Morning News Roundup (09 August)

Top Story

• Joementum has completely stalled out in the Democratic Party, but it looks like he's going forward with an independent bid to save his job. Joan Walsh over at Salon's War Room has some thought for Democratic leaders:
  

  [I]f Democratic Party leaders have any courage, they'll lock arms against Lieberman's selfish move and repudiate him just as boldly and quickly as Lieberman declared he would run. Because Lieberman's run is selfish, and politically stupid. His "concession" speech echoed the Beltway wisdom that he'd been defeated by Bush haters, by the "politics of polarization." But Lamont's victory is more than the surprise uprising of Cindy Sheehan’s Camp Casey from last summer. The country has turned against the Iraq war, and Democrats like Lieberman -- and Republicans like, well, most Republicans -- have lost the battle for the middle ground.
  
  Lamont's victory isn't just a win for the antiwar wing of the party. It's a victory for Americans who fear the recklessness of the Bush administration, who feel the wheels are falling off the truck, and who want Democrats to fix it. Mainstream Democrats who can't see that political reality are a threat to the party. The charge of "liberal McCarthyism" against Lamont voters and their lefty blogger backers by some Beltway voices, including Beltway Democrats ... is far worse for Democratic prospects than the random excesses of the antiwar left.

• David Sirota over at the HuffPo offers some stinging commentary for Joe:
  

  Understand how insulting this is - Connecticut taxpayers just spent a large sum of money to hold a democratic primary election in a country founded on small-d democratic principles. An 18-year incumbent who had 100 percent name ID and a $12 million warchest (thanks to, among others, Joe's good friends in the pharmaceutical and financial services industry) was unable to win that election. Now, instead of respecting small-d democracy or the party he has spent the last week pledging his devotion to, he's behaving like a Third World autocrat that ignores democracy, and running to hard-core GOP voters and fundraisers in Connecticut and begging them to help him hold onto his job in the Senate club. This undemocratic chicanery from a man who has long justified his support for the Iraq War by saying he has a supposedly heartfelt devotion to spreading democracy.

• And finally, Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly sees the Democratic Party on the right track heading into November:

  [T]he Democratic voters in Connecticut, who believe that the war in Iraq is hurting the broader war against radical jihadism, now have a Senate candidate who agrees with them. Likewise, the Democratic voters of DeKalb County [Ed. note: where Hank Johnson defeated incumbent Cynthia McKinney], who want a representative who spends more time on district business than on investigating weird conspiracy theories, now have a congressional candidate who promises to do just that.
  
  Seems to me the party acquitted itself pretty well tonight.

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• 1,855. Number of bodies that showed up at the Baghdad morgue in July, “a 16 percent rise from June and a 71 percent increase from January.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.
  
  Shiites have long advocated some sort of autonomy in the south, similar to the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave in the north, with its own defense forces and control over oil exploration. And the new constitution does allow provinces to team up into federal regions. But the latest effort, promulgated by Cabinet ministers, clerics and columnists, marks the first time they have advocated regional partition as a way of stemming violence. [LATimes]
  
  
• Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora takes to the WaPo's op-ed pages to denounce Israel and mentions Hezbollah only once - in passing. In Israel, the security cabinet shakes up the military leadership and greenlights a new ground offensive that ministers believe will last at least 30 days. Israel is becoming a nation of hawks, but then, Arab reformers are increasingly isolated as well. [Foreign Policy's Passport]
  
  
• Israel shut down south Lebanon with a threat to blast any moving vehicles, as ground fighting intensified near the Israeli border, airstrikes killed at least 19 civilians and Arab governments called for a full Israeli withdrawal as a condition of any cease-fire.
  With U.S., French and Arab negotiators meeting into the evening at the United Nations, Israel voiced cautious interest in a Lebanese proposal to deploy 15,000 soldiers to control the ground in south Lebanon where Hezbollah has been firing missiles into Israel. But the warring sides appeared to be some distance apart on the text of a possible resolution, now not expected to come before the Security Council before Thursday. [AP]
  
  
• The United States and France have split over key provisions in a compromise resolution to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, triggering intense diplomatic scrambling, according to European and U.S. officials.
  [...]
  France wants to incorporate ideas from Lebanon's new proposals, particularly on two issues: deploying Lebanese troops alongside a more robust version of the U.N. force now in Lebanon as a means to expedite an Israeli withdrawal, and settling the status of Shebaa Farms, the officials said.
  
  But the United States, which has accepted Israel's concerns on both issues, thinks that a strong international force still needs to be in place before an Israeli withdrawal to ensure that the Shiite militia is not able to resume control of southern Lebanon or shoot at Israeli forces as they pull out, U.S. and European officials say. [WaPo]

Domestic Potpourri

• Despite rhetoric from Washington that the United States must wean itself from dependence on oil, the shutdown of a BP oil field in the state of Alaska has shown how far the country remains from that goal and the lack of a consensus on how beat to achieve it.
  [...]
  Already hit by turmoil in the Middle East and Nigeria, and concerns over Venezuela, world oil futures shot up by about two dollars to 77 dollars a barrel for crude oil. Gas prices in the U.S. have already begun to rise as much as five cents a gallon in some cities. The U.S. Energy Department is now preparing to tap into the country's strategic petroleum reserves to deal with the shutdown.
  [...]
  [A] number of civil society groups say that the real debate should centre on the need to adopt available technology and mandate a significant increase in fuel economy standards for cars, trucks and utilities. They also propose cutting the record profits of oil companies and channeling the savings to consumers or to investments in alternative energy sources. [IPS]
  
  
• The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a U.S. war crimes law “passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions.” The changes would mean interrogators would no longer face possible prosecution for committing “outrages upon [the] personal dignity” of prisoners. The plan has “provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  

Climate Crisis

• Here's an interesting idea (that I Hugg-ed last night) proposed by UK prime minister Tony Blair: a carbon audit of your home. From the BBC:
  

  Mr Blair is pushing the idea of "carbon audits" - checks on how much CO2 people's homes pump out through using energy. "One of the things we're looking at is how we actually get individuals to know to get their own carbon audit, which you can do quite simply," he said. "We're looking at how you make this really widespread for people, so you get a kind of movement going of people knowing how much carbon is emitted from their own household and how they can reduce it."

• Lights out for the Lights Out campaign (posted yesterday): Hong Kong responded without much enthusiasm on Tuesday to a call by environmentalists to turn off lights for a few minutes to highlight air pollution in the city. Few turned off their lights at the scheduled 8 p.m. (1200 GMT), and much of the city's high rise towers and busy harbourfronts remained lit up as they usually are.
  
  
• Voters will get to choose whether to require state utility companies to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their supply by 2020. Elections officials announced Tuesday that Initiative 937, which would also require utilities to invest in energy conservation programs, qualified for the November ballot.
  [...]
  Under the initiative, utilities with more than 25,000 customers would have to meet 15 percent of their annual load with resources such as wind power, solar energy or sewage gas.
  
  If the initiative is approved by voters, Washington will join the 20 other states, and the District of Columbia, that have a so-called renewable portfolio standard; Maine has the highest, at 30 percent.
  
  Under current law, utilities are already required to offer customers the option of investing in renewable energy, by paying extra on their monthly bill. [Seattle P-I]

Misc.

• The Rapture Index -- a popular evangelical Christian Web posting that calculates a global rise in natural disasters, war and inflation -- bills itself as "a Dow Jones industrial average of end-time activity."
  
  An index below 85 signifies a week of "slow prophetic activity." Anything above 145 signals the apocalypse is near. The Rapture Index this week: 158. The spike reflects many U.S. evangelicals' view that growing conflict in the Middle East signals the start of a global struggle leading to Christ's return.
  [..]
  "The Scripture bears witness to these events being part of the end-times prophecy," said Gary Cristofaro, pastor of First Assembly of God in Melbourne. "Israel is so important in God's eyes."
  
  Cristofaro's church is one of a handful of Florida congregations that tithes a monthly donation to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a practice that stems from a belief that Israel must control the Palestinian territories in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. The congregation has donated more than $100,000 to support Israeli settlements in the past decade, Cristofaro said. On Saturday, church members plan to hold a "Bless Israel" fundraising event for 2,000 people. [Miami Herald]