Karmic Soup

Just some parting shots

2007-08-08T06:58:00.000-04:00

Blogfading?

2007-08-01T23:06:00.000-04:00

It seems that the urge to post has faded for the time being. Maybe the bombardment of stupidity, corruption, and arrogance from the current administration has overloaded my circuits. I might be back. I might not. Here's hoping that some semblance of sanity will return to the political scene.

The Republican platform in a nutshell

2007-06-28T07:27:00.000-04:00

Or is it a wingnutshell?

The liberal leanings of the knowledgeable

2007-06-25T07:37:00.000-04:00

An investigative reporter for MSNBC recently found that of journalists who contributed money to politicians or political organizations, the vast majority gave to Democrat and liberal causes. Despite the rants of the wingnut right about the bias of the Librul Media, it seemed to me that this should only be natural and expected, considering what they do. A commenter to a NY Times blog pretty much summed it up.

It’s true that many college professors, journalists, scientists, ethicists, philosophers, teachers, free-lance writers, lean to the left. It’s also true they have a higher aggregate IQ than the general populace. (hmmm…)

It’s also true that people who make a lot of money (lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, etc.) were usually more liberal, and as their assets grew, they moved against their ethics and logic to the right to protect their pocketbooks. Human nature.

Those who were born rich, and stay that way, tend towards the right. Gun toting loonies who don’t like diversity also tend towards the right. Religious fundamentalists lean way right. People who make tortured unsustainable arguments often confuse being right wing with patriotism (uh, RLJ?) Voters who still support Libby, a convicted criminal, Gonzales (is Fredo really dirty, mommy?) and think Rumsfeld and Feith are great military minds are certainly on the right. They generally don’t work as reporters either. (their SAT scores on the writing section weren’t all that nifty, so…well,you get the picture.)

Are all GOP supporters stupid? No. Most of the rich ones just pretend to be, to allow them the luxury of pretending ethics don’t matter. Is it coincidence that the states that still allow corporal punishment in schools are almost without exception the Red states? Red necks who think beating your children is a “good thing” generally vote right.

So am I supposed to be surprised that most reporters, who are some of the brightest and most loquacious citizens, tend to lean left? The reality is that mainstream media is centrist most of the time, as most good reporters are scrupulous in leaving personal bias out of the equation. The exception tends to be on the right, where Fox is obviously partisan. (whereas corporal punishment of Fox reporters is tempting, we know better.)

Check out the Center for American Progress latest report on talk radio, and the overwhelming bias of right wing propaganda. Can I see a study of nationally syndicated talk radio hosts and their political contributions? (Please include the multiple appearances of right wing politicians like Mr. Sessions, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Snow)

— Posted by Holcombe Hurd

Source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/campaign-cash-reporters-as-donors/

Depends on who you are

2007-06-19T07:09:00.000-04:00

Is terrorism only in the mind of the beholder? ..or of the press?

If you don't live in Texas, chances are you're not aware of William Krar. You may not know that an FBI raid on his property in April 2003 netted more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs, and nearly two pounds of sodium cyanide, along with antigovernment and white supremacist literature.

Krar's case 'ranks at the very top of all domestic terrorist arrests in the past 20 years in terms of the lethality of the arsenal,' terrorism expert Daniel Levitas told the Christian Science Monitor in December 2003. Yet 'outside Tyler, Texas, the case is almost unknown,' the Monitor reported, noting that there had been 'two government press releases and a handful of local stories, but no press conference and no coverage in the national newspapers.'

Now suppose Krar had been a Muslim. Does anyone doubt that this story would have topped the national news, making his name a household word?

Source: Ethics Newsline from the Institute for Global Ethics

The Simpsons takes on the MSM

2007-05-23T16:45:00.000-04:00

In it's recently released 400th episode, The Simpsons writers take shots at Fox News and the rest of the media. Only a cartoon could get away with this fragging. Let's hope they keep it up. One of the lines:

Friends, the press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong, they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel. Journalists used to questions the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the 6:00 News. Demand more of your government. Demand more of your press.

See a video clip at Think Progress - The Simpsons v. the media.

Attacking the W of mass deception

2007-05-22T07:14:00.000-04:00

Al Gore decides to lay it on the line with a blistering assessment of the Bush administration and the state of public discourse in America.

In "The Assault on Reason" Al Gore excoriates George W. Bush, asserting that the president is "out of touch with reality," that his administration is so incompetent that it "can't manage its own way out of a horse show," that it ignored "clear warnings" about the terrorist threat before 9/11 and that it has made Americans less safe by "stirring up a hornets' nest in Iraq," while using "the language and politics of fear" to try to "drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts or the public interest."

The administration's pursuit of unilateralism abroad, Mr. Gore says, has isolated the United States in an ever more dangerous world, even as its efforts to expand executive power at home and "relegate the Congress and the courts to the sidelines" have undermined the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The former vice president contends that the fiasco in Iraq stems from President Bush’s use of "a counterfeit combination of misdirected vengeance and misguided dogma to dominate the national discussion, bypass reason, silence dissent and intimidate those who questioned his logic both inside and outside the administration."

He argues that the gruesome acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq "were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity — encouraged, authorized and instituted" by President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. And he writes that the violations of civil liberties committed by the Bush-Cheney administration — including its secret authorization of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail messages between the United States and other countries, and its suspension of the rights of due process for "enemy combatants" — demonstrate "a disrespect for America's Constitution that has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of democracy."

Similar charges have been made by a growing number of historians, political analysts and even former administration insiders, and President Bush's plummeting approval ratings have further emboldened his critics. But Mr. Gore writes not just as a former vice president and the man who won the popular vote in the 2000 election, but also as a possible future candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 race for the White House, and the vehemence of his language and his arguments make statements about the Bush administration by already announced candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton seem polite and mild-mannered in contrast.

And yet for all its sharply voiced opinions, "The Assault on Reason" turns out to be less a partisan, election-cycle harangue than a fiercely argued brief about the current Bush White House that is grounded in copiously footnoted citations from newspaper articles, Congressional testimony and commission reports — a brief that is as powerful in making its points about the implications of this administration's policies as the author's 2006 book, "An Inconvenient Truth," was in making its points about the fallout of global warming.

...Doubts about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction were sidestepped in the walk-up to the war: Mr. Gore says that uranium experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee told him "there was zero possibility" that aluminum tubes acquired by Saddam Hussein were for the purpose of nuclear enrichment, but felt intimidated from "making any public statement that disagreed with the assertions being made to the people by President Bush."

And the Army chief of staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's pre-invasion recommendation that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for a successful occupation of Iraq was similarly dismissed. "Rather than engaging in a reasoned debate on the question," Mr. Gore writes, administration members "undercut Shinseki for disagreeing with their preconceived notion — even though he was an expert, and they were not."

Moreover, Mr. Gore contends, the administration's penchant for secrecy (keeping everything from the details of its coercive interrogation policy to its National Security Agency surveillance program under wraps) has dismantled the principle of accountability, even as what he calls its "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception" on matters like Iraq has made "true deliberation and meaningful debate by the people virtually impossible."

Mr. Gore points out that the White House repeatedly implied that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, between the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and Iraq, when in fact no such linkage existed. He observes that the administration "withheld facts" from Congress concerning the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which turned out to be "far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the president."

And he contends that "it has become common for President Bush to rely on special interests" — like those represented by the Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi before the war, and ExxonMobil on the climate crisis — for "basic information about the policies important to these interests."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/books/22kaku.htm

Put Bush's 'puppy dog' terror theory to sleep

2007-05-15T07:16:00.000-04:00

This essay by Richard Clarke is worth quoting in its entirety.

Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.

The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."

Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he says.

How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?

Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.

Some 100,000 Iraqis, probably more, have been killed since our invasion. They have parents, children, cousins and fellow tribal clan members who have pledged revenge no matter how long it takes. For many, that revenge is focused on America.

At the same time, investing time, energy and resources in Iraq takes our eye off two far more urgent tasks at hand: one, guarding the homeland against terrorism much better than the pork-dispensing Department of Homeland Security currently does the job; and two, systematically dismantling Al Qaeda all over the world, from Canada to Asia to Africa. On both these fronts, the Bush administration's focus is sorely lacking.

Yet in the fantasyland of illogic in which the President dwells, shaped by slogans devised by spin doctors, America can "win" in Iraq. Then, we are to believe, the terrorists will be so demoralized that they will recant their beliefs and cease their terrorist ways.

In the real world, by choosing unnecessarily to go into Iraq, Bush not only diverted efforts from delivering a death blow to Al Qaeda, he gave that movement both a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible.

U.S. military raids in Iraq have uncovered evidence that Iraqis are planning attacks in America, perhaps to be carried out by terrorists with European Union passports that require no U.S. visas. But such attacks here over the next several years are likely now no matter what happens next in Iraq - and that is because of what Bush has already done, not because of any future course we choose in Iraq.

But we can be sure that when the next attacks come in the U.S., if Bush is down on the ranch cutting trees, he and whatever few followers he retains by then will blame his successor. You can almost hear them now: If only hissuccessor had left enough U.S. troops in the Iraqi shooting gallery to satisfy the blood lust of the enemy, as Bush did, then they wouldn't have come here.

The truth: If not for this administration's reckless steps to push America into war - and strategic blunder after strategic blunder that has satisfied the blood lust of the enemy - fewer evildoers would follow us home like the dogs that they are.

Clarke served as chief counterterrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He is now chairman of Good Harbor Consulting.

Source: www.nydailynews.com

The place formerly known as the Justice Department

2007-04-19T06:59:00.000-04:00

Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'

2007-04-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

No surprise here.

A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little.

...Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.

Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.

Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites.

Semi-vacant skulls

2007-04-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

Nothing new here, but it's a nice turn of phrase.

So far, Congress has been embarked on a 20-year bipartisan effort to accomplish nothing, and it's been highly successful.'

And they've had plenty of help from Rush Limbaugh, 'Global warming's most popular denialist,' as James Wolcott notes in his brilliant, must-read lambasting of Limbaugh in the current Vanity Fair. With all the brouhaha over Don Imus's ho-paux, I wish people could work up a fraction of that outrage over the way Rush Limbaugh has brainwashed millions of listeners into believing that global warming is a liberal elite hoax. As Wolcott notes:

'... he has injected millions of semi-vacant American skulls with a cream filling of complacency that has helped thrust this country into the forefront of backward leadership. He has given Republican lawmakers the rhetorical cover fire to do nothing but snicker as the crisis emerged and impressed itself on the rest of the world. He conscripted concern for nature as just another weapon in the Culture Wars.'

Source: It Takes A Fake Preacher to Tell the Truth | The Huffington Post

Corruption Inc. (continued)

2007-04-17T08:57:00.001-04:00

This case is a new low (another one) in the Republican effort to circumvent the Constitution. In the words of David Brin, "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."

Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected -- and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.

The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson's case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. "Your evidence is beyond thin," Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. "I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is."

Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal governor’s race.

There was good reason for the appeals court to be shocked. Ms. Thompson, a 56-year-old single woman, seems to have lost her home and spent four months in prison simply for doing her job. Ms. Thompson, who spent years in the travel industry before becoming a state employee, was responsible for putting the state's travel account up for competitive bid. Mr. Biskupic claimed that she awarded the contract to an agency called Adelman Travel because its C.E.O. contributed to Mr. Doyle's campaign.

To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of innocence. Ms. Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant, hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics. She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the bidders. She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.

While Ms. Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr. Biskupic.

...Mr. Biskupic insists that he prosecuted Ms. Thompson only because he believed a crime was committed, and that he did not discuss the political implications of the case or the timing with anyone in the Justice Department or the White House. Congress has asked the Justice Department for all e-mail messages about the case to help resolve the matter.

But even if there were no discussions, Mr. Biskupic may have known that his bosses in Washington expected him to use his position to help Republicans win elections, and then did what they wanted.

That would be ironic indeed. One of the biggest weaknesses in the case against Ms. Thompson was that to commit the crime she was charged with she had to have tried to gain personally from the contract, and there's no credible evidence that she did. So Mr. Biskupic made the creative argument that she gained by obtaining "political advantage for her superiors" and that in pleasing them she "enhanced job security for herself." Those motivations, of course, may well describe why Mr. Biskupic prosecuted Ms. Thompson.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/opinion/16mon4.html

Safe stroll

2007-04-10T23:11:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, April 6 — Senator John McCain has issued an apology of sorts for his remarks after visiting a Baghdad market last weekend, saying he misspoke when he declared that his ability to walk freely around the marketplace was a sign of a significant improvement in security in Iraq.

He led a Congressional delegation through the Shorja market under tight security, with 100 heavily armed American troops guarding the group and attack helicopters and snipers watching over them.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/washington/07mccain.html

Things are better in Baghdad

2007-04-05T07:45:00.000-04:00

2007-04-02T21:27:00.000-04:00

http://www.whitehouse.org/

2007-03-28T07:12:00.000-04:00

Showdown at Justice

Jon has heard better excuses from his two-year old about how feces got in the DVD player.

2007-03-20T07:10:00.000-04:00

Success will take months

Maybe even hundreds of months.

2007-03-15T07:06:00.000-04:00

A slightly wacked and quite funny online comic strip at http://www.wondermark.com/.

2007-03-10T07:55:00.000-05:00

Line 'em up

2007-02-23T07:13:00.000-05:00

Alice in Baghdadland

Black is white. Up is down. War is peace.

As the British announced the beginning of their departure from Iraq yesterday, President Bush's top foreign policy aide proclaimed it 'basically a good-news story.' Yet for an already besieged White House, the decision was doing a good job masquerading as a bad-news story.

What national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley meant was that the British believe they have made enough progress in southern Iraq to turn over more of their sector to Iraqi forces. To many back in Washington, though, what resonated was that Bush's main partner in Iraq is starting to get out just as the president is sending in more U.S. troops.

...The notion that the British pullback actually signals success sounds like bad spin, added Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). "I think it's Alice in Wonderland looking through the looking glass," he said.

Source: Ally's Timing Is Awkward for Bush

2007-02-16T19:17:00.000-05:00

Who's funding the Sunnis?

I have been waiting for someone to make this most obvious observation.

The Bush administration claims that they care so much about protecting our troops in Iraq that they are going to go after Iran, who is at most responsible for 8% of US fatalities. Then, why not go after the people funding the Sunnis instead? After all, they are the ones doing the great majority of attacks against our beloved troops.

Yesterday, I concluded that the reason might be because some of that funding goes back to the even more beloved Saudi government. I came to that conclusion based on what analysts, experts and reporters in the field say and what the Iraq Study Group concluded, but I suppose I could be wrong. So, if this administration cares so much for the troops dying in Iraq, as they claim, why don't they investigate who is sending the money for the weapons that are killing over 90% of them?

If they don't do this, then it becomes patently obvious that they are using the troops as an excuse once again for their real agenda. They want to attack Iran at all costs.

Who's funding the Sunnis?.

2007-02-14T22:44:00.000-05:00

Fudge the facts, save the world

The legend of Douglas Feith

2007-01-25T19:07:00.000-05:00

Whitehouse.org

2007-01-25T13:27:00.000-05:00

The Bush house of cards in a hard wind

William Rivers Pitt reviews the President's latest performance by leading with, "George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and nobody gave a damn."

If a measure were needed to gauge Bush's crumbling standing, it could be found in the overwhelming obsequiousness with which he greeted the new Democratic majority, and in his craven pleas for bipartisanship. We got, as well, the usual litany of reasons for continuing and expanding the massacre unleashed by his generational catastrophe in Iraq. The bloody shirt of 9/11 was waved once again. Sabres were rattled against Iran and Syria, again. The word 'nukular' made its annual appearance. The word 'Katrina' was nowhere to be found.

A few economic and domestic agenda items made a desultory showing before fluttering limply to the plushly-carpeted floor, each failing utterly to accomplish Bush's most desired goal: to divert the conversation away from his manifest and myriad failures. It was, weirdly enough, very much like a Bill Clinton address from the 1990s. Balancing the budget, saving Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, health insurance, the environment, global warming, alternative energy sources ... and if you believe he meant any of it, there are bridges for sale all across the country you should check out.

This was a tiny, tepid performance by a tiny man who is shrinking, even now, before our very eyes. Let all the gods that are or ever were be thanked that he only has one more speech to go before history swallows him, before this nation and the world is faced with the grueling challenge of cleaning up all the bloody messes he has made.

Source: The Tiniest President.

2007-01-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

The Politics of Fear

The three-part "Power of Nightmares" BBC documentary was filmed over two years ago, but its premises have, if anything, been reinforced with time. A stunning video.

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR

Part Three: The Shadows in the Cave "In the wake of the shock and panic created by the devastating attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, the neo-conservatives reconstructed the radical Islamists in the image of their last evil enemy, the Soviet Union - a sinister web of terror run from the centre by Osama Bin Laden in his lair in Afghanistan." - BBC

2007-01-19T00:07:00.000-05:00

Experience

2006-12-29T23:09:00.000-05:00

Just answer the question

"President Bush has been very clear that through his leadership, he has made the world safer.... my question to you is simply this: How much safer can the world afford to have him make us?"
- JON STEWART, INTERVIEWING SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, ON THE DAILY SHOW [June 2006]

Source: TV's funniest quotes: Your picks from 2006.

2006-12-29T17:37:00.000-05:00

Speak up, man!

Not everyone is on the "Gerald Ford was just a nice guy" bandwagon.

Here's the reason for my slight bitterness toward President Ford - apparently, he told Woodward that he thought Bush was making a 'big mistake' by going into Iraq, but that Woodward shouldn't tell anybody until Ford died.

That's awful, and frankly, stupid. If I were a bit more brazen, I might even say that it lacks courage. But he is dead, so I'll leave it at stupid.

My God man, the Almighty didn't give you a life so you can sit on your rear end and wait to say things when you're dead. Just say it. Live a little.

Yes, it may break the tradition of ex-presidents not talking about the policies of current presidents. So what? Who cares? Soon you'll be dead and no one will give a damn about any tradition. Soon they'll be busy talking about how many varsity letters you got when you were eighteen because you didn't really do anything while you were alive, except accidentally become president.

Besides which, who cares what people say when you're dead - you're already dead. If Ford had said something while he were alive, he might have had a small effect. I know that nothing was going to stop Cheney from going to war with Iraq. As Ford himself agreed, Cheney had the 'fever.'

But it might have helped if reasonable people all stood up at the same time and voiced their objections. If Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush all said how foolhardy the Iraq War was in unison perhaps the country would have heard them. Even if they had just said it a whole two years after the war started, it still could have helped to get us on the right track before we wound up in the mess we're in now.

Except Blair chose the role of the inexplicable lapdog. Powell chose the role of the wounded but foolishly loyal soldier. George H. W. Bush chose the role of the doting father who put the feelings of his dimwitted son ahead of what he knew was right for the country. And Gerald Ford sat around waiting to die.

Source: Gerald Ford Should Have Listened to Tim McGraw | The Huffington Post.

2006-12-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

The urge to surge

Reuters is reporting that 3500 troops may be sent to Kuwait in the next few weeks to be ready to move into Iraq as part of the 'surge' of 20,000-30,000 additional troops. Such an escalation is being advocated by George W. Bush and John McCain, even as a recent NPR poll found that 68% of Americans surveyed wanted US troops withdrawn in the next six months.

Plans to increase troops in Iraq also come against the backdrop of further American fatalities in that country, bringing the number to 90 for December, with Iraqi fatalities also continuing at a high rate.

...They can't even go into part of Baghdad and we're supposed to believe that a proportionately tiny increase in troop levels is going to do anything more than put more American soldiers in harm's way, when too many already are? There's the McCain rationale, of course, as laid out by Robert Reich.

"I talked with John McCain Sunday morning in the green room just before 'This Week.' I asked him why he continued to call for more troops for Iraq when he must know it's a political non-starter. He said he thought it important for the morale of the troops."

As Meteor Blades said in comments:

"So, we should send more women and men into the maw to kill and be killed in the coming bloodbath because it will be good for morale?

"It's one thing to send additional troops because you believe they will make a military difference. Even if you think they might make a military difference. But sending them because you want to boost morale in a futile situation?"

Source: Daily Kos: The Coming Bush-McCain "Surge".

2006-12-21T07:19:00.000-05:00

And the beat goes on...

The Decider-in-Chief continues to twist words to mean whatever he wants us to believe.

...And what about the Iraq Study Group report? Yesterday Bush said:

"I'm listening to the folks on the Baker-Hamilton commission about coming up with a strategy that helps us achieve our objective."

Given that he has flatly rejected their key recommendations to begin withdrawing troops within a specified time and to deal directly with Iran and Syria, it isn't clear which part Bush is listening to, unless he meant co-opting the phrase, "new way forward." That would certainly help the administration achieve their objective of finding new catch phrases for war rather than practical solutions.

2006-12-10T13:06:00.000-05:00

Commander CuckooBananas

The Simpsons continues to be the most intelligent show on television. This show clip has more insight than all the other Fox shows combined.

http://www.zippyvideos.com/157859598277245/simpsons/

2006-12-07T07:19:00.000-05:00

Science Teachers’ Organization Refuses To Accept Copies of Inconvenient Truth

Corporate special interests: 1, science education: 0.

In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of An Inconvenient Truth (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs:

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs:

[T]here was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters."

As it turns out, those supporters already include "special interests," including Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil, and the American Petroleum Institute, which have given millions in funding to the NSTA.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/25/oil-propaganda/

2006-11-30T07:16:00.000-05:00

REAL profit and loss

The Ethical Corporation blog discussed the passing of economist Milton Friedman and his view that a corporation's only responsibility was to maximize the profits of the shareholders. This comment from a New Zealander provides a thoughtful counterpoint.

Friedman clearly was a big believer in free markets and the price mechanism. His comments on CSR make him an easy target but perhaps you need to put his views into context. I think his views, along with others such as David Henderson, see business as an entity where the goal is to simply make profits on behalf of the owners and to be involved in activities outside that strict goal is not the role of business.

That is a fair comment on the face of it but two issues arise: one is that businesses externalise many costs, some on purpose and some that they are not aware of. If these costs were internalised (ie the Trucost approach) then we would be looking at a more 'responsible' business but still one that fitted Friedman's paradigm. The same could be said about Adam Smith's view of commerce. He understood very clearly the concept of the supply chain and how much labour and effort went into a product. However he was not aware at the time (1776) of the issue of environmental costs. He is much maligned over this and i believe quite unfairly. His book the Theory of Moral Sentiments written previously to the Wealth of Nations talked very clearly about the issue of morals within business.

We are moving to a more Trucost approach to business where external costs such as carbon emissions and other forms of pollution and ecosystem services are starting to be internalised. I don't think any free market economist would disagree with this concept (they may disagree with climate change but that is a different issue).

The second point is that it has been shown that companies with a purpose beyond profit outperform those who simply focus on the bottom line (see Built to Last and Metawealth research). Companies organised around a clear purpose and set of values simply do better. Because of who they are they address issues of social responsibility as those values are embedded within the organisation.

In summary we are heading towards a business world where all external costs will become internalised and where all business will operate around a set of values (they will differ from place to place) because it makes business sense as well as serving its stakeholders.

In a strange way the free marketeers will have been proved correct but not in the way they would have imagined.

Environmental and social responsibility will become the norm not because it feels good but because it IS more profitable for the whole system.

Source: Ethical Corporation blog: Milton Friedman, death of a social responsibility critic.

2006-11-26T10:41:00.000-05:00

Same same

Albert Einstein once said the problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. And yet, politicians like John McCain insist that we should keep trying. Chuck Hagel makes some obvious conterpoints in an editorial:

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

Source: Chuck Hagel - Leaving Iraq, Honorably.

2006-11-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

The more things change...

Mahatma Gandhi might have been talking about Bush and the other violent bullies of the world when he made these quotes in the early 20th century.

'When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall--think of it, always.'

'What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?'

'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'

And this one strikes at the heart of this country's fundamental hypocrasy:

'The only people on Earth who do not see Christ and His teachings as nonviolent are Christians.'Source: Mahatma Gandhi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

2006-11-11T22:09:00.000-05:00

Heckuva job, Rummy

2006-11-08T16:59:00.000-05:00

Rumsfeld to Cut and Run

It appears that Donald Rumsfeld doesn't fancy the thought of spending the next two years testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, among others. It also seems that Rummy has been "heckuva-jobbed" by Bush.

In reporting Rumsfeld reversal, will media note that Bush has been caught in apparent lie about Cabinet switch before?

During a November 8 press conference, President Bush announced that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was resigning. Bush's remarks came less than a week after he pledged that he would keep Rumsfeld on as defense secretary until the end of his presidency. When asked about the dramatic reversal by a reporter at the press conference, Bush claimed that he had said Rumsfeld was staying on because he 'didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign,' and later asserted that at the time of the November 2 press conference in which he expressed his support for Rumsfeld, he hadn't yet decided to replace Rumsfeld because he had not yet met with his eventual replacement, former CIA director Robert Gates.

In May, Bush similarly claimed that then-Treasury Secretary John Snow was 'doing a fine job' and had given no 'indication' that he would resign that position, even though it had already been determined that Snow was, in fact, leaving the administration and Hank Paulson had already been offered the job and accepted it, as the weblog Think Progress noted at the time.

Will the media note that this is not the first time Bush was caught in an apparent lie about whether a member of his Cabinet would continue to serve in his administration?

Source: Media Matters - Bush caught in apparent lie about Cabinet switch.

2006-11-02T18:07:00.000-05:00

The truth pops up accidently

Suddenly, a glimpse into the murky mind of W.

In an interview with Sean Hannity (how the hell did he get access to POTUS?) on the Fox News Channel's 'Hannity & Colmes,' President Bush was asked whether the United States will be hit by another terrorist attack.

Did the President say that if we stay the course™ in Iraq that wouldn't happen?

Did he say 'only if the Democrats were elected?'

Did he say that 'only if Nancy Pelosi had to measure her new office for drapes?'

Nupe.

What he said was, 'I think so, and we've got to do everything we can to stop them.'

Wha...?

Did you get that?

Our leader, who has sent thousands to their death so that we don't have to fight them over here™, said he thinks that in spite of all the blood spilled to further his catchphrases, it will not keep them from fighting over here.

Source: The Blog | Steve Young: Bush Believes Country Less Safe With Him In Charge.

2006-10-13T16:06:00.000-04:00

Throwing good money after bad

Abstinence-only sex education works . . . only in the minds of the religious right.

New research published by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and reported on in the Washington Post this past weekend, reviews the successful behavior change studies of the past 25 years and concludes that fear-based health messages are ineffective. This supports what public health experts have long known about abstinence-only-until-marriage programs; no sound study exists that shows these programs have any long-term beneficial impact on young people's sexual behavior. More than a dozen states have completed evaluations of their federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, and still none have found the abstinence-only-until-marriage approach to be effective. Recent studies are instead showing that virginity pledges, common components of these programs, may be potentially harmful to young people.

In contrast, numerous studies and evaluations published in peer-reviewed literature suggest that comprehensive education about sexuality, programs that teach teens about both abstinence and contraception, are an effective strategy to help young people delay their initiation of sexual intercourse. 'SIECUS believes in time-tested and proven evidence that finds teaching abstinence alongside other issues, not in isolation from them, provides the best long term outcomes for youth,' said Smith. The ESRC's research agrees, determining that 'positive, informative strategies which help people set specific health and environmental goals are far more effective when it comes to encouraging behaviour change than negative strategies which employ messages of fear, guilt or regret.'

'Curricula that instill fear and shame in young people, disparage condom use, perpetuate gender stereotypes, and contain anti-abortion messages have no place in any program for school-aged young people, let alone programs sanctioned by the federal government, and paid for with hard-earned tax dollars,' Smith said.

Over the past six years - since President Bush came into office - almost $800 million federal dollars have been spent on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. President Bush is seeking an additional $204 million in Fiscal Year 2007 alone.

Source: How Medical Inaccuracies, Fear, and Shame in Federally Funded Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Put Our Youth at Risk.

2006-10-12T06:59:00.000-04:00

When will we learn?

Our current Republican leadership has been able to acquire unprecedented power despite a toxic combination of stupidity and malevolence. Let's hope the American voters--or at least 51% of them--will figure this out by election time.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
-- Bertrand Russell

2006-10-06T06:45:00.000-04:00

Coverup undone by bad manners

George F. Will appears to be the only conservative in the country who isn't trying to blame the Foley debacle on the Democrats.

Having so quickly exhausted the Oprah approach, the Foley story moved on to who knew what, and when. That drove Speaker Dennis Hastert to the un-Oprah broadcasting couch on which Republicans recline when getting in touch with their feelings. To Rush Limbaugh's 20 million receptive listeners, Hastert, referring to Republicans as 'we,' said:

'We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have -- in my view have -- put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to put us on defense.'

It is difficult to read that as other than an accusation: He seems to be not just confessing a coverup but also complaining that the coverup was undone by bad manners. Were it not for Democrats' unsportsmanlike conduct in putting 'this thing' forward, it would not be known and would not be disrupting Republicans' storytelling.

Their story, of late, has been that theirs is the lonely burden of defending all that is wholesome. But the problem with claiming to have cornered the market on virtue is that people will get snippy when they spot vice in your ranks. This is one awkward aspect of what is supposed to have been the happy fusion between, but which involves unresolved tensions between, two flavors of conservatism -- Western and Southern.

The former is largely libertarian, holding that pruning big government will allow civil society -- and virtues nourished by it and by the responsibilities of freedom -- to flourish. The Southern, essentially religious, strand of conservatism is explained by Ryan Sager in his new book, 'The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party':

'Whereas conservative Christian parents once thought it was inappropriate for public schools to teach their kids about sex, now they want the schools to preach abstinence to children. Whereas conservative Christians used to be unhappy with evolution being taught in public schools, now they want Intelligent Design taught instead (or at least in addition). Whereas conservative Christians used to want the federal government to leave them alone, now they demand that more and more federal funds be directed to local churches and religious groups through Bush's faith-based initiatives program.'

To a Republican Party increasingly defined by the ascendancy of the religious right, the Foley episode is doubly deadly. His behavior was disgusting, and some Republican reactions seem more calculating than indignant.

Source: What Goeth Before the Fall - George F. Will.

2006-10-04T06:57:00.000-04:00

Victory is immiment? Why didn't they say so?

Talk about jumping the gun.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.

The original legislation empowered the president to designate "a day of celebration" to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to "issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities."

..."If the Bush administration had spent more time planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and less time planning 'mission accomplished' victory celebrations, America would be closer to finishing the job in Iraq," said Rebecca M. Kirszner, communications director for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

Source: In Bill's Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory .

2006-10-03T07:18:00.000-04:00

Family Values

2006-10-03T07:05:00.000-04:00

Corruption and hypocracy, taken to a new level

Did the Republicans borrow their scandal playbook from the Catholic Church?

History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result. The only surprise in Washington now is that the Congressional Republicans managed to reach that point of decayed purpose so thoroughly, so fast.

That House leaders knew Representative Mark Foley had been sending inappropriate e-mail to Capitol pages and did little about it is terrible. It is also the latest in a long, depressing pattern: When there is a choice between the right thing to do and the easiest route to perpetuation of power, top Republicans always pick wrong.

...It's astonishing behavior for a party that sold itself as the champion of conservative social values. But then so was the fact that a party that prides itself on fiscal conservatism managed to roll up record-breaking deficits, featuring large amounts of wasteful pork earmarked to the districts of powerful legislators or the profit sheets of generous campaign contributors. So was the speed with which the party that billed itself as the voice of grass-roots exurban and suburban America turned itself into the partner of every special-interest lobbyist with a checkbook.

The good news is that American democracy, so flawed in many ways, is often fairly efficient at punishing parties that become addicted to self-perpetuation. This November may not force Congress to come up with a plan for Iraq, or even immigration. But if it reminds elected officials that there's a punishment waiting for those who fall in love with their own sense of entitlement, it will have done its job.

Source: The Foley Matter - New York Times.

2006-09-29T22:59:00.000-04:00

Stick with the incompetents who created this mess

Joshua Marshall seeks to understand the strategy that the Republicans seem to be grasping.

I think we're getting down to that true last refuge of the scoundrel marrow.

According to the president, those who think he's created a mess in Iraq which is making us less rather than more secure are 'buy[ing] into the enemy's propaganda.'

Isn't this what the president's own intelligence agencies are telling him? I guess they're buying into the enemy's propaganda. From what the polls seem to say, more than half the country is buying into the enemy's propaganda too. Pretty much everybody does, I guess, beside the president and those who sign on to his dogmas.

What's actually just as revealing is the president's own argument about the Iraq-Terrorism NIE, which amounts to a sort of covert play for double-or-nothing with the American people.

Pick it apart and the argument is that Iraq's a disaster which has made us less safe. And if we can't change it from a disaster to a success it will be even worse than it is now.

So the argument amounts to, Stick to The Incompetent Crew Who Created the Mess!

Give Us Your Vote Because Who Better to Trust Than the Guys Who Created the Mess!

Or Maybe, Vote For Us Because Don't We Have to do Something Right Eventually!?!

Rolls right off the tongue. Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.

2006-09-26T09:31:00.000-04:00

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush

Keith Olbermann was brilliant on last night's MSNBC Countdown as he defended Clinton and smacked down Bush. An excerpt:

...Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War -- though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this President.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except… for this:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts -- that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is -- not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired -- but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for 'e-mailing' you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth un-told... about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.

He was brave.

Crooks and Liars | Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?.

2006-09-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

Truth of the jesters

Willie Nelson and the boys were on the road, and they stopped them and found a pound and a half of marijuana. bin Laden is still loose, but we got Willie Nelson. -- David Letterman

In his speech, Bush said the United Nations is in danger of losing its credibility. And believe me, when it comes to international affairs, President Bush is an expert on losing credibility. -- Jay Leno

Source: Charlotte Observer | Laugh Attack.

2006-09-25T06:56:00.000-04:00

This week's blinding flash of the obvious

Too bad no one ever imagined that a military invasion would lead to this.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, "Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement," cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," said one American intelligence official.

Source: Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat.

2006-09-01T14:46:00.000-04:00

Judicial brakes on the Bush regime

Fortunately and finally, the courts are beginning to address some of the recent Presidential abuses of power.

"Public interest is clear in this matter. It is the upholding of the Constitution. . . . It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control." -U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, August 17, declaring unconstitutional the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance--authorized illegally by George W. Bush

...She concluded that the president had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the separation of powers, and the Fourth Amendment privacy protections of Americans.

Not only did the president violate a statute but he also, the judge added, "blatantly disregarded the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights" (very much including the Fourth Amendment).

As for the constant claim by the president, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales that, as commander in chief, George W. Bush has the "inherent constitutional power" to conduct the war on terrorism unilaterally when necessary, Judge Taylor said—and I hope future schoolbooks will include this definition of Americanism: "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all 'inherent' powers must derive from that Constitution."

What makes this regeneration of the powers of Constitution all the more important, even if her ruling is overruled by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on its inevitable way to the Supreme Court, is that Judge Taylor represents the awakening, at last, of more of the judiciary to its crucial responsibility to respect—and act—on the separation of powers.

Source: Liberty Beat | George Bush: Recidivist.

2006-08-30T07:21:00.000-04:00

War crimes

This rebuke in the Times editorial page is welcome, but it is late to come and far too measured in it's language. A war crime is a war crime no matter which side perpetrates it. And "our" side has been doing to for too long.

All weapons kill and maim, but some are especially insidious -- like cluster munitions, miniature explosives packed into a bomb, rocket or artillery shell and designed to scatter over a wide area.

This week the State Department said it was investigating whether Israel inappropriately used American-made cluster munitions in populated areas during its monthlong campaign in Lebanon. Whatever the specific findings of this investigation, the rules governing cluster bomb exports and their use by American troops need to be tightened and more strictly enforced.

Cluster munitions are useful against tanks, massed conventional forces and other purely military targets. But they should never be used in populated areas. By nature they kill indiscriminately.

Because some of the bomblets fail to explode on impact, the casualties continue to mount long after the fighting stops. These harmless-looking objects, often no larger than flashlight batteries, explode when inadvertently jostled or picked up. Children mistake them for toys, with tragic results.

Washington has strict rules about how American-made cluster munitions are supposed to be used by foreign buyers. But in the heat of combat, those rules are not always followed. Nor are United States forces as careful as they should be. America has used cluster munitions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Israel used them in past campaigns in Lebanon. Russia used them in Chechnya.

Israel makes its own cluster munitions as well as buying more advanced models from the United States. It used cluster weapons extensively in its latest campaign in Lebanon, and the majority of the unexploded bomblets that United Nations teams have found there so far have been American-made.

Source: No Place for Cluster Bombs.

2006-08-27T07:05:00.000-04:00

Give me safety

Our opposite-world has turned Patrick Henry's proclamation on its head.

Until now, every generation of Americans has traded safety for liberty. From the Lexington Green to the Normandy beaches, from the Sons of Liberty to the Freedom Riders, it has been part of the American narrative that risks are taken to expand freedom, not freedoms sacrificed to avoid risk.

The Founders challenged the most powerful military on earth, the British army, all the while knowing that defeat would send them to the gallows. The American colonists spurned their relative comfort as British subjects for a chance to be citizens of a Republic dedicated to the vision that some rights are "unalienable" and that no man should be king.

Since then, despite some ups and downs, the course of the American nation has been to advance those ideals and broaden those freedoms.

...Only in this generation -- only on our watch -- has the march reversed.

Instead of swapping safety for liberty, this generation -- traumatized by the 9/11 attacks and under the leadership of George W. Bush – has chosen to trade liberties for safety.

...As a trade-off for accepting Bush's unlimited powers, the American people have gotten assurances that Bush will make protecting them his top priority. Yet, the presidential oath says nothing about shielding the public from danger; rather it’s a vow to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

...Within that presidential oath and within the nation’s historic commitment to freedom, there is no assurance against risk or danger. There is no government guarantee of safety, nor is there a promise that harm might not come to American citizens.

Indeed, it has been assumed by all previous generations of Americans -- dating back to the beginning of the Republic and ending only with today's fearful generation -- that risk and danger were part of the price for maintaining and spreading freedom.

Source: Consortiumnews.com.

2006-08-22T07:31:00.000-04:00

Fat and fatter

News item that needs no further comment:

This month McDonald's is giving away toy Hummers -- 42 million of them, in eight models and colors -- with every Happy Meal or Mighty Kids Meal. That's right: The fast-food chain that helped make our kids the fattest on Earth is now selling future car buyers on the fun of driving a supersized, smog-spewing, gas-guzzling SUV originally built for the military. Use the Ronald McHummer Sign-O-Matic to tell us what you think of this misguided marriage of two icons of American excess.

Source: Ronald McHummer - Just Say No to Hummers.

2006-08-22T07:27:00.000-04:00

Same story, different stage

Does this quote sound familiar?

The reservists, most of whom have gone back to civilian life, say that their training was inadequate and that they were sent into [the war zone] with unclear missions, inadequate supplies, outdated equipment and a lack of basics, like drinking water. They called for a national inquiry into how the war was waged.

It is referring to the Israeli military intervention in Lebanon.

Source: Reservists in Israel Protest Conduct of Lebanon War.

2006-08-19T16:28:00.000-04:00

Idiot or evil?

It's interesting that Joe Scarborough has come to the belated realization that Bush is a fool, but the comment by "Stoney" sums it up even better.

There's a big difference between the perceived 'idiocy' of Bush and the perceived 'idiocy' of Reagan. I wasn't a big fan of Reagan but I remember Reagan as being basically avuncular - not stupid, evil, mean or arrogant. But maybe a little set in his ways and out of touch with opposing points of view. I could disagree with a lot of his policies without feeling we were in danger as a country with him at the helm. Ditto Ford. Ditto the first President Bush.

Bush, on the other hand, comes off as a snarky, mean, arrogant, over-privileged, under-educated bastard. And as for actual stupidity as opposed to simple incuriousness, there are all kinds of examples in his impromptu comments that point to his really not knowing what he's talking about.

Combine that with his subscribing to a religion that believes the end of the world is a good thing, and one should be very, very afraid.

Source: Joe Scarborough: Is Bush an idiot?.

2006-08-19T15:45:00.000-04:00

Middle ground

2006-08-17T07:19:00.000-04:00

The difference

The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judge by how good it makes its crusaders feel. - Thomas Sowell

2006-08-09T07:05:00.000-04:00

When the real center is portrayed as a radical alternative

The Times editorial is so incisive and insightful that is deserves to be repeated in its entirety.

The defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman at the hands of a little-known Connecticut businessman is bound to send a message to politicians of both parties that voters are angry and frustrated over the war in Iraq. The primary upset was not, however, a rebellion against the bipartisanship and centrism that Mr. Lieberman said he represented in the Senate. Instead, Connecticut Democrats were reacting to the way those concepts have been perverted by the Bush White House.

Ned Lamont, a relative political novice, said he ran against Mr. Lieberman because he was offended by the senator's sunny descriptions of what was happening in Iraq and his denunciation of Democrats who criticized the administration's handling of the war. Many other people in Connecticut may have felt that sense of frustration, but no one else had the money and moxie to do what Mr. Lamont did. Mr. Lieberman was stunned to find himself on the defensive, and it was only in the last few weeks that the 18-year veteran mounted a desperate campaign to reclaim his party's support.

Senator Lieberman says he will run as an independent in November, taking on Mr. Lamont and the Republican, Alan Schlesinger. Mr. Schlesinger is a very weak candidate, but Mr. Lieberman should consider the risk of splitting his party if the Republicans are able to convince Mr. Schlesinger to drop out of the race in favor of a stronger nominee.

Mr. Lieberman's supporters have tried to depict Mr. Lamont and his backers as wild-eyed radicals who want to punish the senator for working with Republicans and to force the Democratic Party into a disastrous turn toward extremism. It's hard to imagine Connecticut, which likes to be called the Land of Steady Habits, as an encampment of left-wing isolationists, and it's hard to imagine Mr. Lamont, who worked happily with the Republicans in Greenwich politics, leading that kind of revolution.

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person's right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

When Mr. Lieberman told The Washington Post, "I haven't changed. Events around me have changed," he actually put his finger on his political problem. His constituents felt that when the White House led the country into a disastrous international crisis and started subverting the nation's basic traditions, Joe Lieberman should have changed enough to take a lead in fighting back.

Source: Revenge of the Irate Moderates.

2006-08-01T19:19:00.000-04:00

Taking a page out of the Enron playbook

Apparently this administration is inclined to hide war profiteers and other crooks if the actions of these contractors made the government look bad.

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.

The report by the inspector general's office does not give a full accounting of all projects financed by the agency's $1.4 billion budget, but cites several examples.

The findings appeared in an audit of a children's hospital in Basra, but they referred to the wider reconstruction activities of the development agency in Iraq. American and Iraqi officials reported this week that the State Department planned to drop Bechtel, its contractor on that project, as signs of budget and scheduling problems began to surface.

... The hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency "was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million," the inspector general wrote in his report.

The rest was reclassified as overhead, or "indirect costs." According to a contracting officer at the agency who was cited in the report, the agency "did not report these costs so it could stay within the $50 million authorization."

... The report said it suspected that other unreported costs on the hospital could drive the tab even higher. In another case cited in the report, a power station project in Musayyib, the direct construction cost cited by the development agency was $6.6 million, while the overhead cost was $27.6 million.

One result is that the project's overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.

Source: Audit Finds U.S. Hid Actual Cost of Iraq Projects.

2006-07-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

Not in lockstep

Interesting news that an evangelical preacher, Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, has chosen to turn down requests to support Religious Right politicians and causes.

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called "The Cross and the Sword" in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a "Christian nation" and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses," Mr. Boyd pr Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

...Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written "Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical's Lament." eached. "When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross."

Source: Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock.

2006-07-30T21:16:00.000-04:00

Liberation is just breaking out all over

2006-07-14T07:17:00.000-04:00

Planet for sale

Congress and the Bush administration are selling our future for cash and tax breaks.

Unfortunately, Congress’ approach to energy policy has been to kowtow to lobbyists and campaign donors rather than craft a strategy to deal forthrightly with energy-related risks. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was a wasted opportunity of historic proportions. At a time of rising fuel prices, Middle Eastern turmoil and growing evidence that humanity is messing with the planetary thermostat, Congress produced a bill that the Philadelphia Inquirer called a “lobbyist’s paradise and a citizens’ nightmare.” It contains $85 billion worth of subsidies for energy research, royalty concessions and tax breaks, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group.

Useful measures in the legislation that promote conservation and resource diversification were offset by handouts that will sustain our addiction to oil. Proposals to boost fuel economy standards and increase investment in renewably generated electricity were left on the cutting room floor. An amendment to adopt caps on greenhouse gas emissions was blocked.

One of most egregious lollipops in the legislation is a $1.55 billion fund to pay for oil and gas research. Most of the fund will be administered by a private consortium, and a leading candidate is a group backed by former congressman Tom DeLay and made up of executives from Halliburton and other energy companies. Critics call it a giant slush fund for cash-rich oil companies.

Source: http://www.comanchecountychronicle.com/viewarticle.php?id=657

2006-07-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

See, I told you we needed to build more weapons

North Korea's Kim Jong Il has now becomes W's best ally in his war on defense cutbacks -- just like Bush has become Bin Laden's best ally in recruiting new terrorists. I don't think this is what the Bible meant by "love thine enemy."

President Bush said Friday that he believed the nation's nascent missile defense system would have had a 'reasonable chance' of shooting down a long-range missile launched by North Korea had it come close to the United States...

...It was the ambitious North Korean program to extend the reach of its missiles -- along with its work on producing nuclear warheads -- that many proponents of the missile defense plan cited to justify the Pentagon's huge expenditures on the new defensive system, which is costing about $9 billion a year and is still in the early stages of a long and complex development process.

...Though North Korea and the struggle over responding to the missile tests dominated the news conference, Mr. Bush denied that the United States was trimming back on its search for Osama bin Laden by disbanding a unit within the Central Intelligence Agency that focused on that hunt.

Source: Bush Says U.S. May Have Been Able to Intercept North Korean Missile.

2006-07-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

What secret?

Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department expert, pokes major holes in the latest Bushco lies.

If you still labor under the fantasy that the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal divulged 'classified information' that put U.S. lives at risk or hampered our ability to track terrorist financial assets, you are willfully ignorant or have been living in a sensory isolation tank. [Word to Congressman Peter King--pull your fat, Irish Republican Army-supporting head out of your ass and stay awake during Congressional testimony.]

Starting in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, the Administration took up the hue and cry of the need to track terrorist finances.

...The information provided to the public went well beyond general platitudes. In fact, U.S. officials provided specific information that anybody, including members of Al Qaeda, who read the testimony would learn what the United States Government was doing and how it was doing it.

...Only people trading clam shells for coconuts would have been unaware that any financial transaction moving through the international financial system--which includes SWIFT, FedWire, and CHIPS—was being scrutinized by the United States Government. As I noted earlier, Bush official, Juan Zarate, was telling Congress in February 2002 that Bin Laden and his crew were taking precautions because traditional banking money movements made them vulnerable to detection.

The furor over the “SWIFT” story has little to do with keeping America safe and a lot to do with keeping Republicans in power. If the leak was so devastating there would be a full court investigation of who in the Federal Government spoke to the reporters. But, as shown above, this information was not secret and was already in the public domain. It appears that Bush, with the advice of Karl Rove, sees demonizing the New York Times as a great way to energize a flagging political base. When it comes to hurting our nation's security and putting our citizens at risk, the fault lies with Bush, not the New York Times.

Source: NO QUARTER: What Secret?.

2006-07-06T17:05:00.000-04:00

Never truer than today

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.

- Sinclair Lewis

2006-07-05T17:23:00.000-04:00

Today, the rights of individuals are being eroded: by government, by corporations, by society itself. This icon — the Individual-i — represents the rights of the individual.

It represents the right to privacy and anonymity in the information age. It represents the rights to an open government, due process, and equal protection under the law. It represents the right to live surveillance free, and not to be marked as 'suspicious' for wanting these other rights.

It recognizes that a free society is a safe society, and that freedom is founded upon individual rights.

Individual-i.

2006-07-02T19:58:00.000-04:00

Ethical black hole

In the outstanding movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore notes the strategy of energy companies to purposely confuse the public's peception of the science of global warming. He says that global warming is an ethical issue. Paul Krugman cites further evidence of the ethics that govern the oil companies.

A leaked memo from a 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, in which Exxon (which hadn't yet merged with Mobil) was a participant, describes a strategy of providing 'logistical and moral support' to climate change dissenters, "thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'" And that's just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics.

The people and institutions Exxon Mobil supports aren't actually engaged in climate research. They're the real-world equivalents of the Academy of Tobacco Studies in the movie 'Thank You for Smoking,' whose purpose is to fail to find evidence of harmful effects.

But the fake research works for its sponsors, partly because it gets picked up by right-wing pundits, but mainly because it plays perfectly into the he-said-she-said conventions of 'balanced' journalism. A 2003 study, by Maxwell Boykoff and Jules Boykoff, of reporting on global warming in major newspapers found that a majority of reports gave the skeptics--a few dozen people, many if not most receiving direct or indirect financial support from Exxon Mobil--roughly the same amount of attention as the scientific consensus, supported by thousands of independent researchers.

Rox Populi: 'Enemy of the Planet'.

2006-06-29T07:19:00.000-04:00

Driving off the edge

In the face of mounting evidence, some still see just what they want to see.

Friday, the National Academies (the nation's leading scientific body) released a study that dug into source data for graphs like the following:

The study's getting attention because graphs like this are Exhibit A in the argument that temperatures have spiked in the past few decades. The National Academies' conclusions boil down to this:

The temperature line is correct (based on data currently available).
The band around the line (i.e. uncertainty) gets thicker as you back in time, especially before 1600 and again before 900 - because we have less data and the data we have is less reliable.
We need to keep working to get better data - especially before 900.

In other words, no news - not to the scientific community, anyway. Needless to say, Sen. Inhofe (OK-R) and his cabal have tried to spin this study as proof that global warming is a 'hoax.'

...So is uncertainty an excuse for inaction, as Inhofe would argue? Let's see ... You're driving up a mountain with the cliff's edge ten feet to the right, drifting towards the edge. Scenario 1: it's daytime. Scenario 2: it's dark and foggy, the edge may be 20 feet away - or inches. How, Senator Inhofe, is Scenario 2 an argument to keep drifting to the right?

For me, that's a takeaway from this study that's missing in the press coverage:

Science's best estimate remains unchanged: the cliff's edge is probably ten feet to the right (and we're drifting to the right).
It's dark and foggy, so let's be extra cautious. The edge could be twenty feet away - or inches (turn left, now).
Let's do more work to get better visibility on the cliff's edge (but with stakes this high, uncertainty isn't an excuse for inaction; we can't afford to keep drifting while we figure it out).

Source: The The Poker Player's Guide to Climate Change.

2006-06-28T22:37:00.000-04:00

Robber barons of the 21st century

Obscene executive salaries don't only hurt corporate shareholders.

The public is led to believe that companies are slashing workers' pensions and backing out of their retirement promises to workers because these companies face a cash squeeze caused by the market. But in a major investigative report, Schultz points out that an 'analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's pensions.'

...Faced with all of this, Congress has deliberately done nothing. Bought and paid for by the executives who are running off with billions, lawmakers allow these schemes to expand in secret - largely hidden from the investors, stockholders and employees who are getting screwed. Meanwhile, most reporters give the public a he-said-she-said account of the burgeoning retirement security crisis, leading us to believe that massive pension cutbacks are just a force of nature that cannot be stopped, rather than the unsurprising outcome of specific policy choices by greedy executives and the politicians in their back pocket.

...The more such information gets out, the more we really see what's going on: a vicious class war being waged by elites in government and business who are doing everything they can to bleed America dry.

Source: David Sirota: WSJ: Report Proves Executive Payouts Causing America's Pension Crisis.

2006-06-28T22:11:00.000-04:00

Real cut and run

2006-06-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

Insidious effects of the industry-government revolving door

David Sirota describes how, immediately after 9/11, White House officials persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to minimize its assessment of the dangers posed by airborne dust and debris from the World Trade Center collapse.

Who would doctor such critical information? A man named James Connaughton, who President Bush appointed to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Just before Connaughton was appointed to that critical position, the New York Daily News reports he "was an industry lawyer who represented major asbestos and toxic polluters."

Yes, you read that correctly - Bush appointed a shill for industrial polluters to head the White House office on environmental quality, who immediately used his power to doctor critical public health information about the effects of massive pollution immediately after 9/11. This is the revolving door at work - a culture of corruption that is now so pervasive it affects the most basic and critical information the government is supposed to provide in order to protect the public."

Source: David Sirota.

2006-06-27T20:40:00.000-04:00

The best defense is a good offense

Paul Begala sums up a viable approach for the Democrats.

Every time the GOP says “cut and run,” Democrats should say, “rubber stamp.” Every time they say we’re weak, we should say real strength is standing up to your president and your party when American lives are on the line. When they attack our patriotism, we should challenge them to sign their kids up for the military: “Since when did the sons and daughters of working people corner the market on patriotism, Senator? If this war is so wonderful, so noble, so vital, why the hell is your son throwing up on his date at Ivy League frat parties?”

In short, Democrats can and will win the debate over the war in Iraq not by playing defense (pleading “We’re NOT for cut and run!”) but on offense: the Republican Congress has blindly backed a failed strategy that has left 2,500 Americans dead, 20,000 wounded, and put us $2 trillion in the hole.

Being part of a party that has three or four different new approaches to Iraq beats the hell out of being part of a party that marches in lockstep off a cliff.

Source: GOP on Iraq = More of the Same.

2006-06-17T00:27:00.000-04:00

Liberty vs. control

In light of recent revelations of NSA spying, Bruce Schneier explains how "privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance."

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: 'If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?'

Some clever answers: 'If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.' 'Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition.' 'Because you might do something wrong with my information.' My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

...Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Source: The Eternal Value of Privacy.

2006-06-16T07:43:00.000-04:00

Well, that's a shocker!

Maybe they are paying attention. Or maybe it's just that demon liberal media to blame.

WASHINGTON, June 13 — As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the United States, a new opinion poll has found.

...Support for the fight against terrorism led by the United States is also down, Pew found.

Although strong majorities in several countries expressed worries about Iran's nuclear intentions, in 13 of 15 countries polled, most people said the war in Iraq posed more of a danger to world peace. Russians held that view by a 2-to-1 margin.

"Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it's a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

...Only 75 percent of Americans had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while 90 percent of Western Europeans and Japanese had heard about them.

Many respondents distinguished between their largely negative feelings about President Bush and their feelings about Americans in general.

Source: Global Image of the U.S. Is Worsening, Survey Finds.

2006-06-16T07:28:00.000-04:00

Bush's real environmental legacy

2006-06-12T08:45:00.000-04:00

Cowboy George

2006-06-09T21:35:00.000-04:00

Lunatics

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the world's most unhinged lunatic. He's now dead, so that moves Ann Coulter up to first place. --David Letterman

2006-06-05T07:19:00.000-04:00

Playing to the basest (Wingnuttery, Part 2)

In their never-ending search for initiatives which ignore all the country's important problems but which arouse and incite the Far Right, the Republicans have found another red herring. "The world's going to Hades in a hand basket. We're going to debate the next three weeks, I'm told, gay marriage, a flag amendment and God only knows what else. I can't believe the American people can't see through this," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

President Bush devoted his Saturday radio speech to a cynical boost for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. It was depressing in the extreme to hear the chief executive trying to pretend, at this moment in American history, that this was a critical priority.

Mr. Bush's central point was that the nation is under siege from 'activist judges' who are striking down anti-gay-marriage laws that conflict with their own state constitutions. That's their job, just as it is the job of state legislators to either fix the laws or change their constitutions.

If there's anything the country should have learned over the past five years, it is that Mr. Bush and his supporters have no problem with judicial decisions, no matter how cutting edge, that endorse their political positions. They trot out the 'activist judge' threat only when they're worried about getting out their base on Election Day.

The aim of the president's radio address — which darkly warned that Massachusetts and San Francisco (nudge, nudge) are going to destroy marriage — is the same as the Republican leadership's plans to trot out one cultural hot button after another in the coming weeks. After gay marriage comes the push for a constitutional ban on flag burning, a solution in search of a problem if there ever was one.

All this effort to divert the nation's attention to issues that divide and distract would be bad enough if the country were not facing real, disastrous problems at home and abroad. But then, if that weren't the case, Mr. Bush probably wouldn't feel moved to stoop so low.

Divide and Conquer the Voters - New York Times.

2006-06-02T20:44:00.000-04:00

Karzai blasts U.S. for firing near protesters

Afghan president speaks out as riots persist over deadly auto accident

KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai Thursday denounced the use of gunfire by U.S. troops to suppress Afghans angered by a traffic accident involving a military truck that sparked the worst riots in the capital since the fall of the Taliban.

"The coalition opened fire, and we strongly condemn that," Karzai said in a national radio address.

Source: Associated Press via MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13027759

2006-06-02T20:24:00.000-04:00

Talk about wingnuttery

Of all the problems the country faces, the Republicans decide that cutting more taxes for millionaires is the best answer.

Gutting the estate tax only helps those who need none, at the expense of everyone else.

...Health care funding is being slashed, education money is lacking, and the most important issue for the Senate is... dropping taxes on a millionaire's inheritance?

Senate majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) wanted to hold a vote to repeal the estate tax last fall. Because of Hurricane Katrina, however, it was thought unseemly to pass yet another tax giveaway and add nearly a trillion more dollars to the deficit. Now they're back at it, though. A vote to either repeal the tax outright or else "reform" it to near extinction is planned for next week.

The issue could not be more clear-cut. The estate tax causes no one any hardship - no one even pays it unless they have more than $2 million in assets (99% of estates are not taxed at all). But erasing that tax revenue would cost our country nearly $1 trillion over the first ten years. That would cause plenty of hardship. Already we have deficits projected as far as the eye can see, and Congress is considering cuts in important programs ranging from Medicaid to education to food stamps.

Source: Take Action: Tell your senator to oppose another millionaire giveaway.

2006-05-24T07:04:00.000-04:00

Teed up for Jon Stewart

These apparently straight-faced commments are begging for ridicule on The Daily Show. (Emphasis mine.)

A Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq warns that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could damage American credibility and calls for an end to military payments to a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the investigation.

The review, by Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, was ordered after the disclosure last November that the military had paid the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based Pentagon contractor, to plant articles written by American soldiers in Iraqi publications, without disclosing the source of the articles. The contractor's work also included paying Iraqi journalists for favorable treatment.

Though the document does not mention the Lincoln Group, Admiral Van Buskirk concluded that the military should scrutinize contractors involved in the propaganda effort more closely 'to ensure proper oversight is in place.' He also faulted the military for failing to examine whether paying for placement for articles would 'undermine the concept of a free press,' in Iraq, according to the summary.

Or, as Will Rogers said, "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

Source: U.S. Urged to Stop Paying Iraqi Reporters.

2006-05-22T08:29:00.000-04:00

Do as I say

The U.S. should tell Iran in no uncertain terms that indefinite arrest without charges is wrong. Ah, that is, unless we do it.

TEHRAN, May 20 — An Iranian philosopher and writer who also holds Canadian citizenship has been detained for three weeks without formal charges, raising concerns that his arrest could signal greater repression of intellectuals.

Source: Concern in Iran After a Scholar Is Held 3 Weeks.

2006-05-22T07:20:00.000-04:00

He's talking about you, George

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. -- John Adams, Journal, 1772

2006-05-20T18:17:00.000-04:00

Right-wing cowardice

TPM contributor Matthew Yglesias makes some great points that are worth including in full. Maybe it's no coincidence that many who want to restrict freedom are also textbook chickenhawks.

'I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties,' Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) remarked at yesterday's Hayden confirmation hearings, 'but you have no civil liberties if you are dead.' This comes via Dave Weigel and nicely encapsulates at least three different pieces of horribly misguided rightingery.

First off is the sheer cowardice of it. Sure, liberal democracy is nice, but not if someone might get hurt. One might think that strong supporters of civil liberties would be willing to countenance the idea that it might be worth bearing some level of risk in order to preserve them.

Second is just this dogmatic post-9/11 insistence on acting as if human history began suddenly in 1997 or something. The United States was able to face down such threats as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany without indefinite detentions, widespread use of torture as an interrogative technique, or all-pervasive surveillance. But a smallish group of terrorists who can't even surface publicly abroad for fear they'll be swiftly killed by the mightiest military on earth? Time to break out the document shredder and do away with that pesky constitution.

Last, there's the unargued assumption that civil rights and the rule of law are some kind of near-intolerable impediment to national security. But if you look around the world over the past hundred years or so, I think you'll see that the record of democracy is pretty strong. You don't see authoritarian regimes using their superior ability to operate in secret and conduct surveillance to run roughshod over more fastidious countries. You see liberalism prospering -- both in the sense that the core liberal countries have grown richer-and-richer and in the sense that liberal democracy has consistently spread out from its original homeland since people like it better. You see governments that can operate in total secrecy falling prey to crippling corruption. You see powers of surveillance used not to defend countries from external threats, but to defend rulers from domestic political opponents.

The U.S.S.R., after all, lost the Cold War, not because we beat them in a race to the bottom to improve national security by gutting the principles of our system, but because the principles underlying our system were actually better than the alternative. If you don't have some faith the American way of life is capable of coping with actual challenges, then what's the point in defending it?

Source: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.

2006-05-16T23:50:00.000-04:00

Oh what a difference a few months makes

I'd like to hear the administration explain this, but of course, they don't have to explain anything.

In December of 2005, Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly floated an unlikely -- even brash -- idea to the Homeland Security secretary to seal off the porous southwest border.

"Why don’t you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?" O'Reilly asked.

Michael Chertoff, in those relatively calmer days before mass pro-immigration rallies, heated immigration reform politics in the Senate and cellar-dwelling opinion polls for President Bush, dismissed the idea out of hand.

"Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission," Chertoff told O'Reilly. "I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there."

Chertoff added that that it would take a huge amount of National Guard troops, that they would need new training. But couldn’t the National Guard pull it off, O'Reilly asked?

"I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem," Chertoff said. "Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way."

Source: DHS Does About-Face In Backing Use of National Guard to Seal Border:

2006-05-15T16:19:00.000-04:00

The scary ring of truth: Enemies are enemies.

Could it be possible that the Bush administration policy on electronic surveillance will be used against political opponents, media critics, the press, and the rest of us?

I think part of the issue for many people on the administration's various forms of surveillance is not just that some of activities seem to be illegal or unconstitutional on their face. I think many people are probably willing to be open-minded, for better or worse, on pushing the constitutional envelope. But given the people in charge of the executive branch today, you just can't have any confidence that these tools will be restricted to targeting terrorists. Start grabbing up phone records to data-mine for terrorists and then the tools are just too tempting for your leak investigations. Once you do that, why not just keep an eye on your critics too? After all, they're the ones most likely to get the leaks, right? So, same difference. The folks around the president don't recognize any real distinctions among those they consider enemies. So we'd be foolish to think they wouldn't bring these tools to bear on all of them. Once you set aside the law as your guide for action and view the president's will as a source of legitimacy in itself, then everything becomes possible and justifiable.

Source: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.

2006-05-15T07:22:00.000-04:00

Movie Plot Threats vs. Reality

Security expert Bruce Schneier should be the next CIA director--or at least a top-level Presidential security advisor. He combines thorough analysis with common sense. (Which obviously disqualifies him from this administration.)

In my book, Beyond Fear, I discussed five different tendencies people have to exaggerate risks: to believe that something is more risky than it actually is.

1. People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.
2. People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation.
3. Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.
4. People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can't control.
5. People overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

The best plot ideas leverage one or more of those tendencies. Big-ticket attacks leverage the first. Infrastructure and low-tech attacks leverage the fourth. And every attack tries to leverage the fifth, especially those attacks that go on and on.

Source: Crypto-Gram Newsletter.

2006-05-14T14:40:00.000-04:00

Treason, indeed

Frank Rich writes that any "witch hunt" for traitors should begin in the White House. Shrill, maybe, but it's hard to find fault in his argument.

'What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude,' Rich writes.

'It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press' exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security,' Rich continues. 'That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin.'

Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss should not be allowed to 'escape into retirement unexamined,' Rich argues, calling him 'so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaida double agent.'

'His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate CIA intelligence on Iraq before the war,' Rich writes.

Rich ends his column by suggesting that if Air Force General Michael Hayden is confirmed by the Senate to replace Goss then 'someone should charge those senators with treason, too.'

Source: The Raw Story | Times' Frank Rich: Any 'witch hunt' for traitors should begin in the White House.

2006-05-14T10:09:00.000-04:00

The truth (probably) about Iran's nuclear program

That noted foreign relations expert, Scott Adams, seems to have nailed it. I certainly trust him more than Condi W. Cheneyfeld.

Iran claims it doesn't plan to build any nuclear weapons. They say they only want nuclear technology for energy. The United States and lots of other folks believe it's all a trick to get nuclear weapons and hand them out to terrorists, or possibly just nuke Israel for fun.

I'm a distrustful, cynical guy, so my first impulse is to assume the Iranians are lying. But that would require me to believe that my own government is telling the truth, and that's a tough sell too. I'm genuinely embarrassed to admit that it's a toss up.

The part that really threw me is that the President of Iran says that their ruling mullahs have issued a fatwah (ruling) that says Iran won't build nuclear weapons. I'm going to surprise you by saying that I think they mean it. I base that opinion on the following:

I think that the Iranian religious leaders value their credibility with their own people. It's one thing to make outrageous and unsupportable claims about your enemies; that stuff is generally believed and has a low risk of being discredited within Iran. But it's a risky lie to tell your citizens you aren't building a nuke and then suddenly include one in the next parade. That's flat-out lying, and it would make a mockery of the whole fatwah system.

This is not to say the Iranian nuclear efforts are innocent. I spent 16 years in corporate America and I can spot weasel-words half a world away, even in Farsi. I think the truth is that the Iranians plan to build all the capability to quickly slap together a nuke, but stop short of assembling and testing it unless there is a specific threat. That gives the mullahs some wiggle room to later issue another fatwah saying the situation has changed and now it's okay to build some nukes for self defense. And they never need to lie.

Source: The Dilbert Blog: Iran's Nukes.

2006-05-12T19:25:00.000-04:00

A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead

This following passage is from a 2004 commencement address given by Theodore Sorenson. Being outraged is easy. Being outraged and a great writer is a gift.

...This is a cry from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country's goodness and therefore its greatness. Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn - toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon. For me the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. ...

The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us. ... The stain on our credibility, our reputation for decency and integrity, will not quickly wash away. ...

What has happened to our country? We have been in wars before, without resorting to sexual humiliation as torture, without blocking the Red Cross, without insulting and deceiving our allies and the U.N., without betraying our traditional values, without imitating our adversaries, without blackening our name around the world. ...

Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein - politically, economically, diplomatically, much as we succeeded in isolating Khadafy, Marcos, Mobutu and a host of other dictators over the years, we have isolated ourselves. We are increasingly alone in a dangerous world in which millions who once respected us now hate us. ...

All this is rationalized as part of the war on terror. But abusing prisoners in Iraq, denying detainees their legal rights in Guantanamo, even American citizens, misleading the world at large about Saddam's ready stockpiles of mass destruction and involvement with al Qaeda at 9/11, did not advance by one millimeter our efforts to end the threat of another terrorist attack upon us. On the contrary, our conduct invites and incites new attacks and new recruits to attack us. ...

We are no longer the world's leaders on matters of international law and peace. After we stopped listening to others, they stopped listening to us. A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no one will follow.

Source: The Village Voice: Power Plays.

2006-05-08T07:27:00.000-04:00

Deeply, deeply flawed

Malice, greed, incompetence, followed by continued cover-up. When will it end?

We've been waiting for well over two years for the Senate Intelligence Committee to finally hold the Bush administration accountable for the fairy tales it told about Saddam Hussein's weapons. Republican leaders keep saying it is a waste of time to find out whether President Bush and other top officials deliberately misled the world. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's bizarre responses the other day to questions about that very issue were a timely reminder of why this investigation needs to be completed promptly, thoroughly and fairly.

...Ray McGovern, an analyst for 27 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, stood in the audience and asked why Mr. Rumsfeld lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The secretary shot back, "I did not lie." Then, even though no one asked about them, he said Colin Powell and Mr. Bush offered "their honest opinion" based on "weeks and weeks" of time with the C.I.A. "I'm not in the intelligence business," he said, adding, "It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there."

First, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Period. Second, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Powell spent long weeks with the C.I.A., whose analysts were largely cut out of the decision making. And that was because, third, Mr. Rumsfeld was, and is, very much in the intelligence business.

The Defense Department controls most of the intelligence budget and is the biggest user of intelligence. Mr. Rumsfeld also set up his own intelligence agency within the Pentagon when the C.I.A. and the State Department refused to tell him what he wanted to hear about Iraq. It was that office's distortions that formed the basis for what the administration told Congress and the public.

In Atlanta, Mr. Rumsfeld denied ever saying flatly that there were dangerous weapons in Iraq. Actually, he did, many times, even as late as March 30, 2003. On Sept. 27, 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld said there was "bulletproof" evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, including that Iraq had trained Qaeda agents in chemical and biological warfare, and he repeated that myth in response to Mr. McGovern.

...Beyond dragging out the process further, the intent, obviously, is to suggest that Mr. Bush said the same things that Democratic senators and others did. That has no significance. They did not decide to have a war and had access only to the sanitized intelligence fed to them by the administration. Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush's father did think there were dangerous weapons in Iraq — back in the 20th century. By the time the war started, those weapons had long been eliminated by inspections and sanctions.

It is worth knowing why policy makers failed to anticipate the insurgency and other postwar nightmares, but the structure of this part of the investigation is flawed as well. The Senate investigation of Mr. Chalabi's involvement is limited to "intelligence products," which the C.I.A. produces. But it was not the C.I.A. that predicted rose petals in Baghdad and a virtually problem-free transition to democracy; it was Mr. Chalabi and his henchmen, creatures of Mr. Rumsfeld's team at the Pentagon. And it was the intelligence business that Mr. Rumsfeld now pretends not to run that used Mr. Chalabi's myths in an attempt to rebut the skeptical State Department and make dubious information seem more reliable.

It was helpful of Mr. Rumsfeld to remind us why this inquiry is still so important. The least Mr. Roberts and his committee can do is to finish the flawed investigation and make the results public.

Source: The Intelligence Business.

2006-05-07T07:35:00.000-04:00

Lie extensions

It's campaign contributions that pay for themselves.

2006-05-04T16:46:00.000-04:00

Yet another Colbert commentary

It seems that TIME's TV critic, James Poniewozik, actually "gets it."

To the audience that would watch Colbert on Comedy Central, the pained, uncomfortable, perhaps-a-little-scared-to-laugh reaction shots were not signs of failure. They were the money shots. They were the whole point.

In other words, what anyone fails to get who said Colbert bombed because he didn't win over the room is: the room no longer matters. Not the way it used to. The room, which once would have received and filtered the ritual performance for the rest of us, is now just another subject to be dissected online. Colbert--as he might say on The Colbert Report--'gets it.' So does his patron, Jon Stewart, who similarly was said to have bombed at the Oscars because he turned off the stars in the theater with a snide performance that was much funnier to the (much bigger and more relevant) audience at home.

All of this, in other words, is yet another sign of how authority is fragmented and democratized in the Internet era--the top-down authority to assess and interpret for the masses that used to be much of the raison d'etre of the room. So if the room wasn't too amused by Colbert Saturday night, you'll have to excuse them. They don't have as much to laugh about anymore.

Source: TIME.com: Stephen Colbert and the Death of "The Room".

2006-05-03T22:02:00.000-04:00

From Orwell to Colbert

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
- George Orwell

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
- Bertrand Russell

Fox believes in presenting both sides--the President's side and the Vice President's side.
- Steven Colbert

2006-05-03T07:02:00.000-04:00

The well-known liberal bias of reality

Thanks to the blogosphere, Colbert's roasting of the President could not be ignored by the media. If looks could kill.

What Mr. Smith did not anticipate, he said, was that Mr. Colbert's nearly 20-minute address would become one of the most hotly debated topics in the politically charged blogosphere. Mr. Colbert delivered his remarks in character as the Bill O'Reillyesque commentator he plays on 'The Colbert Report,' although this time his principal foil, President Bush, was just a few feet away.

...At issue was a heavily nuanced, often ironic performance by Mr. Colbert, who got in many licks at the president — on the invasion of Iraq, on the administration's penchant for secrecy, on domestic eavesdropping — with lines that sounded supportive of Mr. Bush but were quickly revealed to be anything but.

...Meanwhile, on its Web site, the trade journal Editor & Publisher posted more than a dozen letters from readers under a headline that reflected the broad range of electronic opinion: "Colbert Offensive, Colbert Mediocre, Colbert a Hero, Colbert Vicious, Colbert Brave." Mr. Colbert's employer, Comedy Central, said it had received nearly 2,000 e-mail messages by Monday morning — a response, it said, rivaled only by the contentious appearance nearly two years ago of Jon Stewart, Mr. Colbert's comedy patron, on the now-defunct CNN shout-fest "Crossfire."

Source: After Press Dinner, the Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter.

2006-05-02T07:21:00.000-04:00

Speaking Truthiness to The Man

Jon Stewart's protege did him proud. Embarrassing both the press and the President at once was a masterpiece.

Stephen Colbert was the star attraction at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night, and his performance was thrilling or insulting or uncomfortable, depending on your point of view. Apparently, according to Editor and Publisher.com, President and Mrs. Bush looked very uncomfortable, and quickly left right afterward.

But the mainstream media is apparently ignoring this part of the evening, and instead is covering the early entertainment where Bush and a look-alike imitator do a 'he says this, he's really thinking this' routine. Moderately amusing, but very mild.

This, by the way, is the same Washington event where Bush previously charmed many (and horrified others) by pretending to have trouble finding Weapons of Mass Destruction (after we'd started to realize they weren't in Iraq), and wandered the room looking under tables. Really cute, huh? They should send videos of that to the families of soldiers killed.

The media's ignoring Colbert's effect at the White House Correspondents Dinner is a very clear example of what others have called the media's penchant for buying into the conservative/rightwing 'narrative.'

In this instance, the 'narrative' is that President Bush, for all his missteps, has a darling sense of humor and is a real regular guy, able to poke delightful fun at himself and his penchant for mis-using and mispronouncing words.

Who cares if he lied to start a war? (Or chose to ignore all contrary opinion, which as far as war-starting goes, is pretty crummy.) Who cares if he declares he's above the law, and according to the Boston Globe yesterday there are something like 750 laws he's decided don't apply to him as 'Commander-in-Chief'?

The Globe article's first sentence: "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution."

If the President doesn't obey the law, what the heck is he? He's a dictator in a coup, I think -- but no matter, according to the media, he's A-DOR-ABLE!

Some of my favorite clips from Colbert's speech:

Every night on my show, the Colbert report, I speak straight from the gut, ok? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the no fact zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term.

...Now, I know there's some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

...I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

...The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man's beliefs never will.

And as excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side.

...Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the affect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions, he's the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home.

Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction.

Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

...And we can't forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq. Got some big shoes to fill, Tony. Scott McClellan could say nothing like nobody else.

Source: Chris Durang: Ignoring Colbert, Part Two.

2006-04-28T07:07:00.000-04:00

Incompetence Profiteering

Halliburton subsidiary KBR has done okay as others have suffered. Its revenues "have exploded thanks to the post-9/11 wars, from $5.1 billion in 2002 to $10.1 billion in 2005--about half of all Halliburton revenues."

So, should you buy KBR's stock? The margins aren't great, its sweetheart contracts may be a thing of the past, and its patrons are in decline. But hey, that's all history. And stocks are famously about the future. Dick Cheney may be gone from the scene in 2008. But his legacy--the occupation of Iraq, the outsourcing of vital government functions, and higher energy prices fueled in part by global instability and a refusal to commit to conservation--will last long beyond that. What's more, KBR--the Constant Contractor--has achieved a perfect synergy between its diversified businesses. Global instability and American war policies boost demand for its logistics and support services in Iraq. These policies also help keep energy prices high, which stimulates investment in the oil, gas, and petrochemical sectors. KBR's stock is, in effect, a leveraged bet on the Bush administration's continued incompetence at dealing with the twin issues of energy security and the Middle East.

Source: War profiteering--harder than it looks.

2006-04-27T07:19:00.000-04:00

Second Thoughts in Congress on Oil Tax Breaks

Well, duh!

Of course, the "second thoughts" are about the flack they are now getting, not really about the huge tax giveaways for fat-cat oilmen.

WASHINGTON, April 26 — As anxiety spread in Congress on Wednesday over soaring oil prices, lawmakers in both parties said they were ready to take a tough look at oil and gas incentives they passed as recently as eight months ago.

Citing record industry profits and huge executive pay packages, the top Republican and top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service to turn over tax returns for the nation's 15 biggest oil and gas companies.

Leading Republicans echoed President Bush's call Tuesday to trim about $2 billion in tax breaks Congress passed as part of the energy bill last August. Several prominent Democrats, not to be outdone, pushed for repealing oil and gas tax breaks worth more than $10 billion over the next five years.

...Mr. Bush also called for repealing several hundred million dollars in subsidies, also in the energy bill, for an industry-run deepwater drilling research center in Sugar Land, Tex. That project's biggest champion was Representative Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader whose district includes Sugar Land.

Many Democrats had opposed the new tax breaks all along, and Senate Democrats pushed for a provision that would trim them in a broader tax bill that the Senate passed last fall. But that provision was not approved by the House.

On Wednesday, leading Republicans made it clear they were now willing and even eager to eliminate some of those tax breaks.

"I am happy to repeal tax breaks for the development of oil in foreign countries," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "I cannot support the concept of tax breaks for oil companies while some American families are searching their budgets for the extra cash they need to fill their gas tanks."

Source: Second Thoughts in Congress on Oil Tax Breaks - New York Times.

2006-04-26T10:36:00.000-04:00

Pure Theater, Pure Greed

Raise your hand if you think the President is now concerned about the rising cost of gas for the average citizen. Hmm...didn't think so.

Let's get something straight: the President's proposed investigation into gasoline price gouging is straight theatre. Not just because, as Matt noted, the Bush White House and the Republican Congress are funded by (and composed of) oilmen, but because gouging simply isn't the issue. At best, an investigation into unfair pricing practices will turn up a handful of malicious station owners jacking up the price. That, however, isn't what's driving high oil costs. Fears about peak oil, about Iraq, about Iran, about Venezuela, and all the rest are doing most of the work forcing prices upwards (if we so much as touch Iran, pump prices will shoot skyward). In addition, India, China, and others are requiring more and more crude, further inflating prices.

Worse yet, the light, sweet crude -- the easily-pumped, low-sulphur, cheaply-refined oil the industry prefers (see this for more) -- is becoming harder to find and trickier to extract. Take a look at this chart tracking the cost. Notice the trend line? That, not price gouging, is raising pump prices. Less light, sweet crude means the shortfall must be made up with heavy, sour crude, which is more expensive and inefficient to refine.

This isn't about price gouging, it's about increased instability in and demand for a finite product. Bush and the Republican Congress want credit for doing something, so they'll hold some show hearings. But as the days get longer and the summer months, with their high gas prices, arrive, a couple photo-ops won't do much to distract voters from pump prices nearing $4.

Source: PRICE GOUGING FOR FUN AND POLITICAL PROFIT.

2006-04-26T07:13:00.000-04:00

Unscientific American Man of the Year

2006-04-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

First bomb them, then rob them (and us)

The magnitude of corruption occurring in post-invasion Iraq is unprecedented. It is amazing that Americans are practically unaware of the billions of taxpayer dollars that are going to both US and Iraqi war profiteers and crooks.

The great liberator of Iraq was actually the hyena that cleaned out the nation.

Piece by piece, Halliburton over here, a corrupt company over there, we have heard various individual cases of overcharging and fraud by American firms in the reconstruction of Iraq. Last weekend, a Globe story connected some of the dots of corruption. Of $20.7 billion in Iraqi bank accounts and oil revenues seized by the Coalition Provisional Authority in the US-led invasion of Iraq, $14 billion was given out for reconstruction but tens of millions of dollars were unaccounted for. A year ago, an audit by the inspector general found no evidence of work done or goods delivered on 154 of 198 contracts. Sixty cases of potential swindles are under investigation.

Halliburton and its hundreds of millions of dollars of overcharges or baseless costs are well known. But millions more were taken by companies that promised to build or restore libraries or police facilities, or deliver trucks and construction equipment. Money was given to the puppet government with no follow-up. US government investigators can account for only a third of the $1.5 billion given by the CPA to the interim government and it appears that a substantial portion of the $8 billion given to Iraqi ministries went to "ghost employees."

Because of the way the United States set things up after the invasion, contractors are immune from prosecution by Iraqis. And even when firms are prosecuted, the millions of dollars in fines go to the US Treasury, not the Iraqi people. It amounts to two invasions. First the bombs. Then the banks.

This is robbery, not reconstruction.

Source: Robbery_not_reconstruction_in_Iraq - The Boston Globe