Shana Tova… may you get written into the Book of LIfe for another year.

And it’s a drag when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. I missed the Shofar today.

Jessica Millstone, formerly of Bertlesmann’s Media Workshop, is continuing the work she did there with the Edu-Tech News Blog.

More voices, more resouces… more to read on every day. Sheesh.

Andy Carvin of the Benton Foundation and the WWW-EDU list and all sorts of other cool things now has a blog.

Max Cleland, former Senator from Georgia, has fired off the latest salvo, making very explicit comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. Moreover, Cleland — a vet who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam — argues that the current administration did not learn the lessons of Vietnam… and he’s not shy about his reasons why.

Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons….

This is the latest of the "chicken hawk" arguments against the Bush Administrator, and this one resonates pretty strongly. How is it that all these men are so quick to send America soldiers to war, yet of Cheney, Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, only Rumsfeld served in the armed forces?

Cleland goes a step further than merely accusing this administration of hypocracy, he argues that their lack of experience in any kind of modern war has led to several errors. To wit, he argues that the administration seems doomed not to learn from the past and, therefore, repeat it.

Now… before anyone suggest that Clinton’s Oxford deferment was no better than Bush’s National Guard "service," let me suggest that Clinton wasn’t rushing us into war. That creates a tangible difference.

And the thing is, I don’t fault anyone who didn’t want to fight in Vietnam. I wouldn’t have. I’m glad my father failed his physical. It was a quagmire that damaged our nation’s psyche for years afterwards. But Bush managed to dodge in a way that took advantage of every privilege available to him and then has the audacity to both fake his way into a war and then pass himself off as a war pilot. That’s where his actions cross the line into truly reprehensible. (Moreover, the GOP claims for the patriotic high-ground really fall apart when you compare the list of GOP veterans to the Democratic list.)

So where does this leave us? It leaves me asking more and more questions about what we’re doing in this war. It leaves me wondering why the media savaged Clinton for his Oxford deferment, yet does not want to ask Bush about his military record — worse, allows him to use our military for a PR shot. And it leaves, I’d imagine, Max Cleland angry. In fact, I’ll let him have the last word:

Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn’t go when you had the chance.

… is watching the Emmy Awards, hoping to get a glimpse of your wife and hoping the show she worked on wins its award. Yay!

Update: It did!

Here’s where the Political Compass web site says I stand politically.

Personally, I don’t think I’m that left… but the questions they ask certainly suggest I am.

Douglas Ruskoff got his start as a media / Generation-X writer. Lately, he has turned his focus to issues of Judiasm. His book Nothing Sacred is on my "must bring on the next vacation" list. It seems to tap into much of what I’ve been thinking about Judiasm and identity and the ideas underneath Judiasm as a way of life.

So it’s interesting and disconcerting and, perhaps more than a little frustrating, when I read about the panel he was on last week, as he writes:

But it did make me think about the limited gains of attempting to spread Torah – or any universal philosophy – under a banner that for many means race. I honestly believe that I’m less likely to find people willing to engage with the underlying ideas of Judaism at a Jewish event than at almost any other. Yes, as one rabbi has advised me, it’s because Jews have so much at stake in their positions on these ideas. But that very at-stakeness translates into a closed-mindedness and an inability to engage.

But it’s an interesting idea… and one worth exploring… how much do we become stuck in our ideas because our ideas become synonymous with our own identities? How many of us would be more willing to change our minds if those ideas weren’t so powerfully intertwined who we were… the ideas of our peers (some religion, gender, race, political party, family… take your pick?)

How do we retain fluidity of ideas while also retaining a strong sense of self?

This one comes from Brad DeLong. He linked to Eric Alterman’s latest blasting of Nader for costing Gore the election. Alterman has a lot of (justified) anger at how self-serving Nader has become, and I have to agree. I managed to survive my five months working at PIRG, but just barely. I had tons of issues with Nader’s demeanor back then, but at the most basic level, I couldn’t handle the way the PIRG folks refered to him as “Saint Ralph,” and I couldn’t believe he did nothing to dissuade them. I remember, at the time, thinking that it was so obvious that Nader lives for the applause moment. Once I made that connection, his actions often seem pretty crass.

Clearly Alterman isn’t crazy about him, either.