Court Nom Will Fly -- Focus on Quagmire

Civilian deaths in Iraq now total nearly 25,000, according to a group in London called Iraq Body Count.

The NYT reports today on this latest stunning statistic:

The figures were compiled from more than 10,000 news media reports of civilian deaths. The deaths were painstakingly cross-referenced and reconfirmed across various news media, researchers said. They asserted that the results offered the first full picture of the civilian death toll in the country, down to the number of deaths caused by various weapons.

Only the least responsible would call reporting on this data a partisan attack (and Republicans are all so giddy over the slam dunk SCOTUS nom and the attention being taken off of Rove they don't even care about partisan attacks anyway).

I am most interested in the following observation:

Children were disproportionately affected by explosive devices, most severely by airstrikes and unexploded ordnance like cluster bombs.

Notable is the 37.3 percent of civilian deaths that came from American fire. Insurgent attacks accounted for 9.5 percent, and terrorist attacks accounted for 11.0 percent.

Almost 35.9 percent was a result of the crime wave that has hit Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

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Can someone write and tell us: How does this rate of civilian death compare with civilian death under Saddam Hussein?

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I wonder how long the Supreme Court nomination will distract from the quagmire. Or the Rovemire. Probably pretty long.

My hope? That the Democrats don’t put up a showy resistance to Roberts just for the drama of it. I sense that he will go through pretty readily, unless some very stinky skeleton emerges from his closet.

If we go through a long, symbolic fight over the SCOTUS nom, we will simply be distracting from the problems in the Bush administration.

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I rode my bike all the way to Palo Alto today. It's a suburban town about half way between San Francisco and San Jose, plugged into the heart of Silicon Valley. I read in the local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, that the median price for a house in the Valley is now $750,000. Mind blowing.

I must admit the streets were pretty. The bike lanes were excellent. The houses were elegant.

But I got that same feeling I always get in suburbs: what is driving this place? What purpose does this community see in life? What winds people up in the morning?

I understand that Palo Alto is generally a liberal community. It's home to Stanford, so there are a lot of brains there. I know that much. But $750,000 for a house? Can anybody explain that one?

With that much concern about money, how could you think about anything else? Like the civilians killed in Iraq? Like the next generation of Americans who have to live with the country Bush is shaping for them: in debt, regulated by civil rights-crushing laws, steeped in toxic residue from irresponsible industry.

I felt guilty being on my bike. Who can relax now? Who can exercise?

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I still feel something in the pit of my stomach. What can a citizen do right now to get that feeling out of their stomach? Fatspeak wonders: what are the top five things citizens can do right now to make themselves better inside?

Post your list in the comments section below.

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Let's chew the fat. Let me know what you know.