So let me see if I get this straight. Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos tried to defeat Joe Lieberman in his last Senate election. The Kos Kiddies did get Lieberman defeated in the Democratic primary, but Lieberman ran as an independent in the election and easily blew away his opponent to maintain his Senate seat. So Kos lost. His goal was to defeat Lieberman. He didn’t. And yet, he’s crowing:

I love it every time Lieberman does these things. It confirms, quite vividly, why we were right to target him despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the media. Booting him from the Democratic Party ballot line is still one the proudest accomplishments of our movement.

So keep it up, Joe! Speak at the Republican convention! Put yourself in the minority for the next four years! And don’t retire, because it’ll be delicious to take you out in 2012! You wouldn’t want to deny us that pleasure, would you Joe?

Counting those chickens awfully early, aren’t we? Because so far, the record is: Lieberman 1, Kos 0.

Oh, the thing that Lieberman is doing that’s pissing off Kos so much? Lieberman is working for John McCain. He’s being touted as a possible vice presidential pick. I don’t think it will happen.

All that talk about how dirty bombs won’t do a whole lot of damage outside the area in which they’re exploded? I’m calling bullshit on it. Because I am currently smelling the smoke from the North Carolina wildfires that are burning 200 miles south of me.

A wildfire that has burned nearly 30,000 acres in North Carolina is being blamed for the smoky conditions today in the Richmond area.

Local police have been getting numerous calls this morning from people wondering if there is a fire in the area because they are smelling smoke and seeing low-lying haze.

There is a fire; it’s just not here.

It’s actually the one that has burned roughly 45 square miles since being detected earlier this week in Hyde County, N.C.

“I was surprised, too, but the upper-level winds are . . . carrying the smoke all the way up to the Richmond area,” said James Foster, assistant forecaster in the National Weather Service’s Wakefield office.

Granted, radiation isn’t smoke. But particles are particles. And it seems to me that if smoke from a wildfire two hundred miles away from me can affect my area this strongly, I really don’t want to find out that Iranians or al Qaeda or Hezbullah or some other terrorist scumbags can manage to get the materials to set off a dirty bomb somewhere in my country. I just want them prevented from doing so.

It’s been driving me crazy all week. What is June 6th? What am I supposed to be doing on June 6th? Do I have an appointment? What the hell is happening on June sixth? What?

Oh. This.

Sixty-four years ago today, Allied forces swept onto the beaches of Normandy to liberate France and put an end to Nazi domination of Europe. The D-Day assault comprised American, Canadian, and British forces, but the Americans led, and for the most part the Americans bled, especially on Omaha.

There were 2,500 American deaths the first day. Kind of puts the AP daily Iraq military death count into a different light, doesn’t it?

A few years ago Thomas Friedman wrote a column, “Wanted: Fanatical moderates.” It was advocating the Geneva Accords, a PR exercise undertaken by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo and a number of others. The point of the exercise was to lay out an example of what an Israeli Palestinian peace treaty might look like.

The fanatical moderate of the title was Yossi Beilin, an Israeli politician and former Knesset member and member of the cabinet. Of course, in Israel, Beilin isn’t in politics anymore. Last election he couldn’t even get a seat. It’s not because there’s anything extreme about Israel’s political scene - it is in fact pretty leftist in orientation compared to twenty years ago - it’s because Beilin is so far the left he no longer has any constituency.

Friedman wanted to sound clever by using words that sound oxymoronic, but, according to him, fit together. The problem is that what he was describing was fanaticism not moderate, so his oxymoron may have sounded clever and counterintuitive when, in fact, it was wrong.

What was clear from that column though is that Friedman is a firm believer in outside pressure to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He just dredged up his old tricks again this week with, “Time for radical pragmatism.”

After arguing that there’s no way to create a Palestinian state, he argues for more American pressure for Israel to cede land to Abbas to give him a chance to develop credibility. It’s an astonishing argument, especially as he himself noted:

The trust deficit is exacerbated by the fact that after Israel quit the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinians, instead of building Singapore there, built Somalia and focused not on how to make microchips, but on how to make rockets to hit Israel.

So you say, but that was Hamas, this is Abbas and Fatah. Why would we expect a different result? Barry Rubin observed a few months ago:

Abbas tells his people and others that, as he said recently to an Islamic summit, Palestinians “are facing a campaign of annihilation” by Israel. The U.S. State Department merely calls this “overheated political rhetoric,” not comprehending that such talk by Abbas incites terrorism and forecloses his own options.It’s easy to justify violence but hard to rationalize making peace with those you say are committing genocide against you. That’s why the PA does things like letting “imprisoned” terrorists who murdered two Israeli hikers to “escape.” Every such terrorist is seen by both the PA and public opinion as a hero.

Fatah is every bit as committed to terror as is Hamas, it’s just a little less open and a lot less competent at it.

The security wall that Israel built (and Operation Defensive Shield ) have reduced Fatah’s terror making ability. But instead of praising this effort to protect Israeli lives, Friedman disparages it (thanks to Elie for observation)

The second energy shortage comes from the fact that Israel, with the wall that it has erected around the West Bank, has so effectively shut down Palestinian suicide bombers that the Israeli public right now feels no sense of urgency, especially with the Israeli economy booming. The West Bank behind the wall might as well be in Afghanistan.

Nor does his suggestion that asking Jordan to come in and help with the security make much sense. (He assured us that Egypt would do everything in its power to prevent a Hamas takeover in Gaza.)

In the end the failure to create a Palestinian state in the territory Israel has ceded is not Israel’s fault, it’s due the failure of Palestinian nationalism to evolve and accept Israel. Forget about settlements. The PLO failed to create a single police force of an acceptable number as stipulated in the accords. It failed to stop incitement. It failed to stop terror. It used its foreign aid to enhance the lifestyles of its favored few. Had it behaved, the popular pressure in Israel (however misguided) would have forced the government to continue ceding more control to the PLO. But Fatah never changed. It never earned the legitimacy it was granted in 1993.

Maybe Israel made mistakes, but the main failures were Fatah’s and the Palestinians’. It never changed from its roots of terror and they never really accepted Israel.

So what Friedman wants isn’t pragmatic, but it is radical. And that’s why his stupid oxymoron is simply moronic.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It looks like the IDF is going to go into Gaza, as has been discussed for months. The 60th birthday celebrations are over, George W. Bush’s visit is done, Olmert has been to the U.S., and Hamas refuses to stop firing rockets and mortars into Israel. One Israeli has been killed and ten wounded in the last few days, and the death and injury count is way up over the last several months, while smuggling is not down. And then there’s the fact that Olmert put a real soldier in charge of the IDF after dumping Peretz the Putz.

“Israel is close to launching an operation in Gaza,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters moments before lifting off the tarmac in Washington en route back to Israel on Thursday evening.

Olmert said he sees eye to eye with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the latter’s assessment of the probable necessity at hand to launch a wide-scale counterterrorism operation in the Gaza Strip.

“We’re nearing a crossroads in Gaza, both in terms of setting a timetable and the exacerbation of the problem,” said the prime minister. During a tour of the kibbutz factory hit by a Hamas mortar barrage earlier in the day, Barak said such a military operation would likely precede any ceasefire agreement with Palestinian terror groups.

Of course, the best way to tell how close the operation is to happening is to gauge the disappearance of the Hamas leadership in Gaza. They’re like groundhogs. If they see the IDF’s shadow, they head back into their holes until spring, or until the operation is over—whichever comes first. Say, groundhogs are rodents, aren’t they? Totally fits the Hamas subhuman leadership, if you ask me. Of course, it’s an insult to groundhogs the world over.

As for Hamas, well, they’re promising to keep on killing.

Hamas warned on Thursday afternoon that it would continue to launch attacks against Israeli communities near the Gaza border so long as there was no ceasefire in effect.

“We have no intentions of holding back our fire,” said a senior Hamas official said after the group’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the shelling of the factory.

My question in all of this: How many rockets will Hamas launch if there is a major Gaza ground operation? How much have they modeled themselves on Hezbollah? And will Hezbollah use this as an opportunity to strike Israel from the other direction? (I think not. They’ve got too much to lose right now.)

Watch for the AP, Reuters, and the mainstream media to start having the vapours over the prospect of an IDF operation in Gaza. I’m sure they’re warming up their civilian body count programs already.