Signs Of Things To Come

Tom Bevan, writing in the RCP Blog notes the signs of things to come in the Democratic party. He takes note of an attack by Matt Stoller on Rahm Emanuel. Stoller calls Emanuel an extremist ideologue and recommends cutting him loose and developing "progressive" party strategists.

Excuse me while I wipe down my computer keyboard. I spit Diet Coke all over it after reading Stoller, of all people, fingering Rahm Emanuel an "extremist ideologue." This is the sort of stuff that should scare sensible Democrats out of their minds. Rahm is a centrist. He's a Clintonite. Six years ago years ago that wasn't a sin. Now to a growing portion of the party, it's grounds for excommunication. Apparently, unless you've taken a heavy pull from the nutroot Kool-Aid, you're not welcome or wanted.

Which should put a lot of people on alert that there is a major problem brewing. Some of us have been saying this all along. If the netroots continue on the path they appear to want to follow, they will drag the Democrats into territory where they cannot win nationally. Purges of moderates will lead the party to that place.

That is not good for either party, frankly.

UPDATE: Black Hawk sends this link in the comment section. It is well worth reading Joshua Trevino's analysis of a very similar situation in American political history.

Sound familiar? It is — to us. To the left, it’s all very exciting, and all very new. And so we see the self-proclaimed netroots go through a trajectory very much like what the Birchers went through, albeit in highly compressed time. The elements are all there: the resentment, the conspiracy-mindedness, and especially the leaders with stupefyingly poor judgment married to Napoleon complexes. I’ve noted before that they are “frank proponents of outright mimicry of the mechanisms of GOP ascendacy.” Add to this the horrifying, alienating statements ranging from the mockery of dead Americans at war to the derision of political opponents’ personal sorrows. Add to this the demonization of the very people who should, in a sane world, be their friends — The New Republic chief among them — and the formula is complete. Messianism and paranoia marry to make this.

Knight Shift

A castle is rising in the forests of Burgundy, France. Using just the tools available in the 13th century and nothing but hand labor, Michel Guyot is living out his dream of building his very own castle.

TREIGNY, France - Once upon a time, deep in the forests of Burgundy, a man was haunted by a vision. He dreamed of building a castle, with turrets, great walls and a moat. Some people wondered if he was mad.

This was, after all, 1996.

And yet Michel Guyot set out to build his castle the hard way — the medieval way. With only hammers and chisels to carve the stones. With only horses to cart the rock. Without power tools.

Ten years later, Guedelon castle is about one-third finished, with imposing sandstone walls that rise up out of the red Burgundy soil. It's a living history lesson and a successful tourism project: Last year, 245,000 visitors admired the work of Guedelon's stonecutters, carpenters, potters, rope-makers and blacksmiths.

The 50 paid craftsmen, plus volunteers, wear tunics and use rustic tools. Except for the occasional hardhat or pair of safety goggles, there's little to remind visitors that this is not the 13th century, but the 21st.

On a recent visit to Guedelon, I watched in awe as a man climbed into a wooden contraption that looked like a huge hamster wheel. He ran frantically, spinning the wheel and activating a pulley system that lifted a load of stones atop a tower.

When he was done, our tour group broke into applause, and poor Jean-Paul climbed off the wheel, huffing and puffing and fanning his tunic. It was all so … medieval.

The article is quite amusing and informative. It's funny how projects like this can just take off and become a major tourist attraction. People are fascinated by places that portray daily life in a bygone era. Here in the US, Williamsburg has been a major attraction for years, along with many other places. Here's the Guedelon website if you'd like to see some pictures of the castle under construction.

Guyot just has to hope someone doesn't come along who has dreams of building a battering ram.

A Dream Come True

In a story that will warm the hearts of frustrated commuters everywhere, we bring you this report of a very happy day. A Maryland man lived a dream come true on Tuesday morning when he got to do what every commuter has wanted to do at least once.

He got to blow up the bridge that had been a daily torment to him for 30 years.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A long-suffering commuter fulfilled the dreams of generations of Washingtonians on Tuesday morning when he blew up a detested Potomac River bridge.

Maryland electrician Dan Ruefly won a contest to detonate a section of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, which carries the Capital Beltway across the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia just south of the District of Columbia. Regional authorities have been building a replacement since 2000.

"It's past due. It was past due a couple of years after it was built," said Ruefly, who crosses the bridge before 6 a.m. on weekdays to beat traffic on his two-hour commute.

The bridge has long been one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in a region notorious for gridlock. Eight lanes of Beltway traffic funnel down to six lanes, and backups can stretch for miles when the drawbridge is raised 270 times a year to let boats through.

As the midpoint of Interstate 95, the East Coast's busiest highway, the bridge also handles a heavy flow of long-distance traffic.

Seconds after Ruefly pushed down the ceremonial plunger at 12:34 a.m., a cascade of flashes lit the underside of the bridge and thunderclaps rolled across the river. The steel girders of the old span collapsed in a cloud of dust as spectators on a nearby overpass cheered.

Ruefly, of Accokeek, Maryland, has had to contend with the Wilson Bridge every working day for the past 30 years. His hip was crushed in an accident on the bridge in 1999.

One span of the replacement bridge is now open with the rest expected to be finished by 2008. It will take another three years after that to finish everything else, so the commute won't get a whole lot better in the short term. But I would imagine that Ruefly is the envy of thousands right now.

Details On Bomb Plot Emerge

The New York Times reports on details coming out about the foiled bomb plot to target flights from England to the US. Certain people will be disappointed to find out it was not all about Ned Lamont winning a primary. It seems investigators have at least seven "martyrdom tapes" among a great deal of other evidence.

LONDON, Aug. 27 — On Aug. 9, in a small second-floor apartment in East London, two young Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their suicide plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and its “accomplices,” Britain and the Jews.

“As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed,” said one of the men on a “martyrdom” videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be “pleased with us and accepts our deed.”

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States, barred passengers from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack. Those details include fresh evidence from Britain’s most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects’ statements of their motives.

While the NYT is also quick to point out that the plotters were not ready to trigger the plot immediately, they also have details of why the arrests had to be made sooner than the authorities wanted to. It had nothing to do with events in the US.

British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.

The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a “key figure” in the plot.

In 2000, Mr. Rauf’s father founded Crescent Relief London, a charity that sent money to victims of last October’s earthquake in Pakistan. Several suspects met through their involvement in the charity, a friend of one of them said. Last week, Britain froze the charity’s bank accounts and opened an investigation into possible “terrorist abuse of charitable funds.” Leaders of the charity have denied the allegations.

Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

What is unfortunate here is that some other plotters may have escaped because the investigators did not have enough time to completely identify everyone involved.

A Look At Hezbollywood

A report from the Counterterrorism Blog shows the workings of Hezbollah's propaganda machine and the cheerful cooperation of the Western Media. When Kofi Annan visited South Beirut yesterday, he was greeted by demonstrators in a "spontaneous" display. Yeah, right.

….A camera linked to an international media agency was broadcasting live from behind the Hezbollah's security lines. It captured the details of the "show." A group of women and girls, in traditional Muslim dresses and scarves were gathered by Hezbollah bearded security some 15 minutes before the motorcade arrives. The gathering was at about 30 feet away from where Annan's car was supposed to stop. This indicates that the motorcade security and the Hezbollah operatives knew ahead of time where the spot would be and had the women standing and waiting. Posters of Hassan Nasrallah were then distributed to the women. The camera showed a group of bearded men standing few meters behind the first line of women as a "second brigade." Then the camera showed the group of women tightening their positioning while few men with hats and "talkies" positioned themselves behind the women and started shouting orders: "Clap when Annan gets out of the car," they screamed to the women. The latter complied with "passion," raising the posters of Nasrallah. "Boo when Seniora appears," the Hezbollah's operators shouted. A huge boo was produced, not only by the women, but also by the men standing behind them.

Read the whole thing. It is a carefully choreographed show where the people all played their parts, including the security forces. All just another act and another successful bit of propaganda picked up by the Western media.

Good News, Bad News

The Washington Post is reporting that gasoline supplies have risen, while prices have fallen. Even though this is only a relatively small drop and is, of course, subject to change at any time based on world events, it is a welcome thing to many people interviewed for the story.

The decline, based on a survey from Friday, is the largest drop since November, when prices fell 18 cents after the price increases that followed hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

And as if this weren't enough good news for consumers, Lundberg and others said more relief should be on the way, as long as crude oil prices remain stable and no supply disruptions occur.

Lundberg said in a telephone interview that the gasoline market was in a "mini-glut" state, with prices tumbling in the face of increased supply at the end of the peak driving season.

"Given other situations not confounding it . . . some further reduction seems likely from here," she said.

Lisa Craig, 47, a teacher at Holton-Arms, a private girls school in Bethesda, was thrilled to see regular gasoline selling for $3.09 a gallon at a Wisconsin Avenue Texaco station in Bethesda — even though she was just in New Hampshire, where, she said, gas was in the $2.70 range.

"Life's got to be a little better if gas is going down," said Craig, who shuttles three carloads of children home in the afternoon. "I went, 'Wow, $3.09, that's not so bad!' And that's pathetic."

While good for consumers, the news is likely not all that welcome to Democrats who wanted that to be one of the big issues they could push in November. Mind you, I've always thought that the pandering on gasoline prices, which only happens in election years, has always been a weak strategy. Voters aren't really all that impressed with the rhetoric about things like this.