavors, but we fear [it] is past the point of fixing," quipped the Oppenheimer analyst known for her forecast that the company would slash its dividend. The biting remarks, in the form of a research note to clients, came on the heels of Citi's long-awaited turnaround plan, unveiled by the bank's executive team on Friday. In a nearly four-hour presentation with investors and analysts, CEO Vikram Pandit said the bank aims to get rid of $400 billion in noncore assets but otherwise rejected calls to boost the stock by spinning off units.

"Hillary Clinton on Wednesday reiterated her vow to stay in the Democratic presidential race, but she said it would be a 'terrible mistake' for her supporters to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama."

Pressed by the demands of the “global war on terrorism”, the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old. The 46-page report, “Soldiers of Misfortune“, which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students. Military recruiters, according to the report, use “exaggerated promises of financial rewards for enlistment, [which] undermines the voluntariness of their enlistment.” In some cases documented by the report, recruiters used coercion, deception, and even sexual abuse in order to gain recruits. Perpetrators of such practices are only very rarely punished, the report found. “The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project.

You and your White House have been sitting on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since your arrival in January 2001, thus assuring the giant auto companies that NHTSA-toothless under President Bill Clinton and previous administrations-- continues morphing even further away from the technology-forcing, life- saving regulatory agency it is supposed to be, to an industry consulting firm. The result has been tens of thousands of American fatalities and serious injuries that could have been prevented had you and President Clinton simply urged NHTSA to follow its statutory obligations, lately under Congressionally mandated deadlines, with readily feasible, practical safety technologies. Instead, you stacked the deck with your Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, former president and CEO of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AAMA). The rest, as they say, “is commentary.”

The McCain campaign has provided an ongoing tutorial in the subtle ethics of lobbying. For instance, you might think that a politician who professes to be abhorred by special interests would not surround himself with lobbyists. Not so. What a politician can be drowning in lobbyists -- what matters is his integrity. And for that, you'll just have to take his word.

Okay, Sen. Clinton, is it over yet?.........Former Sen. John Edwards is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidate Wednesday evening, in a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama's appeal to working-class voters, several senior Democratic sources tell ABC News.

Has it ever occurred to you just how odd it is that we know so little about what we eat? Each day we feast on cereal, bread, salad, soup, chicken, cheese, apples, ice cream, and more. Over the course of our lives, each of us has eaten thousands of different foods. We have tasted their saltiness and sweetness, crunched their crispness, chewed their fleshiness, swallowed them, and incorporated their nutriment into our bones.Yet despite this biologically intimate and everyday physical connection, most of us have little idea where our foods come from, who raised them, and what went into making them.

Tony Wikrent reports from the American Wind Energy Association's Workshop -- held just a week or so before the Department of Energy released it's 20% Wind Energy by 2030 report. "Wind has the potential to meet most if not all of U.S. electricity needs within the next two to three decade, if - IF - we can surmount significant obstacles caused by the “post-industrial” neglect and withering of the U.S. manufacturing base. ...We are at the dawn of a new age of clean, renewable energy, but if we are to realize the full potential of this new era, there is no getting around the need to rebuild U.S. heavy industry and manufacturing."

More than five years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, since President Bush stood under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on that aircraft carrier. While these fifth anniversaries got some notice, another did not: the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by a U.S. Army tank on April 8, 2003. The tank attack killed two unembedded journalists, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and José Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. Couso recorded his own death. He was filming from the balcony and caught on tape the distant tank as it rotated its turret and fired on the hotel. A Spanish court has charged three U.S. servicemen with murder, but the U.S. government refuses to hand over the accused soldiers. The story might have ended there, just another day of violence and death in Iraq, were it not for a young U.S. military intelligence veteran who has just decided to blow the whistle.

The media has failed to cover the history of U.S. war preparations directed against Iran. News coverage of US sponsored war preparations in relation to Iran started to surface in early 2007 in scanty press reports. Although confirmed by official military documents and reports, public opinion has largely been kept in the dark and misinformed on these war preparations.

On right-winger Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) expressed his openess to bombing Iran, saying that there is “an appeal to it.” Discussing the West Virginia primary results, Bennett praised what he claimed was Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) transformation into his “style” of politician, which he said is someone who “throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran.” HE HAS LOST HIS MIND. THESE PEOPLE ARE INSANE!!!!!!!!!!

This report contains corporate documents and emails, and also the US Workers Compensation court documents. They have not been released anywhere else to our knowledge. It details an incident involving Lilia Odhner, who suffered a traumatic brain injury at the course of her employment at Pittsburgh based PNC Bank in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Bob Shaffer, GOP for Senate, has a new commercial out that commits maybe the most boneheaded mistake I've seen in a political ad. Seriously, this is unbelievable....