Hank Kalet

There is both good news and bad news from Lebanon. The good news is a truce that, if it holds, will stem the violence and allow people in southern Lebanon and northern Israel to return to some normalcy. The bad news is that the claims by Hezbollah, Israel and the United States, the apportionment of blame and the poisonous atmosphere make it likely that the truce will be short-lived.

As this tragedy has unfolded (here is a sad story about the son of the great Israeli novelist and peace activist David Grossman), we have been allowed to forget that we are fighting a seemingly endless war in Iraq, one in which bad news seems to be the only news.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Ruminations on the beach from James Carroll. I’ve made just one foray to the ocean this season (to Beach Haven), and really need a dose of sea air. (We did spend a day on the inlet near Atlantic City, but it isn’t the same thing as standing on the beach at the edge of the surf watching the foam pop and feeling the water rush up past the ankles to the knees….)

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

This is pretty low — both the vice president and the recently ousted Democratic candidate from Connecticut tying Democrats to terrorists. The Times offers this:

It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation’s trauma for political gain. We never get used to this. It never feels like business as usual.

And here is Josh Marshall on Lieberman.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Dispatches is ready for a reading. This week, I write about political poetry.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The great flaw in this kind of thinking is that — once John McCain and his outsized personality are removed from the discussion — this new, allegedly centrist third party is unlikely to be a force at the polls.

Joe Lieberman lost not because of a demand for party purity, but because he lost touch, misreading the real anger out there over the direction in which the country is moving and the part he plays in it by lending bipartisan cover to the president’s bankrupt policies. It doesn’t necessarily signal a turn to the left or a mass movement to follow the teachings of AJ Muste, just a basic democratic craving that representatives actually represent.

Simple, basic truth: Lieberman’s fate proves that democracy can work, or as Josh Marshall wrote on Talking Points Memo:

That’s politics. And that’s accountability. And, really? It’s not that big a deal.

That Lieberman seems unwilling to accept his fate and play by the rules, proves that he no longer believes in democracy — and the fact that the Washington punditocracy agrees with him only proves how out of touch the folks inside the Beltway really are.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick