November 05, 2008

Fox Reporter: Palin Thought Africa Was A Country

Politics

It's even worse than you thought:

Interesting that Fox is leading the way on this. Sounds like somebody wants to send Palin back to Alaska before she can do any more damage.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

The Onion Strikes Again

Humor & Fun  Politics

Ah, The Onion:

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

"Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, 'Things are finally as terrible as we're willing to tolerate," said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. "To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these last eight years must have really broken you."

Added Obama, "It's a great day for our nation."

Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.

Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election.

According to a CNN exit poll, 42 percent of voters said that the nation's financial woes had finally become frightening enough to eclipse such concerns as gay marriage, while 30 percent said that the relentless body count in Iraq was at last harrowing enough to outweigh long ideological debates over abortion. In addition, 28 percent of voters were reportedly too busy paying off medical bills, desperately trying not to lose their homes, or watching their futures disappear to dismiss Obama any longer.

"The election of our first African-American president truly shows how far we've come as a nation," said NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. "Just eight years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable. But finally we, as a country, have joined together, realized we've reached rock bottom, and for the first time voted for a candidate based on his policies rather than the color of his skin."

"Today Americans have grudgingly taken a giant leap forward," Williams continued. "And all it took was severe economic downturn, a bloody and unjust war in Iraq, terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, nearly 2,000 deaths in New Orleans, and more than three centuries of frequently violent racial turmoil."

Said Williams, "The American people should be commended for their long-overdue courage."

Obama's victory is being called the most significant change in politics since the 1992 election, when a full-scale economic recession led voters to momentarily ignore the fact that candidate Bill Clinton had once smoked marijuana. While many believed things had once again reached an all-time low in 2004, the successful reelection of President George W. Bush — despite historically low approval ratings nationwide — proved that things were not quite shitty enough to challenge the already pretty shitty status quo.

"If Obama learned one thing from his predecessors, it's that timing means everything," said Dr. James Pung, a professor of political science at Princeton University. "Less than a decade ago, Al Gore made the crucial mistake of suggesting we should care about preserving the environment before it became unavoidably clear that global warming would kill us all, and in 2004, John Kerry cost himself the presidency by criticizing Bush's disastrous Iraq policy before everyone realized our invasion had become a complete and total quagmire."

"Obama had the foresight to run for president at a time when being an African-American was not as important to Americans as, say, the ability to clothe and feed their children," Pung continued. "An election like this only comes once, maybe twice, in a lifetime."

As we enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S. history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that person is not a woman.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

November 03, 2008

Why I'm Voting For Obama

Musings  Politics

I'm going to vote for Barack Obama. But you probably guessed that.

A few readers have, from time to time, chastised me for my enthusiasm for Obama, so I'd like to explain.

First off, I'm not someone who believes that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. On the contrary. No national election is ever going to be decided by a single vote, so I think you should vote for the candidate you believe in. People say that's wasting your vote, but you can just as well argue it's the other way around. When your vote is one of a hundred million, it counts for a lot less than when it's one of a million or two. In that sense, a vote for a third party candidate counts more, not less. But, people always say, what if everyone thought that way? Well, then we'd elect the candidate we really want, not the lesser of two evils.

So that's how I've voted most of my adult life. Usually, but not always. Sometimes the choice is so stark that I have to go with the lesser of two evils, quite deliberately. So I voted for Nader in 2000, but in 2004 I felt I had to vote for Kerry. I had no illusions about Kerry, but the evil of the Bush presidency was just too great. I knew the effect of my vote would be infinitesimal, but it was at least something.

I understand that the Democrats and Republicans are in many ways two wings of one Corporate Party, and I realize full well that most of today's Democratic politicians are basically what Republicans used to be before the Republicans swung so hard to the right. That said, I don't buy that there's no difference between the parties. If Gore had become president in 2000, for example, he never would have invaded Iraq. It never would have even occurred to him. The Democrats aren't progressives (there are a few exceptions), but they are better than the Republicans on most of the issues I care about. Of course that's faint praise indeed.

So a Democratic president is preferable to a Republican president, but that still doesn't explain my vote. After all, as I said, my one vote won't affect the outcome. So why vote for Obama? And why enthusiastically?

At bottom, I think it's not so much the laundry list of Obama's positions, it's more a question of who Obama is and what an Obama presidency will mean for this country.

First, as to who Obama is. I think he is self-evidently a man of rare gifts, with a level of emotional intelligence and maturity that is unequaled in American public life. He is a true grown-up, in the finest sense of the word. He embodies grace. It may sound like I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but that's what I sense in the man. And I am obviously not alone.

Second, as to what an Obama presidency will mean for the country. Think of where we've come as a nation. American politics has become so cheapened, so coarsened, so brutalized and corrupted and dumbed down that I think it will take a leader with Obama's gifts to pull us back from the brink. Think what it will mean to have a leader who appeals to what is best in us and not what is worst, who talks to us like fellow citizens of a great democracy, not like members of Jerry Springer's studio audience, and who genuinely wants government to succeed.

There are lots of other reasons why an Obama presidency will be good for America — Obama's standing in the eyes of the world; the transformative effect his presidency will have on American attitudes about race; Supreme Court nominations — but for me it's really more personal. It's the reasons I gave above. And it's this: I want to live in a country where Barack Obama is president.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:11 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this  

November 02, 2008

Palin's Greatest Hits

Politics

Beating a dead horse, maybe, but:

Just how cocky do you have to be to put yourself in a position where you are so utterly out of your depth?

Posted by Jonathan at 12:55 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Cheney Endorses McCain

Politics

Dick Cheney left his undisclosed location long enough to endorse John McCain.

Guess which campaign was quick to capitalize:

The kiss of death. What genius in the McCain campaign thought it would help?

Posted by Jonathan at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Palin Punk'd

Humor & Fun  Politics

Sarah Palin gets a prank call from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and she never catches on:

Yes, it's for real.

This is who they want to put a heartbeat away.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 29, 2008

Charles Meets Barack

Politics

Brought tears to my eyes:

[Via Digby]

Posted by Jonathan at 12:00 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

October 23, 2008

Polls: Obama Up Double Digits In Big Ten States

Politics

I was about to do a post on this, but I see AmericaBlog already has one. So read it there.

Compare the two maps. What a difference a month makes.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Amazing Factoid

Politics

Hard to believe, but true.

When was the last time a Republican won the presidency without a Bush or a Nixon on the ticket?

Answer after the jump.

1928!

That's 80 years ago.

(Source)

Posted by Jonathan at 04:00 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

October 20, 2008

It's Getting Ugly Out There

Politics

Cause for alarm:

[Via Digby]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:22 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Blocking The Vote

Politics  Vote Fraud

Bobby Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast have an important article at Rolling Stone on Republican efforts to block millions of Democratic voters from casting their votes. Here's a video that tells a little of the story:

I've never understood why Democrats lie down for this stuff. Are they really that afraid of being called cry babies? Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004 — two Presidential elections stolen. Are Democrats too nice? Are they in on the fix? What? I just don't get it.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:15 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Krugman On The Real Plumbers Of Ohio

Economy  Politics

Paul Krugman looks past Joe the Plumber to ask how the real plumbers of Ohio are making out. NYT:

[W]hat's really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?

First of all, they aren't making a lot of money....[A]ccording to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of "plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters" in Ohio was $47,930.

Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber's income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.

Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.

And bear in mind that all these data pertain to 2007 — which was as good as it got in recent years. Now that the "Bush boom," such as it was, is over, we can see that it achieved a dismal distinction: for the first time on record, an economic expansion failed to raise most Americans' incomes above their previous peak.

Since then, of course, things have gone rapidly downhill, as millions of working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. And all indicators suggest that things will get much worse in the months and years ahead.

So what does all this say about the candidates? Who's really standing up for Ohio’s plumbers?

Mr. McCain claims that Mr. Obama's policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush's policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, Mr. McCain proposes continuing Mr. Bush's policies in all essential respects, and he shares Mr. Bush's anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.

What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber’s complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Mr. Obama?...[T]he typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.

I don't want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.

But that's the point. Whatever today's G.O.P. is, it isn't the party of working Americans.

The people who show up at McCain/Palin rallies are mostly the very people who would do better under Obama. But when McCain sneers that Obama "believes in redistributing wealth," the crowds erupt with outraged boos. Maybe they should stop for once and think.

McCain, too, believes in redistributing wealth. He just believes in redistributing it in the other direction, away from the people at his campain stops and toward the already wealthy — away from Joe the plumber and toward Richie the hedge fund manager.

And they boo Obama?

Posted by Jonathan at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 19, 2008

The Right On Colin Powell

Politics

You've no doubt seen that lifelong Republican Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama.

How do people like George Will and Rush Limbaugh react? By writing it off as a race thing.

Deep thinkers.

Here's what Powell had to say about the McCain/Palin campaign:

Good for him.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 18, 2008

Somebody Finally Asks McCain About Gordon Liddy

Politics

By the McCain campaign's own bogus standard, John McCain "pals around with terrorists."

McCain has a long-standing relationship with G. Gordon Liddy, who was sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison for his role in the Watergate break-in. Liddy also urged the Watergate conspirators to firebomb the Brookings Institution and assassinate columnist Jack Anderson.

In 1994, Liddy told listeners of his radio show, "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

Nodody asks McCain about his relationship with Liddy, though.

But finally somebody did. Media Matters:

Finally, for the first time this year, a prominent media figure asked John McCain about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy last night.

The lack of media attention to the Liddy-McCain relationship is one of the clearest double standards in recent political history. McCain and the news media have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to Barack Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, yet until last night, McCain hadn't been asked a single question about his ties to Liddy, a convicted felon who has instructed his listeners on how best to shoot law-enforcement agents. Liddy has held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and describes the Arizona senator as an "old friend"; McCain has said he is "proud" of Liddy.

Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had said he was "proud" of an "old friend" who urged people to shoot law-enforcement agents in the head. Do you think maybe he would have been asked a question or three about it? Do you think maybe there would have been more than the occasional passing mention in the news of the relationship? Of course there would have been.

Yet McCain hasn't been questioned about Liddy. The media have largely ignored the relationship, even while working themselves into a frenzy about Obama and Ayers. McCain's relationship with Liddy is obviously newsworthy in its own right, but coupled with his attacks on Obama over Ayers, it's a textbook case of hypocrisy -- exactly the sort of thing that political reporters supposedly drool over. But not when it's John McCain. [...]

Until last night, when McCain was finally asked, point-blank, about his relationship to Liddy and the similarities between that relationship and the Obama-Ayers relationship he has attacked so harshly.

Who finally asked the question? The New York Times? The Washington Post? CNN's "best political team on television"?

Nope.

David Letterman asked McCain about Liddy, putting the nation's journalists to shame in the process.

Here's the video:

I love how McCain first tries to pretend Liddy is someone he's only met. When Letterman asks about the fundraiser at Liddy's house, McCain acts like it's news to him. Pretty much exactly what he keeps accusing Obama of: initially minimizing what turns out to be a more substantive relationship. Except in McCain's case, we're not talking about a guy (Liddy) whose actions occurred when McCain was only eight years old.

None of this has any real importance. But the double standard — that is just maddening.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Freaking Amazing

Politics

Go check out this photo of the crowd at Obama's speech today in St. Louis. Holy cow.

Obama is going to be here in Madison on Thursday. Can't wait.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Why The ACORN Flap Is So Stupid

Politics

Some of ACORN's voter registration workers put bogus names like "Mickey Mouse" on some of their lists of new registered voters. They did this, no doubt, because they got paid by the name.

The McCain campaign and the Right generally have been screaming that this is voter fraud and even a threat to democracy itself.

But think about it. The bogus names aren't names of people who are actually going to try to vote. Who's going to show up at the polls and claim to be Mickey Mouse?

ACORN got cheated out of some money. That's all. It will have absolutely no effect on votes cast. None.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:09 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Obama Tax Calculator

Politics

Want an estimate of how you'd fare under the Obama and McCain tax plans? Go here.

If only paying taxes were that easy.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 16, 2008

I Wish Obama's Positions Were More Like Nader's

Politics

I really hope Barack Obama wins. A McCain/Palin victory would be a nightmare. Literally.

That said, I wish Obama's positions were more like Ralph Nader's.

Nader's campaign website today points out a few important things about last night's debate. When McCain challenged Obama to name some occasions when he had stood up to the leaders of his own party, Obama said he voted for tort reform and clean coal technology. As Nader's people put it, by voting for tort reform Obama "stood with the National Association of Manufacturers against injured people." And by voting for clean coal technology, he "stood with the polluting coal industry against people who suffer the consequences." In both cases, he voted like a Republican, putting the interests of corporations over the interests of people.

They continue:

When McCain accused Obama of supporting a single payer, Canadian style national health insurance system, Obama said he didn’t.

And he doesn’t.

Despite the fact that a majority of doctors, nurses and the American people want it.

On national health insurance, Obama stands with the insurance industry and against the American people who are demanding single payer.

Over 5,000 U.S. physicians have signed an open letter calling on the candidates for president and Congress "to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system." (Here's the ad that ran in the New Yorker magazine.)

Obama says no.

I can't say I wish Ralph Nader would become president instead of Barack Obama. And I don't expect Obama — or anyone else — to be perfect. But I do wish Obama's positions were more like Nader's. That would be something.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 14, 2008

Olbermann: McCain Campaign "Tacitly Inciting Lunatics To Violence"

Politics

Keith Olbermann brings it:

(Source)

I hate to even mention the A-word, but if McCain and Palin keep on going like they're going it will be hard not to conclude that they're trying to get Obama killed. An outrageous accusation, I realize, but they're not idiots. They see what they are stirring up, and yet they continue. If they're not actually trying to get him killed, clearly they are at least willing to run that risk. It's beyond despicable.

If you're too young to remember the assassinations of the sixties, this may all sound like hysteria. But believe me, it's all too real. By labeling Obama a terrorist and a traitor, they've not only given tacit permission for him to be assassinated, they've made it so whoever does it will be a hero defending the homeland. If that's not an invitation to violence, I don't know what is.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:29 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Backlash: Independents Deserting McCain/Palin

Politics

A new CBS poll has Obama up by 14. The swing to Obama is due to a huge swing among independents, who've been turned off by McCain's negative campaigning and his choice of Sarah Palin. CBS:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is entering the third and final presidential debate Wednesday with a wide lead over Republican rival John McCain nationally, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows.

The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.

Among independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign - the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.

McCain's campaign strategy may be hurting hurt him: Twenty-one percent of voters say their opinion of the Republican has changed for the worse in the last few weeks. The top two reasons cited for the change of heart are McCain's attacks on Obama and his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate.

The hate message of the McCain/Palin campaign is hurting them enormously, but they continue. It's scorched earth, and it just may wind up getting somebody killed.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Two Minutes Hate

Politics

McCain/Palin rallies are invoking an ugly, Brownshirt vibe that is very, very dangerous.

This is an extremist brand of politics that should be shunned by all decent people. What they're stirring up isn't going to just evaporate come November 5th.

So much for Country First.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:59 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

October 10, 2008

"My Fellow Prisoners"

Politics

WTF?

Posted by Jonathan at 12:23 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 09, 2008

Bush To "Assure" The Country

Economy  Politics

This should knock another thousand off the Dow (Bloomberg):

President George W. Bush will address the nation tomorrow to tell Americans they should remain "confident" amid falling stock markets and a worldwide credit crisis, administration spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The president wants to "assure" the country that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other administration officials are taking "every effort to stabilize our financial system," Perino said.

"Economic officials are aggressively taking every action," she said. "The Treasury is moving quickly to use new tools to improve liquidity, which is the root cause of this problem."

The timing of the statement, spurred by "volatility" in the U.S. markets today, hasn't been set, Perino said, adding that it likely will take place about 10 a.m.

"Volatility." Hah.

Pretty hilarious, actually, in the bitterest kind of way. Nothing says "assure" to the country like seeing Dubya on the teevee.

But maybe it's not such a good idea to keep reminding people of all the stunningly drastic steps government is taking. Not when people can see none of it's working. If this stuff isn't even making a dent, could be we're really up shit's creek.

Let's give Krugman the last word:

And by the way: liquidity is not the root cause of this problem. It's terrifying that the Bush administration still thinks it is.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Tracking Poll

Politics

Gallup's daily tracking poll has Obama up 11.

Three day rolling average, so it doesn't yet fully reflect the last debate, nor, of course, today's rout in the stock market.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 08, 2008

"That One"

Humor & Fun  Politics

Now in four sizes.

[Thanks, Kevin]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 07, 2008

He Knows, He Knows

Politics

Debate drinking game: every time McCain says "I know how to..." — as in, "I know how to fix the economy" or "I know how to fix Social Security" or "I know how to win the war" — but then doesn't let us in on the magic formula.

He thinks we're morons.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:04 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

The Party Of Economic Growth

Economy  Politics

I'm always interested in things that "everybody knows" that turn out to be flat wrong.

"Everybody knows" that the Republican Party is the party of economic growth, with Ronald Reagan as patron saint. But here are the last 13 presidents ranked by the rate of growth in per capita real GDP (via Angry Bear):

1. FDR
2. LBJ
3. JFK
4. Clinton
5. Reagan
6. Carter
7. Nixon
8. Eisenhower
9. Dubya
10. Ford
11. Bush Sr.
12. Truman
13. Hoover

Notice anything?

FDR, bête noire of Republicans everywhere, tops the list and nobody else even comes close. From 1932 through 1944, real per capita GDP grew 8.05% per year. But maybe it was the war? From 1932 to 1940, the growth rate was 5.37% per year, more than twice Reagan's rate.

LBJ's rate was 3.98%, about 1.6 times Reagan's rate. JFK's rate was 2.65%, and so on.

FDR and LBJ, who increased the federal government's role in social programs more than any other presidents, by far, were the heavyweight champs of economic growth, by far.

But "everybody knows" social programs kill economic growth.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

A Rout

Politics

Town hall format was supposed to be McCain's forte, but so far this thing is a rout. McCain sounds completely out of his depth; Obama is masterful.

No contest.

What do you all think?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:08 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this  

Polls

Politics

My friend Maurice turned me on to fivethirtyeight.com, the best site I've seen for poll results/analysis for the 2008 election.

Today's numbers are outstanding for Obama: up 13 in New Hampshire, 12 in Virgina, 11 in Pennsylvania, 7 in Florida, 6 in Ohio, North Carolina, and Colorado, 3 in Missouri. If these numbers hold, Obama wins the electoral college in a landslide.

[Thanks, Maurice]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

October 06, 2008

A Question Of Character

Politics

Maybe you think of John McCain as basically a pretty heroic guy who only recently sold his soul, turning his back on a career as a straight-talking, reformist "maverick." If you live in America, it's hard not to have internalized the McCain brand, at least in part. But it's a load of bull. Tom Dickinson has a long article at Rolling Stone that's a real eye-opener. All his life, McCain, like Dubya, has used family connections to fail upward. But if Bush is Fredo Corleone, McCain is Sonny, a hot-headed, reckless, womanizing crook, violent, impulsive, and corrupt. The article traces McCain's personal history and there's too much to summarize here — you really need to go read it — but let me quote the initial anecdote:

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says. "Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

And the article's conclusion:

MR. FLIP-FLOP

In the end, the essential facts of John McCain's life and career — the pivotal experiences in which he demonstrated his true character — are important because of what they tell us about how he would govern as president. Far from the portrayal he presents of himself as an unflinching maverick with a consistent and reliable record, McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career. He "is the classic opportunist," according to Ross Perot, who worked closely with McCain on POW issues. "He's always reaching for attention and glory."

McCain has worked hard to deny such charges. "They're drinking the Kool-Aid that somehow I have changed positions on the issues," he said of his critics at the end of August. The following month, when challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. "What specific area have I quote 'changed'?" he demanded. "Nobody can name it."

In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.

In March, McCain insisted to The Wall Street Journal that he is "always for less regulation." In September, with the government forced to bail out the nation's largest insurance companies and brokerage houses, McCain declared that he would regulate the financial industry and end the "casino culture on Wall Street." He did a similar about-face on Bush's tax cuts, opposing them when he planned to run against Bush in 2001, then declaring that he wants to make them larger — and permanent — when he needed to win the support of anti-tax conservatives this year. "It's a big flip-flop," conceded tax abolitionist Grover Norquist. "But I'm happy he's flopped."

In June of this year, McCain reversed his decades-long opposition to coastal drilling — shortly before cashing $28,500 from 13 donors linked to Hess Oil. And the senator, who only a decade ago tried to ban registered lobbyists from working on political campaigns, now deploys 170 lobbyists in key positions as fundraisers and advisers.

Then there's torture — the issue most related to McCain's own experience as a POW. In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants, winning a victory to require military personnel to abide by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. But barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.

What his former allies in the anti-torture fight found most troubling was that McCain would not admit to his betrayal. Shortly after cutting the deal, McCain spoke to a group of retired military brass who had been working to ban torture. According to Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former deputy, McCain feigned outrage at Bush and Cheney, as though he too had had the rug pulled out from under him. "We all knew the opposite was the truth," recalls Wilkerson. "That's when I began to lose a little bit of my respect for the man and his bona fides as a straight shooter."

But perhaps the most revealing of McCain's flip-flops was his promise, made at the beginning of the year, that he would "raise the level of political dialogue in America." McCain pledged he would "treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect." Instead, with Rove protégé Steve Schmidt at the helm, McCain has turned the campaign into a torrent of debasing negativity, misrepresenting Barack Obama's positions on everything from sex education for kindergarteners to middle-class taxes. In September, in one of his most blatant embraces of Rove-like tactics, McCain hired Tucker Eskew — one of Rove's campaign operatives who smeared the senator and his family during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.

Throughout the campaign this year, McCain has tried to make the contest about honor and character. His own writing gives us the standard by which he should be judged. "Always telling the truth in a political campaign," he writes in Worth the Fighting For, "is a great test of character." He adds: "Patriotism that only serves and never risks one's self-interest isn't patriotism at all. It's selfishness. That's a lesson worth relearning from time to time." It's a lesson, it would appear, that the candidate himself could stand to relearn.

"I'm sure John McCain loves his country," says Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar under Bush. "But loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view."

In other words, McCain is an inveterate liar.

In 2004, the Republicans attacked John Kerry at what seemed like his strongest point — his combat service in Vietnam, while Bush was too drunk and coked up to show up for his piss tests at the Air National Guard unit Daddy had gotten him into — and turned it into a weakness. In 2008, they're doing it again, attacking Obama's character and honor. But if character and honor counted for anything, McCain would have been run out of public life a long time ago.

The McCain brand is a myth. Read the article. Send it to your Republican brother-in-law.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 05, 2008

Register To Vote

Politics

Are you registered to vote?

If not, here's a site that tells you, state by state, what you need to do and by when. Here's another.

And here's some encouragement:

[Thanks, Erin]

Posted by Jonathan at 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Obama And Israel

Palestine/Middle East  Politics

Yes, I know it's political advertising, but it's beautiful. Pass it on.

[Via AmericaBlog]

Posted by Jonathan at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Daily Tracking Polls

Politics

Gallup's daily tracking poll has Obama up 8.

Kos's daily tracking poll has Obama up 12.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Homer Simpson Votes

Humor & Fun  Politics  Vote Fraud

Video here.

Let's hope on November 5th we're still laughing.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Tina Fey Debates

Humor & Fun  Politics

Posted by Jonathan at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 03, 2008

McCain Debates... McCain

Humor & Fun  Politics

Great Jon Stewart bit. Watch especially McCain vs. McCain starting at the 1:45 mark. Unbelievable.

But McCain is the straight talker. I heard it on the teevee.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Sarah Palin Debate Flowchart

Humor & Fun  Politics

Exactly.

(Source)

Posted by Jonathan at 11:25 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

October 02, 2008

Obama On Jobs

Politics

This is good:

Meanwhile, John McCain is selling one of his many homes. This one has:

10 fireplaces (in the desert)
13 bedrooms
14.5 bathrooms
15,000 square feet
a wine tasting room
an air conditioned playhouse for the kids
6 car garage
an extra second garage
surrounding the pool, 3 ramadas with full size bars
22 flat screen tvs

But Obama is the elitist. I heard it on the teevee.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 01, 2008

Have You Changed Or Are You The Same?

Activism  Politics

The last eight years have changed us all, or should have.

Sally Anthony reminds us of some of what has changed us — and why we desperately need change in our leadership — in this moving video. Go watch it.

[Thanks, Maurice]

Posted by Jonathan at 09:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 30, 2008

They Want Her To Be A 72-Year-Old Heartbeat Away

Politics

Tina Fey can't top this:

Posted by Jonathan at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 29, 2008

Our Shock Doctrine Moment

Activism  Economy  Politics

The Right wants to use this economic crisis as a Shock Doctrine moment to take the country even farther to the right.

Digby asks the obvious question: why don't we turn it around and use it as a moment to move the country to the left? Republican policies have been so thoroughly discredited by the last eight years that if there were ever a time for advancing a Progressive agenda, this is it.

Go read it.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 26, 2008

Fiscal Conservatives

Economy  Politics

Source

Posted by Jonathan at 05:27 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Jon Stewart's "Freedom Memory"

Economy  Humor & Fun  Politics

Jon Stewart nails it, as usual:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 24, 2008

"You Need A Ride To The Airport?"

Humor & Fun  Politics

Letterman on McCain's ridiculous stunt:

Awesome.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 23, 2008

They're Catching On

Economy  Politics

A new poll shows people get the "bailout," even if Congress doesn't. Bloomberg:

Americans oppose government rescues of ailing financial companies by a decisive margin, and blame Wall Street and President George W. Bush for the credit crisis.

By a margin of 55 percent to 31 percent, Americans say it's not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayer dollars, even if their collapse could damage the economy, according to the latest Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll.

Poll respondents say Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would do a better job handling the financial crisis than Republican John McCain, by a margin of 45 percent to 33 percent. Almost half of voters say the Democrat has better ideas to strengthen the economy than his Republican opponent.

Six weeks before the presidential election, almost 80 percent of Americans say the U.S. is going in the wrong direction, the biggest percentage since the poll began asking that question in 1991.

After market chaos this month drove Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and prompted federal takeovers of American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, most survey respondents said financial companies shouldn't expect taxpayers to rush to the rescue.

"Why should we help companies that can't help themselves?" Tara Rook, 36, a Republican voter in Medford, New Jersey, asked in a follow-up interview. "The government is getting way too involved with private companies."

Congress, you listening?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 18, 2008

McCain Seems To Think Spain Is In Latin America

Politics

This is astonishing. Go read it and listen to the clip.

John McCain is definitely running on empty.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 17, 2008

Tide Turning

Politics

Looks like McCain/Palin's bounce is fading. CBS/NYT has Obama 5 points ahead nationally, and Gallup's daily tracking poll has him up 2. The latter is a five day rolling average, so it is slower to show the effect.

Update (9/17) - Today's daily tracking poll has Obama up 4.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 16, 2008

Obama On The Stump

Politics

While McCain's stump speech is now mostly about Sarah Palin, Obama talks about real issues. No gimmicks, no character assassination, no Karl Rove-style appeals to the lizard brain.

Obama's no progressive — though he's probably as progressive as someone can be and get a major party's nomination in America in 2008 — but he does conduct himself with honor and intelligence and class. Compared to McCain, he's just in a whole other league. No contest.

If you don't believe me, watch this.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

AP: "McCain's Stump Speech More About Palin Than Self"

Politics

AP reports that John McCain's stump speech now is more about Sarah Palin than about himself. Excerpts:

Two things jump out from John McCain's standard campaign speech: Sarah Palin and change. Mostly Sarah Palin bringing change.

It's a new pitch for McCain, and that's something that sets him apart from rival Barack Obama. The Democratic nominee settled early on what's known in the business as his stump speech and has varied it only a little since.

McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate injected an unexpected and enormous burst of energy into his White House bid, and now he tries to tap into that dynamic in his campaign speeches. Nearly unprecedented for presidential contenders in recent history, McCain's stump speech now is often almost as much about his No. 2 as it is about him.

In fact, McCain is expected to do few rallies without Palin through the fall. With McCain's uneven delivery and stiff stance on the stage, big events and formal addresses have never been a staple of his campaigns. He prefers roundtables and town-hall settings where he is more apt to shine. For a long time, he was content to leave the glitzy auditorium-filling events and smooth speechmaking to Obama.

But now crowds are gathering by the thousands for the Republican ticket, and they're there as much to see her as him. Even if she's not there, like at solo McCain rallies Monday and Tuesday, they want to hear about her.

And do they ever. [...]

McCain is a lot heavier on empathy than solutions, though. He spends nearly all his time defining problems, and very little time giving detail on how he would fix them.

It's kind of pathetic, really.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 13, 2008

Serial Liars

Politics

The McCain/Palin campaign lies about everything. Here's another (Boston Globe):

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin's visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate's campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America.

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as "K-Crossing," on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."

It was the second such clarification in as many weeks of the itinerary of what Palin has called "the trip of a lifetime." Earlier, the campaign acknowledged that Palin made only a refueling stop in Ireland. [...]

But she did not venture into Iraq, [Lieutenant Colonel Dave] Osborn said. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said. [...]

Palin also told ABC that she had traveled to Mexico and Canada. Her campaign had previously mentioned a Canada visit, but not a trip to Mexico. Comella said yesterday that Palin had visited Mexico on vacation, and Canada once last year.

Claiming she had visited Ireland because her plane touched down there briefly to refuel was pathetic. But claiming she had visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq when she hadn't — that's a lot more serious. But hey, she did go to Canada once.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

A Heartbeat Away

Politics

You've probably seen this, but it's too good not to repeat.

In her interview with Charles Gibson, Sarah Palin was pressed about how her living in Alaska gave her foreign policy insight vis-a-vis Russia. She said:

They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

Sounds like Miss Teen South Carolina.

Anyway, the perfect rejoinder was offered by commenter Krista, at Balloon Juice:

And when I look out my window I can see the moon. Doesn't make me a fucking astronaut now, does it?

"You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska..." Gawd. That should have ended her public career. It's like people aren't even listening to the words anymore.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:17 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 12, 2008

The Palin Interview

Politics

James Fallows on the Palin interview. Perceptive, as usual:

It is embarrassing to have to spell this out, but for the record let me explain why Gov. Palin's answer to the "Bush Doctrine" question — the only part of the recent interview I have yet seen over here in China — implies a disqualifying lack of preparation for the job.

Not the mundane job of vice president, of course, which many people could handle. Rather the job of potential Commander in Chief and most powerful individual on earth. [...]

Each of us has areas we care about, and areas we don't. If we are interested in a topic, we follow its development over the years. And because we have followed its development, we're able to talk and think about it in a "rounded" way. We can say: Most people think X, but I really think Y. Or: most people used to think P, but now they think Q. Or: the point most people miss is Z. Or: the question I'd really like to hear answered is A.

Here's the most obvious example in daily life: Sports Talk radio.

Mention a name or theme — Brett Favre, the Patriots under Belichick, Lance Armstrong's comeback, Venus and Serena — and anyone who cares about sports can have a very sophisticated discussion about the ins and outs and myth and realities and arguments and rebuttals.

People who don't like sports can't do that. It's not so much that they can't identify the names — they've heard of Armstrong — but they've never bothered to follow the flow of debate. I like sports — and politics and tech and other topics — so I like joining these debates. On a wide range of other topics — fashion, antique furniture, the world of restaurants and fine dining, or (blush) opera — I have not been interested enough to learn anything I can add to the discussion. So I embarrass myself if I have to express a view.

What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years. [...]

Sarah Palin did not know this issue, or any part of it. The view she actually expressed — an endorsement of "preemptive" action — was fine on its own merits. But it is not the stated doctrine of the Bush Administration, it is not the policy her running mate has endorsed, and it is not the concept under which her own son is going off to Iraq.

How could she not know this? For the same reason I don't know anything about European football/soccer standings, player trades, or intrigue. I am not interested enough. And she evidently has not been interested enough even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era.

A further point. The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance
2) Lack of curiosity
3) "Decisiveness"

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

We don't know for sure about #2 for Palin yet — she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3. Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role.

That last point, of course, is crucial. McCain put her in this position. So much for "Country First."

Posted by Jonathan at 11:43 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 10, 2008

OK When McCain Says It

Politics

Cheney, too.

It's enough to make you crazy.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:02 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 09, 2008

Sarah Palin's Church

Politics  Religion

Wasilla Assembly of God was Sarah Palin's church from 1974 to 2002. The video below mixes footage from Wasilla AoG and Morning Star Ministries. In October, Wasilla Assembly of God will host a "Prophetic Conference" with Steve Thompson of Morning Star Ministries, as you can see on Wasilla AoG's website.

To see more of what Morning Star Ministries is into, go up on YouTube and search for Holy Spirit Breakout. There is a whole series of videos, starting with this one:

Not exactly the home of rational thought.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:04 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 08, 2008

Palin's Goof

Politics

Sarah Palin thinks mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have, over time, "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Only one problem. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are private corporations. They have never been taxpayer funded.

On Friday (after Palin spoke) they were put into conservatorship under the Federal Housing Finance Agency (a move supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama). So now taxpayers are on the hook. But Palin's comment made it clear she had no real idea what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post:

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, which came before the government had spent funds bailing the two entities out, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."

Added Andrew Jakabovics, an economic analyst for the progressive think tank, Center for American Progress: "It is somewhat nonsensical because up until yesterday there was sort of no public funding there. Even today they haven't drawn down any of the credit line they have given to Treasury. 'Gotten too big and too expensive' are two separate things. The too big has been a conservative mantra for a while and there is something to be said of that in that they hold about half of the mortgage guarantees that are out there. And in the last year they have been responsible for roughly 80 percent out there. The 'too expensive to tax payers,' I don't know where that comes from."

Even conservative analysts acknowledged that the statement simply did not hold true.

"Heretofore, if the treasury had a balance sheet there would have been a liability but there was never a taxpayer payment before [the bailout]," said Gerald P. O'Driscoll, an economist with the Cato Institute. "[Fannie and Freddie] were not taxpayer funded. They had taxpayer guarantee, which is worth something, especially in the stock market..."

Listen to the clip. She's just winging it, talking through her hat.

And they want to put her a 72-year-old-heartbeat away from the presidency.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Obama Ad Uses The "L" Word

Politics

As in "Lie". Via DailyKos:

Good.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:42 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 07, 2008

You Go, Joe!

Politics

This is outstanding (via James Fallows):

We need more of that. Much more.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:48 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 06, 2008

McCain's Faustian Bargain

Politics

Another great Daily Show bit, this one on John McCain's journey from Maverick Reformer to Reformed Maverick. Includes some startling clips, starting at the 3:15 mark, of John McCain saying one thing before 2006 and the exact opposite after:

From Robert Greenwald, another collection of McCain flip-flops:

Whatever John McCain may have been in the past, today he's sold his soul to the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party. He's marketed as a straight-talking man of integrity and people buy it. They need to see these clips.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 05, 2008

Numbers

Politics

An ABC News national poll, taken yesterday, includes these findings:

Do you approve or disapprove of John McCain's choice of Palin as his vice presidential running mate?

Approve	Disapprove	Unsure
60%	34%	6%

Does McCain's choice of Palin for vice president make you more likely to vote for McCain, less likely, or won't it make any difference in your vote?

More	Less	No Diff	Unsure
25%	19%	55%	1%

Does Barack Obama's choice of Biden for vice president make you more likely to vote for Obama, less likely, or won't it make any difference in your vote?

More	Less	No Diff	Unsure
22%	10%	67%	1%

Regardless of your vote preference, does McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate make you more confident or less confident in the kind of decisions McCain would make as president?

More	Less	No Diff	Unsure
43%	38%	14%	6%

Do you think [Biden, Palin] does or does not have the kind of experience it takes to serve effectively as president, if that became necessary?

	Does	Does Not	Unsure
Biden	66%	21%	13%
Palin	42%	50%	7%

Good news, bad news. People approve of the choice of Palin, but they don't have a lot of confidence in her ability to serve as president (which I thought was pretty much the whole point of the vice presidency).

It's interesting that the approve/disapprove ratio for the choice of Palin is almost two to one, but then people are almost evenly split over whether it gives them more or less confidence in McCain's decision making ability. But nobody said people are consistent.

It's interesting, too, that Biden may actually be doing more good for Obama than Palin is for McCain. At least the difference between "more likely" and "less likely" for Biden is 12 percentage points, while for Palin it's only 6. That's a pretty weak measure (we don't know how strongly "more likely" or "less likely" people were in each case, for example) but at the very least it looks like Palin's benefit to McCain is in the same ballpark as Biden's to Obama. Which I'm guessing is not what most people would have expected. I wish they had asked the approve/disapprove question (question #1) for Biden as well so we could compare.

It looks to me like Democrats should make people think seriously about Palin as president. This isn't American Idol. It's not a question of who's more entertaining. It's a question of who can actually do the job when the election's over. I don't know about you, but the thought of President Palin terrifies me.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:44 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this  

September 04, 2008

McCain's Speech

Politics

Well that was weird.

It was like he was reading a speech in another language. Major disconnect between content and affect. Smiles in all the wrong places. Stilted gestures and emphasis, like he was struggling to remember what they'd told him to do, when. Body language like a marionette's.

McCain must be running on empty.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Jesus Was A Community Organizer

Politics

In last night's RNC sarcasm fest, there was a lot of snide derision directed at Obama's having been a community organizer.

A number of national organizations of community organizers have responded. This is probably my favorite response, from John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan:

Community organizers work in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the failing economy. The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we're trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed. Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn't need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans understood that, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to make fun of community organizers like me.

Or maybe it's this one, left by a commenter at Faith in Public Life:

Jesus was a community organizer.
Pontius Pilate was a governor.

Amen.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Palin's Foreign Policy Credential: Alaska's Right Next Door To Russia

Politics

Last Friday Fox News Channel's Steve Doocy said:

But the other thing about [Sarah Palin], she does know about international relations because she is right up there in Alaska right next door to Russia.

Check out Jon Stewart's reaction in the Daily Show clip in this earlier post, at the 1:40 mark.

Just about the dumbest thing anyone's ever said in public, right? Apparently not everyone thinks so.

On Sunday, Cindy McCain repeated it, saying, "remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia."

Yesterday, leading neocon Frank Gaffney picked up the theme:

Napoleon is said to have declared that "Geography is destiny." That certainly is true of Gov. Palin. Her state is adjacent to Russia... As that state's governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis — if nothing else — about the necessity for US anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden.

And now it's been picked up by John McCain himself. On ABC today McCain said:

Alaska is right next to Russia. She understands that.

Can you imagine Barack Obama saying something so dumb? No, neither can I.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Ali On YouTube

Politics

My daughter Ali is up in St. Paul shooting footage for a video project on the street action outside the RNC. She's been tear-gassed and has filmed a number of arrests. Tuesday she happened to see the arrest of a couple of "medics" from the North Star Health Collective and was interviewed on camera briefly by some reporters from City Pages, an alternative weekly in the Twin Cities.

You can see her interview here. Not earth-shaking news, but she's my daughter and I'm proud of her!

Posted by Jonathan at 02:12 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Today's Joke

Politics

What a historic race. The first time an actual black person is leading the charge for a major American political party. I think that says something pretty great about America: we will accept a black man to lead us if the only other choice is a woman. — Bill Maher

Posted by Jonathan at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 03, 2008

Reality And Reality TV

Politics

Palin's speechwriters filled her speech with snide zingers that she delivered with snarky confidence. Never mind that it was riddled with untruths. The delegates ate it up. So we can probably expect to hear a lot of talk about her having "nailed" it. And she did, I guess, in a sort of reality-tv-show-winner-gets-to-run-for-vice-president kind of way.

But down here in the real world, people who run for vice president and win actually have to serve in the office.

Alexander Burns (politico.com) looked up the actuarial statistics on a man John McCain's age making it through his presidency. Without even factoring in McCain's history of four melanomas or the crushing stresses of the presidency, a man McCain's age would have about a 1 in 3 chance of dying before he could finish two terms and about a 1 in 7 chance of not making it through one.

So the question of Sarah Palin's fitness to be President of the United States has to be taken very seriously. This isn't some reality tv show — though you get the feeling that people are finding it harder and harder to distinguish reality from reality tv. They may think Sarah Palin as vice president would be "fun."

President Sarah Palin would most assuredly not be fun, though. Not in reality.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Palin And Earmarks

Politics

Expect to hear a lot tonight about Sarah Palin as reformer, foe of budget earmarks. True? KXMC (Via Atrios):

John McCain touts his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as a force in his battle against earmarks and entrenched power brokers.

But under her leadership, Alaska has asked the federal government for almost $300 per person in requests for pet projects this year. That's more than any other state received, per person, from Congress and runs counter to the image the GOP ticket is pushing.

McCain's campaign says Palin realizes Alaska has been too reliant on earmarks and ordered state officials to cut back on their requests. It also says Barack Obama requested nearly a billion dollars in earmarks over three years for Illinois, a state with nearly 20 times the population of Alaska.

Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year. Last year he requested 311 million dollars roughly $24 worth for every Illinoisan.

To be fair, Alaska has reduced its earmark requests, which were more than $800 per Alaskan in Palin's first year in office. But the current figure of $300 per capita is still the highest in the land. The average across all states is only about $34 per capita.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

What Awaits Sarah Palin

Politics

James Fallows on what's in store for Sarah Palin, even leaving aside all the embarrassing disclosures:

Unless you have seen it first first-hand, as part of the press scrum or as a campaign staffer, it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is. Everybody gets exhausted. The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they've worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues — Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it — and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there's an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we're sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia's role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges — plus Iran while we're at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what's the right future for South Ossetia; and let's not even start on domestic issues.

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying "Taiwan and mainland China" versus "Taiwan and China." The first is policy as normal; the second — from an important US official — would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

The further point is that not even the most accomplished person knows all this off the top of his or her head. Example: Barack Obama. He is a quick study and has been campaigning very hard for 18 months. But this summer, when he tried to offer a reassuring message about his commitment to Israeli security with his AIPAC speech, he made a rookie error by getting the standard phraseology slightly wrong.

Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process, she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.

The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address. This is long before she gets to a debate with Biden; it's what the press is going to start out looking for.

So the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time, since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?, without being bullies about it.

One more reason — a big reason — why McCain's reckless gamble on Palin is crazy and doomed. I wish people would stop focusing on Palin's pregnant daughter. That's the least of her worries. It's going to be entertaining to watch Palin try to sound like she's got the goods to be a heartbeat away.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:49 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 02, 2008

GOP: Brand X

Politics

Jack Cafferty on the self-destructing GOP. Worth a read.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

"This Can't Be Happening"

Politics

Here's what some prominent Alaska Republicans thought of the Palin pick (Anchorage Daily News):

State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to give her the news.

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?" [...]

The state Legislature is investigating whether Palin and her staff broke state law by pressuring the public safety department to fire a state trooper who was in a custody battle with her sister. [...]

State House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez, was astonished at the news. He didn't want to get into the issue of her qualifications.

"She's old enough," Harris said. "She's a U.S. citizen."

Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.

"I said to Walt, 'This can't be happening, because his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out," Phillips said.

Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate.

"We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."

It's not just that Palin isn't ready to lead the country. By picking her, McCain has shown — definitively — that he isn't ready either. These are not the actions of a serious grownup.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:37 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

September 01, 2008

"Hookers And Blow"

Politics

John McCain publicly asked RNC conventioneers to cut back on the partying while their fellow citizens deal with Hurricane Gustav. How's that working out?

You get the feeling nobody in GOP politics really gives a damn about McCain. He's just the front man, the guy they hope will let them keep their noses in the trough. He can do his thing, they're going to do theirs.

[Via FireDogLake]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:29 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this  

Why Sarah Palin?

Politics

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin seems inexplicable. Yes, she's a woman, but there are lots of women. Why pick such a lightweight?

But maybe there's an explanation after all.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

August 31, 2008

Sarah Palin, Vagina-American

Humor & Fun  Politics

The Daily Show nails John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate:

Posted by Jonathan at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

June 08, 2008

Obama Plans 50-State Strategy

Politics

People talk about the long, hard-fought Democratic primary season having been good for McCain. On the surface that seems true, but the primary campaign also pushed the Obama team to build organizations (and raise money) all over the country. The NYT reports that those organizations are now gearing up to take it to McCain in a number of Republican strongholds. NYT:

Senator Barack Obama’s general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states — from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana — as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will travel to North Carolina — a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 32 years — to start a two-week tour of speeches, town hall forums and other appearances intended to highlight differences with Mr. McCain on the economy. From there, he heads to Missouri, which last voted for a Democrat in 1996. His first campaign swing after securing the Democratic presidential nomination last week was to Virginia, which last voted Democratic in 1964.

With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton now having formally bowed out of the race and thrown her backing to him, Mr. Obama wants to define the faltering economy as the paramount issue facing the country, a task probably made easier by ever-rising gasoline prices and the sharp rise in unemployment the government reported on Friday. Mr. McCain, by contrast, has been emphasizing national security more than any other issue and has made clear that he would like to fight the election primarily on that ground.

Mr. Obama has moved in recent days to transform his primary organization into a general election machine, hiring staff members, sending organizers into important states and preparing a television advertisement campaign to present his views and his biography to millions of Americans who followed the primaries from a distance. [...]

While the lengthy, contentious Democratic primary fight against Mrs. Clinton exposed vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that the Republicans will no doubt seek to exploit, it also allowed him to build a nearly nationwide network of volunteers and professional organizers. While early assertions by presidential campaigns that they intend to expand the playing field are often little more than feints intended to force opponents to spend time and money defending states that they should have locked up, Mr. Obama’s fund-raising success gives his campaign more flexibility than most to play in more places.

It's easy to forget what an overwhelming advantage Hillary Clinton had when the campaign began. Obama and his team are enormously effective organizers, as John McCain is about to find out. I love that Obama is going after red states, that he's not content to play for 50% plus one. The bigger the victory, the longer the coattails. This is going to be fun.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:33 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

June 03, 2008

What A Night

Politics

Obama. What a night. What a speech.

I know real change will be hard to come by, but tonight I choose to be inspired. Tonight I choose to hope. The man has greatness.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:40 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this  

May 06, 2008

Miscellany

Peak Oil  Politics

BookForum has a lengthy excerpt from Rick Perlstein's new book, Nixonland. For anyone who remembers 1972 and the McGovern campaign, it's a fascinating read.

Meanwhile, oil hit $122 a barrel today. It's remarkable how little talk there is in the mainstream, still, about the permanence of the trends that have brought this about. It's as if people think it's a temporary blip — a little gas tax holiday and it'll all blow over.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:31 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this  

April 04, 2008

81% Say Country On Wrong Track

Politics

You are not alone. NYT:

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country's direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track," up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one. Today, however, Americans report being deeply worried about the country even though many say their own personal finances are still in fairly good shape.

Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.

Check the graph. Pretty much correlates with Bush's term in office. Let's hope people catch on to the fact that McCain is essentially running for Bush's third term.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:01 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 03, 2008

If Obama Was A Woman

Politics

Last Tuesday, I heard Geraldine Ferraro on the radio discussing gender and the Clinton campaign. Ferraro, you may remember, was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1984. She's a year older than John McCain, but you'd never know it. She's ferociously smart — lightning quick and crackling with energy. She made an interesting point: if Barack Obama was a woman, with a resume as thin as his, he'd never have gotten past square one. She's right. No doubt.

People like to say it's about issues, but really it comes down to gut feel. We're just a bunch of primates who evolved to live in small bands with other primates. We look for a certain animal magnetism in a leader. We want someone who gives us confidence that he (or she) will keep us safe. We pick our leaders by instinct, by feel, and then we rationalize our choice by appealing to the issues. Most of us, anyway. Unfortunately.

I've been reading (and enjoying) Ken Wilber's Boomeritis, and it strikes me also that an important reason why Obama connects so well with younger voters is that he's the first post-Boomer candidate. Obama was born in 1961 — which may or may not make him technically a Boomer, depending on who you ask — but he doesn't feel like a Boomer. He feels like something new. People are just so tired of us Boomers. We've been hogging the spotlight forever, seems like. People want to take the next step. But you already knew that.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:03 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this  

February 28, 2008

Dick Gregory On The First Black President

Politics

Dick Gregory at last weekend's State of the Black Union explains about the "first Black President":

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:04 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

February 27, 2008

How Embarrassing

Media  Politics

Until last night, I hadn't watched any of the presidential candidates' "debates." Partly because I don't watch tv, but mostly because I just don't have the stomach for it: politics as an episode of "American Idol" (not that I've ever watched "American Idol," either.) But last night I did watch online, and I have to say: what's the deal with Tim Russert and his gotcha questions? That's the state of American journalism and politics? (Rhetorical question.)

Gawd, it's embarrassing. (Digby agrees.)

Posted by Jonathan at 03:51 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

February 20, 2008

Something's Happening Here

Politics

Before last night, the record turnout for Democratic caucuses in Hawaii was 4,900, set in 1988. Democrats expected a record turnout last night, so they prepared 17,000 ballots, figuring that would be a safe number.

How many people showed up? 37,182 — 28,347 for Obama, 8,835 for Clinton. Three to one for Hawaii native son Obama, but that's not really the big story. In this campaign, the big story has been and continues to be turnout. Democrats are drawing unprecedented numbers of people to the polls and to caucuses in state after state. We have two people to thank for that: Barack Obama — and George Bush. Even Hillary's numbers dwarfed the previous record.

A tidal wave is building. If the Democrats manage not to shoot themselves in the foot, November could be an across-the-board Democratic blowout, a real mandate for change. Then it will be up to the Democrats to deliver. No excuses.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:11 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Worst. President. Ever.

Politics

Bush's approval rating has dropped below 20%:

George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American Research Group polling as 78% of Americans say that the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 14% approve and 79% disapprove.

Wow. Even Bush's hardcore base is bailing. Pity we don't have a parliamentary system that allows for an immediate vote of no confidence.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:16 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

February 19, 2008

Primary Day

Politics

Just got back from voting in the Wisconsin primary. Polling place was crowded with Gen-X'ers, and I was voter number 1171, an unusually high number for a primary in our precinct. All of which I take as good news for Obama.

In other news... The chemo got my hair, so I shaved my head over the weekend. Totally bald. Turns out there are no major dents in my skill, which is nice, but my scalp sure does need to get some sun. Second treatment tomorrow.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:09 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

February 18, 2008

Obama's Coattails

Politics

Last week's Obama event here in Madison was impressive. Thousands of people waited in single-digit temperatures for the doors to open, and when the doors did open, the Kohl Center's 17,000 seats filled quickly. Still more people watched in the overflow room on CCTV. The crowd was largely student-aged, but a cross-section of the community was there as well. I've never seen a more enthusiastic crowd at a political event.

Obama himself has an effortless sort of magic. No other American politician is as gifted. In person, he seems to radiate a relaxed, confident mastery and warmth. Other politicians importune. They want something from you, and badly. (One thinks of Hunter Thompson's lines that Hubert Humphrey "campaigned like a rat in heat," while Edmund Muskie sounded "like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year's crop.") Obama, on the other hand, projects a kind of "here I am, I'm ready if you are" vibe. Not for nothing does he end his appearances with the Stevie Wonder song that goes, "Here I am, signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours."

Having said all that, I continue to have my doubts about a man who could write, as Obama did in Foreign Affairs last summer:

To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. [...]

We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. We must retain the capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and our vital interests. But we must also become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.

We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. [...]

I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.

We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability — to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others — as President George H. W. Bush did when we led the effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. The consequences of forgetting that lesson in the context of the current conflict in Iraq have been grave.

Obama may be opposed to the Iraq War, but he's hardly anti-war. His candidacy is packaged as some kind of grass-roots insurgency, but he's got plenty of elite backing. Yes, his personal story is impressive, and yes, he says a lot of the right things, but it remains to be seen just how progressive a president he would be.

But one thing he said in his Madison speech really struck me. He said that to create real change a president needs to come into office with a "mandate for change."

That's when I saw why I should vote for Obama in tomorrow's Wisconsin primary. Hillary Clinton might be able to win — barely — in the general election, but Obama has the potential to win big. In last Tuesday's Virginia primary, for example, Obama beat Clinton almost two-to-one. Virginia is a red state, a state where Bush won easily in 2004. But last Tuesday, Obama got 623,141 votes; all Republican candidates combined got only 487,656.

And if Obama wins big in the general election, he brings a lot of Democrats in with him. Obama is not as progressive on the issues as we would like (neither, of course, is Clinton), but Obama with a solidly Democratic Congress — that could be a real watershed. Even, conceivably, like FDR in 1932. After all, FDR had been a relatively conservative governor, but when he swept into office with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that was well to his left, he adapted quickly.

A landslide like FDR's is unlikely. But Obama does have the possibility of coming into office with a real "mandate for change." Hillary Clinton does not. That's why I'm going to vote for Obama. One can hope that he'll live up to his rhetoric, but I'm not counting on it. The bottom line is this: Obama's coattails.

Don't get me wrong. I realize that today's Democrats are what Republicans used to be, back before Ronald Reagan and this country's hard right turn. Bill Clinton only seems liberal because people compare him to Reagan and the Bushes. So it's not that a Democratic majority is the answer. But it beats the alternative. And, who knows, maybe the energy mobilized by the Obama phenomenon will begin to break the DLC's hold on the Democratic Party, and the Democrats can finally stop trying to be Republican Lite.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

February 12, 2008

See You In 12,008

Humor & Fun  Politics

Meet John McCain:

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Obama Fever

Politics

I don't watch much tv, so I've been relatively immune from Obama mania. That may be about to change.

Obama's speaking at the Kohl Center here in Madison tonight (doors open around 6 PM), and I'll be going with my 18-year-old daughter Molly, who's on fire for Obama and can't wait to vote in her first election next Tuesday. It should be quite the event, something like that gorgeous autumn day in 2004 when John Kerry came to town with Bruce Springsteen. I just went back and read my post from that day. I was so much younger then...

Posted by Jonathan at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

February 08, 2008

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!

Environment  Politics

This'll leave you sputtering:

Your modern GOP.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:54 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

January 15, 2008

American Taliban

Extremism  Politics  Religion

Digby points to this, in which Mike Huckabee shows his true colors:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

That's the GOP front runner, and he's not joking. Theocracy here we come.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:32 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this  

December 27, 2007

Wrapped In The Flag, Carrying A Cross

Extremism  Politics  Religion

Mike Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. If only that were all there is to it. Excerpts from an excellent piece by Chris Hedges:

George Bush is a happy stooge of his corporate handlers. He blithely enriches the oligarchy, defends a war that is the worst foreign policy blunder in American history and callously denies medical benefits to children. Huckabee is different. He has tapped into the rage and fury of the working class, dispossessed and abandoned by the mainstream Democrats and Republicans. And he refuses to make the ideology of the Christian right, with its dark contempt for democratic traditions and intolerance of nonbelievers, a handmaiden of the corporate establishment. This makes him a much more lethal and radical political force.

The Christian right is the most potent and dangerous mass movement in American history. It has been controlled and led, until now, by those who submit to the demands of the corporate state. But the grass roots are tired of being taken for rubes. They are tired of candidates, like Bush or Bill Clinton, who roll out the same clichés about working men and women every four years and then spend their terms enriching their corporate backers. The majority of American citizens have spent the last two decades watching their government services and benefits vanish. They have seen their jobs go overseas and are watching as their communities crumble and their houses are foreclosed. It is their kids who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. The old guard in the Christian right, the Pat Robertsons, who used their pulpits to deliver the votes of naive followers to the corporatists, is a spent force. Huckabee’s Christian populism represents the maturation of the movement. It signals the rise of a truly radical, even revolutionary force in American politics, of which Huckabee may be one of the tamer and less frightening examples. [...]

Huckabee has close ties with the Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist branch of the Christian right. The Dominionist movement, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism, is small in numbers but influential. It departs from traditional evangelicalism. It seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power. It shares many prominent features with classical fascist movements, at least as such movements are defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Dominionism, born out of Christian Reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. [...]

Dominionism teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long refusal by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian "dominion" over the nation and, eventually, over the Earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to actively build the kingdom of God on Earth. America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, in which creationism and "Christian values" form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the work force to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship.

Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and a self-described "Christocrat,"...has endorsed Huckabee. Scarborough, along with holding other bizarre stances, opposes the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine on grounds that it interferes with God’s punishment of sexual license. And Huckabee, who once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public and opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure, comes out of this frightening mold. He justified his call to quarantine those with AIDS because they could "pose a dangerous public health risk."

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," Huckabee wrote. "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position, but he remains deeply hostile to gays. He has used wit and humor to deflect reporters from his radical views about marriage, abortion, damnation, biblical law, creationism and the holy war he believes we are fighting with Islam. But his stances represent a huge step, should they ever become policy, toward a theocratic state and the death of our open society. In the end, however, I do not blame Huckabee or the tens of millions of hapless Christians — 40 percent of the Republican electorate — who hear his words and rejoice. I blame the corporate state, those who thought they could disempower and abuse the working class, rape the country, build a rapacious oligarchy and never pay a political price.

We keep moving further and further into uncharted territory. Each new election cycle, things that would have seemed unimaginably grotesque in the not too distant past suddenly become mainstream. Then they, too, are surpassed. Like the proverbial boiling frog, we fail to act as things change by gradual degrees.

Resentment builds and is fed by people skilled in exploiting it. The bursting credit bubble, imploding dollar, and skyrocketing energy costs may yet push the US economy over the cliff. Then, look out.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

November 29, 2007

US Carbon Emissions Down In 2006; Bush Takes The Credit

Energy  Environment  Politics

In a White House press release issued yesterday, President Bush declared:

I was pleased to receive the Energy Information Administration's final report today, which includes U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for 2006. The final report shows that emissions declined 1.5 percent from the 2005 level, while our economy grew 2.9 percent. That means greenhouse gas intensity - how much we emit per unit of economic activity - decreased by 4.2 percent, the largest annual improvement since 1985. This puts us well ahead of the goal I set in 2002 to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent by 2012.

My Administration's climate change policy is science-based, encourages research breakthroughs that lead to technology development, encourages global participation, and pursues actions that will help ensure continued economic growth and prosperity for our citizens and for people throughout the world. [...]

Energy security and climate change are two of the important challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously, and we are effectively confronting climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong investment in new technologies. Our guiding principle is clear: we must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and we must do it in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people.

Breathtaking in its cynicism.

Decide for yourself if you're willing to take the government's figures at face value. But let's suppose we do. As Andrew Leonard points out, here's what the EIA report actually says about causes of the drop:

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2006 were 110.6 million metric tons (MMT) below their 2005 level of 6,045.0 MMT, due to favorable weather conditions; higher energy prices; a decline in the carbon intensity of electric power generation that resulted from increased use of natural gas, the least carbon intensive fossil fuel; and greater reliance on non fossil energy sources.

Andrew Leonard:

Call me partisan, but I'm finding it difficult to credit the Bush administration with responsibility for a year that featured both a mild winter and a cool summer. And while one can put some blame on the White House for high energy prices, the administration has actually fought tooth-and-nail against any kind of carbon tax or cap-and-trade system that would ensure stiff energy costs for greenhouse gas generating fossil fuel consumption. I'm also skeptical of the notion that "greater reliance on non fossil energy sources" has yet made any significant impact on emissions. Indeed, the EIA's own data have carbon dioxide emissions attributable to "renewable fuels" rising from 11.6 MMT to 11.9 MMT.

Which leaves us with the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. I don't know the whole story of how that transition is playing out, but one major incentive has been the New Source Review requirement of the Clean Air Act, which was designed to encourage the phasing out of older, high-polluting energy-generating technologies.

Of course, the Bush administration attempted (and failed) to gut New Source Review.

And to that we can add this: natural gas is, in terms of its usefulness, the most valuable fuel we have. Think of a gas stove. Instant on, instant off, no fumes, no smoke, no soot. There is no substitute. Moreover, natural gas can't easily be shipped across oceans. When you use up what's on your own continent, you're pretty much done. Here in North America, natural gas production may already have peaked. So, if we're using more natural gas for electricity generation and building lots of new natural gas-powered generation plants, that's hardly cause for celebration.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

November 20, 2007

Scott McClellan: Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby Lied About Plame

Politics

Scott McClellan's squealing. CNN:

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says top administration officials — including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — were involved in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

In October 2003, as controversy grew about the leak of Valerie Plame's name, McClellan stood at the White House podium and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April.

The excerpt, which consists of just three paragraphs from a 400-page book, reads in full:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff, and the president himself.

Time for somebody in Congress to start issuing subpoenas. They won't do it unless pushed, so let's get pushy.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:47 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

November 19, 2007

What Kucinich Should Do

Politics

Madison's John Nichols, writing in this month's Progressive on what Dennis Kucinich should do now:

There is much to be said for the power of positive thinking, but in Presidential politics the practice can be futile — especially when more prominent and monied candidates are stealing your themes: economic populist (Edwards), anti-war (New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson), and time-for-a-transformation (Obama). In Kucinich's case, his optimism borders on off-putting and out of touch. Indeed, if he continues on his current course, he runs the risk of falling short of the 643,067 (3.9 percent of the total) votes he scraped together by the end of his never-say-die 2004 run.

If that happens, it will be a political tragedy, because Dennis Kucinich is more right on the issues than ever: with his demand that Congress defund the war in Iraq, with his warnings about the dangerous machinations of the Bush-Cheney machine regarding Iran, with his courageous stance on nuclear disarmament, and with his increasingly ardent advocacy of impeachment.

Kucinich may be more necessary to the process of choosing a 2008 Democratic President than even he may understand. The front-loaded race for the nomination will be a blur for most Democrats, who will likely be told who the party's candidate is going to be long before they actually have a chance to weigh in. At that point, the trailing candidates will be told by the money men who define American politics that it is time to start suspending campaigns.

More than two dozen states will select delegates after February 5. Many of them — Wisconsin, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Oregon — have Democratic voter bases that are ardently anti-war. If Kucinich were to commit now to mount a campaign that made no pretense of personal electability but rather promised to force the party to debate its direction — not just on the war but on the whole question of what a post-Bush America might look like — he could yet turn himself into the most effective protest candidate this country has seen in years.

What might the Congressman propose to the voters of later primary and caucus states, where the choice could well come down to Kucinich versus Clinton? By telling voters "this is your chance to vote for a peace plank," Kucinich could — and should — promise to use whatever bloc of delegates he is given to fight for a clearly anti-war platform, to provoke floor fights over foreign policy and the domestic agenda, and to have his name placed in nomination in order to take his message to prime time.

In a one-on-one race, where the Kucinich campaign is about an idea rather than a man, he could turn the tables on the elites. By ditching talk about actually being nominated — which only strains his own credibility — and instead making himself the tribune of the peace and justice movement that is alive and powerful at the grassroots of the Democratic party, Dennis Kucinich could win hundreds of delegates to the 2008 convention. He could renew and redefine the debate in the later primaries and at the convention. He could force the eventual Democratic nominee to listen to the party's neglected base — which polling suggests is now very close in its thinking to the self-identified independent voters who decide close contests in November — rather than to the Wall Street donors and Washington think tanks that invariably muddle the message once the pundits declare the nomination fight to have been settled. And, maybe, just maybe, Dennis Kucinich could make the Democratic nominee more appealing than a broken political process is supposed to allow.

The challenge for Kucinich is a real one. He can run according to the rules and be a Democratic Harold Stassen, or he can break the rules and make his campaign a redemptive force. To do the former, he need merely continue campaigning as he now is. To do the latter, he must level with himself and with the voters and offer himself up as a representative of the idealistic insurgency that both the party and the country so sorely need.

It makes so much sense, and it would be a beautiful thing to see. Politics might actually mean something again. Dennis, are you listening?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

It's Hard To Be This Breathtakingly, Jaw-Droppingly Dumb

Media  Politics

Unless you're Tom Friedman. Gawd.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:49 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 29, 2007

Body Armor Profiteer Indicted

Iraq  Politics

David Brooks, who made a fortune selling faulty body armor to the Army and Marines, has been indicted. Marine Corps Times:

The former CEO of the nation’s leading supplier of body armor to the U.S. military was indicted Thursday on charges of insider trading, fraud and tax evasion in a scheme that netted him more than $185 million, prosecutors said.

David H. Brooks, 53, the founder and former chief executive of DHB Industries Inc., appeared in federal court on Long Island and was ordered held without bail. His lawyer entered a not-guilty plea. [...]

The charges were outlined in a superseding indictment that also named Sandra Hatfield, 54, the former chief operating officer of DHB. The pair was accused of falsely inflating the value of the inventory of DHB’s top product, the Interceptor vest, to help meet profit margin projections. [...]

Authorities allege the scheme propelled the company’s stock from $2 a share in early 2003 to nearly $20 a share in late 2004. When the pair sold several million DHB shares at that time, Brooks made more than $185 million and Hatfield more than $5 million, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. [...]

Brooks and Hatfield also are accused of failing to report more than $10 million in bonus payments to themselves and other DHB employees to the Internal Revenue Service.

Brooks also is accused of using DHB funds to buy or lease luxury vehicles for himself and family members, and to pay for vacations, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, country club bills and family celebrations.

Prosecutors say he threw lavish bar and bat mitzvahs for his children in which entertainers like Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the Eagles performed.

Brooks, who owns more than 100 horses and races them at harness tracks around the country, also used DHB funds for his private horse racing business, prosecutors said.

At the beginning of the Iraq war, Brooks' company had a monopoly on the production of body armor. The Army and Marines eventually had to recall some 23,000 of his vests. Brooks, surprise, surprise, was a hefty contributor to Republican political campaigns.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

It's All Downhill From Here

Economy  Future  Politics  War and Peace

Excerpts from a cheery rant by Stirling Newberry at The Agonist:

Technocrats are technocrats because they like measurable things. Thus there is a great deal of discussion of peak oil, because oil production is a measurable thing. As someone who has written about peak oil longer than most, and understood its implications better, I would be the last person to diminish the importance of physical scarcity and lessening bandwidth as a problem for the global economy. Particularly in the light of our dependence on petroleum and other carbon based forms of energy. However our present spike in oil has nothing to do with peak oil directly, but instead everything to do with a gush of dollars. Peak dollar capacity, not peak production capacity, is what is making $100/bbl the new "over/under" number among the oil traders I talk to. [...]

The present spike of oil is, to some extent, driven by offshoring and demand. This decade is really like the 1920's not the 1930's. While prosperity has not reached many in the developed world, this has been a boom time for the developing world. When America was a developing nation, we profited from similar consumption binges in the then core nations of France, Great Britain and Germany. We are making the same mistakes they did in their time in the sun.

The real reason for the spike in oil prices is the pouring of dollars into the global economy meant to bail out the banking sector without imposing any accountability on the people who run it.

The coming World War

So Bernanke pumps dollars into the system, those dollars go elsewhere, and the difference - we stagnate while others advance - makes inevitable, and at this point I say inevitable - that there will come a point where military conflict will be used by those others to evict the United States from the privileged position of having 6% of the world's population and using 25% of the world's oil. That day is coming and the question now is how many millions of people will die when it arrives. Americans have declined, and will in 2008 decline again, to do anything to stop the arrival of a real world war, to replace this fake made for cable one. There aren't many any chances left. This same was true in the 1840's and 1920's. The real instability is yet to arrive.

When it does arrive there will be several islamic states with atomic weapons and the means to deliver them. They will, as the underdogs in the conflict, have the ability politically to use these weapons, perhaps assymetrically, to bring down an order that they do not need. New York City and London are simply too tempting as targets, and the counter attack against the oil fields would destroy what we need. The arabs do not need our financial centers for much longer, we will need the oil in such a conflict.

There is at this point nothing that will be done about this. The current leadership of the US, and of Europe, is completely committed to a global conflict in the future in order to keep doing what they are doing in the present. The right that people are willing to kill for is the right to overconsume what is underpriced. The disutility of oil - in physical terms of war, pollution and scarcity - is well under priced. The price of oil will rise to just below the cost of solving the problems. It will always be a little bit cheaper to pay Saudi Arabia an oil tax not to solve the problem, than to pay ourselves to solve the problem. Just as it was always a little bit cheaper to let slavery continue than to buy it out. That is, until such time as it was clear that there were two mouths and one slice of pie. That day is inevitable, because right now many people are happily munching on the pie. Don't exclude yourself.

What's next, the short term

Short term, if you see a maniac running down the street randomly shooting people while the police look on, bet that he will keep shooting until he runs out of bullets. George Bush will keep fighting in Iraq until the second he leaves office. Congress will keep handing this maniac bullets, and the Central Bank will keep looking the other way. Don't get too attached, to your kid's left arm. [...]

Coal. Bet on coal. Coal. Coal. Coal. Coal. Why? Because both China and the US have lots of it, and will want to use that to get out of dealing with their energy problems, or face economic contraction. [...]

However, this particular farce doesn't have much longer to run, already the process of buying up the financial sector by arabs and chinese interests is proceding. That means that soon the bankers and the other elite are going to start hating this expansion as much as the rest of the country...Bet that the trough after the recession will be, as the last two have been, long, slow, and hard.

This is why I shout this now: get rid of debt, and work your butt off for every bit of money you can now, because this is the last year or so that it will be really easy to do. After that, we might have an expansion, but you won't see any advantage from it.

What can our current political leadership do? Can? Lots of things. Are? Nothing.

They after all, are getting very well paid. 2004 was the most important election in your lifetime. 2008 is the least important election in your lifetime. Nothing is going to be decided. Nothing. [Emphasis added]

Have a nice day.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:47 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

October 26, 2007

Candidate Match

Politics

This is pretty interesting.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:02 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

FEMA Stages Fake News Conference

Politics

FEMA deputy administrator Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson held a press conference today regarding FEMA's response to the fires in southern California. The press conference was carried live on Fox News and MSNBC.

It all went smoothly; old Harvey did a heckuva job. Not surprising, considering there weren't any real reporters present, just FEMA staffers posing as reporters.

ThinkProgress has video. This wasn't some sort of misunderstanding — they went out of their way to make it look and sound like a real press conference. For example, WaPo:

FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted at one point to caution he'd allow just "two more questions." Later, he called for a "last question."

I don't know which is creepier: that they think this is what "news" should be — a totally stage-managed hoax — or that they are such mental infants that they thought it was a neat idea and they could get away with it. Is there no adult supervision in Washington any more?

Posted by Jonathan at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 24, 2007

Dems Suck, Too

Iran  Iraq  Politics

The other day, I got a fund-raising call from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). I told the caller I was sick of the Democrats' caving in to Bush on Iraq, Iran, torture, wiretaps, and everything else, and they weren't getting any of my money, and I hung up. What surprised me was how angry I was. I've had it with the Democrats, and I guess I'm angrier than I knew. Chris Floyd is pissed, too:

Outrage follows outrage, surrender follows surrender: Every day the unreality of our political discourse worsens, even as the reality on the ground grows more bitter and uncontainable. As we approach the anniversary of the Democrats' recapture of Congress — an event that was supposed to mark the repudiation of the Bush administration's lawless, blood-soaked enterprise — it is undeniable that the situation is actually worse now than before.

The prospect of a Democratic victory in 2006 was for many people the last, flickering hope that the degradation of the republic could be arrested and reversed within the ordinary bounds of the political system. This was always a fantasy, given the strong bipartisan nature and decades-long cultivation of greed, arrogance and militarism that has now come to its fullest bloom in the Bush administration. But desperation can crack the shell of the most hardened cynic, and no doubt there were few who did not harbor somewhere deep inside at least a small grain of hope against hope that a slap-down at the polls would give the Bush gang pause and confound its worst depredations.

One year on, we can all see how the Democrats have made a mockery of those dreams. Their epic levels of unpopularity are richly deserved. At every step they evoke the remarks of the emperor Tiberius, who, after yet another round of groveling acquiescence from the once-powerful Roman Senate, dismissed them with muttered contempt: "Men fit to be slaves." The record of the present Congress provides copious and irrefutable evidence for this judgment.

After 10 full months of Democratic command in the legislative branch -- 10 full months under the "liberal," "progressive," "antiwar" Democratic leadership -- where are we? The Iraq war, far from being ended or even curtailed, was instead escalated by Bush in the face of popular discontent and establishment unease: the first, and most egregious, Democratic surrender. Bush's illegal spying on Americans was not only not punished, it was formally legitimized by Congress, whose Democratic leaders are now hastening to give their telecom paymasters retroactive immunity for taking part in what they knew to be a massive criminal operation...The Military Commissions Act -- which eviscerated 900 years of habeas corpus, as even Arlen Specter admitted (before slavishly voting for the bill anyway) -- remains on the books, unshaken by the Democrats, despite all the cornpone about "restoring the Constitution" they've dished out for the rubes back home.

And now we stand on the brink of another senseless, useless, baseless war, this time with Iran -- a conflict that, as Juan Cole pointed out on Salon recently, is likely to make the belching hell of Iraq look like a church picnic. Dick Cheney's bellicose outburst Sunday in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies -- a reprise of many similar war dances he performed in the run-up to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq -- takes us one step closer to this new crime. But Cheney's assertions of Persian perfidy -- all of them unsubstantiated, and in the case of the nuclear program, refuted by the IAEA -- were simply the culmination of a remarkable bipartisan campaign of demonization in which the Democrats have actually taken the public lead, repeatedly castigating the administration for not being "tough enough" on Iran, and repeatedly vowing that "all options are on the table" against the mad mullahs. [...]

The Democrats have already overwhelmingly -- and officially -- accepted the administration's arguments for war against Iran. The first on-the-record embrace came in June, on a 97-0 Senate vote in favor of a saber-rattling resolution from Fightin' Joe Lieberman [that] affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. [...]

But even this was not enough. A few weeks later, there was a new resolution, carefully calibrated to mesh with the all-out propaganda blitz surrounding the appearance of Gen. David Petraeus on Fox News in September. (He also put in an appearance on Capitol Hill, it seems.) Once again, the majority of Senate Democrats voted with the monolithic Republicans for yet another Lieberman-sponsored measure, which effectively if not formally authorized military action against Iran by declaring the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard a "foreign terrorist organization" and tying it to attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. [...]

Even the clueless Joe Biden...gets it. He told George Stephanopoulos Sunday that Bush will seize on the resolutions exactly as predicted: "The president's going to stand there and say ... 'Ladies and gentlemen, as the United States Congress voted, they said these guys are terrorists. I moved against them to save American lives.'"

But Bush is not the only president -- or potential president -- who might seize on the Senate votes. Last week -- just a few days before Cheney's speech -- Hillary Clinton weighed in with a "major policy article" in Foreign Affairs that regurgitated the administration's unproven allegations against Iran as indisputable fact. This too is ominous stuff, coming from a strong front-runner who not only is leading in the opinion polls but is also way out in front among an elite constituency whose support is much more important and decisive than that of the hapless hoi polloi: arms dealers. Clinton has surpassed all candidates -- including the hyper-hawkish Republican hopefuls -- in garnering cash payments from the American weapons industry, the Independent reports. Obviously, these masters of war are not expecting any drop-off in profits if Clinton takes the helm.

And indeed, beyond her "all options" thundering at Iran, Clinton has vowed to do the one thing guaranteed to breed more war, more ruin, more suffering, more "collateral damage," more terrorist blowback: keeping American forces in Iraq, come hell or high water. Clinton's "withdrawal" plan calls for retaining an unspecified number of "specialized units" in Iraq to "fight terrorism," train Iraqi forces and protect other American troops carrying out unspecified activities. Is it any wonder that she's the apple of Lockheed Martin's eye?

But in fact, the "antiwar" plans of the other "liberal" candidates -- the "serious" ones, that is -- are remarkably similar. In other words, the Democrats are promising a permanent (or in the current weasel-word jargon, "enduring") U.S. military presence in Iraq -- which of course has been one of the primary war aims of the Bush administration all along (even before it took office). Credible analysis shows that up to a million people or more have been slaughtered in this ghastly enterprise -- and still the Democrats will not act to end it or, God forbid, try to remove its perpetrators from office. Instead they will keep the red wheel of death rolling toward the ever-vanishing horizon. [...]

[The people] turned to the only serious alternative the system provided: the Democrats. And this is what they got: more war, more torture, more tyranny, more corruption, more lies. [Emphasis added]

The game's rigged. Democrats and Republicans pretend to be different by having different positions on abortion and gay marriage. But on issues of war and peace, military spending, government surveillance, and even torture, they're peas in a pod. Fraternal twins. Coke and Pepsi. An exquisite scam: keep people excited about abortion and gay marriage to make them feel like they have a meaningful choice, then ignore what they want on everything that really matters to the Big Money that drives the system.

What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Democrats tell different lies to get elected. A pox on both their houses.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 05:49 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

October 15, 2007

The Real Rudy: FDNY Radios

9/11, "War On Terror"  Politics

Watch this:

Be sure to catch Rudy's moment of testimony near the end. The guy never stops lying.

Now go sign the petition.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:49 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 10, 2007

What Is It With These People?

Politics

I'll give him one thing. He showed imagination.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 09, 2007

Waiting On The Decider

Iran  Politics

As we wait to see what Bush/Cheney will do vis-a-vis Iran, we read that former Mexican President Vicente Fox calls Bush "quite simply the cockiest man I have ever met in my life," while Bush tells his biographer he's "an October-November man." I.e., we may not have long to wait. David Bromwich:

Once again the president and vice president are ahead of us. Iraq is no longer on their minds. That chapter closed when Petraeus and Crocker administered the sedatives in Washington. Besides, Iraq had become tiresome to George W. Bush. The committee hearings in September were a necessary cover to tie down American soldiers in the Middle East. His excuse was signed by Congress, and now he is home clear.

The dates can only be guessed. November for the triggering incident, December for the trip to the U.N., February for the ultimatum, perhaps March again for the strikes. The repetition would suit his taste for boyish acts of defiance.

Diplomacy, to Bush, is one of those words you had to learn to say in school, like "serious consideration" and "concerted effort." There isn't any glamour in it, no kick. He intends to bomb Iran. He tells us so in every other speech and in everything he doesn't say and doesn't do. [...]

[The Democrats] won a mandate to stop an illegal war, but they let the war be widened; and they are about to consent to another war, before they ask for another mandate.

The president does not wait and he doesn't ask permission. In early February 2007, according to Robert Draper in his biography Dead Certain, Bush was looking to the end of the year, and to Iran: "I'm an October-November man." He had already factored in the pause for the summer, and the soothing September explanations. "The danger," he told Draper, "is that the United States won't stay engaged." But engagement means war: "People come to the office and say, 'Let us promote stability — that's more important.' The problem is that in an ideological war, stability isn't the answer to the root cause of why people kill and terrorize."

The only answer that goes to the root cause, Bush told his biographer, is to add more instability, the right kind of instability. After two wars and a proxy war, none of them yet successful, a lesser man might shrink from further dealing in blood; but in February, Bush was prepared: "I'm not afraid to make decisions."

Soon he will decide again. It is going to happen unless the lawmakers, the media, and those corporations that know they will find a war with Iran the reverse of profitable, overcome their lethargy and admit that this is really happening and decide to stop him. [Emphasis added]

Nobody seems to remark on how crazy it is, in this supposed democracy, that we're all in the dark, awaiting a unilateral decision by the man in the Oval Office. That's not how it's supposed to work. We might as well be Germans wondering what Der Fuhrer has in store for us. Der Fuhrer. The Decider.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

October 03, 2007

Cash COW

Politics

When they said No Child Left Behind, I didn't think they meant Neil Bush.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 26, 2007

Winding Down — Not

Iraq  Politics

Bush's request for war funding in 2008 will be the biggest of the war. LAT:

After smothering efforts by war critics in Congress to drastically cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq, President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure — totaling nearly $200 billion — to fund the war through next year, Pentagon officials said.

If Bush's spending request is approved, 2008 will be the most expensive year of the Iraq war. [...]

The funding request means that war costs are projected to grow even as the number of deployed combat troops begins a gradual decline starting in December. Spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to rise from $173 billion this year to about $195 billion in fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1.

When costs of CIA operations and embassy expenses are added, the war in Iraq currently costs taxpayers about $12 billion a month, said Winslow T. Wheeler, a former Republican congressional budget aide who is a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. [Emphasis added]

Good thing we elected all those Democrats last year. What a difference it's made.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 23, 2007

I'm So Proud

9/11, "War On Terror"  Iraq  Politics

Our president:

(Via Cryptogon)

Posted by Jonathan at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 21, 2007

President Creepy

Politics

Sidney Blumenthal reviews Robert Draper's Dead Certain in Salon. It's creepy stuff. Excerpt:

In his interviews with Draper, [Bush] is constantly worried about weakness and passivity. "If you're weak internally? This job will run you all over town." He fears being controlled and talks about it relentlessly, feeling he's being watched. "And part of being a leader is: people watch you." He casts his anxiety as a matter of self-discipline. "I don't think I'd be sitting here if not for the discipline ... And they look at me — they want to know whether I've got the resolution necessary to see this through. And I do. I believe — I know we'll succeed." He is sensitive about asserting his supremacy over others, but especially his father. "He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge I've got on current things," he told Draper.

Bush is a classic insecure authoritarian who imposes humiliating tests of obedience on others in order to prove his superiority and their inferiority. In 1999, according to Draper, at a meeting of economic experts at the Texas governor's mansion, Bush interrupted Rove when he joined in the discussion, saying, "Karl, hang up my jacket." In front of other aides, Bush joked repeatedly that he would fire Rove. (Laura Bush's attitude toward Rove was pointedly disdainful. She nicknamed him "Pigpen," for wallowing in dirty politics. He was staff, not family — certainly not people like them.)

Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, "You looked mad," he shot back, "I wasn't mad! Tell them that!"

At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: "KARL!" Rove, according to Draper, was Bush's "favorite punching bag," and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today."

Draper reports a telling exchange between Bush and James Baker, one of his father's closest associates, the elder Bush's former secretary of state and the one the family called on to take command of the campaign for the 2000 Florida contest when everything hung in the balance. Baker's ruthless field marshaling safely brought the younger Bush into the White House. Counseling him in the aftermath, Baker warned him about Rumsfeld. "All I'm going to say to you is, you know what he did to your daddy," he said.

Indeed, Rumsfeld and the elder Bush were bitter rivals. Rumsfeld had scorn for him, and tried to sideline and eliminate him during the Ford administration because he wanted to become president himself. If George W. Bush didn't know about it before, he knew about it then from Baker, and soon thereafter he appointed Rumsfeld secretary of defense. Draper does not reflect on this revelation, but it is highly suggestive.

Quoted in an Aug. 9 article in the New York Times on the lachrymose father, Andrew Card, aide to both men, lately as White House chief of staff, and a family loyalist, spoke out of school. "It was relatively easy for me to read the sitting president's body language after he had talked to his mother or father," Card said. "Sometimes he'd ask me a probing question. And I'd think, Hmm, I don't think that question came from him." [...]

"History would acquit him, too. Bush was confident of that, and of something else as well," writes Draper. "Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs."

Bush grasps at the straws of his own disinformation as he casts himself deeper into the abyss. The more profound and compounded his blunders, and the more he redoubles his certainty in ultimate victory, the greater his indifference to failure. He has entered a phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down, he has decided that no matter what he does, history will finally judge him as heroic. [Emphasis added]

What kind of jerk lets his chief of staff greet him, day after day, with the words, "Thank you for the privilege of serving today." I mean, come on. And how delusional does he have to be to still think Saddam had WMDs?

And all the rest of it, the constant nasty, petty ways he humiliates and bullies the people around him. It would be one thing if he were some kind of genius prima donna — a George Patton, maybe, or a Winston Churchill — but the guy's an absolute fly-weight, grotesquely out of his depth, without even a hint of self-awareness. What an asshole.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:43 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

September 12, 2007

"That's Not How Gay Works"

Humor & Fun  Politics

Larry Craig's old news, but this is too funny.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 10, 2007

Petraeus' Performance

Iraq  Politics

Watching Petraeus' performance, you get the impression that great strides are being made in Iraq. But note what he actually said: by mid-July of next year, if all goes well, the US should be able to go back to the same number of troops it had before the surge. I.e., the withdrawal he's talking about is withdrawal of the surge. Back to where we were before. That's all. Nearly a year from now. And after that — who knows. Petraeus:

Force reductions will continue beyond the pre-surge levels of brigade combat teams that we will reach by mid-July 2008. However, in my professional judgment, it would be premature to make recommendations on the pace of such reductions at this time.

Petraeus comes across as smart, competent, straight-forward, on top of things. No wonder, given how much prep and practice he's had. Still, you listen to him and you think, wow, that's encouraging.

But Iraqis beg to differ. BBC:

Coming at a crucial moment, a new BBC/ABC News opinion poll suggests ordinary Iraqis have a damning verdict on the US surge.

The poll, conducted in August, also indicates that Iraqi opinion is at its gloomiest since the BBC/ABC News polls began in February 2004.

According to this latest poll, in key areas - security and the conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development - between 67 and 70% of Iraqis, or more than two-thirds, say the surge has made things worse. [...]

Since the last BBC/ABC News poll in February, the number of Iraqis who think that US-led coalition forces should leave immediately has risen sharply, from 35 to 47%, although that does mean that a small majority - 53% - still says the forces should stay until security has improved.

But 85% of Iraqis say they have little or no confidence in US and UK forces. [...]

In terms of quality of life, 80% of Iraqis say the availability of jobs is bad or very bad, 93% say the same about electricity supplies, 75% for clean water, 92% for fuel.

And 77% of Iraqis say the ability to live where they want, without persecution, is bad or very bad. [...]

There are some more encouraging results.

Sixty-two per cent of Iraqis still say Iraq should have a unified central government, and 98% say it would be a bad thing for the country to separate along sectarian lines. [...]

This is the fourth BBC/ABC News poll since the US-led invasion. And the polling reveals two great divides.

The first is between the relative optimism recorded in November 2005, and the gloom reflected in the two polls conducted this year. [...]

The other great divide is that revealed between the Sunni and Shia communities.

Eighty-eight per cent of Sunnis say things are going badly in their lives.

Fifty-four per cent of Shias think they are going well.

Also, strikingly, 93% of Sunnis say attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, compared with 50% of Shia (the overall total is 57%). [...]

But both communities think equally overwhelmingly (by 98%) that sectarian separation is a bad thing. Iraqis are also somewhat suspicious of their neighbours.

Seventy-nine per cent of them think that Iran is actively encouraging sectarian violence in their country, 66% think the same of Syria and 65% think likewise about Saudi Arabia. [Emphasis added]

It's helpful, too, to know that people close to Petraeus call him "a walking mass of ambition" and "the most competitive person I have ever known — ever," a man who will not just beat you but "make a point of it." And he probably wants to be President. So take his performance with a heaping helping of salt.

And there's this. Military leaders are not supposed to be the ones to sell a policy. That's supposed to be a job for civilians. The White House is hiding behind the general, using the general to cow Congress, which is not how a democracy is supposed to work.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 07, 2007

Liar	9/11, "War On Terror"  Politics

Watch Rudy lie through his teeth:

Posted by Jonathan at 05:13 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

The Decider Down Under

Iraq  Politics

Feel the pride. AP:

President Bush had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day at the Sydney Opera House.

He'd only reached the third sentence of Friday's speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.

"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.

Bush quickly corrected himself. "APEC summit," he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

The president's next goof went uncorrected — by him anyway. Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them "Austrian troops."

That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying "Austrian," the official text released by the White House switched it to "Australian."

Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out — the wrong way.

He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.

The event had inauspicious beginnings. Bush started 10 minutes late, so that APEC workers could hustle people out of the theater's balcony seating to fill the many empty portions of the main orchestra section below — which is most visible on camera.

Even resettled, the audience remained quiet throughout the president's remarks, applauding only when he was finished. [Emphasis added]

Mr. Magoo.

Kinda funny, I guess, but then there's this (SMH):

[Bush] arrived in Australia in a chipper mood.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney. [...]

[In his press conference,] Bush said [Afghanistan and Iraq] were "both theatres in the same war". [...]

His defiance on Iraq is growing. He implied that those who argued against the war in the first place had no role in the current debate.

Perhaps encouraged by the expectation that he will soon be able to withdraw some troops and claim success, regardless of what the rest of the world believes, Bush appeared as a man who has convinced himself he is on the right track and will crash or crash through. [Emphasis added]

"We're kicking ass." The guy's delusional.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

September 03, 2007

Dead Certain

Iraq  Politics

The NYT has some excerpts from interviews Bush gave to author Robert Draper for his forthcoming book, Dead Certain:

[I]n an interview with a book author in the Oval Office one day last December, [Bush] daydreamed about the next phase of his life, when his time will be his own.

First, Mr. Bush said, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers." With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, "I don’t know what my dad gets — it's more than 50-75" thousand dollars a speech, and "Clinton's making a lot of money."

Then he said, "We’ll have a nice place in Dallas," where he will be running what he called "a fantastic Freedom Institute" promoting democracy around the world. But he added, "I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch."

For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, "I'm playing for October-November." That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, "stay longer." [...]

As Mr. Draper described it, Mr. Bush began the interview process over lunch last Dec. 12, in a week when he suddenly had free time because his highly anticipated announcement of a new Iraq strategy had been postponed.

Sitting in an anteroom of the Oval Office, he eschewed the more formal White House menu for comfort food — a low-fat hotdog and ice cream — and bitingly told an aide who peeked in on the session that his time with Mr. Draper was "worthless anyway."

But as Mr. Draper described it, and as the transcripts show, Mr. Bush warmed up considerably over the intervening interviews, chewing on an unlit cigar, jubilantly swatting at flies between making solemn points, propping his feet up on a table or stopping him at points to say emphatically, "I want you to get this" or "I want this damn book to be right." [...]

And in apparent reference to the invasion of Iraq, he continued, "This group-think of 'we all sat around and decided' — there's only one person that can decide, and that's the president." [...]

In response to Mr. Draper’s observance that Mr. Bush had nobody’s "shoulder to cry on," the president said: "Of course I do, I've got God's shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot." In what Mr. Draper interpreted as a reference to war casualties, Mr. Bush added, "I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count as president."

Yet Mr. Bush said his certainty that Iraq would turn around for the better was not for show. "You can't fake it," he told Mr. Draper in December. [...]

"I've been here too long," Mr. Bush said, according to Mr. Draper. "Every time I start painting a rosy picture [about Iraq], it gets criticized and then it doesn't make it on the news."

But he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. "I made a decision to lead," he said, "One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?" [...]

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'" But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

Mr. Bush said he believed that Mr. Hussein did not take his threats of war seriously, suggesting that the United Nations emboldened him by failing to follow up on an initial resolution demanding that Iraq disarm. He had sought a second measure containing an ultimatum that failure to comply would result in war.

"One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn't gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?" Mr. Bush said. "I can't answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work." [Emphasis added]

So, he's The Decider, but he's got no idea how the Iraqi Army got disbanded. Doesn't remember all of that "stuff". I bet Cheney remembers.

Dead Certain. Could the irony of that title be any more grotesque?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

August 31, 2007

GOP Sleaze

Politics

Every time you turn around, there's another news story about GOP scandal and corruption. Somebody should make a list.

Well, somebody has.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:55 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

August 27, 2007

Karma

Politics

Payback's a bitch. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) then and now. What is it about these Republicans?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:09 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

"Cage Bush, Not Sydney"

Corporations, Globalization  Politics

When Bush and the other bigwigs arrive in Sydney next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, they will be ensconced behind a five-kilometer long security fence. Sydney's Deputy Lord Mayor's not happy. ABC (via Crptogon):

This Saturday, construction will start on a three-metre high, five-kilometre long fence in Sydney's CBD to protect leaders attending next week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference.

The fence will cause major traffic disruptions throughout the city and local workers and residents will have to go through special ID checks at access points.

But Sydney's Deputy Lord Mayor is appalled by the security measures being taken to protect officials attending the conference and wants to hang a huge banner from the city's Town Hall saying, "Cage Bush, not Sydney". The council will vote on the proposal.

The city's chamber of commerce has attacked the idea as "madness", saying such a decision would be rude and could affect businesses all over Australia.

Just last week, New South Wales police unveiled a new $600,000 water canon, warning that if APEC demonstrators got wild, they would get very wet.

Another visible part of security will be a five-kilometre long, three-metre high steel fence separating the Opera House, Botanic Gardens and a large part of the CBD from public access.

Workers will start building the fence this weekend.

Greens Councillor Chris Harris, who is also Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney City Council, says he wants the council to take a stand against APEC - and particularly against US President George W Bush.

"I'm sitting in Town Hall today and there's Army personnel wandering through Town Hall with all these fancy devices," he said.

"This is the kind of stuff you see in despotic regimes. This is fearmongering, right-wing, red neck stuff that's being [exported] out of America [and] I think we should distance ourselves from it as far as we can.

"We're forcing the citizens of Sydney, the businesses that operate in the city, to forego hundreds of millions of dollars in business to protect one bloke. I just think this is extraordinary.

"So first of all we're asking that council acknowledge that and then the second thing I'm asking council to do is to demonstrate to our citizens how we feel by putting a banner up on Town Hall that says very simply, 'Cage Bush, not Sydney'."

Please do it, please do it, please do it, please!

Posted by Jonathan at 08:30 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

August 20, 2007

Petraeus Report To Be Written By White House

Iraq  Media  Politics

We're supposed to all be waiting to hear what General Petraeus will say in his September "progress" report. But buried deep in an LA Times story about the upcoming report, we find this:

Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress. How to deal in the report with the lack of national reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects has created some tension within the White House.

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

The senior administration official said the process had created "uncomfortable positions" for the White House because of debates over what constitutes "satisfactory progress."

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq's oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, 'Well, we can claim progress,'" the administration official said. "There were others who said: 'Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it's not credible to...just neglect the fact that it's had no effect on the ground.'"

The Defense official skeptical of the troop buildup said he expected Petraeus to emphasize military accomplishments, including improving security in Baghdad neighborhoods and a slight reduction in the number of suicide bomb attacks. But the official said he did not believe such security improvements would translate into political progress or improvements in the daily lives of most Iraqis.

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?" [Emphasis added]

Everybody pretends the report will be from Petraeus, but it's being cooked up by political hacks in the White House. Which is to say, it will be completely useless as a basis for deciding anything. Watch, though, as the mainstream media play along and portray it as a serious evaluation originating from Petraeus himself. Pardon me while I retch.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

August 02, 2007

Why Fredo Won't Fire His Consigliere

Politics

Even Time gets it:

If cabinet members were perishable goods, Alberto Gonzales would have passed his "sell by" date sometime last spring. Since January, when he first faced sharp questioning over the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the Attorney General has earned disastrous reviews for his inconsistent testimony, poor judgment and for appearing to place loyalty to the White House above service to the public. By June it was hard to find a Republican willing to defend him. Now Gonzales' dissembling testimony about a controversial domestic-spying program has raised suspicions about what he is hiding and fueled new calls for him to go. Senate Democrats have called for a special prosecutor to investigate his activities as Attorney General, and a group of moderate House Democrats has called for the House to weigh impeachment proceedings against him.

Yet the embattled Gonzales' grip on his job seems unshakable. Bush tossed Donald Rumsfeld last fall despite support from conservatives for the then Defense Secretary, and the President chucked Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace at the first sign of congressional resistance to his renomination. So why the extraordinary support for Gonzales in the face of a protracted meltdown at the Department of Justice (DOJ)? Here are four reasons why Bush can't afford to let Gonzales go:

1. Gonzales is all that stands between the White House and special prosecutors. As dicey as things are for Bush right now, his advisers know that they could get much worse. In private, Democrats say that if Gonzales did step down, his replacement would be required to agree to an independent investigation of Gonzales' tenure in order to be confirmed by the Senate. [...]

2. A post-Gonzales DOJ would be in the hands of a nonpartisan, tough prosecutor, not a political hand. Newly appointed Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford is in line to take over until a new Attorney General could be confirmed. Morford, a 20-year veteran of the department, was brought in to investigate the botched trial of the first major federal antiterrorism case after 9/11. He is in the mold of James Comey, the former Deputy Attorney General who stood up to the White House over its domestic-eavesdropping program. Even New York Senator Charles Schumer, one of Gonzales' harshest critics, called Morford's appointment a positive step. Over the past six months, more than half a dozen top political appointees have left the department amid scandal. The unprecedented coziness that once existed between the Justice Department and the White House now remains solely in the person of Gonzales.

3. If Gonzales goes, the White House fears that other losses will follow. Top Bush advisers argue that Democrats are after scalps and would not stop at Gonzales. Congressional judiciary committees have already subpoenaed Harriet Miers and Karl Rove in the firings of U.S. Attorneys last year. Republicans are loath to hand Democrats some high-profile casualties to use in the 2008 campaign. Stonewalling, they believe, is their best way to avoid another election focused on corruption issues.

4. ...Gonzales remains the last line of defense protecting Bush, Rove and other top White House officials from the personal consequences of litigation. A high-profile probe would hobble the White House politically, and could mean sky-high legal bills and turmoil for Bush's closest aides.

Keeping Gonzales isn't cost-free. But for now, Bush seems to have decided that the importance of running out the clock on investigations by keeping his loyal Attorney General in place is worth any amount of criticism. [Emphasis added]

So there you have it. Bush needs a crooked AG to keep him and the rest of his crooked gang out of jail. Nice country we've got.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:09 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

July 30, 2007

All About The Data-Mining After All

9/11, "War On Terror"  Black Ops  Politics

As has been pointed out here at PastPeak a number of times, the whole FISA warrant/wiretapping story was really about a whole lot more than wiretapping: the collection and data-mining of massive databases tracking Americans' phone calls, emails, financial transactions, etc., etc. The NYT reported Saturday that it was this data-mining that was the real story behind the contention between Congress and the White House (and within the Justice Department iself) on the FISA warrants. Pretty much like we've said all along. NYT:

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

The NSA's data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation.

The confrontation in 2004 led to a showdown in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, where Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, tried to get the ailing Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize the NSA program.

Mr. Gonzales insisted before the Senate this week that the 2004 dispute did not involve the Terrorist Surveillance Program "confirmed" by President Bush, who has acknowledged eavesdropping without warrants but has never acknowledged the data mining.

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been briefed on the program, called the testimony deceptive.

"I've had the opportunity to review the classified matters at issue here, and I believe that his testimony was misleading at best," said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, joining three other Democrats in calling Thursday for a perjury investigation of Mr. Gonzales.

"This has gone on long enough," Mr. Feingold said. "It is time for a special counsel to investigate whether criminal charges should be brought."

The senators' comments, along with those of other members of Congress briefed on the program, suggested that they considered the eavesdropping and data mining so closely tied that they were part of a single program. Both activities, which ordinarily require warrants, were started without court approval as the Bush administration intensified counterterrorism efforts soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. [Emphasis added]

So Gonzales has been denying the dispute was about eavesdropping — because it really was about something that was much more serious. I guess it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

July 25, 2007

Messin' With Texas

Extremism  Politics  Religion

Texas governor Rick Perry has appointed a creationist dentist named Don McLeroy to head the State Board of Education. The Austin American-Statesman (via Pharyngula) tells us:

In 2001, McLeroy and a majority of the board rejected the only Advanced Placement textbook for high school environmental science because its views on global warming and other events didn't comport with the beliefs of the board majority. The book wasn't factual and was anti-American and anti-Christian, the majority claimed. Meanwhile, dozens of colleges and universities were using the textbook, including Baylor University, the nation's largest Baptist college.

In 2003, McLeroy voted against approving biology textbooks that included a full-scale scientific account of evolutionary theory. The books were approved.

Just the guy to put in charge of public education.

Need I add, both Perry and McLeroy are Republicans.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

July 20, 2007

WH To Bar US Attorneys From Prosecuting WH Officials For Contempt

Politics  Rights, Law

Prepare to be shocked. As Congress prepares to initiate contempt charges against several White House officials in the US attorneys firing case, the White House has announced that it will prohibit any US attorney from pursuing such a case. Congress can issue all the charges it wants, and the Justice Department will simply ignore them. No matter what Federal law says. WaPo:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege. [...]

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

The administration's statement is a dramatic attempt to seize the upper hand in an escalating constitutional battle with Congress, which has been trying for months, without success, to compel White House officials to testify and to turn over documents about their roles in the prosecutor firings last year. The Justice Department and White House in recent weeks have been discussing when and how to disclose the stance, and the official said he decided yesterday that it was time to highlight it.

Yesterday, a House Judiciary subcommittee voted to lay the groundwork for contempt proceedings against White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, following a similar decision last week against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers. [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called it "an outrageous abuse of executive privilege" and said: "The White House must stop stonewalling and start being accountable to Congress and the American people. No one, including the president, is above the law."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said the administration is "hastening a constitutional crisis," and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the position "makes a mockery of the ideal that no one is above the law."

Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

Under long-established procedures and laws, the House and Senate can each pursue two kinds of criminal contempt proceedings, and the Senate also has a civil contempt option. The first, called statutory contempt, has been the avenue most frequently pursued in modern times, and is the one that requires a referral to the U.S. attorney in the District.

Both chambers also have an "inherent contempt" power, allowing either body to hold its own trials and even jail those found in defiance of Congress. Although widely used during the 19th century, the power has not been invoked since 1934 and Democratic lawmakers have not displayed an appetite for reviving the practice. [...]

Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. ... It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers." [Emphasis added]

Almost Nixonian? Even Nixon didn't go this far. And remember what happened to him.

There are very strange things happening in this country, but because they're happening in relative slow motion and don't make for exciting video, they are escaping most people's notice. But it's not good.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:23 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Lying Liars' Lies

9/11, "War On Terror"  Iraq  Politics

As they say, if you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention.

Well, this should help:

A nation of suckers, that's us.

[Thanks, Kevin]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

July 18, 2007

That "Senior Leader Of Al Qaeda In Iraq"

Iraq  Politics

It was all over the news today: the US military captured a senior al Qaeda in Iraq leader. CNN:

The U.S. military on Wednesday announced the arrest of a senior leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent who, the military said, is casting himself as a "conduit" between the top leaders of al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.

But, in case you missed it, here's a little detail that didn't make the headlines: the guy was captured two weeks ago (July 4) and they only announced it today. He's supposedly this super-important al Qaeda guy, the "conduit" between global al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq, the demonstration of a significant link between Bin Laden and the insurgency, a supposed proof of something the administration has been dying to establish forever. And they only thought to mention it today.

Yesterday, it was the National Intelligence Estimate that trumpeted the al Qaeda threat. Today, it's this. Neatly timed to take the Republican filibuster of the Senate vote on a troop drawdown and blow it off the front pages. Funny how that works.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:13 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this  

July 05, 2007

Despicable

Extremism  Politics  War and Peace

Go read this, and follow its links.

These are very dangerous, very despicable people. Absolute lunatics.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:43 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this  

July 02, 2007

Mad Dreams Of Empire

Politics

Reading Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?, I was struck by the following passage:

...[O]ne summer morning not long ago...my plane touched down in the rain at Shannon Airport, in the Republic of Ireland. ...[A]s it happened, the president of the United States had arrived in Ireland shortly before I did, for an eighteen-hour official visit. His two Air Force One jumbo jets were parked on the shiny tarmac, nose to nose. The presidential eagle, a descendant of Rome’s, glared from within the presidential seal, painted prominently near the front door of each fuselage. A defensive perimeter of concertina wire surrounded the two aircraft. Surface-to-air missiles backed it up. The perimeter was manned by American forces in battle fatigues, flown in for the occasion — just one element of the president’s US security detail, a thousand strong. Other security personnel peered down from the rooftops of hangars and terminals, automatic weapons at the ready. Ringing the airport was a cordon of Scorpion tanks supplied by the Irish Republic. A traveling president...brings with him a government in microcosm... — cabinet members and courtiers and cooks, speech doctors and spin doctors. Provisioning has not been overlooked: the plane can serve meals for 2,000 people, the supplies bought anonymously at American supermarkets by undercover agents, the updated version of [the servants who tasted the Emperor's food as a protection against poisoning]. And if there's a medical emergency? An onboard operating room is stocked with blood of the president’s type; his personal physician is at hand. From the plane's command center a president can launch and wage a nuclear war, or any other kind, for that matter. The forward compartment is what passes for a throne room, containing the president's leather armchair and his wraparound desk and his telephone with its twenty-eight encrypted lines.

Off in the mist would be the Air Force cargo planes, which had brought helicopters, a dozen Secret Service SUVs, and the official presidential limousine (plus the official decoy limousine), its windows three inches thick and its doors so heavy with armor that gas-powered pistons must be used to help open them. Four US naval vessels plied the Shannon River estuary nearby. Outside the airport the roads were jammed with Irish soldiers and police officers — 6.000 in all, slightly more than an entire Roman legion — and on even the tiniest boreens security personnel with communications piglet tails trailing from their ears would emerge from hiding places in the bracken if a passing car, like mine, so much as slowed to avoid some sheep. [Emphasis added]

All for an eighteen-hour visit. Imagine being the person at the center of that frenzied whirlwind of brutal excess. The effect must be positively hallucinatory. No wonder they go mad, imagining themselves to be omnipotent, God's elect, inhabiting an altogether different reality from the rest of us. Consider how inimical such excess is to democracy. It truly is the stuff of Empire.

And then consider this, from the same book:

The idea that an American imperium is part of God's plan was the message of the Christmas card sent out in 2003 by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. It read: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

Not exactly subtle: it's empire we're after, and it's God's plan. The Cheneys humbly commemorate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Think of that the next time they tell you we're just trying to spread democracy and freedom.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

June 27, 2007

What They Say When We're Not Around

Extremism  Politics

These are not nice people. Mean-spirited and godawful dumb.

Update: More here.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

June 25, 2007

Rudy And Ground Zero

9/11, "War On Terror"  Politics

Rudy Giuliani, hero of 9/11. NY Daily News (via Xymphora):

In an upcoming interview with WNBC-TV, former head of the EPA Christie Whitman says former Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts to force WTC workers to wear respirators. [...]

She also said city officials didn't want EPA workers wearing haz-mat suits because they "didn't want this image of a city falling apart."

In an interview scheduled to run the day before Whitman testifies in front of Congress on Monday, she told WNBC-TV she warned the city of the risks almost every day.

And she said she believes illnesses killing first responders can be blamed on the city's lack of action.

"I'm not a scientist ... but I do [believe that]," she told WNBC's Brian Thompson.

"I mean, we wouldn't have been saying that the workers should wear respirators if ... we didn't think there might be health consequences."

She said the city had the responsibility to make sure workers wore respirators. But many took them off, complaining of heat. She said workers without respirators were barred from cleanup efforts at the Pentagon.

"We were certainly frustrated at not being able to get people to wear respirators because we thought that was critically important to workers on The Pile," Whitman said.

"Every day, there would be telephone calls, telephone meetings and meetings in person ... with the city when we repeated the message of the necessity of wearing respirators."

But her concern at the time only involved breathing air on The Pile.

Only seven days after the 9/11 attacks, as fires still raged at the site, she said, "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that the air is safe to breathe."

Whitman also criticized Giuliani's handling of a suspected anthrax attack at NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters weeks after 9/11.

"There was concern by the city that EPA workers not be seen in the haz-mat suits," she said. "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart. I said, 'Well, that's not acceptable.'" [Emphasis added]

Ground Zero workers paid the price. AP:

A study of more than 20,000 people by Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York concluded that, since the attacks, 70 percent of ground zero workers have suffered some sort of respiratory illness. A separate study released last month found that rescue workers and firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring disease, at a rate more than five times as high as in the years before the attacks. [Emphasis added]

Yes, but respirators wouldn't have looked good on the teevee.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:55 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

June 24, 2007

Bush Joins Cheney In Claiming Oversight Exemption

Politics  Rights, Law

A few days ago it was reported that Dick Cheney's office has decided to exempt itself from President Bush's own executive order requiring oversight of the handling of classified information by executive branch agencies and "entities." Cheney argues, not for the first time, that the VP, because s/he also serves as President of the Senate, is a "unique office" that is not a part of either the executive or legislative branch. The Gavel:

The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."

Well, it gets worse. Now Bush's office claims it, too, is exempt. LA Times:

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

The issue flared Thursday when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) criticized Cheney for refusing to file annual reports with the federal National Archives and Records Administration, for refusing to spell out how his office handles classified documents, and for refusing to submit to an inspection by the archives' Information Security Oversight Office.

The archives administration has been pressing the vice president's office to cooperate with oversight for the last several years, contending that by not doing so, Cheney and his staff have created a potential national security risk.

Bush amended the oversight directive in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to help ensure that national secrets would not be mishandled, made public or improperly declassified.

The order aimed to create a uniform system for classifying, declassifying and otherwise safeguarding national security information. It gave the archives' oversight unit responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of each agency's classification programs. It applied to the executive branch of government, mostly agencies led by Bush administration appointees — not to legislative offices such as Congress or to judicial offices such as the courts.

"Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.

But from the start, Bush considered his office and Cheney's exempt from the reporting requirements, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in an interview Friday.

Cheney's office filed the reports in 2001 and 2002 but stopped in 2003.

As a result, the National Archives has been unable to review how much information the president's and vice president's offices are classifying and declassifying. And the security oversight office cannot inspect the president and vice president's executive offices to determine whether safeguards are in place to protect the classified information they handle and to properly declassify information when required.

Those two offices have access to the most highly classified information, including intelligence on terrorists and unfriendly foreign countries.

Waxman and J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, have argued that the order clearly applies to all executive branch agencies, including the offices of the vice president and the president.

The White House disagrees, Fratto said.

"We don't dispute that the ISOO has a different opinion. But let's be very clear: This executive order was issued by the president, and he knows what his intentions were," Fratto said. "He is in compliance with his executive order."

Fratto conceded that the lengthy directive, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, did not specifically exempt the president's or vice president's offices. Instead, it refers to "agencies" as being subject to the requirements, which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. "It does take a little bit of inference," Fratto said.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project, disputed the White House explanation of the executive order.

He noted that the order defines "agency" as any executive agency, military department and "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information" — which, he said, includes Bush's and Cheney's offices. [Emphasis added]

If President Bush intended from the outset that the offices of the President and Vice President were exempt, and if the Vice President's office has never been part of the executive branch, then why did Cheney's office file the required annual reports for a couple of years before it decided to stop? Riddle me that.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:18 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

June 22, 2007

The Politics Of Energy

Energy  Politics

A commenter to the previous post points out that when fuel efficiency increases, people just drive more. He/she has a point. This effect is an example of the Jevons Paradox: increasing the efficiency of the use of a resource is effectively the same as cutting its price — so people buy more of it. Total consumption may actually go up as the lower price makes new usage patterns affordable.

If the increases in efficiency are sufficiently great, however, it seems unlikely that usage will keep pace. If people started driving cars with three or four times better mileage than cars today, it seems doubtful that they would drive three or four times as many miles as a result. There are only so many hours in the day. Not that the proposed increase in CAFE standards will get us to those kinds of efficiencies, but you see my point.

The commenter also says (correctly, I think) that a stiff gasoline tax would be more effective than CAFE standards in getting people to conserve. I don't doubt that's true, although it would be an awfully regressive tax. But it's a moot point. A significant gas tax is, at present, a political impossibility.

By the target date of 2020, 35 mpg will seem ridiculously inefficient, so the CAFE increase may be of purely symbolic importance, telling the car companies to do something they were going to do anyway. Which may explain why the Senate was willing to pass it. But it at least acknowledges conservation as an important goal. And I guess that's worth something.

Meanwhile (CNN):

Republicans blocked Democratic efforts to pass a $32 billion package of tax incentives for renewable energy and clean fuels, objecting to increasing taxes on oil companies by $29 billion over 10 years to pay for it.

That's the real story of this energy bill.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:46 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

June 19, 2007

Rudy And The Iraq Study Group

Politics

From Newsday (via Josh Marshall):

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why — the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months. [Emphasis added]

Suppose that had been Hillary (or any other Democratic candidate). The media would crucify her. But not Rudy (or any other Republican candidate). What do you want to bet he skates? Watch.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

June 14, 2007

Scary Weird

Politics

US Senator Joseph Lieberman went on CBS Sunday and advocated bombing Iran "to stop them from doing what they're doing." What kind of guy says such things? Check out this anecdote from Jeffrey Goldberg's profile of Lieberman in the New Yorker (via Glenn Greenwald):

Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was "Behind Enemy Lines," in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, "Yeah!" and "All right!"

Weird. Scary weird. Literally. "Behind Enemy Lines" was an utterly juvenile piece of crap. What is the guy, a 12-year-old? A not very bright one at that?

Posted by Jonathan at 05:19 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 09, 2007

Support The Troops

Iraq  Politics

In case you haven't already seen this...

Posted by Jonathan at 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 06, 2007

28%

Politics

The good news: Bush's approval rating is now a paltry 28% (Newsweek).

The bad news: "that sort of means you go walking down a street — or go to a mall — and more than 1 out of every 4 people you pass is completely insane" (Tristero).

Posted by Jonathan at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

April 27, 2007

Unevolved

Extremism  Politics  Religion  Science/Technology

This is disheartening, putting it mildly. The graph below shows public acceptance of human evolution in 2005. You'll find the US at second-to-last.

From National Geographic's description:

Adults were asked to respond to the statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." The percentage of respondents who believed this to be true is marked in blue; those who believed it to be false, in red; and those who were not sure, in yellow.

A study of several such surveys taken since 1985 has found that the United States ranks next to last in acceptance of evolution theory among nations polled. Researchers point out that the number of Americans who are uncertain about the theory's validity has increased over the past 20 years. [Emphasis added]

Note that the question was just whether humans evolved from earlier animals. It said nothing about evolution being by purely natural means, via natural selection, or without participation by a deity. It's just: "did humans evolve?"

It would be hard to overstate how clueless you have to be to say no.

The study also found — no surprise here — that evolution deniers in the US tend to be Republicans:

The team found that individuals with anti-abortion, pro-life views associated with the conservative wing of the Republican Party were significantly more likely to reject evolution than people with pro-choice views.

The team adds that in Europe having pro-life or right-wing political views had little correlation with a person's attitude toward evolution.

The researchers say this reflects the politicization of the evolution issue in the U.S. "in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan."

"In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in Southern and Midwestern states," the study authors write.

Miller says that when Ronald Reagan was running for President of the U.S., for example, he gave speeches in these states where he would slip in the sentence, "I have no chimpanzees in my family," poking fun at the idea that apes could be the ancestors of humans. [Emphasis added]

It would be funny, in a sick sort of way, if it weren't so downright scary, considering the belligerence and military power of the US. People who have flipped the mental switch that lets them ignore the evidence of physical reality so they can be accepted by the herd are people who can be led into all sorts of mischief. And they're armed to the teeth. Superstitious primates with guns.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

April 23, 2007

Kucinich To Announce Impeachment Bill Tomorrow

Politics

Pandagon:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will hold a news conference tomorrow afternoon to announce the introduction of articles of impeachment against Vice-President of the United States Richard B. Cheney.

A start. It'll be interesting to see Kucinich's particulars.

I don't believe Kucinich does this kind of stuff to get on the tv. I think he believes in it. So do I. Impeachment needs to get on the table. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and this White House passed it long ago. It's a Republic, if we can keep it, and impeachment is one of the tools. It's the firewall. That's what it's for.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

April 19, 2007

Good For The American People

Politics

USA Today (via Atrios):

While Congress and the White House remain divided over what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the USA, a new poll shows the American public appears to have reached a consensus on the question.

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken last weekend found that 78% of respondents feel people now in the country illegally should be given a chance at citizenship. [...]

But many conservatives strongly oppose to putting illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. "You'd be rewarding them for breaking our laws," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif. [Emphasis added]

Just one more example (alongside Iraq, institutionalized torture, illegal wiretaps, denial of global warming, etc., etc.) of how far out of the mainstream American conservatives really are — though you'd never know it from watching tv.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb..."

Iran  Politics

Un-freaking-believable.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

April 18, 2007

Loan Wolf

Humor & Fun  Iraq  Politics

A great Jon Stewart bit on Paul Wolfowitz:

Posted by Jonathan at 04:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

April 14, 2007

Abstaining From Abstinence

Politics

There seems to be a penchant on the Right for policies that fit their prejudices and preconceived notions but just don't work. Trickle-down, for example, in all its forms. And abstinence education. AP:

Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not, according to a long-awaited study mandated by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don't believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement. [Emphasis added]

Don't expect this kind of scientific study to make a dent, however. The purpose of the programs is to use public funds to reinforce a political/cultural agenda. Who cares if they actually work. Besides, the jury's still out on that science thing.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:17 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

April 03, 2007

Iraqis Unimpressed By McCain Visit

Iraq  Politics

Baghdad residents were unimpressed with Senator McCain's Baghdad photo op. AP:

Iraqis in the capital said Tuesday that Sen. John McCain's account of a heavily guarded visit to a central market did not represent the current reality in Baghdad, with one calling it "propaganda."

Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old who sells electrical appliances at the Shorja market that the Republican congressmen visited on Sunday, said the delegation greeted some fellow vendors with Arabic phrases but he was not impressed.

"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," he said. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit."

Thamir said "about 150 U.S. soldiers and 20 humvees" accompanied the McCain delegation. [...]

"I didn't care about him, I even turned my eyes away," Thamir said. "We are being killed by the dozens everyday because of them. What were they trying to tell us? They are just pretenders."

Karim Abdullah, a 37-year-old textile merchant, said the congressmen were kept under tight security and accompanied by dozens of U.S. troops.

"They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying souvenirs," he said. "To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers." [Emphasis added]

Fly in, use the war as a backdrop for campaign visuals, smile for the camera, tell the folks at home that up is down and black is white, fly out again. Can it get any more grotesque?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 30, 2007

How Dumb Is Homeland Security?

Politics

This dumb. The mind boggles.

Update: Looks like I'm the dumb one. April Fool's came early this year. Serves me right for posting in a hurry.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

March 26, 2007

Stacking The Deck

Environment  Politics

A Maryland paper reports that Republicans who want to serve on the global warming subcommittee have to have decided in advance that humans don't cause global warming. Otherwise, the Republican leadership won't let them on the committee:

House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming — but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.

"I said, 'John, I can't do that,'" Gilchrest, R-1st-Md., said in an interview. "He said, 'Come on. Do me a favor. I want to help you here.'"

Gilchrest didn't make the committee. [...]

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a research scientist from Maryland, and Michigan's Rep. Vern Ehlers, the first research physicist to serve in Congress, also made cases for a seat, but weren't appointed, he said.

"Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one." [Emphasis added]

Hey, here's an idea. How about we actually look at the science and try to come up with constructive public policy solutions. You know, like grownups.

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to revel in being the Flat Earth party. They diverge farther and farther from reality. It's weird. And dangerous.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:25 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

March 24, 2007

Gates: Close Gitmo — Cheney: No

9/11, "War On Terror"  Politics

When Robert Gates started as Secretary of Defense, he wanted to close the Guantanamo prison. Bush himself has said that he'd like to close Guantanamo. But Cheney says no. NYT:

In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gates's appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush's publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo's continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.

Mr. Gates's arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said. [Emphasis added]

In case you were wondering who's really in charge.

Proof that time travel will never be invented: no one came back from the future to strangle Dick Cheney at birth.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 22, 2007

Rove (And Bush) Gave The Order

Politics

Sidney Blumenthal, in Salon:

In the U.S. attorneys scandal, Gonzales was an active though second-level perpetrator. While he gave orders, he also took orders. Just as his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, has resigned as a fall guy, so Gonzales would be yet another fall guy if he were to resign. He was assigned responsibility for the purge of U.S. attorneys but did not conceive it. The plot to transform the U.S. attorneys and ipso facto the federal criminal justice system into the Republican Holy Office of the Inquisition had its origin in Karl Rove's fertile mind.

Just after Bush's reelection and before his second inauguration, as his administration's hubris was running at high tide, Rove dropped by the White House legal counsel's office to check on the plan for the purge. An internal e-mail, dated Jan. 6, 2005, and circulated within that office, quoted Rove as asking "how we planned to proceed regarding the U.S. attorneys, whether we are going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc." Three days later, Sampson, in an e-mail, "Re: Question from Karl Rove," wrote: "As an operational matter we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys — the underperforming ones ...The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc."

The disclosure of the e-mails establishing Rove's centrality suggests not only the political chain of command but also the hierarchy of coverup. Bush protects Gonzales in order to protect those who gave Gonzales his marching orders — Rove and Bush himself.

"Now, we're at a point where people want to play politics with it," Rove declared on March 15 in a speech at Troy University in Alabama. The scene of Rove's self-dramatization as a victim of "politics" recalls nothing so much as Oscar Wilde's remark about Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop": "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."

From his method acting against "politics," Rove went on to his next, more banal talking point: There can be no scandal because everyone's guilty. (This is a variation of the old "it didn't start with Watergate" defense.) "I would simply ask that everybody who's playing politics with this, be asked to comment on what they think of the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration and see if they had the same, superheated political rhetoric then that they've having now." Instantly, this Rove talking point echoed out the squawk boxes of conservative talk radio and through the parrot jungle of the Washington press corps.

Indeed, Presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan replaced the 93 U.S. attorneys at the beginning of their administration as part of the normal turnover involved in the alternation of power. A report issued on Feb. 22 from the Congressional Research Service revealed that between 1981 and 2006, only five of the 486 U.S. attorneys failed to finish their four-year terms, and none were fired for political reasons. Only three were fired for questionable behavior, including one on "accusations that he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case." In brief, Bush's firings were unprecedented, and Rove's talking point was simply one among several shifting explanations, starting with the initial false talking point that those dismissed suffered from "low performance." [...]

Bush's resistance to having Rove placed under oath or even having a transcript of his testimony appears to be a coverup of a series of obstructions of justice. The e-mails hint at the quickening pulse of communications between the White House and the Justice Department. But only sworn testimony can elicit the truth.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee issued five subpoenas, including one for Rove, and on Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to follow suit. With these subpoenas, a constitutional battle is joined. "The moment subpoenas are issued, it means that they have rejected the offer," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. Bush is barricading his White House against the Congress to prevent its members from posing the pertinent question that might open the floodgate: What did Karl Rove know, and when did he know it?

Let's hope the Dems follow the trail as high as it goes. This administration has been guilty of all manner of criminality. Nailing them for this would be like nailing Al Capone for income evasion (or Nixon for the Watergate break-in): not entirely satisfying, but effective.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:20 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

March 21, 2007

"Captain Ahab In Charge Of Saving The Whales"

Humor & Fun  Politics

Jon Stewart interviews John Bolton. Awesome.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Paging Dr. Freud

Humor & Fun  Politics

John McCain accidentally tells the truth, here.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 20, 2007

Editing Global Warming Out Of Government Reports

Environment  Politics

NYT:

A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

They were the first public statements on the issue by Mr. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, he was the "climate team leader" for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby.

He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. [Emphasis added]

From the oil industry lobby's "climate team leader" to White House chief on environmental quality issues to a position at Exxon Mobil. All with no science background.

Everything's politics to this White House, but these are issues that put the health and safety of millions of people at risk. There's actual physical reality at work here. No amount of political hackery can change that. Putting a political hack in charge is like putting a political hack in charge of working up your cancer diagnosis.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:52 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

WH: Congress Can Talk To Rove — In Private, No Oath, No Transcript, No Subpoenas

Politics

The White House says Congress can talk to Karl Rove and Harriet Miers — provided it's in private, not under oath, no transcript taken. AP:

The White House offered Tuesday to make political strategist Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers available for congressional interviews — but not testimony under oath — in the investigation of the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would still press for White House aides to testify under oath but that White House counsel Fred Fielding "indicated he didn't want to negotiate" whether Rove and others would have to appear in a full hearing. "That doesn't mean we're not going to try," Schumer said. [...]

The White House offered to arrange interviews with Rove, Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy to White House political director Sara Taylor, who works for Rove.

"Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," Fielding said in a letter to the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees. [Emphasis added]

Not under oath. Gee, I wonder why.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 19, 2007

Gonzales Is Toast

Politics

ABC News:

New e-mails released this evening by the Justice Department reveal the depth of White House involvement in the discussions to fire eight U.S. attorneys last year. The thousands of pages of e-mails suggest the White House was involved in the plan from the beginning.

The e-mails detail conversations about attorneys targeted for dismissal. There are no e-mails from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who reportedly does not use e-mail, though the Justice Department says messages show some indication that Gonzales' former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, kept the attorney general apprised.

The Justice Department has taken heat from Democrats, who stepped up harsh criticism and calls for Gonzales to step down last week. "They [the U.S. attorneys] should not be sent packing on a whim," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., adding, "especially when the circumstances suggest that their departures may have been motivated by politics."

"First of all, he's [Gonzales] not telling the truth. These were all political," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Never in the history of the country has anything like this ever happened. What is done is untoward, it is wrong, it is unethical, it's immoral. I believe it's illegal, and Gonzales should be fired or he should resign." [Emphasis added]

Better yet, if Gonzales perjured himself, indict him. This has been a lawless administration, front to back. People need to start going to jail. How else are you going to save the principle that the laws apply to everyone, White House included?

Posted by Jonathan at 10:22 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

March 17, 2007

The Serious Candidate

Politics

When presidential candidates speak, we're used to seeing them weigh every single utterance against what they know from polling and focus groups. The wheels never stop turning. You can see it in their eyes.

But here's a presidential candidate who says what's true, not what's expedient (via Poputonian):

Mostly, Kucinich talks in this clip about the possibility of a US attack on Iran. He makes the following essential point:

The most ominous development in this whole matter came a few days ago when the Appropriations Committee made a decision to take out of the budget, of the appropriation, a provision that would have required the president to come back to Congress for permission [before attacking Iran]. In effect what Congress did, by taking that provision out, was to open the door for the president to launch an attack. It was a disastrous move on the part of congressional leaders.

(Congress apparently made this move at the behest of American supporters of Israel. The awful irony is that an attack on Iran would almost certainly be disastrous for Israel — and for the US.)

Kucinich makes the other candidates seem like wind-up toys by comparison. Too bad he can't get a fair shake from the corporate media, who don't think he's a "serious" candidate. The reality, of course, is the opposite. Kucinich is the one candidate who's serious about the issues. Everybody else is auditioning for a part.

Listen for yourself. Part Two here.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:28 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

McCain: "You've Stumped Me"

Politics

John McCain is:

A) a shameless political whore.
B) a clueless idiot.
C) all of the above.

Answer: C

Posted by Jonathan at 12:39 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

March 12, 2007

Cheney's Cheney

Politics

Will Bush pardon Scooter Libby? Frank Rich thinks it's a slam dunk:

Even by Washington's standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.

A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by encumbering them with "signing statements" and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is "pretty much going to stay out of" the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.

Either way, the pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut. Cheney's Cheney knows too much about covert administration schemes far darker than the smearing of Joseph Wilson....[Libby] has the makings of an explosive Washington tell-all that could be stranger than most fiction and far more salable. [...]

Its first chapter would open in August 2002, when he and a small cadre of administration officials including Karl Rove formed the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secret task force to sell the Iraq war to the American people. The climactic chapter of the Libby saga unfolded last week when the guilty verdict in his trial coincided, all too fittingly, with the Congressional appearance of two Iraq veterans, one without an ear and one without an eye, to recount their subhuman treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

It was WHIG's secret machinations more than four years ago that led directly to those shredded lives. WHIG had been tasked, as The Washington Post would later uncover, to portray Iraq's supposedly imminent threat to America with "gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence." In other words, WHIG was to cook up the sexiest recipe for promoting the war, facts be damned. So it did, by hyping the scariest possible scenario: nuclear apocalypse. As Michael Isikoff and David Corn report in "Hubris," it was WHIG (equipped with the slick phrase-making of the White House speechwriter Michael Gerson) that gave the administration its Orwellian bumper sticker, the constantly reiterated warning that Saddam's "smoking gun" could be "a mushroom cloud." [Emphasis added]

Bush doesn't care what the rest of us think, and he doesn't care about the law. He thinks he is the law. He'll do the pardon and it'll be a news story for a day or two, and then it will be gone. Livin' in the USA.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 07, 2007

Seven Countries In Five Years

9/11, "War On Terror"  Iran  Iraq  Politics

I'm astonished that this hasn't been all over the news. On February 27, Amy Goodman interviewed General Wesley Clark. Clark said this:

About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the Secretary of Defense's office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don’t show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!" [Emphasis added]

It seems inconceivable that Clark is just making this up. So I guess it's official: we're in the hands of complete and utter lunatics. Seven countries — seven unprovoked, preemptive wars — in five years. They think they're Hitler, or Napoleon, or Alexander the Great — with nukes. In their minds, the Republic is over; it's Empire time.

People who think like this, what are the chances they're going to accept defeat in Iraq quietly? If you're not scared yet, you should be.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:06 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this  

The I-Word

Politics

Hagel says the I-word.

At least 36 Vermont towns do, too.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 06, 2007

It Didn't Start With Dubya

Iraq  Politics

Before Bush's lies about Iraq's WMD, there were Clinton's lies, as former chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter