Past Peak: Politics Archives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cause for alarm:

[Via Digby]

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

Blocking The Vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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"

WTF?

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

October 09, 2008

Bush To "Assure" The Country

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

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"

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

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

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):

FDR
LBJ
JFK
Clinton
Reagan
Carter
Nixon
Eisenhower
Dubya
Ford
Bush Sr.
Truman
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 03, 2008

McCain Debates... McCain

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

Exactly.

(Source)

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

October 02, 2008

Obama On Jobs

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

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

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?"

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As in "Lie". Via DailyKos:

Good.

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

September 07, 2008

You Go, Joe!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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"

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Meet John McCain:

[Thanks, Miles]

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

Obama Fever

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!!

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

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

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

This is pretty interesting.

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

FEMA Stages Fake News Conference

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

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?

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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%

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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"

Jon Stewart interviews John Bolton. Awesome.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Paging Dr. Freud

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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 reminds us:

From January 1993 until my resignation from the United Nations in August 1998, I witnessed first hand the duplicitous Iraq policies of the administration of Bill Clinton, the implementation of which saw a President lie to the American people about a threat he knew was hyped, lie to Congress about his support of a disarmament process his administration wanted nothing to do with, and lie to the world about American intent, which turned its back on the very multilateral embrace of diplomacy as reflected in the resolutions of the Security Council...and instead pursued a policy defined by the unilateral interests of the Clinton administration to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
I personally witnessed the Director of the CIA under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, fabricate a case for the continued existence of Iraqi ballistic missiles in November 1993 after I had provided a detailed briefing which articulated the UN inspector's findings that Iraq's missile program had been fundamentally disarmed. I led the UN inspector's investigation into the defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, in August 1995, and saw how the Clinton administration twisted his words to make a case for the continued existence of a nuclear program the weapons inspectors knew to be nothing more than scrap and old paper. I was in Baghdad at the head of an inspection team in the summer of 1996 as the Clinton administration used the inspection process as a vehicle for a covert action program run by the CIA intending to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

I twice traveled to the White House to brief the National Security Council in the confines of the White House Situation Room on the plans of the inspectors to pursue the possibility of concealed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, only to have the Clinton national security team betray the inspectors by failing to deliver the promised support, and when the inspections failed to deliver any evidence of Iraqi wrong-doing, attempt to blame the inspectors while denying any wrong doing on their part. [...]

In February 1998 the Clinton administration backed a diplomatic effort undertaken by then-Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, to help get the weapons inspection process back on track (inspections had been stalled since January 1998, when a team I led was prevented by the Iraqis from carrying out its mission because, as the Iraqis maintained, there were too many Americans and British on the team implementing the unilateral policy of regime change instead of the mandated task of disarmament)...[President Clinton] initially supported the Annan mission, not so much because it paved a path towards disarmament, but rather because it provided a cover for legitimizing regime change.

I sat in the office of then US Ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, as the United States cut a deal with then-United Nations Special Commission Executive Chairman Richard Butler, where the timing and actions of an inspection team led by myself (a decision which was personally approved by Bill Clinton) would be closely linked to a massive US aerial bombardment of Iraq triggered by my inspection. I was supposed to facilitate a war by prompting Iraqi non-compliance. Instead, I did my job and facilitated an inspection that pushed the world closer to a recognition that Iraq was complying with its disarmament obligation. As a reward, I was shunned from the inspection process by the Clinton administration.

In April 1998 Bill Clinton promised Congress that his administration would provide all support necessary to the UN inspectors. In May 1998 his National Security Team implemented a new policy which turned its back on the inspectors, seeking to avoid supporting a disarmament process which undermined the policies of regime change so strongly embraced by Bill Clinton and his administration. When I resigned in August 1998 in protest over the duplicitous policies of Bill Clinton's administration, I was personally attacked by the Clinton administration in an effort to divert attention away from the truth about what they were doing regarding Iraq. Four months later Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq, Operation Desert Fox. [...]

It turned out Saddam was in fact already disarmed. And it turned out that...President Bill Clinton...knew this when he ordered the bombing of Iraq in 1998. [Emphasis added]

As I've noted before, Bill Clinton probably killed more Iraqis than George Bush ever has (although Bush is far from done). Clinton killed via sanctions, quietly, off-camera, not via bullets and bombs.

But Ritter's article is aimed directly at Hillary Clinton. I cut that part out just because I wanted to bring Bill Clinton's role into sharp focus. But in 2002 Hillary voted to authorize Bush to use force against Iraq, and she, of all people, knew better.

Weapons inspections work. They are a highly sophisticated technical enterprise. We're supposed to picture a collection of hapless Inspector Clouseaus bumbling around aimlessly, but that's not how it works. Inspections rely on teams of highly skilled scientists and technicians, armed with a variety of extraordinarily sensitive sensors, satellite and aircraft surveillance, and so on. The inspectors knew Iraq had no WMDs. Clinton knew it. Bush knew it. Hillary knew it, but still she voted for war.

What we need now is peace. Let's not settle for less. We can do better than Hillary Clinton.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:49 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 05, 2007

Busting The Joint Out

The still-missing body armor. The billions in cash "missing" in Iraq. No-bid contracts for Halliburton and the rest. A complete failure to even attempt reconstruction in Iraq or the Gulf Coast. And now Walter Reed and the rest of the military medical system.

It's tempting to chalk it up to incompetence. They want us to. And Dubya is nothing if not a poster child for the incompetence defense. But incompetence is way too passive an explanation. They're ravenous, vicious vultures, picking the bones clean. Tax cuts for the rich, private contracts for their cronies, and the rest of us can go screw ourselves.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the scene in Goodfellas where the owner of the Bamboo Lounge takes mobster Paulie as a "partner." Ray Liotta's character says in voiceover:

Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill, he can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy's got to come up with Paulie's money every week. No matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. The place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me. Also, Paulie could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody's gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. And then finally, when there's nothing left, when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match.

That's America today. They're busting the joint out. Trillions in debt? So what, they're not going to pay for it. Sociopaths and pirates, no scruples, no conscience. And that's their edge over the rest of us. We think they've got to be at least a little like us: wanting to do the right thing, caring about what other people think. So we struggle for an explanation. It's got to be incompetence. But it's not. It's criminality on a scale so vast that the rest of us can't even begin to get our heads around it.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:36 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 02, 2007

23%, 25%, 29%

Two weeks ago, David Broder, "Dean" of the Washington press corps, wrote:

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case.

So, how's that working out? NYT:

In the months since the Congressional elections, President Bush has lost substantial support among members of his own party, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
Mr. Bush's approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

Over all, Mr. Bush's job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job, compared with 34 percent at the end of October. Sixty-one percent disapproved, compared with 58 percent in October, within the margin of sampling error.

Twenty-three percent of those polled approved of the way Mr. Bush is dealing with the situation in Iraq. Twenty-five percent approved of his handling of foreign policy. [...]

Seventy percent, including 52 percent of Republicans, say there is not much the United States military can do to reduce the sectarian fighting in Iraq.

Over all, 23 percent of the public say the country is going in the right direction and 68 percent see it as "on the wrong track." [Emphasis added]

Approval rating in the 20s. The downside: desperate men do desperate things.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

March 01, 2007

Goring Gore

Media Politics

Two things.

First, the world would be a very different place today if Al Gore had been elected (or selected) President in 2000. No war in Iraq, for starters. No attack on Iran, should it come to that. Nothing like the worldwide antipathy towards the United States we see today. One could go on.

Second, Al Gore would have been elected President — probably with relative ease — if the mainstream media had given him a fair shake. All that nonsense about Gore being stiff, unlikable, a serial exaggerator — inventor of the Internet, the subject of Love Story — while George Bush was the likable, straight-talking guy everybody'd want to have a beer with. It was unrelenting, and it made all the difference.

Which is to say, the US media have a lot of blood on their hands. But don't hold your breath waiting for them to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the great wrong they did to Gore and the great harm they did to the country and the world.

Which brings us to Bob Somerby. He chronicled many of the media outrages at the time, and he hasn't forgotten who said and did what. And is still saying and doing what. In yesterday's Daily Howler, Somerby looks at how little things have changed, and he's pissed. It's a good read, and an important one, as the media prepare once again to sanctify the likes of McCain and Giuliani, while covering Hillary and Obama — and Gore — with snide innuendo. Go read it.

This isn't a game. The media's consensus narrative shapes people's perceptions and changes history. Millions of lives have been shattered by Bush's presidency. While the pundits feed their egos, ordinary people pay the price. You'd think the pundits would look around at what they have wrought, at the rising tide of wreckage and ruin that surrounds us, and feel chastened. But you'd be wrong.

Now watch, as they get ready to do it all again.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 27, 2007

Are We Being Played?

Iraq Politics

Digby had an interesting post yesterday on ways the Senate Dems are soft-pedaling Iraq, supposedly out of fear that Joe Lieberman will jump to the GOP, thereby ending the Democratic majority and (supposedly) putting the Republicans in control of Senate committees.

Except for one thing. As Digby points out, WaPo and MediaMatters have reported that the current Senate's organizing rules don't require the Democrats to relinquish control if they lose their majority. To regain control, the Republicans would have to pass new organizing rules, something that the Dems could — and presumably would — filibuster.

It's hard not to conclude, therefore, that Lieberman is being used as a convenient excuse by timid Senate Democrats who don't want to stick their necks out on Iraq. Yes, politics is a devious game, but there's a war on. The country needs principled and decisive action, not phony political theater.

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

February 22, 2007

Recycling: Incentives Needed

Economy Environment Politics

How are Americans doing at recycling plastic bottles? The answer is disappointing. Andrew Leonard, at Salon:

In 1995, nearly 40 percent of all plastic PET bottles sold in the United States were recycled. Ten years later, in 2005, the figure was only 23 percent.
The vast majority of water and plastic soda bottles consumed in the world are made of PET, aka polyethylene terephthalate. And perhaps contrary to expectations, this is one petroleum byproduct that is eminently recyclable. Indeed, and here's a second baffling peculiarity, producers of ground-up recycled PET "flake" cannot keep up with demand. Prices per pound are strong, propelled by Chinese buyers who will buy all the flake or bales of flattened bottles that they can get, to turn into pseudo-polyester and other materials.

So, we are recycling a smaller percentage of plastic bottles than 10 years ago, and yet supply of what is lovingly referred to as "post-consumer PET" can't keep up with demand. What's wrong with this picture? Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

The answer to the first question turns out to be simple. A handy chart provided by the National Association for PET Container Resources reveals that in 1995, the U.S. recycled 775 million pounds of PET bottles, out of a total of 1.95 billion pounds of bottles estimated to be on retail shelves. The actual total poundage recycled over the next 10 years stayed more or less the same, albeit finally beginning to tick up steadily in 2004. But the total amount of bottles produced more than doubled, jumping to nearly 5 billion pounds by 2005. Those of us who do recycle aren't necessarily recycling less as the years go by, we just haven't been able to keep up with the deluge.

But now that we've answered the first question, there's still the second. With so many bottles available to be recycled, why can't we satisfy demand? One reason is that we don't have enough installed capacity to clean the bottles and chop them up into flakes. But another is that voluntary programs for recycling plastic don't appear to work too well. Maybe most people are like me, and didn't realize until today how recyclable the bottles are. Or maybe they don't live in one of the 11 states that mandate refundable deposits for PET bottles.

Because if you want to know why PET bottle recycling rates started to rise again in recent years, the answer appears to be simple: California. In 2004, California enacted a law that increased redemption values for PET containers. As a result, PET recycling in California surged.

Strange: Legislation and financial incentives make a difference! If government properly sets up a system that encourages people, whether you, me or the neighborhood poacher, to ferret out those bottles and turn them in, we can reduce landfill waste and clean up our neighborhoods. [Emphasis added]

The free market, all by itself, won't protect the environment. Regulation is needed — which means government regulation.

Give people an incentive, and they'll do the right thing. Providing that incentive just requires political will. What are we waiting for?

Posted by Jonathan at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 19, 2007

Starving Climate Science

Environment Politics Science/Technology

From an interview with NASA climatologist Drew Shindell in yesterday's NYT:

Q: As a physicist and climatologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, you recently testified before Congress about ways in which the Bush administration has tried to prevent you from releasing information on global warming. Can you give us an example? Sure. Press releases about global warming were watered down to the point where you wondered, Why would this capture anyone's interest? Once when I issued a report predicting rapid warming in Antarctica, the press release ended up highlighting, in effect, that Antarctica has a climate.
If your department is that politicized, how does that affect research? Well, five years from now, we will know less about our home planet that we know now. The future does not have money set aside to maintain even the current level of observations. There were proposals for lots of climate-monitoring instruments, most of which have been canceled.

By NASA? Well, it's a NASA decision following the directives from their political leaders. The money has been redirected into the manned space program, primarily.

Are you referring to President Bush and his plan to send Americans to Mars? The moon and Mars, yes. It's fine to do it for national spirit or exploring the cosmos, but the problem is that it comes at the cost of observing and protecting our home planet.

Why is NASA involved in climate research in the first place? There is no federal agency whose primary mission is the climate, and that's a problem, because climate doesn’t command the clout that it should in Washington. Since NASA is the primary agency for launching new scientific satellites, it has ended up collecting some of the most important data on climate change. [...]

Why do you think the federal government has been so phobic about adopting energy-efficiency regulations? "Phobic" is the right word, because it's irrational not to conserve when you think of all the advantages, such as keeping money in consumers' pockets instead of sending it to Middle Eastern countries that hate us. [Emphasis added]

It always seemed a little odd that the Bush White House took an interest in promoting manned spaceflight to Mars and the moon. It seemed out of character.

Pardon my cynicism, but could it just be their way of diverting funding away from research into the inconvenient truth of global climate change? Seems like just the sort of move that Bush, Cheney, and Rove might think was oh so very clever.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 16, 2007

Happy President's Day

USA Today's founder Al Neuharth, today:

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying "this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst."
"She's wrong," I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. "It's very unlikely Bush can crack that list," I added.

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.

[Via Atrios]

Posted by Jonathan at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 12, 2007

Securing The Homeland

Daft.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 05, 2007

Cognitive Dissonance

Iran Iraq Politics

While administration rhetoric against Iran grows more heated, a new US National Intelligence Estimate finds it "not likely" that Iran is a significant cause of violence in Iraq. Seattle Times:

The Bush administration is escalating its confrontation with Iran, sending an additional aircraft carrier and minesweepers into the Persian Gulf as it accuses the Islamic regime of arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq for attacks on U.S. troops.
A new U.S. intelligence estimate Friday, however, concluded that Iranian and other outside meddling is "not likely" a major cause of the bloodshed in Iraq, and a new McClatchy analysis of U.S. casualties in Iraq found that Sunni Muslim insurgents, not Iranian-backed Shiites, have mounted most — but not all — attacks on American forces.

The Bush administration, which made exaggerated or incorrect claims about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to al-Qaida to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq, hasn't provided evidence to back up its charges. [...]

"The vast majority of Americans who are being killed are still being killed by IEDs [improvised explosive devices] set by Sunnis," said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and White House expert on Persian Gulf affairs. [...]

"The evidence that I am seeing does not seem to support the level of rhetoric, let alone the military actions" the administration is taking, Pollack said. [...]

On Friday, the National Intelligence Council, comprising the top U.S. intelligence analysts, released an assessment of the Iraq crisis that said "lethal support" from Iran to Shiite militants "clearly intensifies" the conflict, but isn't a significant factor.

"Iraq's neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events in Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining" sectarian strife, said the analysis, known as a National Intelligence Estimate.

Intelligence officials said they have strong evidence of Iranian support for Iraqi Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army. The question is how great a role they're playing in the conflict.

"No one sees a problem," said a U.S. defense official who requested anonymity because the issue involves top-secret intelligence. [Emphasis added]

The analysts who generated the NIE have seen whatever evidence exists. If they haven't seen any evidence that Iran is playing a significant role in Iraq, it's because there isn't any evidence.

No one should be giving the White House the benefit of the doubt on this. Not after all the lies they told us to sell their attack on Iraq. The penalty for lying is not to be believed.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Texas GOP: Proud To Look Stupid

Texas Republicans don't care about your grandkids — or theirs. Not when there's money to be made. Austin Star-Telegram:

Despite warnings from President Bush about global warming — and in the face of what many experts and even industry leaders describe as overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue — top leaders in Texas have continued to question the validity of man-made climate change.
"Absolutely," Gov. Rick Perry replied when asked recently by the Star-Telegram whether there is scientific doubt that human activity causes global warming. "I am not going to put the state of Texas in a competitive economic disadvantage on some science that may or may not be correct."

State Rep. Phil King said: "I think it's just bad science. I think global warming is bad science." The Weatherford Republican has responsibility for electric-utility issues in the House.

The global-warming debate has exploded in prominence during the legislative session, especially against the backdrop of TXU's controversial plan to build 11 coal-fired plants that environmentalists say will contribute dramatically to greenhouse gases in Texas. Other utilities also propose new facilities.

Perry and other key Republicans have expressed general support for those utility plans even as they have rejected the validity of global warming or sidestepped the question.

In a recent opinion piece, Perry said there remains great debate among scientists about the validity of man-made global warming. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Wednesday that there's an "absence of scientific consensus on the causes of climate change" but added that "we should take every reasonable step to support the development of new technologies and renewable energy sources."

House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, said he did not know whether there was scientific consensus.

Contrast that with a recent cover story in Scientific American, in which Gary Stix wrote that "the debate on global warming is over" and that "carbon dioxide from SUVs and local coal-fired utilities is causing a steady uptick in the thermometer."

David Kennedy, writing for Science magazine, has noted that "consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science." [...]

Perry has signed an executive order directing state regulators to expedite permits for new power plants, and in an interview this month with the Star-Telegram he repeated skepticism about the science of global warming.

King said he hopes the Legislature does nothing to restrict emissions that environmentalists associate with global warming.

"For every study and every report that somebody points to and says this is occurring, you can find just as many that say it's not," King said. "I just haven't seen anything that [convinces me that this is] anything other than the natural swing that the climate takes throughout the eons." [...]

D. James Baker, a former administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was quoted in a May 2005 issue of Mother Jones as saying that "there is a better scientific consensus on this than on any other issue I know — except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics." [...]

"Anybody, regardless of their position, reaches a point where they just look silly denying what is so clear to the rest of the world," said Rowan, of Environmental Defense. [Emphasis added]

Sooner or later, the gap between what these people say and what the rest of us can see with our own eyes will grow so large that they'll be discredited forever. Or at least one can hope so.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:27 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this

February 04, 2007

Super-Veep

Under the Constitution, the Vice President is an executive branch officer who also serves as President of the Senate. But because of the veep's Senate role, Cheney has decided that (via Digby):

The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter.

The US theory of government rests on the principle of three coequal branches. Separation of powers. But in Dick Cheney's world, the Vice President is some kind of super-official. He, and he alone, is bigger than the system. Belonging to neither the executive nor legislative branch, he need follow the rules of neither. So when Cheney's office was asked to submit the required list of its staff, they submitted the statement quoted above. Super-Veep. If it was any other Vice President, you'd have to laugh. But it's Cheney. No laughing matter.

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

February 02, 2007

Fool Me Once

Global Guerrillas Iran Iraq Politics

The influence of Israel (via AIPAC) on US politics is enormous, and that influence is pushing us towards war with Iran. The Democrats are, if anything, more in AIPAC's debt than the Republicans. On Iraq, the Dems are making gestures, at least, of opposition, but Iran is another story. Digby has a very important post on this subject. It deserves to be read in full, but let me just highlight a few things.

First, Hillary Clinton speaking the other night at an AIPAC dinner (IHT):

Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel's greatest threats, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said "no option can be taken off the table" when dealing with that nation.
"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. "In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table."

And John Edwards, speaking in Israel (RawStory):

Although Edwards has criticized the war in Iraq, and has urged bringing the troops home, the former senator firmly declared that "all options must remain on the table," in regards to dealing with Iran, whose nuclear ambition "threatens the security of Israel and the entire world."
"Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons," Edwards said. "For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse."

Their rhetoric is utterly indistinguishable from the White House's. So much for the opposition party. Digby says he's "starting to get agitated" about the Democrats' approach to Iran. He calls it "discouraging," a misguided political strategy. But it goes way beyond just a strategy. It's who the Democrats are. Unfortunately.

All the hysteria about Iran getting a bomb is wildly overblown. As Jacques Chirac put it:

"Where would Iran drop this bomb? On Israel?" he asked. "It would not have gone off 200 metres into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground."

Iran doesn't want to nuke Israel. The Iranians want a deterrent, so they won't be attacked by the US and/or Israel. The US attack on Iraq — but not North Korea — has proved the importance of a deterrent. Especially, if you've been designated a member of the "Axis of Evil." In any case, international inspections could keep a rein on an Iranian weapons program. But, as was the case with Iraq, the US refuses to take yes for an answer and let inspections do their work.

The final, horrifying irony is that an attack on Iran is certain to be far more dangerous and destructive to Israel than would be a situation where Iran is sitting with a bomb or two as a deterrent. As Digby says:

It is very unfortunate that it came to this. But you also have to recognise that as unpalatable as it might be to have another nuclear armed nation in a volatile region, it doesn't really take us much closer to the end of the world or even the end of Israel, despite all the kooky talk coming from Ahmadinejad.
Attacking Iran, however, just might. The repurcussions of such a move would cut the last frayed ties with many allies, finally destroy all of our moral authority and convince the world that we are a super-power to be contained, not an international leader that can be relied upon to behave rationally. It is a disasterous strategic move on virtually all levels that only someone with a puerile "might makes right" strategic vision would even contemplate.

As John Robb says, a war between the US/Israel and Iran "would quickly destabilize every state in the Middle East and allow them to fall prey to open source war like Iraq." I.e., we'd have not just one Iraq on our hands, but many. Failed states, torn apart by tribal guerrillas, jihadists, and criminal gangs, as in Iraq. It's hard to imagine what centripetal force would ever put those Humpty-Dumptys back together again. There are right-wingers in Israel — and here in the US — who embrace that scenario: if the other nations in the Middle East collapse, Israel will be left to dominate the region. But it's lunacy. Once those atomizing forces are put in motion, chaos will be inexorable. These people are playing with matches in a world of gasoline.

But more and more people seem to buy that Iran is "on the brink" of getting nukes (plural), that that's "unacceptable," that the Iranians are madmen, worse than Hitler, etc., etc. Why? Because that's what they're saying on the teevee? It's exactly the same script that was used to sell Iraq, but for some reason a lot of people think this time it's on the level. Please.

The people telling us what to think about Iran are the same people who lied through their teeth to get us into Iraq. They are the same people who were absolutely wrong about what the outcome of that would be. Everything they have ever said on the subject was a lie or wrong. Everything.

What are we, suckers?

Posted by Jonathan at 07:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

The Great War Powers Flip-Flop

Iraq Politics

This post by Glenn Greenwald is fascinating.

The wingnuts love to say that President Clinton "emboldened" terrorists by "cutting and running" from Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993. Something I didn't realize, pardon my ignorance, was that it was Republican senators who forced Clinton to withdraw by setting troop withdrawal deadlines and threatening further restrictions. The same Republican senators who today say Congress lacks the power to limit troop deployments to Iraq.

Leading the way, the great flip-flopper himself, John McCain, who in 1993 said:

Dates certain, Mr. President, are not the criteria here. What is the criteria and what should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal from Somalia. And if we do not do that and other Americans die, other Americans are wounded, other Americans are captured because we stay too long — longer than necessary — then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did not exercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and mandate that they be brought home quickly and safely as possible. [Emphasis added]

As Glenn Greenwald says, the Constitution hasn't changed since 1993.

[Thanks, Ken]

Posted by Jonathan at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 01, 2007

When Presidents Lie

There are lies about sexual indiscretions, and there are lies about stuff that matters.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 30, 2007

More Double Talk

McCain flip-flops again. Does he think no one's listening?

Posted by Jonathan at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

The Way Of The Ostrich

This is outrageous, crazy, you name it. AP:

Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.
The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report. [Emphasis added]

If we just ignore it, maybe it will go away. As if reality is only what we say it is.

Insanity.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 29, 2007

Politics Trumps Science — Again

The NYT reports that the White House has issued a directive giving its political commissars more direct control of regulatory policy at the various agencies of the executive branch, taking control away from civil servants and scientists. Excerpts:

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, "This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable." [Satire?] [...]

The directive issued by Mr. Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify "the specific market failure" or problem that justifies government intervention.

Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review "any significant guidance documents" before they are issued. [...]

Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the executive order "achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government." [...]

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said: "The executive order allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health and safety issues, even if the government's own impartial experts disagree. This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests." [...]

Wesley P. Warren, program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who worked at the White House for seven years under President Bill Clinton, said, "The executive order is a backdoor attempt to prevent E.P.A. from being able to enforce environmental safeguards that keep cancer-causing chemicals and other pollutants out of the air and water." [Emphasis added]

Many, if not most, regulatory matters are highly technical applications of specialized expertise. The White House couldn't care less about such technical matters. It wants control of the regulatory carrot and stick. Instead of scientists and civil servants, people like Karl Rove will get the final say on regulatory policy. Which means it will be about politics, period. And which gives the White House enormous leverage to reward corporations friendly to it and punish those that aren't. A gigantic protection racket. Everything's for sale. Science is for liberal suckers. The thing is, though, if you ignore what science tells you about reality long enough, reality has a way of getting the last word.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Double Talk

John McCain's popularity has always been a triumph of style over substance. People seem to think he's some kind of moderate and non-ideological "maverick", but he's got one of the two or three most conservative voting records in the entire US Senate.

And while he styles himself a "straight talker," he's anything but. Check out this short video, all in McCain's own words. Excellent.

Lots more here. An excellent resource.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 28, 2007

Clinton: US Should Withdraw Before End Of Bush Term

Iraq Politics

Hillary Clinton has finally taken a position on Iraq that seems like a step in the right direction. AP:

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be "the height of irresponsibility" to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.
"This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy," the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

"We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office" in January 2009, the former first lady said.

A clever move, politically. Creates a timetable without seeming to pick an arbitrary date out of the air. Defines the war as Bush's war and, by extension, the GOP's war. Gives Hillary a way to hammer Bush and the eventual Republican candidate from now through election day.

Bush is determined to foist the war onto his successor. Even if he succeeds in that, the war must be seen as Bush's failure, since that's what it is. The danger in Clinton's position, however, is that it could be taken as giving Bush two more years to try to "win".

Posted by Jonathan at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bush Approval: 30%

Newsweek:

President George W. Bush concluded his annual State of the Union address this week with the words "the State of our Union is strong … our cause in the world is right...and tonight that cause goes on." Maybe so, but the state of the Bush administration is at its worst yet, according to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll. The president's approval ratings are at their lowest point in the poll's history — 30 percent — and more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans. Half (49 percent) of all registered voters would rather see a Democrat elected president in 2008, compared to just 28 percent who'd prefer the GOP to remain in the White House. [Emphasis added]

Next stop, ratings in the 20s. And yet The Decider flouts the will of the country and single-handedly escalates the war.

Meanwhile, those of us who said from the outset that Bush/Cheney would be a disaster, that the Iraq attack was based on fabricated justifications and would end in catastrophe — will the day ever come when the "serious" journalists of the capitalist media recognize and admit that maybe we ought to be listened to? Not holding my breath, but it really is an astonishing state of affairs, when one's status as a "credible" voice bears no relation whatever to whether one has ever actually been right about anything.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:15 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 24, 2007

Facing Reality

Kerry won't run.

Good.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Alternatives

Shorter SOTU: cartoon version.

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

January 21, 2007

Newsweek Poll

Iraq Politics

The latest Newsweek poll is a doozy.

Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq:
Approve: 24%
Disapprove: 70%

Trust more to make decisions about Iraq:
Bush: 32%
Democratic leaders in Congress: 55%

US making progress in Iraq:
Making progress: 24%
Losing ground: 67%

US troop levels in Iraq:
Increase: 23%
Decrease: 50%
Same: 18%

Bush's "surge" plan:
Favor: 26%
Oppose: 68%

Democrats in Congress block funding for Bush's "surge" plan:
Should: 46%
Should not: 46%

The level of support for blocking funding for the troop "surge" is remarkable, considering that it's a question of withholding funding in the middle of a war.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 15, 2007

Gratitude

Iraq Politics

From Scott Pelley's 60 Minutes interview of President Bush:

PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?
BUSH: That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?

PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.

Wow. How creepy is that?

Posted by Jonathan at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 12, 2007

Starting Impeachment

David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org among other things, has an interesting post regarding impeachment:

There is a decent chance that within the next month or two the New Mexico State Legislature will ask the U.S. House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And there is the definite possibility that a Congress Member from New Mexico will take up the matter when it gets to Washington. The Jefferson Manual, rules used by the U.S. House, allows for impeachment to be begun in this manner. It only takes one state legislature. No governor is needed. One Congress Member, from the same state or any other, is needed to essentially acknowledge receipt of the state's petition. Then impeachment begins. [...]
In New Mexico, a leading light of that state's politics, State Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque, will be leading the way on impeachment. He deserves the support of all the world, and you can thank him at jortizyp@aol.com or 505-986-4380. Let's help him make New Mexico the land of enchantment and impeachment.

I had no idea it can be done that way. Things could get interesting.

[Via Poputonian]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:26 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

January 04, 2007

Olbermann On "Sacrifice" And The "White Noise" Of Endless War

Iraq Media Politics

As Bush prepares to sell ~~a troop surge~~ escalation in Iraq in terms of "sacrifice", Keith Olbermann provides blistering commentary:

One of Olbermann's best. Just outstanding.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 14, 2006

White House Clamping Down On USGS Scientists

In Stalinist Russia, science was made to conform with Soviet policies and propaganda. But we live in the Free World. Or not. AP:

The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, who study everything from caribou mating to global warming, subjecting them to controls on research that might go against official policy.
New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. [...]

"I feel as though we've got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that's a very scary thing. I worry that it borders on censorship," said Jim Estes, an internationally recognized marine biologist who works for the geological unit. "The explanation was that this was intended to ensure the highest possible quality research," said Estes, a researcher at the agency for more than 30 years. "But to me it feels like they're doing this to keep us under their thumbs. It seems like they're afraid of science. Our findings could be embarrassing to the administration."

The new requirements state that the USGS's communications office must be "alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature."

The agency's director, Mark Myers, and its communications office also must be told — prior to any submission for publication — "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed."

Patrick Leahy, USGS's head of geology and its acting director until September, said Wednesday that the new procedures would improve scientists' accountability and "harmonize" the review process. He said they are intended to maintain scientists' neutrality. [...]

The changes amount to an overhaul of commonly accepted procedures for all scientists, not just those in government, based on anonymous peer reviews. In that process, scientists critique each other's findings to determine whether they deserve to be published.

From now on, USGS supervisors will demand to see the comments of outside peer reviewers as well any exchanges between the scientists who are seeking to publish their findings and the reviewers.

The Bush administration, as well as the Clinton administration before it, has been criticized over scientific integrity issues. In 2002, the USGS was forced to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report followed, this time saying the caribou would not be affected. [Emphasis added]

Among other things, USGS is the US agency responsible for estimating the world's remaining oil and gas reserves.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 10, 2006

Manifestoon

The words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, illustrated by clips from Looney Tunes and Disney cartoons. Interesting and subversive.

It's remarkable that the words were written more than a century and a half ago. Some archaic terminology aside, a lot of it's pretty descriptive of events today. Check it out.

[Via Stan Goff]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:31 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 08, 2006

Zogby: Bush Approval 30%

People are onto him. Zogby (via Atrios):

The national job approval rating of President Bush has plummeted to 30%, an all–time low in the latest Zogby International telephone poll, sinking below the 31% approval rating he dropped to in early June. [...]
Sixty–eight percent said they believe Bush is doing only a fair or poor job leading the nation.

Support for the President waned in key demographic groups, the Zogby poll shows. Among all Republicans, just 60% gave him a positive job rating, while 39% gave him negative marks. Just 9% of Democrats and 22% of political independents gave him good marks for his work. Among married respondents – typically a group who favors Republicans – just 35% said Bush was doing a positive job. Among men, another favorable GOP demographic, just 31% gave him positive marks, while 69% gave him a negative rating. Even among stalwart Born Again respondents, just 43% had positive ratings for the President on his overall job performance.

You've got to wonder about that 30%, what it is they find worth approving.

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

December 04, 2006

Leahy: Bush Should Be "Terrified"

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy at a Democratic Party function Saturday night (via BuzzFlash):

[Leahy] related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be "worried" that [Leahy] was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.
"No, no" he said, calming the crowd, as if to be prepared for a softening of his rhetoric.

"No, he shouldn't be worried. He should be terrified."

And the room exploded.

Leahy went on to assure the crowd that, unlike "some in the administration," he'd "actually read the Constitution," and went on to promise that no judges nominated to the federal bench who would ignore that Constitution would ever get past his committee. [Emphasis added]

Let's hope he means it.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bolton Quits

John Bolton, diplomat:

Good riddance.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 03, 2006

Bill O'Reilly's Question

Activism Iraq Politics

Stan Goff is somebody worth reading and listening to. He's a veteran of the US Army Rangers, Airborne, Delta Force, and Special Forces, who served in Vietnam, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Somalia, and Haiti. Which is to say, he's seen imperialism up close in a way few of us ever will. Now he's a very determined, very smart, and very thoughtful activist, working against war, patriarchy, and empire. Here's a post of his on a question of Bill O'Reilly's:

There is nothing more tragically amusing than watching the right-wing catch liberals off guard.
Bill O'Reilly has caught the whole crew flat-footed with one of those trick questions: Do you want the United States to win in Iraq? Set aside for the moment that this ignores the fact that the US government has already lost in Iraq, and that the question is constructed a little like, "Yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife?"

This is pissing off the Democratic Party establishment because it is outing them, the same way Republicans outed John Kerry by stating, quite accurately, that Kerry supported the war when the national blood was up. Not a single public official will answer this question the way it needs to be answered if we want go on record saying that the lives of people from abroad are as valuable as American lives.

O'Reilly needs his bluff called.

Do you want the United States to win in Iraq?

ANSWER: No.

The US occupation force in Iraq is there with a malignant purpose. It was sent there to install a puppet government and establish permanent US bases as part of the post-Cold War re-disposition of an imperial military. The invasion and occupation was illegal and immoral; and it has been characterized by the slaughter of innocents by US forces, by premeditated murder and rape, by prisoner abuse, by the systematic humiliation of the people who live there, by the destruction of whole cities, and at the material, mental, and moral expense of the people who — for a host of reasons — find themselves in the US military. The Iraqis have a right to defend themselves, and a right to fight invaders.

Moreover, the US reliance on the miltiary to prop up its domestic economy and justify the future employment of militarism against other people is a net negative in the world. It is also a net negative for the US people, as opposed to defense contractors and politicians. One way to inhibit the future use of military invasion and occupation as a tool of US control over other peoples' lives and economies is to learn the hard way — by accepting the humility that comes with divesting of our overweaning naitonalist pride, our self-delusion of superiority, and our belief that we have the right to direct the affairs of the whole damn world (using soldiers, of course...none of the engineers of these adventures suffer a day of discomfort).

Not only do I not want the US to "win" in Iraq — whatever that is supposed to look like. More importantly, Bill, the US has already lost. What I want is, I want the US to acknowledge its loss sooner than later. Because the Bill O'Reillys and George Bush's of the world are not paying the price; and neither are the Democrats who are wringing their hands when they are confronted with the terrible specter of their own inescapable national chauvinism.

You're acting like cornered rats. Oh me, oh my, yes, we want to win, but it's complicated. Your complication is your desire to further your shitty careers by avoiding the uncomplicated truth. I'm glad Bill O’Reilly put Democrats' asses on the spot. You are walking over the bodies of the dead when you equivocate.

The price of this standing defeat is being paid right now, today, by Americans and Iraqis inside Iraq. And the civil war there now is not being quelled by the American presence; it is being catalyzed by it.

Bring them home now. [Emphasis added]

Amen to that. Dennis Kucinich aside, where is the Democrat with the courage and heart to say such things?

(See also this, from a year and a half ago.)

Posted by Jonathan at 04:11 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

December 02, 2006

Democrats

It was nice to see Democrats win back the House and Senate, if only because it was a repudiation of sorts of the last six years of Republican rule. But let's not kid ourselves. Democrats aren't the answer.

First, Iraq. It's entirely possible that Democrats never would have invaded Iraq, but the ugly truth is that Bill Clinton killed more Iraqis than George Bush has. Clinton killed via sanctions, not an invasion.

During the 1990s, according to the World Health Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the UN International Children's Emergency Fund, the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the US and UK killed at least a half a million Iraqi children (as a percentage of population, equivalent to well over 5 million American children). Hundreds of thousands of adults died as well.

Democrat Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, was asked by a television correspondent, "More than five hundred thousand Iraqi children are already dead as a direct result of the UN sanctions...Do you think the price is worth paying?" Albright replied, "It is a difficult question, but, yes, we think the price is worth it." Notice that she didn't dispute the question's premise.

For most of the past six years, Republicans have controlled Congress as well as the White House. What if Clinton had had a Democratic Congress? Well, he did, for two years, in 1993 and 1994. What happened during those two years? MickeyZ:

In just two years, the notorious liberal [Clinton] managed to abandon his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees, renege on his promise to "take a firm stand" against the armed forces' ban on gays and lesbians, and back away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), increased the Pentagon budget by another $25 billion, fired Jocelyn Elders, dumped Lani Guinier, ordered the bombing of Iraq and the Balkans, renewed the murderous sanctions on Iraq, ignored genocide in Rwanda, deported hundreds of thousands of "illegal" immigrants, and passed a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death. (All this came before the much-hyped Republican "revolution" in 1994. Can someone please explain to me why the right wing didn’t like this guy?)

What about the environment? The Bush Republicans have been a disaster for the environment. Surely, the Clinton/Gore administration was pro-environment. MickeyZ again:

Then we have the environment — allegedly Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore's domain. In 1996, David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, penned a Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled, "Why I Won't Vote for Clinton." In this piece, Brower offered a litany of Clinton administration moves, which utterly smashed the public image of Bubba and Gore as "pro-environment." Some of these moves include: the passage of the salvage logging rider, the continuation of the use of methyl bromide, the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, the lowering of grazing fees on land, subsidizing Florida's sugar industry, weakening the Safe Drinking Water Act, reversing the ban on the production and importation of PCBs, and allowing the export of Alaskan oil.
These, and other proud Clinton/Gore accomplishments, led Brower to declare that the dynamic Democratic duo had "done more harm to the environment in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years." That's Bush the Elder he's talking about, of course. As for Bush the Lesser, consider this: the total logging cut in national forest during his first three years of Dubya's reign was less than the annual logging cut in national forests was under Clinton (Bill, not Hillary).

It sounds like a cliche, but it's true: the real power in the US is corporate power. Corporations — especially the giants in weapons manufacture, media, energy, finance, and pharmaceuticals — call the shots. Both parties are fronts for corporate power. Both are married to a system founded on rapacious exploitation of nature and the powerless.

There are some differences between Democrats and Republicans, but they're a lot more similar than they are different. Coke and Pepsi. At bottom, MickeyZ may have it right: the real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that they tell different lies to get elected.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:25 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

December 01, 2006

Lind: No Amount Of Additional US Troops Will Help

Iraq Politics

Fourth Generation War expert William S. Lind explains why putting more US troops in Iraq is doomed to fail:

The latest serpent at which a drowning Washington Establishment is grasping is the idea of sending more American troops to Iraq. Would more troops turn the war there in our favor? No.
Why not? First, because nothing can. The war in Iraq is irredeemably lost. Neither we nor, at present, anyone else can create a new Iraqi state to replace the one our invasion destroyed. Maybe that will happen after the Iraqi civil was is resolved, maybe not. It is in any case out of our hands.

Nor could more American troops control the forces driving Iraq's intensifying civil war. The passions of ethnic and religious hatred unleashed by the disintegration of the Iraqi state will not cool because a few more American patrols pass through the streets. Iraqis are quite capable of fighting us and each other at the same time.

A second reason more troops would make no difference is that the troops we have there now don't know what to do, or at least their leaders don’t know what they should do. For the most part, American troops in Iraq sit on their Forward Operating Bases; in effect, we are besieging ourselves. Troops under siege are seldom effective at controlling the surrounding countryside, regardless of their number.

When American troops do leave their FOBs, it is almost always to run convoys, which is to say to provide targets; to engage in meaningless patrols, again providing targets; or to do raids, which are downright counterproductive because they turn the people even more strongly against us, where that is possible. Doing more of any of these things would help us not at all.

More troops might make a difference if they were sent as part of a change in strategy, away from raids and "killing bad guys" and toward something like the Vietnam war's CAP program, where American troops defended villages instead of attacking them. But there is no sign of any such change of strategy on the horizon, so there would be nothing useful for more troops to do.

Even a CAP program would be likely to fail at this stage of the Iraq war, which points to the third reason more troops would not help us: more troops cannot turn back the clock. For the CAP or "ink blot" strategy to work, there has to be some level of acceptance of the foreign troops by the local people. When we first invaded Iraq, that was present in much of the country.

But we squandered that good will with blunder upon blunder. How many troops would it take to undo all those errors? The answer is either zero or an infinite number, because no quantity of troops can erase history. The argument that more troops in the beginning, combined with an ink blot strategy, might have made the Iraq venture a success does not mean that more troops could do the same thing now.

The clinching argument against more troops also relates to time: sending more troops would mean nothing to our opponents on the ground, because those opponents know we could not sustain a significantly larger occupation force for any length of time. So what if a few tens of thousands more Americans come for a few months? The U.S. military is strained to the breaking point to sustain the force there now. Where is the rotation base for a much larger deployment to come from?

The fact that Washington is seriously considering sending more American troops to Iraq illustrates a common phenomenon in war. As the certainty of defeat looms ever more clearly, the scrabbling about for a miracle cure, a deus ex machina, becomes ever more desperate — and more silly. Cavalry charges, Zeppelins, V-2 missiles, kamikazes, the list is endless. In the end, someone finally has to face facts and admit defeat. The sooner someone in Washington is willing to do that, the sooner the troops we already have in Iraq will come home — alive. [Emphasis added]

What's maddening — and disgusting — is the way wars are prolonged and intensified simply to serve the egos and ambitions of individual politicians and generals. It's hard to believe anyone would be willing to prolong a war just to advance his own career (McCain) or save himself from personal embarrassment (Bush), but we see it all the time. Sociopaths in high places.

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

November 29, 2006

Gingrich: "Reexamine Freedom Of Speech"

Newt Gingrich proves once again that he's a dangerous extremist:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994. [Emphasis added]

The well-worn recipe: make people afraid enough, and they'll give their freedom away, bit by bit. But once you give it away, you never get it back. Not without a fight.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:52 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Parting Shot

Source

Posted by Jonathan at 08:40 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 21, 2006

Olbermann On Bush And The Lessons Of Vietnam

Bush says the lesson of Vietnam is that "we will succeed unless we quit." Olbermann takes him to school:

Excellent. Watch it.

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

November 20, 2006

McCain Fumbles Iraq Question

Count the number of times McCain checks his notes as he answers this question on Iraq (via Carpetbagger):

Weird. Maybe the guy's losing it, a la Reagan.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

McCain: Send More Troops

Iraq Politics

People need to get it through their heads that John McCain is a dangerous man. A Cheney with charm. Now he wants to send "an overwhelming number" of additional US troops to Iraq. IHT:

"I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic," said McCain. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened. Eventually, you could see Iran pose a greater threat to the state of Israel." [...]
McCain, a front-running Republican presidential hopeful for 2008, said the U.S. must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face more attacks — in the region and possibly on American soil.

"The consequences of failure are so severe that I will exhaust every possibility to try to fix this situation. Because it's not the end when American troops leave. The battleground shifts, and we'll be fighting them again," McCain said. "You read Zarqawi, and you read bin Laden. ... It's not just Iraq that they're interested in. It's the region, and then us." [Emphasis added]

Part of what this is about is Israel's impact on US politics. But McCain's record generally is one of the most conservative records in the Senate. People confuse his personal likability with his poliicies and beliefs. A dangerous mistake.

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

November 18, 2006

Gonzales: Spying Foes A Grave Threat To Liberty And Security

Alberto Gonzales says foes of the administration's warrantless electronic surveillance are a "grave threat" to the "liberty and security of the American people." AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales contended Saturday that some critics of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program were defining freedom in a way that presents a "grave threat" to U.S. security.
Gonzales was the second administration official in two days to attack a federal judge's ruling last August that the program was unconstitutional. Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday called the decision "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

Gonzales, in remarks prepared for delivery at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said that some see the program as on the verge of stifling freedom rather that protecting the country.

"But this view is shortsighted," he said. "Its definition of freedom — one utterly divorced from civic responsibility — is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Gonzales and Cheney's attacks on the court order came as the administration was urging the lame-duck Congress to approve legislation authorizing the warrantless surveillance. The bill's chances are in doubt, however, because of Democratic opposition in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to end debate and vote. [...]

In August, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit struck down the warrantless surveillance program, saying it violated the rights to free speech and privacy and the constitutional separation of powers. She was the first judge to rule on the legality of the program, which is operated by the National Security Agency.

Bush and other administration officials sharply criticized the ruling, which the government appealed. They argued that the program is legal under the president's constitutional powers and saved lives by helping to disrupt terrorist plots.

Cheney, in an address Friday to the Federalist Society, said Taylor's order was troubling because it was "tying the hands of the president of the United States in the conduct of a war." He added: "And this is a matter entirely outside the competence of the judiciary."

In his prepared remarks, Gonzales dismissed as "myth" the charge that civil liberties were being sacrificed in the fight against terrorism. He defended the USA Patriot Act and the handling of detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [Emphasis added]

Criticism of warrantless wiretapping a grave threat to liberty. Orwell lives.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:08 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

November 13, 2006

Lieberman: "I'm Not Ruling It Out"

Joe Lieberman says he won't rule out switching to the GOP, but for now he wants to be known as an "Independent Democrat." Boston Globe:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said yesterday that he will caucus with Senate Democrats in the new Congress, but he would not rule out switching to the Republican caucus if he starts to feel uncomfortable among Democrats.
Lieberman, a Democrat who won reelection as an independent, also said he wants to be called an Independent Democrat.

A strong backer of the Iraq war, Lieberman was returned to office on Election Day with strong GOP support. He ran as an independent after he lost the Democratic primary in August to Ned Lamont.

He said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will begin his new term as a Democrat because it would make him part of the congressional leadership. The senator is in line to become chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. [...]

Democrats will hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate, so Lieberman, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, could find himself courted by Republicans.

He was asked about the possibility that he might switch caucuses if he became uncomfortable as Democrats sought to enforce party discipline, particularly if the GOP offered to keep him as a committee chairman and respect his seniority.

"I'm not ruling it out, but I hope I don't get to that point. And, and I must say, and with all respect to the Republicans who supported me in Connecticut, nobody ever said, 'We're doing this because we, we want you to switch over,'" he said. [...]

"I am going to Washington beholden to no political group except the people of Connecticut and, of course, my conscience," he said. [Emphasis added]

His conscience. Uh-huh. His ego, more like it. With the Senate split 51-49, any Democrat could threaten to switch parties. But to actually make that threat? That takes a Lieberman.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:06 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 12, 2006

Russ Won't Run

Russ Feingold's not going to run for President after all. Madison's Capital Times:

Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold has decided against seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
He states in a letter to friends and supporters of his Progressive Patriots Fund, formed in early 2005 as he explored the possibility of a run for the party nomination, that he has decided to continue his work as senator and not make the run for president.

According to the letter, he is excited by the results of Tuesday's elections in which Democrats won control of the House and Senate, giving them the chance to "undo much of the damage that one-party rule has done to America" and "actually advance progressive solutions to such major issues as guaranteed health care, dependence on oil and our unbalanced trade policies."

Feingold, 53, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as reported on its Web page, that he realized he would be a long-shot candidate in a run for the presidency.

He said running as an underdog appealed to him, but not the way it would "dismantle" his work in the Senate and his personal life.

As an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and other Bush administration policies, Feingold had formed the political action committee and gone to key presidential primary states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

Still, he said he started the process more predisposed against a run than for it.

"I began with the feeling I didn't really want to do this but was open to the possibility that getting around the country would make me want to do it. That never happened," he said.

He said he had come closer to making his decision in the past few weeks, and the final factor came when Democrats won both houses of Congress because it provided added appeal to focus on work in the Senate. [Emphasis added]

It would have been a near impossible task for Feingold to win, but it would have been good to have him participating in the debate, keeping the other candidates honest. Hopefully, he can take a leading role in the new Senate alignment. He is truly one of the good guys.

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

November 09, 2006

White Folks

This is depressing. Billmon:

I know I'm looking for dark linings to silver clouds here, but I still find this exit poll data depressing:
Republican share of two-party vote

Whites: 51%
White men: 53%
White women: 50%

Granted, if you back out the lop-sided results in Dixie (and oh how I wish we could) the totals aren't as bad. But still, in the midwest heartland, the best the Dems could manage was 47% of the white vote. In the west it was 49% — a meager one percentage point plurality.

Only in the Northeast (the part of the country that Barry Goldwater once hoped would fall into the sea) did the Dems manage a solid 58% of the white vote. If there's are reasons to put up with the overcrowding, pollution, crumbling infrastructure and suburban sprawl of the Boston-to-Washington corridor, that's one of them. It's still the most civilized part of the country.

But it does make you wonder: Is there anything the Republicans could do, any line of incompetence or plutocratic indulgence they could cross, that would cost them their national majority among the honkies? I'm seriously beginning to doubt it. [Emphasis added]

Actually, it's worse than depressing. It's scary.

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

November 08, 2006

The Senate, Too

I was sitting in Border's when my cell phone rang: my 17-year-old daughter Molly. I don't know when I've heard her so excited. "Have you seen the news?" she asked. "What?" "We got the Senate!!!", screaming now with glee. "Come on over, I'm making cookies!!!"

Yeah, baby! Let the games begin.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:10 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Timing

I have to admit I was mystified why the White House would announce Rumsfeld's firing the morning after the elections. It seemed like an open admission that the Democrats' victories forced a change in course, which in turn seemed to give the Dems a share, at least, of the credit. Not exactly standard operating procedure for this White House.

Billmon may have hit on the answer: by doing the announcement today, the White House gets to shift the media's attention from the Democratic sweep to a story that reflects credit on the White House. It's all about dominating the news cycle — and looking conciliatory and constructive in the process. Politics.

Still, you have to wonder how much different yesterday's results would have been if the White House had fired Rumsfeld a month ago and made a big show of trying a fresh approach in Iraq back then. Luckily, we'll never know.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:06 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Tester Wins

Networks have called Montana for Tester. That leaves Virginia.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Rumsfeld Gone

CNN says Rumsfeld's gone.

The day after the election? Why not a month ago when it could have let the GOP keep control of the Senate, at least? What in the world are they thinking?

Posted by Jonathan at 11:58 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Oh-Fer

So far, as Billmon points out, it looks like Republicans failed to unseat a single Democratic incumbent in any House, Senate, or Gubernatorial race. A shutout. Pretty stunning.

Moreover, as Norm Ornstein just pointed out on Al Franken's show, most of the 30 or so seats that the Dems picked up in the House were in districts where the Republican incumbent won with 60% or more of the vote in 2004. Even more stunning.

One number I'd like to see: the total number of votes nationwide for all Democratic congressional candidates v. the total number for all Republican candidates. That would give an interesting measure of where we stand looking ahead to 2008.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:48 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Ballot Questions

Referenda were a mixed bag.

Raising the minimum wage won in all six states where it was on the ballot: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio.

Banning same-sex marriage appears to have lost in Arizona, but it won in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and, I'm sorry to say, here in Wisconsin.

Legalization of marijuana lost in Colorado, Nevada, and South Dakota.

Parental notification lost in Oregon and is losing in California. An outright abortion ban lost in South Dakota.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Virginia

So, it looks like control of the Senate comes down to Virginia. Were it not for aggressive GOP vote suppression tactics there, it probably wouldn't have been this close. But as it is, a recount is in the cards.

The good news: the vote count in Virginia is the responsibility of Katherine Hanley — a Democrat, for once.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 07, 2006

According to the DCCC, Dems have picked up the needed 15 seats to take control of the House.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

CNN: Judge Denies Extended Voting Hours In Denver

Rolling Stone:

CNN just had a helicopter shot showing massive lines in Denver and is reporting [that] a judge has denied Democratic requests to extend voting hours.

If they're in line when the polls close, they should be allowed to vote. How is it in the public interest in a democracy to deny that?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:39 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Head Slapper

Atrios has a simple, but brilliant, idea.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:28 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Memory Lane

Just went back and read my last post from Election Night 2004. Rough night, that.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Early Exit Polls

Some early exit polls, but I refused to get excited yet. The exit polls in 2004 broke my heart.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

A Criminal Enterprise

Billmon's got it right:

Like everybody else, I don't know what's going to happen today, but this election has already illuminated one critical truth: The modern GOP — or, more specifically, the axis of '70s campus Republicans now running it — really is just a criminal enterprise disguised as a political party.
Dirty tricks, large and small, are a sorry fact of life in American politics, but what the Republicans have done over the past few weeks — the surrealist attack ads, the forged endorsements, the midnight robo calls, the arrest threats, the voter misinformation (did you know your polling station has been moved?) — is sui generis, at least at the national level.

Even Dick Nixon never tried anything like this on such a grand scale — although, of course, he also didn't have the technology. The only thing we haven't seen yet is a break in at DNC headquarters. And if the Rovians thought they could get anything out of it that would be useful in this election (nobody else has) we'd probably be reading about that, too.

It's always possible to point to Democratic/liberal offenses, but at this point the comparisons look pretty silly: some downed yard signs here, a few crooked and/or stoned ACORN canvassers there. Not even in the same universe, much less the same ball park.

Couple the GOP's rat-fucking campaign with all the other stuff we already know about — the collectivized bribery of the K Street Project, the Abramoff casino extortion ring, the Defense and CIA appropriation scams, the Iraq War contracting scams, the Pacific Island sex trade protection racket, the church pulpits doubling as ward halls, the illegal wiretapping, the lies, perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame case (I really could go on like this all day) — and it's clear that what we need most isn't a new Congress but a new RICO prosecution, with lots of defendents and unindicted co-conspirators. [Emphasis added]

Of course, the mainstream media will never dare to report it that way. But it's the truth.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Pelosi: "Will We Have An Honest Count?"

San Francisco Chronicle:

In an interview from her Capitol office, [House Democratic Leader Nancy] Pelosi characterized Tuesday's vote as a referendum on the war, shrugged off President Bush's efforts to make her liberalism a national issue, described the current GOP leadership as a "freak show," and expressed confidence about her party's prospects to pick up the 15 seats it needs for a majority.
"I know where the numbers are in these races, and I know that they are there for the 15; today (it's) 22 to 26," Pelosi said Friday.

Pelosi cautioned that the number of Democratic House victories could be higher or lower and said her greatest concern is over the integrity of the count — from the reliability of electronic voting machines to her worries that Republicans will try to manipulate the outcome.

"That is the only variable in this," Pelosi said. "Will we have an honest count?" [Emphasis added]

What's incomprehensible to me: why Democrats haven't made more of an issue of voter suppression and election fraud. Why do they wait until it's time for an election before they bring it up?

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

November 06, 2006

"Unchecked, And Unbalanced"

Keith Olbermann on the importance of voting:

Vote.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

More GOP Robo-Calling

Here.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

More GOP Vote Suppression

Wayne Madsen Report:

WMR has learned this afternoon that the GOP and the George Allen campaign are conducting a massive statewide voter suppression operation throughout Virginia. [...]
We have learned that GOP robo-callers are phoning Virginia voters who changed their voter registration from other states during at least the past five years. Registered legal Virginia voters are being told that if they attempt to vote tomorrow they will be prosecuted. [Emphasis added]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:36 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Robo-Calling Dirty Tricks

As you may have read on other blogs, the RNC is paying for automated dirty-trick phone calls in dozens of districts across the country. These calls are designed to trick recipients into thinking they came from Democratic candidates. They reportedly are placed at inconvenient times and are repeated, sometimes immediately after the recipient hangs up. The goal clearly is to piss off voters who would otherwise vote Democratic. Rolling Stone:

Just got off a conference call with Rahm Emanuel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
He called the burgeoning Republican robo-call scandal — in which the National Republican Campaign Committee is aparently violating state do-not-call registries by placing repeat robocalls after midnight to Democratic voters, calls that are recorded to leave bleary-eyed and angry recipients with the impression that they have been placed by Democratic candidates — "the worst of dirty tricks."

"They're doing again the very thing they got fined for," Emanuel said. "We'll be dealing with this." Unfortunately, Emanuel admitted, any "dealing" will be done after election night. [Emphasis added]

They'll get fined, after the election, but so what? A monetary fine is no disincentive. The only way these tactics could hurt the Republicans is if the mainstream broadcast and cable media picked up the story and covered it extensively, now, before the election. Won't happen. Your liberal media at work.

So we need to make our own coverage. Protect Our Votes:

For this to break through, there needs to be visual evidence that voters are being called back immediately. Bloggers: please tell your readers to get video cameras ready and start rolling when the phone rings. Use the speaker phone so that the call can be heard. We need just one example of that up on YouTube and VideoTheVote.com.
Even better would be emails leaked from the robo call house responsible (or any robo call house for that matter) that offer the service or mention the strategy in question. [Emphasis added]

Stay tuned.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Pareto Fallacy

An interesting and useful point from Ezra Klein.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:21 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

November 04, 2006

Independents Favor Dems 2-To-1

A new Newsweek poll shows the Democrats continuing to surge, with a nearly 2-to-1 advantage among independent voters:

As President George W. Bush jets across Red State America this weekend, Republican candidates are falling further behind Democratic rivals, according to the new NEWSWEEK poll. While the GOP has lagged behind Democrats throughout the campaign season, the trend in the past month — when NEWSWEEK conducted four polls in five weeks — had suggested the Republicans were building momentum in the homestretch.
No more. The new poll finds support for Republicans (and for President Bush) receding. For example, 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win enough seats to take control of one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections on Tuesday. Those results are close to early October levels, while less than a third of Americans (32 percent) want Republicans to retain control. If the elections were held today, 54 percent of likely voters say they would support the Democratic candidate in their district versus 38 percent who would vote for the Republican — a 16-point edge for the Democrats. [...]

Meanwhile, the President's approval has fallen back to 35 percent, after a slow but steady rise from 33 percent at the beginning of October to 37 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll last week.

The good news for Republicans is that their voters are coming home; 90 percent of likely Republican voters say they would vote for the GOP's candidate if the elections were held today, not far behind the 95 percent of Democrats who back their party's nominee. But independents say they would vote for the Democrat over the Republican in their district nearly 2 to 1 (26 percent versus 51 percent.) [...]

[O]nly 29 percent of Americans [say] they’re satisfied with the direction of the country — and 64 percent [say] they're not. [Emphasis added]

The good news: people grasp, finally, that the Bush Republicans have got to go. The bad news: they'll be voting in an election system that's pretty well rigged.

So far, election fraud has tended to be applied in cases where the pre-election polls were somewhat close, where we could tell ourselves the outcome was within the margin of error. But this time around, the polls are lopsided. If elections are stolen under these circumstances, it will be like a decree announcing the end of American democracy. We will have crossed a Rubicon from which we may never return. Meanwhile, the mainstream media will refuse to credit the evidence that will be too scary to acknowledge but too obvious to ignore. We'll see black, they'll say white.

The cognitive dissonance will cause a lot of people to just throw up their hands and say, well that's how elections are now. Nobody knows who really won. And anyway, they're all crooks, on both sides. If that happens, elections will be just another form of reality tv with a predetermined outcome. Democracy will be over. But at least we'll know where we stand.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:14 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

November 02, 2006

Cui Bono?

How much is it going to matter if Democrats win on Tuesday? Not as much as we'd like.

Democrats, Republicans — they have the same owners.

Check out these lists (via Billmon).

Posted by Jonathan at 11:02 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

October 31, 2006

"A Stable Of Thieves And Perverts"

Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone that the current Congress is the worst ever:

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula — a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

How did they do it? In five easy steps, say Taibbi. Read his explanation here.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 30, 2006

51%

Karl Rove's GOP ruled like they had a mandate, despite getting into office by the thinnest of margins. Billmon explains:

There is nothing in the record of the past six years that suggests building a broad majority coalition has ever been the objective of the Rovian political project. Just the opposite, in fact. The goal has always been to create a narrow, but solid, majority — a dependable 51% or 52% — that would leave the GOP machine in firm control but reduce the need for the kind of moderate compromises required to hold a broad coalition together. Thus the overwhelming emphasis on keeping the conservative base energized and motivated, no matter what. As long as the base is on board, the extra 12 or 15 percentage points needed to reach a majority can always be picked up one way or another — without having to cut too many non-conservatives a slice of the pie. Or so the theory holds.
It's really just a redneck variation on the old Leninist strategy for a party dictatorship — if the GOP machine can control a majority of conservatives, and conservatives can control a majority of Republicans, then Republicans should be able to control (barely) a majority of the voters, and thus the country. [Emphasis added]

They don't care about mandates. They care about power, power that doesn't depend on consensus, coalition, or compromise. People marvelled when Bush squeaked into office and then acted like he'd won by a landslide. But the rules had changed.

It's a thug's game now, a game for pirates, cutthroats, and cold-blooded killers. I doubt very much we've hit bottom. They've got the election machinery well in hand, and November 7th may just turn out to be the bummer of all time. I hope I'm wrong.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

The Simple Logic

Digby sums up the choice November 7th:

Let's say you have a problem. You have the choice of two people to solve the problem — the one who caused the problem, refuses to admit it even is a problem and won't change anything even as the problem grows worse — or the other one. Which do you choose?
That's the simple logic of this election.

QED

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

October 29, 2006

Funny How That Works

According to Media Matters, the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial has been postponed until November 5, two days before the midterm elections:

The Bush administration has a long history of timing national security-related actions with the political calendar, and the media should be asking if it has done so again. The verdict of the Saddam Hussein trial, which was originally scheduled to be announced on October 16, 2006, has been postponed until November 5, 2006, just two days before the U.S. midterm elections.
Given the importance of the midterm elections, the administration's documented history of manipulating Iraq and terrorism announcements for political gain, and the heavy influence of the U.S. on the Iraqi court, David Brock, President and CEO of Media Matters for America, today called on the media to question the new date set for the release of the Saddam verdict. [Emphasis added]

Could anything be more transparent, more blatant, more obvious? Imagine the howls for his blood had Clinton had this.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:03 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 25, 2006

Staying The Course

Iraq Politics

Awesome video (via AmericaBlog):

They were for "stay the course" before they were against it. Has a familiar ring.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:33 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 24, 2006

Cindy Sheehan Considers Forming A Third Party

Activism Politics War and Peace

Joshua Frank interviews Cindy Sheehan at GNN:

Joshua Frank: Cindy, we are in the armpit of another election season and it seems that the mainstream antiwar movement is rallying behind the Democrats once again, hoping if the Dems can just recapture the House that the Republicans will finally be held accountable for all their horrible faults. Impeachment will follow and the war will end. What do you think? Where do you stand on all of this?
Cindy Sheehan: I hold very little hope that, due to the utter corruption of our electoral system, and the Republican reign of terror and fear against the American public, the Democrats will even take back one or more Houses of Congress.

Even if the Democrats take back the lower House, the potential Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) has already said that impeachment would not be "in the cards." Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi) has also backed off of impeachment rhetoric. Since Bush has said over and over again that the troops aren't coming home while he is president, it is up to us to make sure that his presidency is cut short.

We all know that the Vietnam War ended when Congress cut its funding. There is a bill that has been sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Ma) HR4232 that cuts funding to leave our troops in Iraq, but he has very little support and even a smaller chance of getting it to the floor for a vote. I believe that most representatives don’t support the bill because they will be accused of "not supporting the troops." I believe that it is not supporting the troops to leave them in that nightmare.

Although I admire the Democrats on many issues, when it comes to war and peace, most get their pockets lined by the same corporate interests.

No matter which party has control of Congress come November, we the people have to keep the pressure up to stop the current course our country is taking.

Frank: You are currently serving on the Board of Directors for the
Progressive Democrats of America, a pro-Democrat organization that calls for reform of the Democratic Party from within. The PDA consistently ignores progressive antiwar alternatives to the Democrats. Do you think that such a position could actually hurt the antiwar movement? Should we instead be supporting antiwar candidates who want to hold both parties accountable?

Sheehan: I think that the PDA endorses candidates based on their entire platforms. Of course, I only care about candidate's record on the war and what they say about peace. I prefer to call our movement a "peace" movement, because "antiwar" is too narrow.

I think it would be great if we didn't need a PDA, if all Democrats were progressive peace candidates, but we know they are not.

I would vote for a Republican if they were calling for the withdrawal of troops and for impeachment, and I definitely think a viable third party could rein in the "two" parties we have now.

We will never have a viable third party, though, as long as we vote out of fear and not out of integrity. Instead of voting for the "lesser of two evils" we should be voting for a candidate that reflects our "beatitudes" and not the war machine's. [...]

Frank: I've heard a rumor that you may be looking to start your own third party. Is that true?

Sheehan: Yes, it is true. I think that to save our democracy our country needs a viable and credible third party. This nation was founded on rule by a few rich white males, and for all intents and purposes, we are still ruled by a corporate elite.

We need a third party that will represent all the people, not just the wealthy. [Emphasis added]

Cindy Sheehan is the kind of figure who could mobilize the passionate support needed to make a meaningful third party possible. She's the closest thing we have to a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi.

Her energy is the energy of peace, not of angry opposition. It's what we all hunger and thirst after. It's what the world desperately needs. And it's time for a woman to lead.

I hope she goes for it.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 23, 2006

Perspective

9/11, "War On Terror" Humor & Fun Politics

Doonesbury (via Bruce Schneier) explains faulty risk assessment and the politics of fear:

First cartoon
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh

A voice of reason.

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

Two Weeks To Go

Bush and Rove talk like they're convinced they can't lose control of the Congress. NYT:

Mr. Bush has been saying for months that he believes Republicans will keep control of the House and the Senate, and he is not changing his tune now, even if it means taking the rare step of rebuking his own father.
In an interview shown Sunday on ABC News, Mr. Bush was asked about a comment by the first President Bush, who said this month that he hated to think about life for his son if Democrats took control of Congress. "He shouldn't be speculating like that, because he should have called me ahead of time," the president said, "and I'd tell him they're not going to."

The president's professed certainty, shared with outside friends and advisers, is a source of fascination among even his staunchest allies. In lobbying shops and strategy firms around town, the latest Republican parlor game is divining whether the White House optimism is staged, or whether Mr. Bush and his political team really believe what they are saying. [...]

Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove are discounting predictions of Republican demise in part because they believe they have turned out wrong before. "I remember 2004," Mr. Bush said in the interview shown on "This Week." "I was history as far as the punditry was concerned."

Mr. Rove has told associates that the party's turnout machinery, through which the White House will continue to pump an unrelenting message against Democrats on taxes and terrorism, gives Republicans an advantage of four to seven percentage points in any given race. Though Democrats call that too generous, they acknowledge that it accounts for at least a few percentage points. [Emphasis added]

They could be faking it. They could be in denial. Or, they could know something we don't: that the election's already in the bag, courtesy of electronic voting. The incessant harping on a supposed 4-7 point Republican advantage based on their GOTV ground game preps the conventional wisdom for explaining, post-election, why the polls once again mysteriously turned out to be so wrong. Let's hope not, but it is a measure of how far we've sunk that we even have to entertain such thoughts.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 17, 2006

Stepping Off The Normal Career Path

Charles Swift, American hero:

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. — Thomas Paine

John Robb has an interesting take on Swift's case:

The only thing that prevents the US or any western society from sliding into authoritarianism is the complexity and intelligence of the government machine. It pushes back when sent orders that it deems wrong. This process operates in cycles much faster than the rectification process enabled by opposition parties. IF this machine ever breaks down, we are truly screwed. ... [As Edward Luttwak wrote in his analysis of coups, the] more efficient and hierarchical...government (in that it can execute orders with little noise) is the easiest to "take over."

Charles Swift, and those like him, are heroes. More and more, our liberty depends on people like him, the Congress having pretty much surrendered its role as check and balance.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:46 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 16, 2006

W	Humor & Fun Iraq Politics

The leader of the free world. It's so embarrassing:

And as for cuttin' and runnin'...

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

October 15, 2006

Why We're Still In Iraq

Iran Iraq Politics

Conservative William S. Lind, a leading thinking on fourth-generation warfare, tells us why we're still in Iraq:

At least 32 American troops have been killed in Iraq this month [as of October 11]. Approximately 300 have been wounded. The "battle for Baghdad" is going nowhere. A Marine friend just back from Ramadi said to me, "It didn't get any better while I was there, and it's not going to get better." Virtually everyone in Washington, except the people in the White House, knows that is true for all of Iraq.
Actually, I think the White House knows it too. Why then does it insist on "staying the course" at a casualty rate of more than one thousand Americans per month? The answer is breathtaking in its cynicism: so the retreat from Iraq happens on the next President's watch. That is why we still fight.

Yep, it's now all about George. Anyone who thinks that is too low, too mean, too despicable even for this bunch does not understand the meaning of the adjective "Rovian." Would they let thousands more young Americans get killed or wounded just so George W. does not have to face the consequences of his own folly? In a heartbeat.

Not that it's going to help. When history finally lifts it leg on the Bush administration, it will wash all such tricks away, leaving only the hubris and the incompetence. Jeffrey Hart, who with Russell Kirk gone is probably the top intellectual in the conservative movement, has already written that George W. Bush is the worst President America ever had. I think the honor still belongs to the sainted Woodrow, but if Bush attacks Iran, he may yet earn the prize. That third and final act in the Bush tragicomedy is waiting in the wings. [Emphasis added]

Lind sees no reason to expect Democratic victories in next month's midterm elections to change anything:

A Democratic Congress will be as stupid, cowardly and corrupt as its Republican predecessor; in reality, both parties are one party, the party of successful career politicians. The White House will continue a lost war in Iraq, solely to dump the mess in the next President's lap. America or Israel will attack Iran, pulling what's left of the temple down on our heads. Congress will do nothing to stop either war. [Emphasis added]

It is disgusting to think of a war being continued just to protect the egos of powerful men, but we've seen it before. Vietnam lasted for years after it was evident that no victory would be forthcoming, simply because neither Johnson nor Nixon wanted to be the first American president to lose a war. Now it's happening again. Except the danger this time around is that Bush et al will expand the war by attacking Iran, applying the desperate gambler's strategy of last resort: doubling the size of the bet, then doubling it again.

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

October 14, 2006

Goldman Sachs And The Price Of Gasoline

Economy Energy Politics

As we've noted in the past, presidential approval ratings historically closely track the price of gasoline. The higher the price of gas, the lower the approval rating (see the graph here). That makes the recent plunge in gas prices good news for the White House, and for Republican candidates generally, going into the November elections.

Why have gas prices dropped so precipitously? Why now?

One significant factor that has gone largely unnoticed is a decision by investment bank Goldman Sachs to restructure its Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) in a way that prompted the sudden selling of some $6 billion in gasoline futures. NYT:

Politics and worries about oil supplies may have caused gasoline prices to go up at the pump earlier this year, but one big investment bank quietly helped their rapid drop in recent weeks, according to some economists, traders and analysts.
Goldman Sachs, which runs the largest commodity index, the G.S.C.I., said in early August that it was reducing the index's weighting in gasoline futures significantly. The announcement did not make big headlines, but it has reverberated through the markets in the weeks since and some other investors who had been betting that gasoline would rise followed suit on their weightings.

"They started unwinding their positions, and those other longs also rushed to the door at the same time," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation.

Wholesale prices for New York Harbor unleaded gasoline, the major gasoline contract traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, dropped 18 cents a gallon on Aug. 10, to $1.9889 a gallon, a decline of more than 8 percent, and they have dropped further since then. In New York on Friday, gasoline futures for October delivery rose 4.81 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $1.5492 a gallon. Prices have fallen 9.4 percent this year.

The August announcement by Goldman Sachs caught some traders by surprise. [...]

Unleaded gasoline made up 8.72 percent of Goldman's commodity index as of June 30, but it is just 2.3 percent now, representing a sell-off of more than $6 billion in futures contract weighting.

Like many market indexes, trading in the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is publicly available, allowing individual investors and third-party asset managers to participate in that market. The $100 billion invested comes from brokers, fund managers and individuals, probably including some of the same people who were hurt by high gasoline prices earlier in the year.

Goldman's announcement on Aug. 9 was not the only downward pressure on prices that week, market participants stress. And while it may have played a part in sending prices down, the market would never have continued its downward trend unless supplies had loosened up, they say.

Also during that week, climatologists revised their hurricane forecasts, easing fears that oil supplies could be disrupted. And BP said it would still produce some oil from its field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where leaks were being repaired. Meanwhile, the peak gasoline season was ending, and new supplies of ethanol were coming online. [...]

"We saw gasoline fall 82 cents in the wholesale market over a four-week period, which is unprecedented," he said. Mr. Goldstein said that the decline in gasoline prices helped send prices of the whole group of energy-related products down.

Now, rather than highs, these products are hitting lows — natural gas, for example, traded on Wednesday at its lowest price in four years. [Emphasis added]

There's an element of crowd psychology in commodities futures trading, as there is in the trading of stocks, real estate, etc. A number of factors contributed to the crowd's psychology changing course with respect to gasoline futures. But the fact that Goldman's announcement came on August 9 and gasoline futures plunged more than 8% the following day is hardly coincidence.

It is impossible to know if Goldman's motives were in part political, but one could be forgiven for concluding that Bush administration economic policy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Henry Paulson, current Secretary of the Treasury, was CEO and Chairman of GS, as was Stephen Friedman, formerly the chair of Bush's National Economic Council and currently the chair of his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Bush Chief of Staff (and former director of the Office of Management and Budget) Josh Bolten is a GS alumnus, as is Reuben Jeffery, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It would be the responsibility of the latter to investigate any questions about manipulations of the futures markets. Not for nothing did Tom Wolfe call them "Masters of the Universe".

October 11, 2006

Crisis In Our Nation's Pants

Jon Stewart on the Foley mess. Excellent, as always.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 10, 2006

Augering In

Not a good day to be a Republican. Billmon.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Free Fallin'

New poll numbers from the New York Times:

The public's view of Iraq is as dark as it has been since the war began in 2003, with two-thirds saying it is going somewhat or very badly, while only 3 percent are saying the war is going very well. Two-thirds said they disapproved of how Mr. Bush was handling Iraq.
Mr. Bush's job approval rating has slipped to 34 percent, from 37 percent in September. That is one of the lowest levels of his presidency and poses a complication for the White House as it seeks to send him out on the road to rally base voters. Mr. Bush's job approval rating has even slipped with his base: 75 percent of conservative Republicans approve of the way he has handled his job, compared with 96 percent in November 2004.

The president clearly faces constraints as he seeks to address the public concerns about Iraq that have shrouded this midterm election: 83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said Mr. Bush was personally aware of intelligence reports before Sept. 11 that warned of possible domestic terrorist attacks using airplanes. When the same question was asked in May 2002, 41 percent said they believed Mr. Bush was aware. [...]

So far, at least, it appears that, at least nationally, Republicans have had little success in pressing what have been their two biggest lines of attacks against Democratic challengers this fall: taxes and terrorism. The poll found that 41 percent of respondents thought Republicans were stronger on handling terrorism, compared with 40 percent who named Democrats, a statistically insignificant difference. Before Labor Day, Republicans had a 42 percent to 34 percent edge on handling terrorism.

And in a month in which Republicans have sought to discredit Democratic challengers as advocates of big spending and high taxes, 52 percent of respondents said that Democrats would make the right decisions on how to spend taxpayers' money, while 29 percent said Republicans would. [Emphasis added]

Election Day is four weeks from today.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:59 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 09, 2006

Apocalypse Soon

Iran Politics

Chris Hedges, who used to be the Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, thinks a Bush administration attack on Iran is inevitable. And the disaster that follows, he says, will be, quite literally, apocalyptic. Excerpts:

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.
War with Iran — a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East — is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as "the Axis of Evil." They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions. [...]

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war...[b]ut this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran's intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word "Dimona," the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims' existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies? [...]

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced — either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

"As a people we are enormously forgetful," Dr. [William R.] Polk, one of the country's leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. "We should have learned from history that foreign powers can't win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. [...]

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program "the Samson option." The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life. [Emphasis added]

You think: they can't possibly be this misguided, this reckless, this insane. But then you look at everything else they've done, and you realize that the expectations and standards you use with your friends and neighbors simply don't apply with these people.

It's an administration of psychopaths. Anyone who wasn't a psychopath got weeded out long ago.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:31 PM | Comments (6) | Link to this

October 06, 2006

GOP Corruption Files

When you see it all in one place, it's a pretty stunning list.

[Thanks, Maurice and Sue]

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

September 20, 2006

Olbermann Demands An Apology

9/11, "War On Terror" Media Politics

[Thanks, Kevin]

Posted by Jonathan at 01:25 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

September 06, 2006

CIA Task Force On Iraq Ramped Up Months Before 9/11

9/11, "War On Terror" Iraq Politics

David Corn drops some bombshells in an article on what it was Valerie Plame Wilson really did at the CIA:

In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer at the briefing, were pegged to the assumptions that Iraq had these weapons and would be invaded — as if a decision had been made.
Though Cheney was already looking toward war, the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq — part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations — were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie [Plame] Wilson. [...]

In July 2003 — four months after the invasion of Iraq — Wilson would be outed as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a column by conservative journalist Robert Novak, who would cite two "senior administration officials" as his sources. (...[O]ne was Richard Armitage, the number-two at the State Department; Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, was the other. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to two reporters about her.) Novak revealed her CIA identity — using her maiden name, Valerie Plame — in the midst of the controversy ignited by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, who had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the Bush Administration of having "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The Novak column triggered a scandal and a criminal investigation. At issue was whether Novak's sources had violated a little-known law that makes it a federal crime for a government official to disclose identifying information about a covert US officer (if that official knew the officer was undercover). A key question was, what did Valerie Wilson do at the CIA? Was she truly undercover? In a subsequent column, Novak reported that she was "an analyst, not in covert operations." White House press secretary Scott McClellan suggested that her employment at the CIA was no secret. Jonah Goldberg of National Review claimed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."

Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled. [...]

In the early 1990s, she became what's known as a nonofficial cover officer. NOCs are the most clandestine of the CIA's frontline officers. They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.

In 1997 she returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer — before 9/11 — word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group. [...]

"We knew nothing about what was going on in Iraq," a CIA official recalled. "We were way behind the eight ball. We had to look under every rock." Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations. She also went to Jordan to work with Jordanian intelligence officials who had intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes heading to Iraq that CIA analysts were claiming — wrongly — were for a nuclear weapons program. [...]

The JTFI found nothing. The few scientists it managed to reach insisted Saddam had no WMD programs. Task force officers sent reports detailing the denials into the CIA bureaucracy. The defectors were duds — fabricators and embellishers. (JTFI officials came to suspect that some had been sent their way by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that desired a US invasion of Iraq.) The results were frustrating for the officers. Were they not doing their job well enough — or did Saddam not have an arsenal of unconventional weapons? Valerie Wilson and other JTFI officers were almost too overwhelmed to consider the possibility that their small number of operations was, in a way, coming up with the correct answer: There was no intelligence to find on Saddam's WMDs because the weapons did not exist. Still, she and her colleagues kept looking. (She also assisted operations involving Iran and WMDs.) [...]

As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty. [Emphasis added]

It's been pretty obvious that the Bush team had Iraq in their crosshairs from the very beginning, but this is the first published evidence I can recall that months before 9/11 the administration already had the CIA ramping up a major effort on Iraq. Then 9/11 came along and triggered the military phase of the plan. How very convenient, that.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 31, 2006

Olbermann's Murrow Moment

Media Politics

Great stuff from Keith Olbermann:

The last three minutes, especially.

[Thanks, Ken]

Update: [5:08 PM] - Text is here.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:17 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

August 30, 2006

Amplifying Terror

Security expert Bruce Schneier on how Western governments and media are doing terrorists' work by constantly exaggerating the threat of terrorism, amplifying our fear:

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want. [...]

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports.

Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded. [...]

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror. [...]

...Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. [...]

[O]ur job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. [Emphasis added]

Schneier is actually too kind. Governments trumpet terrorist threats not out of some accidental, misguided wrong-headedness. It's a whole lot more purposeful than that. They actively seek pretexts for instilling fear, and they drive that fear home with constant reminders in the form of useless airport security measures, armed soldiers in terminals, and so on. They do it because they believe it enhances their power. They do it because it lets them control the media news cycle.

They have as much of a vested interest in our being afraid as do the terrorists themselves. Terrorists and Western governments (especially those of Bush and Blair) exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship. If terrorists didn't exist, Western governments would invent them.

Meanwhile, regarding the British plot to blow up 10 planes, it now appears that the number 10 was made up out of thin air. NYT:

In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.

Nobody will remember that, though. They'll just remember all the scary images of machine gun-toting soldiers at airports, etc. So now when a guy accidentally drops his iPod into an airplance toilet, it sets off a full-scale terror alert. It's nuts.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Photo Op Time

Their cynicism is boundless. NYT:

On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's strike here, President Bush returned to the devastated region on Monday...
Winding his way through tattered towns in Mississippi on his way here, Mr. Bush spent the day demonstrating empathy and optimism...

In sweltering midday heat, his shirt soaked with sweat, Mr. Bush told a group of Biloxi, Miss., residents that he knew the rebuilding was so slow that to some it felt as if nothing was happening.

Still, Mr. Bush said, "For a fellow who was here and now a year later comes back, things are changing."

"I feel the quiet sense of determination that's going to shape the future of Mississippi," he said.

In an event with echoes of his prime-time speech in Jackson Square here last September, Mr. Bush spoke in a working-class neighborhood in Biloxi against a backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. But just a few feet away, outside the scene captured by the camera, stood gutted houses with wires dangling from ceilings. A tattered piece of crime-scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet sat on its side in the grass. [...]

Nearby, along the ocean, ravaged antebellum homes and churches dotted the waterfront. The beach from Gulfport, Miss., to Biloxi, was deserted. Debris hung from trees and motels stood shuttered. Blue tarpaulins still patched the roofs of most dwellings. Written in green spray paint on a fence around a home in Biloxi was "You loot, I shoot." [...]

"There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered," the president said. "Houses will begat [sic] jobs, jobs will begat [sic] houses." [Emphasis added]

Lights, cameras, but no action. Nothing in a year. They have no interest in governing; they're too busy staging events that give the appearance of governing. The sheer audacity of it really is stunning: they haven't bothered to try to get anything right in all the time they've been in office. Anything, that is, beyond their permanent campaign for more power.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 23, 2006

Damaged Goods II

This (via Raw Story) is creepy. Bush's portion is a little over two minutes long. It's more than the usual insufferable posturing: the guy's getting flat-out incoherent.

Watch for the Max Headroom glitch at about the 1:35 mark. Absence seizure?

Posted by Jonathan at 12:22 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 22, 2006

Damaged Goods

Forever a boy, and a silly one at that. USN&WR:

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that. [Emphasis added]

"Paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior"? Whaaat? That aspect of his character has to be pretty pronounced for it to be a topic of conversation by a "top insider". Yeah, Barbara Bush must have been a scary mom. No doubt. But Dubya's sixty years old now.

Where are the grownups?

Posted by Jonathan at 08:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 20, 2006

Chauncey Gardiners

Media Politics

Following a trail of links, I happened to arrive at Robert Parry's 1999 review of Edmund Morris's Reagan biography, Dutch. In a remarkable passage, Morris provides a rather shocking list of examples of Reagan's utter cluelessness. Parry:

[T]he Reagan in Dutch comes across as a shallow human being — a man so self-absorbed that he failed to recognize his own son, Michael, at his high school graduation.
Morris also judges Reagan as a one-dimensional leader who himself mixed fantasy with fact in the service of his ideological goals, a man who possessed an "encyclopedic ignorance."

In one sardonic passage, Morris wrote that "the world that rotates inside [Reagan's] cerebellum is, if not beautiful, encouragingly rich and self-renewing. It is washed by seas whose natural 'ozone' produces a healthful brown smog over coastal highways, and rinsed by rivers that purify themselves whenever they flow over gravel. ...

"Reagan's world is not entirely without environmental problems. It glows with the 'radioactivity' of coal burners (much more dangerous than nuclear plants), and is plagued by 'deadly diseases spread by insects, because pesticides such as DDT have been prematurely outlawed.' Acid rain, caused by an excess of trees, threatens much of the industrial northeast.

"Geopolitically, the globe presents many challenges. ... North and South Vietnam should never have been permitted to join, having been 'separate nations for centuries.' The Soviet Union [is] bent on invading the United States via Mexico (a strategem of 'Nikolai' Lenin). ... The economy of South America is a mess, particularly in Portuguese-speaking Bolivia."

See also Helen Caldicott's account of a meeting she had with Reagan, one of my very first posts here at Past Peak.

Morris calls Reagan an ideologue with a "Daliesque ability to bend reality to his purposes." He was aided immeasurably in this by his "encyclopedic ignorance." This was one of the secrets of Reagan's success as the Great Communicator. He could utter all manner of nonsense and lies with completely convincing sincerity because his inner world was unencumbered by facts. He believed what he was saying, and that made him believable.

The appearance of sincerity is one of the factors that made Reagan the perfect front man for the television age. It didn't hurt, too, that he was an "amiable dunce" (all the more so after his shooting by Bush family friend John Hinckley, from which Reagan never fully recovered). He seemed well-meaning and was so obviously clueless that to criticise him too sharply violated Americans' sense of fair play. Sure he was muddled, but he seemed such a sweet old guy. Picking on him was like picking on the mentally handicapped. This consequence of Reagan's cluelessness, together with his amiable sincerity, was the source of his famous Teflon coating.

Reagan's backers may not have anticipated in advance how spectacularly well Reagan's ideologically-driven cluelessness would play on tv, but the lesson surely was not lost on them as it played out. Bush, Sr. and Clinton, in contrast, were obviously not dunces, so they lacked the ignorance defense, and it cost them.

As the Republicans searched for someone to cast in the role of President in 2000, it seems clear that they looked for a telegenic figure with the same kind of ideological sincerity unencumbered by facts. Dubya doesn't have Reagan's doddering amiability, but he's got the encyclopedic ignorance and the reliance on "gut instinct" over analysis. And he's got something Reagan didn't have: a well-crafted image as a born-again, evangelical Christian. So, once again, we're in the position where pointed attacks on Bush's ignorance seem like picking on a dummy — rude and off-putting. Bush plays the front man, and behind him Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, et al, run the country.

Democrats look back on Clinton with nostalgia because he was so bright, so knowledgable, so nuanced, so talented. Republicans look back on Reagan with nostalgia because he was so uncomplicated, appealing to simplistic ideological belief, not analytical thought. You really didn't have to think or to know anything, you just had to believe in the man.

Look again at Morris's small peek into Reagan's bizarre inner world and consider that this man was leader of the free world for eight years. And now we've got Dubya. A political formula is being perfected. If we don't demand knowledgable, capable leaders, we are going to be subjected to a succession of dunces whose job is to go on tv, while the real power is exercised elsewhere.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:50 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 15, 2006

Terror Theatre

More on the alleged British plane bomb plot. Craig Murray, formerly UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, doesn't buy it (via Xymphora):

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled. [...]

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. [...]

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical. [Emphasis added]

Bush learned of the plot on Friday, August 4th, according to White House press secretary Tony Snow. Bush and Tony Blair had several conversations about the plot over that weekend. On Tuesday, anti-Iraq-war candidate Ned Lamont beat pro-war Joe Lieberman. On Wednesday, Dick Cheney held a "highly unusual" conference call with reporters in which he and Tony Snow "argued that Democrats wanted to raise what Snow called 'a white flag in the war on terror.'" They did this knowing that arrests were imminent in the UK. The arrests took place the following day. MSNBC reports that the US pressured the UK to make the arrests when it did. The Brits wanted to wait.

It's political theatre. Expect to see machine gun-toting soldiers in airports until election day.

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

Terror / Danger / Madman

9/11, "War On Terror" Humor & Fun Politics

Pardon my cynicism, but why are US airports full of machine-gun toting police and soldiers after the plot is uncovered?

Three months before an election.

Here's a Jon Stewart bit from February, 2004, a little reminder how the Bush/Cheney White House is all about pushing the fear button:

Terrorists hope to make us afraid. That's why it's called terror. Bush, Cheney, et al do the terrorists' work by constantly reminding us to be afraid.

Meanwhile, expect more pre-election Terror Alerts. They think we're suckers.

Update: YouTube pulled the video. It was good though. :-)

Posted by Jonathan at 05:28 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

August 08, 2006

Too Lame

A fun little story for all you geeks out there.

Joe Lieberman's site went down today, and Lieberman aides immediately blamed liberal bloggers and Lamont supporters for a "denial of service" attack.

Ah, but through the magic of the internets, they're shown to be complete idiots, pretty much in real time. Somebody checked, and it turns out Lieberman's campaign pays $15/month for rinky-dink hosting by an outfit called MyHostCamp. 10 GB bandwidth limit. They share their server with 73 other sites. Some, if not all, of those other sites stayed up, hence no DOS attack. Presumably, Lieberman's site simply maxed out its bandwidth for the month. Doh.

By way of comparison, $15/month happens to be what I pay for my little out-of-the-way site. 10 GB bandwidth limit, too, just like Joe. But guess what. Unlike the Lieberman campaign, I have no budget. I'm not running for the US Senate. I have nothing at stake if my site goes down (on election day, no less). For a better comparison, DailyKos pays $7000/month, and Kos isn't running for anything.

I really don't care if Lieberman's people are too clueless and cheap to get adequate hosting. I just think they ought to consider not pointing fingers when their lame-ass site implodes on election day.

And now of course because of this news everybody and their brother is hitting MyHostCamp to see what their operation looks like, so they're down, too. Bet they're thrilled.

Update: I just checked, and I actually have 15 GB a month. So I've got 50% more bandwidth than Lieberman. LOL

Posted by Jonathan at 04:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 04, 2006

The Dems and Israel: The Precipice Beckons

Palestine/Middle East Politics

When Ned Lamont beats Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, people will say it's because Lamont is "anti-war". But as Billmon reminds us in an outstanding and extremely important post, Lamont — and Democrats generally — are only anti-war when it comes to Iraq. When it comes to Israel, they compete to see who's quickest to snap to attention and salute. And that is a recipe for disaster. Billmon:

I know Ned [Lamont] says he's anti-war, but he only means the war in Iraq. The war in Lebanon, on the other hand, is just fine by him. And he's already pledged he'll be just as staunch a friend of Israel and the Israel lobby in this war as Holy Joe ever was or ever could be. So bombs away. [...]
Lamont's stance...reflects a glaring contradiction in the emerging Democratic consensus on U.S. policy in the Middle East...Politically, it's a position that won't be sustainable for long. And as a matter of policy, it's a recipe for an even wider and more destructive war — one I fully expect most Democrats, including Lamont, will end up supporting, despite the consequences.

The contradiction is between the growing sentiment among both grassroots Democrats and party leaders in favor of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. military forces (or at least ground forces) from Iraq, and the effect such a withdrawal would have, both on the overall strategic balance in the Middle East and on Israel's war against Hizbullah.

If the United States were to begin pulling troops out of Iraq now, it would be interpreted correctly throughout the Middle East as an open admission of defeat — one that would likely lead fairly quickly to a complete American evacuation of the country. [...]

[T]he U.S. Army is the only significant force standing between Iran and it's closest allies, and thus between Iran and Israel. If, as it now seems, Washington and Jerusalem both perceive Iran as the primary threat (and/or target for aggression) in the region, then there is no real distinction between America's occupation of Iraq and Israel's intended re-occupation of southern Lebanon. They are, in essence, both part of the next war.

It seems increasingly probable that that war will come soon — perhaps as early as November or December, although more likely next year. Israel's failure to knock out Hizbullah with a rapid first strike has left the neocons even deeper in the hole, enormously ratcheting up the pressure to try to recoup all losses by taking the war to Damascus and Tehran.

In other words, it's almost time for the ultimate "flight forward" — the one that finally pushes the Middle East into World War III.

What's become clear to me is that the Democratic Party (even it's allegedly anti-war wing) will not try to stop this insanity, and in fact will probably be led as meekly to the slaughter as it was during the runup to the Iraq invasion. Watching the Dems line up to salute the Israeli war machine, hearing the uncomfortable and awkward silence descend on most of Left Blogistan once the bombs started falling in Lebanon, seeing how easily the same Orwellian propaganda tricks worked their magic on the pseudoliberals — all this doesn't leave too much room for doubt. As long as World War III can be sold as protecting the security and survival of the Jewish state, I suspect the overwhelming majority of Democratics will support it.

And it is being sold, ferociously. A number of wealthy pro-Israel donors, including Ronald Lauder, the perfume heir, have given millions to something called the Israel Project — a "public education" cum PR cum grassroots lobbying machine — to fund a program specificially aimed at building support for a military strike on Iran. You can't turn on Fox News these days without finding James Woolsey or Newt Gingrich or Bill Kristol or some other pro-Israel mouthpiece demanding war with Syria and/or Iran, and painting it as the only way to stop the rockets falling on Haifa. [...]

The lesson learned from the Democratic reaction to the Israel's war of choice is that the Dems are only likely to oppose war as long as the war in question can be framed as a fight against Iraqi insurgents and/or Shi'a death squads, rather than a fight for Israel. But the Iraq occupation isn't going to fit neatly into that frame much longer. In fact it's already slipped out of it. The Dems — always a little slow on the uptake — just haven't realized it yet. But when the time comes to choose (for Israel, or against war with Iran) I fully expect to see Ned Lamont in the front ranks of the pro-war phalanx, right next to the last great white Democratic anti-war hope, Howard Dean.

People tell me I shouldn't get hung up on this because, you know, if the Dems get in they'll make sure the seniors get their Social Security checks a little faster — or they'll keep the Supreme Court out of the hands of legal madmen or do something about global climate change or save the whales or whatever else it is that's supposed to make the Democratic Party infinitely preferable to the Republicans.

It's not that I discount these differences entirely -- although they're easily oversold. But compared to the fate that awaits the republic, and the world, if the United States deliberately starts a war with Iran, those other considerations start to look pretty insignificant. I mean, we're talking about World War III here, fought by people who want to use tactical nuclear weapons. I'm supposed to put that out of my mind because the Dems might be a little bit more generous about funding the VA budget??? I'm sorry, but that's fucking nuts.

The truth is that on the most important issue of our time — the cliff that drops into total darkness — the only real opposition left in this country is in the Pentagon, where, according to Sy Hersh, at least some of the generals are trying to stall the march to war. Plus whatever scattered resistance is left in the intelligence agencies following the purges of the past couple of years.

It is a stunning testament to the political devolution of this country that the most effective anti-war movement in America is inside the walls of the Pentagon or buried deep in the bowels of the CIA! But that is the reality, thanks in no small part to the Dems and the Israel lobby.

I had hopes once that the Democratic Party could be reformed, that progressives could burrow back in or build their own parallel organizations (like MoveOn.org or even Left Blogistan) and eventually gain control of the party and its agenda — much as the conservatives took over the GOP in the 1980s and '90s.

But I think we've run out of time. Events — from 9/11 on — have moved too fast and pushed us too far towards the clash of civilizations that most sane people dread but the neocons desperately want. The Dems are now just the cadet branch of the War Party. While the party nomenklatura is finally, after three bloody years, making dovish noises about the Iraq fiasco, I think their loyalty to Israel will almost certainly snap them back into line during the coming "debate" over war with Iran.

I hope like hell I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I am. So I guess I'll just have to accept being labeled a traitor to the cause — or whatever the hardcore partisans are calling it. Sure, why not. They're certainly free to follow their party over the cliff (we're all going over it anyway) but I'd at least prefer to do it with my eyes open. [Emphasis added]

Americans generally have long held a completely one-sided and dangerously simplistic view of Arab-Israeli relations: Israel good, Arabs bad. Add to that the years of propaganda about Arab "terrorists" and the "war on terror", and the result is a populace with a dangerously distorted view of reality, a view that has, to a great extent, been deliberately instilled in them by people who think they're advancing Israel's interests or who push the Israel button as a means to other ends. The final irony will be that blind loyalty to Israel's interests (or to what are portrayed as Israel's interests) may just bring about Israel's destruction. And get untold numbers of other people killed in the process.

Just being a Democrat isn't enough. Just opposing the war in Iraq isn't enough. What we need are progressives who understand that most problems are not solved by the use of military force. And who understand that you don't get out of a hole by digging faster.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at 02:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 03, 2006

Widening The War

Palestine/Middle East Politics

Robert Parry reviews the evidence that the Bush/Cheney regime has wanted to use Israel's attack on Lebanon to widen the war and go after Syria, Iran, or both:

George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as an opportunity to expand the conflict into Syria and possibly achieve a long-sought "regime change" in Damascus, but Israel's leadership balked at the scheme, according to Israeli sources.
One Israeli source said Bush's interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered "nuts" by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has generally shared Bush's hard-line strategy against Islamic militants. [...]

In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at the Israeli rejection of Bush's suggestion of a wider war in Syria. "Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria," the newspaper reported.

On July 18, Consortiumnews.com reported that the Israel-Lebanon conflict had revived the Bush administration's neoconservative hopes that a new path had opened "to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them – military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments." [...]

Though the immediate conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was touched off by a Hezbollah cross-border raid on July 12 that captured two Israeli soldiers, the longer-term U.S.-Israeli strategy can be traced back to the May 23, 2006, meetings between Olmert and Bush in Washington.

At those meetings, Olmert discussed with Bush Israel's plans for revising its timetable for setting final border arrangements with the Palestinians, putting those plans on the back burner while moving the Iranian nuclear program to the front burner.

In effect, Olmert informed Bush that 2006 would be the year for stopping Iran's progress toward a nuclear bomb and 2007 would be the year for redrawing Israel's final borders. That schedule fit well with Bush's priorities, which may require some dramatic foreign policy success before the November congressional elections.

At a joint press conference with Bush on May 23, Olmert said "this is a moment of truth" for addressing Iran's alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.

"The Iranian threat is not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the entire world," Olmert said. "The international community cannot tolerate a situation where a regime with a radical ideology and a long tradition of irresponsible conduct becomes a nuclear weapons state." [...]

In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Olmert added that the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon was "an existential threat" to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger. [...]

By spring 2006, Bush was reportedly weighing military options for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. But the President encountered resistance from senior levels of the U.S. military, which feared the consequences, including the harm that might come to more than 130,000 U.S. troops bogged down in neighboring Iraq.

There was also alarm among U.S. generals over the White House resistance to removing tactical nuclear weapons as an option against Iran. [...]

[A former senior intelligence official] said the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they're shouted down," the ex-official said.

By late April, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.

"Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning," one former senior intelligence official said. [...]

One interpretation of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict is that Bush and Olmert seized on the Hezbollah raid as a pretext for a pre-planned escalation that will lead to bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran, justified by their backing of Hezbollah.

In that view, Bush found himself stymied by U.S. military objections to targeting Iran's nuclear facilities outside any larger conflict. However, if the bombing of Iran develops as an outgrowth of a tit-for-tat expansion of a war in which Israel's existence is at stake, strikes against Iranian targets would be more palatable to the American public.

The end game would be U.S.-Israeli aerial strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities with the goal of crippling its nuclear program and humiliating Ahmadinejad. [...]

Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that "for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East." [...]

Another school of thought holds that Iran may have encouraged the Hezbollah raid that sparked the Lebanese-Israeli conflict as a way to demonstrate the "asymmetrical warfare" that could be set in motion if the Bush administration attacks Iran.

But Hezbollah's firing of rockets as far as the port city of Haifa, deep inside Israel, has touched off new fears among Israelis and their allies about the danger of more powerful missiles carrying unconventional warheads, possibly hitting heavily populated areas, such as Tel Aviv.

That fear of missile attacks by Islamic extremists dedicated to Israel's destruction has caused Israel to start "dusting off it nukes," one source told me. [Emphasis added]

These guys are self-destructively reckless gamblers. Unfortunately, it's not just them who gets hurt.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:07 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 02, 2006

Political Science

Humor & Fun Politics Rights, Law

Good old Onion:

Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self
WASHINGTON, DC — In a decisive 1–0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.

"I promise the American people that I will not abuse this new power, unless it becomes necessary to grant myself the power to do so at a later time." [...]

"In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power," Bush said. "To do otherwise would be playing into the hands of our enemies."

About sums it up.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:35 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 01, 2006

Have A Nice Day

Billmon on the possibility that the Dems may regain control of the House (and maybe even the Senate) this fall:

More and more, I've come to believe the Dems are insane for even wanting a share of the responsibility for running this out-of-control madhouse of a country. It's like being invited to grab hold of a downed high-voltage power line.
As for those of us who still think of ourselves as progressives, the question is this: Is it really worth swallowing so much shit to see John Conyers become the next chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? After watching our purported opposition party's disgraceful foreign policy performance, first in Iraq and now in Lebanon, I've finally come to the conclusion that it isn't.

I used to argue that progressives in this country had no choice but to support the Democrats — even pathetic frauds like Howard Dean and inept Thurston Howell III clones like John Kerry. I used to quote Frederick Douglas's despairing comment about what the Republican Party of his day represented for African Americans: the rock; all else is the sea.

Maybe that was true, once. But I've finally come to realize that in modern-day America there is no rock — just a vast, featureless expanse of reactionary ocean, like something from the set of Waterworld, except without a gilled Kevin Costner.

So here's my confession: At this point I really don't give a flying fuck whether the Democrats take the House or the Senate back. No, wait, that's not true. The truth is I hope they don't. It wouldn't save us from what's coming down the road, in the Middle East and elsewhere. It wouldn't force President Psychopath to change course or seek therapy. But it would make sure that the "left" (ha ha ha) gets more than its fair share of blame for the approaching debacle.

That may well be the natural role of the Democratic Party in our one-and-a-half party system, but I don't want any part of it any more. [...]

For the rest of us, and for whatever is left of this country's soul, it doesn't really matter. We've already lost. [Emphasis added]

Not exactly cheerful, but I take his point. There is such a shit-storm headed our way; this is no time to be reaching out for a share of the blame. And it's not like Democratic control of the House is going to usher in some kind of progressive renaissance: Democrats today are what Republicans used to be before Reagan. They only look liberal when you stand them next to the crazies across the aisle.

The problem is that the Democrats are portrayed as "the left", so anything that discredits them discredits everybody to the left of them, only more so.

Not that I think the Democrats will regain control anyway. Not while there's e-voting.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Dirty Pool

In Pennsylvania, Republican donors have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to put a Green Party candidate on the ballot. AP (via AmericaBlog):

Thanks to the generosity of GOP donors, a Green Party candidate is expected to make it onto the ballot in Pennsylvania's Senate race and siphon votes from Democratic front-runner Bob Casey in his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Rick Santorum.
While Santorum said Monday that he would welcome another candidate on the ballot, Casey's campaign accused Republicans of "trying to steal the election."

Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli, making his first bid for statewide elective office, acknowledged Monday that Republican contributors probably supplied most of the $100,000 that he said he spent gathering signatures to qualify for the Nov. 7 ballot. [...]

"I have friends in all political parties. It's just that my Republican friends are more confident about standing with me than my Democratic friends. And as a group, my Republican friends are a little better off," he said in a telephone interview. [Emphasis added]

I'm all for Green Party candidacies, but if you're going to take GOP money at least don't pretend that the donations have any purpose other than taking votes away from the Democratic candidate. Yes, it's politics, and politicians lie, but Greens are supposed to be better than that. Otherwise, what's the point?

Posted by Jonathan at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 31, 2006

Morons In High Places

Can the Bush people really be as dumb as they seem? I go back and forth. The incompetence defense sure has come in handy, after all. But then I read something like this. It takes your breath away.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Rumsfeld "In A Parallel Universe And Slightly Deranged"

Iraq Palestine/Middle East Politics

Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria on ABC Sunday (via ThinkProgress):

If I were a Democrat, I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it's not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged as a result. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he's living in a different world, not a different country. [Emphasis added]

Rumsfeld and Cheney both. They're delusional men with enormous egos and enormous power. Not a happy combination. Incapable of admitting error or defeat, they will continue to escalate. Bush won't stop them and they won't stop themselves. They'll go to their graves convinced that they were right. The only question is whether they will take the rest of us with them.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:40 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 29, 2006

State Of The Union

As a kind of follow-on to the previous post, here are excerpts from an interview with Gore Vidal in the current issue of The Progressive:

The people don't matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They've got the troops. They've got the army. They've got Congress. They've got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him. [...]
What is it going to take to stop the Bush onslaught? Economic collapse. We are too deeply in debt...I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars. [...]

We've never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It's as though we are evil. We strike first. We'll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It's like a war against dandruff. There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

But our media has collapsed. They've questioned no one. One of the reasons Bush and Cheney are so daring is that they know there's nobody to stop them. Nobody is going to write a story that says this is not a war, only Congress can declare war. And you can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids. Nothing makes any sense, and the people are getting very confused. The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.

[Our rulers] don't want us to know anything. When you've got a press like we have, you no longer have an informed citizenry. [...]

A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.

It's so stupid, everything that they say. And the media take on it is just as stupid as theirs, sometimes worse. They at least have motives. They are making money out of the republic or what's left of it. It's the stupidity that will really drive me away from this country. [...]

We certainly are not warlike. We don't want [military service]. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the most admirable things about Americans. We didn't want to go out and conquer other countries. We wanted to corner wheat in the stock market or something sensible like that. So we are very unbelligerent. [...]

[The Democrats aren't] an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party — the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. [...]

The tactic [to energize democracy] would be to go after smaller offices, state by state, school board, sheriff, state legislatures. You can turn them around and that doesn't take much of anything. Take back everything at the grassroots, starting with state legislatures. That's what Madison always said. I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian. [...]

I hope [Newton's Third Law] is still working. American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. And the Third Law is: There is no action without reaction. There should be a great deal of reaction to the total incompetence of this Administration. It's going to take two or three generations to recover what we had as of twenty years ago. [Emphasis added]

Not a pretty picture, but who can argue with it? Lots of chickens coming home to roost, sooner or later.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 28, 2006

Republican McCloskey Says Vote Democratic

Former Republican Congressman and Presidential wannabe Pete McCloskey has written a long letter explaining why Republicans should vote for Democrats this fall. A short excerpt (read the rest at Seeing the Forest):

I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans. [...]
It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. [...]

These Republican incumbents have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the public interest. [...]

I have therefore reluctantly concluded that party loyalty should be set aside, and that it is in the best interests of the nation, and indeed the future of the Republican Party itself, to return control of the House to temporary Democrat control, if only to return the House for a time to the kind of ethics standards practiced by Republicans in former years. [Emphasis added]

Guess who won't be doing any McCloskey fundraisers.

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

July 25, 2006

Ignoring Congress

The White House continues to flout the will of Congress. Congress won't repeal the estate tax, so what does the White House do? They fire the IRS lawyers who enforce it. NYT:

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. [...]
[S]ix I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a "back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax." [Emphasis added]

Refusing to enforce a law is one way Bush has circumvented Congress. So-called "signing statements" are another. Yesterday, the American Bar Association weighed in on Presidential signing statements, calling them "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." The Nation:

[Monday], a bipartisan American Bar Association task force released its report challenging George Bush's flagrant misuse of signing statements to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers.
Bush has issued more than 800 challenges to provisions of passed laws (more than all previous presidents combined) and he has asserted "his right to ignore law." Among the areas of laws Bush has threatened through this "shortcut veto" are the ban on torture, affirmative action, whistleblower protection, and limits on use of "illegally collected intelligence."

The 10 member ABA panel includes three well-known conservatives, including Mickey Edwards – a former Republican Congressman who places protecting the Constitution above lock-step partisanship. Edwards, a former chair of the American Conservative Union and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, is a true maverick whose recent article in The Nation signals his commitment to protecting our constitutional design. "The President. " Edwards wrote, [has] "chosen not to veto legislation with which he disagreed – thus giving Congress a chance to override his veto – but simply to assert his right to ignore the law, whether a domestic issue or a prohibition against torturing prisoners of war."

Task force member Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan administration, concurs: "When the president signs a bill and says he is not going to enforce parts of a bill that he finds unconstitutional, it is in effect an absolute veto, because the Congress has no power to override him."

According to The Washington Post, panel members wrote: "The President's constitutional duty is to enforce laws he has signed into being unless and until they are held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or a subordinate tribunal. The Constitution is not what the President says it is." [Emphasis added]

Bush has issued more than 800 signing statements, a couple of hundred more than all previous presidents combined.

The ABA panel optimistically recommends "that Congress pass laws enabling judicial review of any instances in which the President claims authority to refuse to enforce legislation against the clear intent of Congress." No word on what happens when such a law is itself met with a signing statement, as one assumes it will be.

[Thanks, Mark]

Posted by Jonathan at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 24, 2006

Freedom-Haters

Yes, this has been going on for a while, but WTF? AP (via C&L):

When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration's policies.
Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating "No More War." What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

Authorities say they were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions... [Emphasis added]

What a bunch of cowardly, un-American weasels. Tom Paine spins in his grave.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 20, 2006

Classy Move

Only a woman, after all.

(Video)

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

July 19, 2006

With A Stroke Of His Pen

Ethics Politics

What's scarier than a country ruled by know-nothing fundamentalist fanatics who inhabit a pre-scientific mental world, fanatics who place a greater value on rigid extremist dogma than they do on the rights and well-being of their fellow humans? WaPo:

President Bush today used the first veto of his presidency to stop legislation that would have lifted restrictions on federally funded human embryonic stem cell research.
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said at the White House, following through on his promise to veto the bill. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it." [Emphasis added]

But, but, but — "acceptable losses" due to "collateral damage" in an elective, pre-emptive war of aggression founded on a deliberate campaign of lies — no moral boundary there. And so, to make political hay with his base, Bush condemns countless people with Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, etc., etc., to continued suffering and death. Has the guy ever been right — about anything?

For a discussion of the morality of stem cell research, please see this.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:23 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this

July 15, 2006

Safeguarding Amish Country Popcorn

Your tax dollars at work. Indiana's IndyStar, via Digby:

About three miles from the nearest town, Brian Lehman's popcorn factory near Berne has somehow ended up on the federal government's list of potential terrorist targets.
"I don't have a clue why we're on the list. We're on a gravel road, not even blacktop. We're nowhere," said Lehman, owner of Amish Country Popcorn, which employs five people.

Nevertheless, Amish Country Popcorn is one of 8,591 places or events in Indiana that the Department of Homeland Security regards as serious potential terrorist targets, according to an inspector general's report that raised questions about the accuracy and relevance of what's known as the National Asset Database.

Indiana has about 30 percent more listed potential targets than New York (5,687) and nearly twice as many as California (3,212), putting Indiana atop the nation's list of potential terrorism targets.
What's more, the number of potential Indiana targets rose from 322 in 2004 to 8,303 in 2005.

Amish Country isn't the only odd-sounding site in the federal database.

Without divulging specifics, the list includes 77,069 U.S. sites where terrorists might strike — including a flea market, a petting zoo, ice cream parlors, several Wal-Marts and a tackle shop.

The government's database is used to determine how much states should get out of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal anti-terrorism grants. [...]

The findings drew the ire of some lawmakers, particularly in New York, which saw its portion of funds shrink this year.
"Now we know why the Homeland Security grant formula came out as wacky as it was," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told The New York Times. "This report is the smoking gun that thoroughly indicts the system." [...]

The list may have become inflated because states were left to interpret a request for potential targets however they wanted.

Pam Bright, a spokeswoman for the state's Homeland Security Department, said federal administrators asked Indiana to make a list of "critical infrastructure and resources," not a list of potential terrorist sites.

"There was not a clear definition of what they wanted, so Indiana took the safe side and submitted all of our important infrastructures," Bright said. "If that's not what they wanted, they should have sent it back and said that's not what they wanted. [Emphasis added]

Amish Country Popcorn. It makes us laugh, but it should also make us angry. It would be one thing if somebody at DHS carelessly published a bogus list. But this is much worse than that. This information made it all the way through the grant process for allocating over $700 million in Homeland Security funds to the states. Imagine the level of incompetence and inattention that requires.

I've said this before, but it really does matter whether people in government believe in government. The Bush regime is full of people who don't believe in the public good and don't believe government has a legitimate, useful role to play in safeguarding and supporting the public good. They have an ideological distrust of of government. It's small wonder, then, that they suck at governing. Boy, do they ever.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 12, 2006

Friends In High Places

~~President Bush and Laura Bush~~ Former President Bush and Barbara Bush today attended the star-studded Houston funeral of Ken Lay. But here's a question. Ken Lay made his fortune by fooling the world into believing in a mirage. He had connections in high places like nobody else. A lot of people, from Bush on down, owed him favors.

So why do we believe he's dead and not retired to some Caribbean isle? He's staring at 20 years jail time and then, poof, he's gone. No open casket. The remains cremated. Convenient. Pure speculation? Of course. But tell me you're not wondering.

In related news, Enron witness found dead in park. Tidying up.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:14 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this

Bush At Stanford

Media Politics

Did you know this? I sure didn't. Paul Craig Roberts:

Gentle reader, did you know that, in April, President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush's access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz's home to hear Bush's pitch for war and more war.
A person might think that it would be national news that Stanford University students would not allow the President of the US on campus. It happened to be a day when hundreds of prospective freshmen were on campus with their parents, many of whom joined the demonstration against Bush. I did not hear or read a word about it. Did you? I learned of it from faculty friends in June when I attended Stanford's graduation to witness a relative receive her degree. The June 16 edition of The Stanford Daily reprinted its April 24 report of the episode. [Emphasis added]

How could this not have been news? Stanford's not just any university. Weird. And pretty unnerving. Where's our free press, now when we need it most?

Posted by Jonathan at 05:43 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 05, 2006

On Underestimating The Enemy

I listened to most of George Lakoff on "On Point" tonight. One thing he said really brought me up short. We think of Bush as the most incompetent president ever, a president who's been wrong on absolutely everything. But, Lakoff said, from Bush's perspective his presidency has been astonishly effective. It has pushed the country in a certain direction farther, faster, than anyone would have thought possible. Since 9/11, Bush has had his way pretty much across the board (Social Security privatization aside). He's taken the country exactly where he wants it to go. That's not incompetence. It's a disgusting thought, but it's also pretty hard to argue with.

A certain path to defeat: underestimating the enemy.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:25 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

June 22, 2006

Crackpots

Reading Ron Susskind's The One Percent Doctrine, I came across the following anecdote that pretty much sums up the crackpot flailing of the Bush White House in its "war on terror":

The result [of 9/11]: potent, wartime autority was granted to those guiding the ship of state...In the wide, diffuse "war on terror," so much of it occurring the shadows — with no transparency and perfunctory oversight — the administration could say anything it wanted to say. That was a blazing insight of this period [2002]. The administration could create whatever reality was convenient. [...]
What, for instance, did all of this mean upon the capture of [Abu] Zubaydah? A freeing of rhetoric for the "wartime" President to say what he felt desperately needed to be said.

Which Bush did, first, in a speech...on April 9, 2002. "The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore. He's where he belongs," the President said to raucous cheers from a room full of Republican Party contributors. [...]

This message — and the characterizing of Zubaydah as the "chief of operations" for all of al Qaeda, a putative "number three" to bin Laden and Zawahiri — would be a drum the President, the Vice President,...Condoleezza Rice, and others would beat relentlessly that April and the months to follow.

Meanwhile, Dan Coleman and other knowledgeable members of the tribe of al Qaeda hunters at CIA were reading Zubaydah's top secret diary and shaking their heads.

"This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," Coleman told a top official at FBI after a few days reviewing the Zubaydah haul. "That's why they let him fly all over the world doing meet and greet. That's why people used his name on all sorts of calls and e-mails. He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights. You can see from what he writes how burdened he is with all these logistics — getting families of operatives, wives and kids, in and out of countries. He knew very little about real operations, or strategy. He was expendable, you know, the greeter...Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands."

This opinion was echoed at the top of the CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President. While Bush was out in public claiming Zubaydah's grandiose malevolence, his private disappointment fell, as it often would, on [CIA Director] Tenet...

"I said he was important," Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily briefings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?"

"No sir, Mr. President."

Back in Langley, Tenet pressed subordinates over what could be done to get Zubaydah to talk. His injuries were serious, but...[the CIA] found [him] some of the finest medical professionals in America. CIA agents alighted at their medical offices and soon they were on flights to Pakistan.

"He received the finest medical attention on the planet," said one CIA official. "We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him." [...]

"Around the room a lot of people [at CIA] just rolled their eyes when we heard comments from the White House. I mean, Bush and Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy had psychological issues. He was, in a way, expendable. It was like calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the COO," said one top CIA official. {...]

According to CIA sources, [Zubaydah] was water-boarded, a technique...creating the sensation of drowning. He was beaten, though not in a way to worsen his injuries. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights. [...]

Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda. That information traveled the globe in an instant. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, and various related agencies joined local police to surround malls. Zubaydah said banks &mdash yes, banks — were a priority. FBI agents led officers in a race to surround and secure banks. And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time...And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried. [Emphasis added]

The stuff of some particularly vicious satire. They pick up a mentally ill nobody, pump him up in public statements as al Qaeda's number three, then, to save face for Bush, they act as if it were actually true. They give him medical treatment to get him well enough to torture, and under torture he starts spewing out every conceivable plot under the sun. Then, the final insanity: thousands of agents and law enforcement officers are sent scrambling to Zubaydah's imaginary targets, when they presumably could have been doing something useful.

These jokers have our collective futures in their hands. It's embarrassing.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 19, 2006

US Rejected Iranian Proposal In 2003

Iran Politics

The Washington Post reported yesterday that in 2003 Iran sought to open a dialogue with the US, but the administration rejected the proposal out of hand. Excerpt:

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.
But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.

Last month, the Bush administration abruptly shifted policy and agreed to join talks previously led by European countries over Iran's nuclear program. But several former administration officials say the United States missed an opportunity in 2003 at a time when American strength seemed at its height — and Iran did not have a functioning nuclear program or a gusher of oil revenue from soaring energy demand.

"At the time, the Iranians were not spinning centrifuges, they were not enriching uranium," said Flynt Leverett, who was a senior director on the National Security Council staff then and saw the Iranian proposal. He described it as "a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement." [...]

Parsi said the U.S. victory in Iraq frightened the Iranians because U.S. forces had routed in three weeks an army that Iran had failed to defeat during a bloody eight-year war.

The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, with possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of negotiating road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation. [...]

Leverett said Guldimann included a cover letter that it was an authoritative initiative that had the support of then-President Mohammad Khatami and supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei. [...]

Paul R. Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said that it is true "there is less daylight between the United States and Europe, thanks in part to Rice's energetic diplomacy." But he said that only partially offsets the fact that the U.S. position is "inherently weaker now" because of Iraq. He described the Iranian approach as part of a series of efforts by Iran to engage with the Bush administration. "I think there have been a lot of lost opportunities," he said, citing as one example a failure to build on the useful cooperation Iran provided in Afghanistan. [...]

Parsi said that based on his conversations with the Iranian officials, he believes the failure of the United States to even respond to the offer had an impact on the government. Parsi, who is writing a book on Iran-Israeli relations, said he believes the Iranians were ready to dramatically soften their stance on Israel, essentially taking the position of other Islamic countries such as Malaysia. Instead, Iranian officials decided that the United States cared not about Iranian policies but about Iranian power.

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said. [Emphasis added]

The gang that couldn't think straight. Have they ever been right about anything?

Posted by Jonathan at 11:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 13, 2006

Bush Administration Slashing Energy Efficiency R&D Programs

More lunacy on the energy front. CSM:

A few years ago a little-known US Energy Department program helped produce a design technology for lightweight cars and trucks that in 2004 alone saved the nation 122 million barrels of oil, or about $9 billion.
Even without that breakthrough, the tiny Industrial Technologies Program routinely saves the United States $7 worth of energy for each dollar it spends, proponents say.

So, with energy prices spiking and President Bush pushing for more energy research, the ITP would seem a natural candidate for more funding. In fact, its budget is set to get chopped by a third from its 2005 level. It's one of more than a dozen energy-efficiency efforts that the Energy Department plans to trim or eliminate in a $115 million cost-saving move.

[T]he Bush administration is anxious to fund its new Advanced Energy Initiative — long-term research into nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and hydrogen power. But to accomplish that, it is cutting lesser-known programs like ITP whose payoffs are far more near-term. [...]

If Congress accepts the Energy Department's proposed 2007 budget, it will cut $152 million — some 16 percent — from this year's budget for energy-efficiency programs. Adjusting for inflation, it would mean the US government would spend 30 percent less on energy efficiency next year than it did in 2002, the ACEEE says. [...]

One energy-efficiency program on the chopping block is the Heavy Vehicle Propulsion and Ancillary Subsystems. It helps improve the fuel efficiency of heavy-duty trucks, one of the nation's biggest oil consumers. That program is "zeroed out" in the 2007 budget request.

The same fate awaits the $4.5 million Building Codes Implementation Grants program. It helps states adopt more energy-efficient requirements for new buildings, the nation's largest consumer of electricity and natural gas. [...]

Dr. Muller's Industrial Assessment Centers program annually conducts about 600 energy audits and trains a new crop of about 250 new energy-efficiency engineers. The $7 million program, which is estimated to save enough power to supply half a million homes each year, wins plaudits from the small businesses that have been able to reduce their costs.

But budget cuts slated for 2007 would trim the program by a third, slashing the number of its university-based auditing and training programs from 23 to 16. Savings: about $2.4 million. [...]

These programs are minuscule compared with the big-ticket research programs envisioned by the White House. Mr. Bush's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, for example, would cost $1.2 billion over five years.

Proponents of the small-scale efficiency programs point out that the ITP, with 1/20th of the budget, has already saved more oil than the hydrogen-fuel program would save, if successful, by 2025. [...]

One of the nation's priorities is improving the security and reliability of the electric grid. One option for doing that sooner, rather than later, is the emerging technology of "distributed generation." Under that approach, the nation would build more but much smaller power plants so that small businesses and even individual homes could have them.

True, such systems would burn costly natural gas — but at twice the energy efficiency of today's grid — to produce both heat and electricity for homeowners. If such systems caught on, they could vastly reduce load demand on central power stations and slash the need to build new power plants.

But that vision of the future may be delayed, since the DOE's "distributed energy" program has been cut in half and the remainder is being heavily earmarked by federal lawmakers for specific projects that they favor. The program is slated to be terminated in 2008, observers say.

"Hurricanes, terrorism, and blackouts have given us so many reasons to emphasize distributed generation, and instead we're putting emphasis on new forms of centralized power," says John Jimison, executive director of the US Combined Heat and Power Association, a Washington advocacy group. "It's too bad it's getting cut because it was a very modest program."

There may be a glimmer of hope for energy-efficiency programs. The House Committee for Energy and Water Development subcommittee moved last week to restore some funding to ITP and hybrid technology for heavy trucks. The committee voted earlier this month to fully fund the president's $2.1 billion Advanced Energy Initiative. [Emphasis added]

It takes your breath away. Energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit. It doesn't require massive, centralized capital investment. It has proven that it works and yields enormous returns on investment. But it's not sexy, somehow. It's what grownups would do, but grownups are in short supply in this administration. And everybody wants their own back scratched. Everybody wants to bring home some pork. Who cares what really works. Fiddling while the world burns.

The Iraq War is proving to be expensive in ways people never dreamed of. Think opportunity cost. All those billions that could have been used to do something about energy, peak oil, and global warming, instead are being used to blow stuff up. Suicidal insanity.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Politics And NIMBY Stop Wind Farm Development

It takes some energy to build, transport, install, and maintain wind turbines, yes, but after that wind power is basically energy for free. No carbon emissions, no pollution. Who could oppose it? Chicago Tribune:

The federal government has stopped work on more than a dozen wind farms planned across the Midwest, saying research is needed on whether the giant turbines could interfere with military radar.
But backers of wind power say the action has little to do with national security. The real issue, they say, is a group of wealthy vacationers who think a proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts would spoil the view at their summer homes.

Opponents of the Cape Wind project include several influential members of Congress. Critics say their latest attempt to thwart the planting of 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound has led to a moratorium on new wind farms hundreds of miles away in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Federal officials declined to reveal how many stop-work orders have been sent out. But developers said that at least 15 wind farm proposals in the Midwest have been shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration since the start of the year.

The list of stalled projects includes one outside Bloomington, Ill., that would be the nation's largest source of wind energy, generating enough juice to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area. The developer had planned to begin installing turbines this summer and start up the farm next year. [...]

[D]espite the government's recent concern about proposed wind projects, it is allowing dozens of current wind farms to continue to operate within sight of radar systems. [...]

Critics of Cape Wind include members of the Kennedy family, whose summer compound is on Cape Cod. Both U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have said the turbines would spoil the ocean views, threaten the local tourist economy and endanger migratory birds.

The younger Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and activist who has supported wind power in other parts of the country, said putting a wind farm in Nantucket Sound would be akin to placing one in the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park. [...]

Another opponent is U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who has tried several times to block the Cape Wind project. In a 2002 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, Warner included a handwritten note saying he often visits Cape Cod, which he called a "national treasure."

But the project continued to move forward until late last year, when Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, slipped an amendment into a military spending bill. The one-sentence congressional order directs the Defense Department to study whether wind towers could mask the radar signals of small aircraft.

Since then, at the Defense Department's behest, the FAA has been blocking any new wind turbines within the scope of radar systems used by the military. [Emphasis added]

It's stuff like this that makes me despair for our prospects. As noted the other day, the time for "grudging incrementalism" is over, but people just don't get it yet. By the time global climate change has gotten so bad that nobody can doubt it's seriousness and urgency, it will be too late. By then, feedback loops will have been set in motion that will push the global climate much, much farther into disastrous new territory, no matter what we do. The time to act is right now, and we need to act with urgency and determination.

Wind farms are an obvious good. I don't really understand this idea that they spoil the view. When I see a wind farm, it makes me feel good. It connotes a peaceful future, a harmonious relationship with the Earth. The turbines are quiet and graceful, beautiful in more ways than one. You might even say they're a gesture of love for our Mother Earth.

The time for NIMBY is over. Every site is in somebody's backyard, but global warming puts many millions of lives at risk. NIMBY is for a different world than the one we're living in. NIMBY is obsolete.

Feel free to build a wind farm in my backyard.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:12 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this

June 12, 2006

The al-Zarqawi Bounce

Iraq Politics

We're supposed to think the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is some sort of turning point in Iraq. But people aren't buying it.

CBS poll:

80% of Americans think attacks on US troops will increase (30%) or stay the same (50%) in the aftermath of al-Zarqawi's death. Only 16% think attacks will decrease.
83% think the terrorist threat against the US will increase (22%) or stay the same (61%). Only 13% think it will decrease.

Bush's approval rating: 33%, down from 35% last month.

It's really got to suck to be Dubya.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:38 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 05, 2006

Rule Of Law

What good is a law if the Bush administration refuses to enforce it? WaPo:

In the three years since Americans gained federal protection for their private medical information, the Bush administration has received thousands of complaints alleging violations but has not imposed a single civil fine and has prosecuted just two criminal cases.
Of the 19,420 grievances lodged so far, the most common allegations have been that personal medical details were wrongly revealed, information was poorly protected, more details were disclosed than necessary, proper authorization was not obtained or patients were frustrated getting their own records.

The government has "closed" more than 73 percent of the cases — more than 14,000 — either ruling that there was no violation, or allowing health plans, hospitals, doctors' offices or other entities simply to promise to fix whatever they had done wrong, escaping any penalty. [...]

The debate has intensified amid a government push to computerize medical records to improve the efficiency and quality of health care. Privacy advocates say large centralized electronic databases will be especially vulnerable to invasions, making it even more crucial that existing safeguards be enforced. [Emphasis added]

Congress wrote penalties into the law for a reason. But the health care industry is a big source of campaign contributions to Republicans, the people complaining about privacy violations are not. End of story.

[Thanks, Maurice]

Posted by Jonathan at 08:16 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

June 03, 2006

The Bigotry-Based Campaign

This being an election year, they're back at it again. WaPo:

[President] Bush has invited some of the nation's leading social conservatives to the Rose Garden on Monday, to cheer him on as he strongly endorses a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

Reaction from CNN's Jack Cafferty:

Guess what Monday is? Monday is the day President Bush will speak about an issue near and dear to his heart and the hearts of many conservatives. It's also the day before the Senate votes on the very same thing. Is it the war? Deficits? Health insurance? Immigration? Iran? North Korea?
Not even close. No, the president is going to talk about amending the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage. This is something that absolutely, positively has no chance of happening, nada, zippo, none. But that doesn't matter. Mr. Bush will take time to make a speech. The Senate will take time to talk and vote on it, because it's something that matters to the Republican base.

This is pure politics. It has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in gay marriage. It's blatant posturing by Republicans, who are increasingly desperate as the midterm elections approach. There's not a lot else to get people interested in voting for them, based on their record of the last five years.

But if you can appeal to the hatred, bigotry, or discrimination in some people, you might move them to the polls to vote against that big, bad gay married couple that one day might move in down the street.

And AmericaBlog's Joe Sudbay:

What leaders will be there? How about Dick and Lynn Cheney? Will they join the gay bashing? How about all the homos working at the White House and the RNC? Will all of them — and there are plenty — be there to cheer on the homophobic president?

Your modern Republican Party: appealing, as always, to people's bigotry, fear, and ignorance.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 01, 2006

Gore In 2008

I have no idea if this is authoritative, but it's interesting:

A new behavior prediction tool is forecasting a landslide victory for former Democratic Vice President Al Gore in the 2008 presidential election. However, should Hillary Clinton gain the Democratic nomination, any potential Republican challenger will win the presidency.
These are among the surprising findings reported by Dr. James N. Herndon, a media psychologist with Media Psychology Affiliates. Using a new research tool called Affective Encryption Analysis, Dr. Herndon led an investigation into the likely outcome of the 2008 Presidential election.

"Affective Encryption Analysis is a new behavior forecasting tool that looks at how our feelings and emotions can influence our long-term actions," explains Dr. Herndon. "Traditional survey techniques are not very good at predicting trends. Affective Encryption Analysis was developed to dig deeper into the emotional factors that control our future behaviors."

Although created as a potential tool for the intelligence community, Affective Encryption Analysis has seen its early uses in the political arena.

"Voter behavior is not primarily issue-driven," states Dr. Herndon. "Subtle emotional factors drive our actions at the ballot box. When we decided to study the potential outcome of the 2008 Presidential election, we had no preconceptions about what we’d find. Nonetheless, there were some surprises."

Among the surprises was the overall weakness of potential Democratic presidential challengers.

"Despite the widespread public dissatisfaction with the George W. Bush administration, our results showed even greater ill-feelings toward potential Democratic challengers," says Dr. Herndon. "But there was one exception: Al Gore."

"With a predictive accuracy of 93%, our results showed that Al Gore would easily defeat any Republican challenger in 2008. However, he is the only Democrat on the scene today who has the ability to defeat the likely Republican challengers, who we believe will be either John McCain or Jeb Bush."

Results were not rosy for Hillary Clinton. "Hillary Clinton would suffer a disastrous defeat at the hands of any Republican who receives the nomination," states Dr. Herndon.

Should Al Gore decide not to seek the 2008 nomination, the Democrats "have their work cut out for them," according to Dr. Herndon.

"Our results suggest that a potentially successful Democratic nominee may be lurking in the entertainment industry. Does this sound strange? Maybe. But when it comes to politics, we may have to get used to a future full of surprises." [Emphasis added]

Who knows if this "Affective Encryption Analysis" has any merit, but my gut feeling is that the conclusions are probably correct. I think Al Gore, who has shed the robotic stiffness and air of superiority that alienated voters in 2000, would be a very formidable candidate indeed, especially given rising public anxiety around the global climate and peak oil issues. People want a reason to hope, and his "loss" in 2000 and subsequent redemption make him a sympathetic figure. I also think Hillary would get creamed. I'd love to see Feingold in the White House, of course, but I'm afraid that remains the longest of long shots.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:28 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

May 24, 2006

Congress Discovers Civil Liberties

Congress is all upset because the FBI, who had a search warrant, raided the office of Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson. Funny how they suddenly become champions of civil liberties when they're the ones in the crosshairs. CNN's Jack Cafferty says it well (video):

Congress seems to think it's fine for the NSA to spy on all of us without any sort of a warrant whatsoever. But it's not OK for the FBI to conduct a raid on Congressman William Jefferson's office with a warrant after finding 90 grand in his freezer and after waiting weeks for him to comply with a subpoena to turn over evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation, evidence which he has refused so far to turn over.
Now, members of both parties are all worked up about this. They positively have their shorts in a knot over this. You see, they want the Capitol police to handle their stuff, you know, the same ones who failed to give Congressman Patrick Kennedy a breathalyzer after Kennedy crashed his car into a stationary barrier a couple of weeks ago. Instead, they just drove Kennedy home and said, "Good night, Congressman, and have a nice evening." You see, the Capitol police answer to Congress. The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert even complained personally to President Bush about the raid on Congressman Jefferson's office. It's believed this was the first raid of a congressman's office in 219 years. Well, judging by the reaction on Capitol Hill, maybe the FBI ought to raid their offices more often. What is it do you suppose they're hiding in those offices?

Once again, Congress is demanding a different set of standards for themselves. [Emphasis added]

Seems they're learning the hard way the lesson of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Congress has spent the last five years letting the Executive Branch trample on the Constitution and basic civil liberties, with scarcely a peep of protest. What did they think was going to happen?

Hey, Congress: welcome to our world.

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

May 22, 2006

AT&T Whistleblower: NSA Taps Internet Trunk Lines At Telecom Sites

As I've been saying here for a while, the little that we've been told about NSA snooping on electronic communications inside the US is just the tip of a very large iceberg. It's axiomatic: what gets released publicly is always just a small glimpse of the whole ugly reality. We will likely never know the full extent of what they've been up to, but every new story enlarges the scope.

Now, from Wired, here's an affadavit by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who says the NSA is tapped into the main trunk lines of the Internet, from where they can monitor literally everything that goes over the Net: email, IM, chat, web site usage, file uploads and downloads, you name it. Excerpt:

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardware installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities. [...]
The essential hardware elements of a TIA [Total Information Awareness]-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replaced by another.

Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from "AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services" and authored by the labs' consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not "leak" their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.

This problem is solved with "splitters" which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: Circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the "secret room." The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform — in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter — its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the internet. [Emphasis added]

Wired has the full statement here (pdf). We don't have to just take Klein's word for it, he's got supporting technical documentation and wiring diagrams, all available via links in his affadavit.

On the one hand, it's not surprising. One always assumed they were listening in. But on the other hand, it's outrageous. Treasonous, in fact. They've crumpled the Constitution into a little ball and tossed it out the window. If laws don't apply to the government, all bets are off.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:27 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

May 21, 2006

The Big Chill

The shredding of the Constitution — what's left of it — continues. Attorney-General Gonzales now says journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, and he won't hesitate to track their phone calls in leak investigations. AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.
The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." [...]

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she presumed that Gonzales was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which she said has never been interpreted to prosecute journalists who were providing information to the public.

"I can't imagine a bigger chill on free speech and the public's right to know what it's government is up to — both hallmarks of a democracy — than prosecuting reporters," Dalglish said.

Gonzales said he would not comment specifically on whether The New York Times should be prosecuted for disclosing the NSA program last year based on classified information. [...]

But he added that the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security. If the government's probe into the NSA leak turns up criminal activity, prosecutors have an "obligation to enforce the law."

"It can't be the case that that right [the First Amendment] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," Gonzales told ABC's "This Week." [Emphasis added]

How's that for legal reasoning: the Constitution does not trump what "Americans would like to see." It's embarrassing.

Whether they prosecute or not, whether they track reporter's phone calls or not, the purpose of these kinds of pronouncements is clear: to create a chill that will keep sources from talking to reporters and keep reporters from publishing what the White House doesn't want published. It's disgusting what they're doing to this country.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 17, 2006

"Carbon Dioxide...We Call It Life"

Not an April Fool's joke, apparently, nor satire. Reuters:

A little girl blows away dandelion fluff as an announcer says, "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life," in an advertisement targeting global warming "alarmists," especially Al Gore.
The television ads, screened for the press on Wednesday and set to air in 14 U.S. cities starting on Thursday, are part of a campaign by the Competitive Enterprise Institute to counter a media spotlight on threats posed by worldwide climate change.

The spots are timed to precede next week's theatrical release of "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary film on global warming that features Gore, the former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate.

Against backdrops of a park, a beach and a forest, one celebrates the benefits of greenhouse gas-producing fuels.

"The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love," the ad runs. "Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed — what would our lives be like then?"

The other ad questions media reports of the threat of climate change, especially a Time magazine issue devoted to the topic, and shows film of a glacier melting and then runs in reverse to show the glacier reconstituting itself.

"We had started work on this several months back, but we sort of changed course once the flood of glacier-melting stories began," said Sam Kazman, an institute lawyer who worked on the ads. "So we did want to get out there before the Al Gore film got into national opening." [...]

"They fly in the face of most of the science," Charlie Miller of Environmental Defense said of the institute ads. "The good news is that there's not a trade-off here between prosperity, jobs, growth and protecting the Earth. We can do both." [Emphasis added]

Kinda takes your breath away. What dimwits.

[Thanks Jeff]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:37 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this

Keeping Reality At Bay

Defending the border with Reality. Bob Harris. Funny stuff.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:24 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 15, 2006

Government Tracking Reporters' Phone Records

The administration would never use phone records for political purposes, right? ABC (via Atrios):

A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation. [...]

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers. [...]

A pattern of phone calls from a reporter...could provide valuable clues for leak investigators. [Emphasis added]

People who think they can trust the government to use phone records solely for combatting terrorism are fools.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:35 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

May 13, 2006

Bill Of Particulars

A dear friend recently asked for a list of the Bush administration's most egregious high crimes and misdemeanors. Via Big Gav, I see that the Angry Liberal Guy (C. B. Shapiro) has already done it for me. It's quite a list:

You might be saying "Man, what are you so angry about, Angry Liberal Guy?"
I've compiled a short (and by no means complete) list just so I could see it all in one place:

I'm angry about the shredding of the constitution...illegal wiretaps...falsified intelligence...secret prisons...use of torture as an accepted means of interrogation...Terry Schiavo...the war on science...denial of Global Warming...the fascistic secrecy of our elected officials...presidential signings that declare the President above the law...the breakdown of the wall between church and state...the outing of a clandestine CIA agent for purely partisan political gain...the corrupting influence of K Street...the total sell-out of the legislative process to corporate interests...appointments of unqualified cronies at every level of government...Harriet Miers...Brownie...Abu Ghraib...Scooter...the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq...the lies about the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq...the grotesque budget deficits...the pathetic response to Katrina...a civil rights division dedicated to undermining civil rights...an environmental protection agency that refuses to protect the environment... (Take a breath, Angry Liberal Guy.)

And I'm angry about a smug, simple-minded, incompetent, unqualified President, and a press that denies the obvious fact that we have a smug, simple-minded, incompetent unqualified President.

If these things don't make you angry, I have to ask — what the hell is the matter with you?

There you go, Nan. Read it and weep.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 12, 2006

May 11, 2006

"The Largest Database Ever Assembled"

You're no doubt aware that USA Today is reporting that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth have, since shortly after 9/11, been supplying the NSA with detailed information on every phone call made by any of its customers, private or commercial. From USA Today's article:

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

If it's really the largest database ever assembled, it's a hell of a lot more than phone records. The phone companies, after all, already have databases of phone records. This would have to be something much bigger. It would have to be data-mining on a colossal scale. As I wrote immediately after it was revealed that NSA was listening in on calls without getting FISA warrants:

The reason the White House didn't just go get FISA warrants for their wiretaps is almost certainly because they weren't doing wiretaps in the usual sense of the word. They were doing automated, broad-based scanning of enormous numbers of calls. For all we know, they were scanning every phone call in the country. Think Echelon and Total Information Awareness. Think data mining.

Is this normal government practice? Reed Hunt at TPMCafe:

No one should imagine that what NSA has done, if reports are accurate, is normal behavior or standard procedure in the interaction between a private communications network and the government. In an authoritarian country without a bill of rights and with state ownership of the communications network, such eavesdropping by people and computers is assumed to exist. But in the United States it is assumed not to occur, except under very carefully defined circumstances that, according to reports, were not present as NSA allegedly arm-twisted telephone companies into compliance. That is a topic that can't be avoided in [General Hayden's] hearing, if he gets that far. [Emphasis added]

CNN's Jack Cafferty says it best (video here):

We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that is standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country.
He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours and tens of millions of other Americans. Shortly after 9/11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens. All part of the war on terror, President Bush says.

Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden and seal the country's borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports? The president rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in "USA Today" and declared the government is doing nothing wrong and all this is just fine.

Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says, OK, and drops the whole thing. We're in some serious trouble here, boys and girls.

Here's the question: Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn't, it sure as hell ought to. [Emphasis added]

And the thing is, you know this isn't all of it. Probably not even close. They're probably data-mining everything they can get their hands on: credit card records, bank statements, Internet usage.

And Cafferty's right. The fact that the NSA told the Justice Department to take a hike because it didn't have a sufficient security clearance to investigate them — and the fact that the Justice Department agreed — is the stuff of dictatorships.

Anybody who says it's ok that the government has completely shredded all civil liberties guarantees with respect to privacy and search and seizure, who says that it's ok because they've got nothing to hide, just doesn't have a clue what the US Constitution and the rule of law are all about. No one can be trusted with unchecked power. No one. Ever. That is why we have a Constitution and a body of laws that limit governmental power. Civics 101. This was the bedrock principle on which the Founders built the nation. People who want to consent to let all that go are just sheep voluntarily marching to slaughter.

Perhaps the most ludicrous thing of all is that Bush and his ilk declare themselves to be conservatives, when they are destroying every fundamental check and balance, every basic right, that a real conservative would be trying to conserve.

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

May 08, 2006

Toast

31% and falling fast. USA TODAY:

President Bush's approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.
The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush's standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%.

"It is a challenging political environment," acknowledges Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee...

Bush's fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups. [...]

Only four presidents have scored lower approval ratings since the Gallup Poll began regularly measuring it in the mid-1940s: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush. When Nixon, Carter and the elder Bush sank below 35%, they never again registered above 40%. [...]

"Historically it's been pretty devastating to presidents at this level," Franklin says. Even Republican members of Congress are "now so worried about their electoral fortunes in November that he has less leverage with them than he normally would with his own party controlling Congress." [Emphasis added]

Circling the drain.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 06, 2006

Rumsfeld And "The Intelligence Business"

Politics War and Peace

When he was confronted the other day in Atlanta by CIA veteran Ray McGovern, Rumsfeld claimed he hadn't lied about Iraqi WMD. He hadn't lied, because he had been fooled by bad intelligence from the CIA. He hadn't lied, because, Rumsfeld said, "I'm not in the intelligence business." Which, of course, is itself a lie if there ever was one.

The Defense department is home to numerous intelligence agencies, which collectively dwarf the CIA. According to the official website of the US Intelligence Community:

Three major intelligence agencies in the Department of Defense (DoD) — the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — absorb the larger part of the national intelligence budget. NSA is responsible for signals intelligence and has collection sites throughout the world. The NRO develops and operates reconnaissance satellites. The NGA prepares the geospatial data — ranging from maps and charts to sophisticated computerized databases — necessary for targeting in an era dependent upon precision guided weapons. In addition to these three agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is responsible for defense attaches and for providing DoD with a variety of intelligence products. Although the Intelligence Reform Act provides extensive budgetary and management authorities over these agencies to the Director of National Intelligence, it does not revoke the responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense for these agencies. [Emphasis added]

In addition to the NSA (the largest US intelligence agency), NRO, and NGA, the DoD is home to Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Intelligence, and Navy Intelligence, as well as various Special Forces and other clandestine ops capabilities. And Rumsfeld has long pushed hard to increase the Pentagon's autonomy in intelligence-gathering and clandestine ops.

In December, I noted something called the Counterterrorism Field Activity (CFIA) that seeks to centralize all counterterrorism intelligence collection inside the United States under Pentagon control.

Rumsfeld has also been extending the Pentagon's reach in human intelligence and black ops activities abroad. WaPo:

While the stature and role of the CIA were greatly diminished under Goss during the congressionally ordered reorganization of the intelligence agencies, his counterpart at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, continued his aggressive efforts to develop a clandestine intelligence operation within his department. The Pentagon's human intelligence unit and its other clandestine military units are expanding in number and authority. Rumsfeld recently won the ability to sidestep U.S. ambassadors in certain circumstances when the Pentagon wants to send in clandestine teams to collect intelligence or undertake operations.
"Rumsfeld keeps pressing for autonomy for defense human intelligence and for SOF [Special Forces] operations," said retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East affairs at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "CIA has lost the ability to control the [human intelligence] process in the community."

Now, "the real battle lies between" Negroponte and Rumsfeld, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, a former deputy national security adviser and once a senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Rumsfeld rules the roost now." [Emphasis added]

Pretty impressive for a guy who's "not in the intelligence business."

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

Goss And Negroponte

The big media outlets are buying the spin that Goss was forced to quit without warning, without so much as notifying the heads of the Congressional intelligence committees (remember that Goss was himself Chair of the House Intelligence Committee), effective immediately, because of some previously unknown turf battle with his old fraternity brother John Negroponte. Before you buy it, though, you should go read Laura Rozen:

The story line until today has been far different: that much of the operative camp of the Agency perceived Goss as a political enforcer, someone who wasn't seen to be looking out for them but for the White House's interests; that Goss was rather passive and out of touch and overly delegated day to day affairs to his staff, "the Gosslings," led by the fiercely partisan Patrick Murray. I don't believe I have ever heard from people in that world a sense that Goss was looking out for them. The newspaper coverage has suggested rather that a lot of the experienced bench strength cadre at the Agency had left in fights with Goss and his staff during his rocky tenure, and that the Agency had never been more demoralized. So all that time, during all those departures, Goss was covertly fighting for his folks against the new intel reorganization? He was a misunderstood champion of the Agency?
Does something about this story line that Goss suddenly left because of his long-standing tension with Negroponte, his fraternity brother from Yale, over Goss fighting to hold CIA turf seem a bit canned to you?

The main question is why Goss's departure suddenly became a matter of the deepest urgency yesterday.

Think back to yesterday morning. The top news after the Patrick Kennedy crash was that Bush's poll numbers were at an all time low, and that he was starting to see a real erosion of support from conservatives. Gas prices and immigration and Iraq. So Bush gets briefed by his staff that day, and decides: hey, let's fire Porter Goss. He's killing morale at the Agency. He's just seen as far too political. And John Negroponte is threatening to quit if he stays. He's given me an absolute ultimatum. Let's get this out today.

Come on. That's just not how this White House has responded to these sorts of tensions in the past. They never move fast. They withstand criticism of appointments for months. They resist criticisms of unpopular agency heads for weeks (Michael "heckuva job" Brown), months (Snow), years (Rumsfeld). Think how much speculation there was in the press before Card's and McClellan's announced retirements, and how warm and friendly were those departures. It's hard not to believe that something moved very quickly on the radar this week that prompted an unusually quick decision. One that took a lot of people who would normally have been advised by surprise. (It's my understanding that the heads of Congressional intel committees were not informed in advance).

Negroponte has President Bush's ear every single day when he delivers the President's daily intel brief. If he had been lobbying to get rid of Goss, and the President was inclined to support that decision, there were a hundred ways to do it in a way that would project stability, confidence, normalcy. There was hardly a show of that yesterday. They could have named a successor. There could have been a leak to the press about Goss being tired (remember all the foreshadowing in the press about how tired Andy Card was after all those 20 hour days that preceded his departure?) and wanting to spend more time with his family, or that Bush was unhappy with him. There was none of that. It was a surprise move. What happened this week that Negroponte and Bush acted so swiftly?

Does the way it happened resemble the slo-mo, warm and fuzzy way Andy Card and Scott McClellan were retired? Or does it rather have more in common with the swiftly announced departures of Claude Allen and David Safavian from their posts, a few days before we hear of federal investigations? [Emphasis added]

Another possibility that nags at me, though I have no evidence for it, is that Goss got wind of something the administration has in the works that he just had no stomach for. Another terrorist attack on US soil, perhaps, to launch a war with Iran. Let us hope not.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 05, 2006

Goss Gone

CIA Director Porter Goss resigned today, completely out of the blue, effective immediately. Of course the big question is why. The answer may lie in the ongoing Duke Cunningham hooker/bribery scandal. WSJ:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.
Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn't clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.

In recent weeks, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have fanned out across Washington, interviewing women from escort services, potential witnesses and others who may have been involved in the arrangement. In an interview, the assistant general manager of the Watergate Hotel confirmed that federal investigators had requested, and been given, records relating to the investigation and rooms in the hotel. But he declined to disclose what the records show. [...]

Mr. Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, was sentenced March 3 to more than eight years in federal prison after he admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes. The bribes were taken in exchange for helping executives obtain large contracts with the Defense Department and other federal agencies. Mr. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November, pleaded guilty to two criminal counts, one of tax evasion and one of conspiracy. [Emphasis added]

What's this got to do with Porter Goss? Harper's:

The two defense contractors who allegedly bribed Cunningham, said the Journal, were Brent Wilkes, the founder of ADCS Inc., and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc.; both firms profited greatly from their connections with Cunningham. The Journal also suggested that other lawmakers might be implicated. I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post. [...]
As to the festivities themselves, I hear that party nights began early with poker games and degenerated into what the source described as a "frat party" scene — real bacchanals. Apparently photographs were taken, and investigators are anxiously procuring copies. [Emphasis added]

So who is the person who "holds a powerful intelligence post"? It wouldn't have to be Goss. It could be someone Goss hired. HuffPo:

The Executive Director of the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, now admits he attended some of the Washington, D.C. poker parties that figure in a widening corruption scandal involving members of Congress.
The poker parties became part of the FBI investigation following recent allegations that defense contractors provided prostitutes for the poker party guests. But through a spokesperson for the CIA, Foggo denies ever seeing prostitutes at the parties he attended.

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is also linked directly to the bribery allegations in the Cunningham case. HuffPo:

The CIA's inspector general is examining a recent contract the agency gave to an obscure Virginia company headed by a relative of Brent Wilkes, an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal bribery case against former San Diego congressman Randy (Duke) Cunningham. The contract was issued by the logistics office of the agency's main base near Frankfurt, Germany, at a time that office was headed by agency veteran Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, now the CIA's third-ranking official; Foggo and Wilkes have been friends since childhood. [Emphasis added]

Goss plucked Foggo from a mid-level position to make him Executive Director of the CIA. Foggo and Wilkes go way back. They were in school together in high school and college, were the best man at each other's weddings, and named their sons after each other (Wikipedia).

There's a lot more to all this. TPM MuckRaker is the go-to site. Stay tuned.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

May 02, 2006

NYT On Net Neutrality

Corporations, Globalization Media Politics

From today's NYT editorial on Net neutrality:

"Net neutrality" is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. Cable and telephone companies that provide Internet service are talking about creating a two-tiered Internet, in which Web sites that pay them large fees would get priority over everything else. Opponents of these plans are supporting Net-neutrality legislation, which would require all Web sites to be treated equally. Net neutrality recently suffered a setback in the House, but there is growing hope that the Senate will take up the cause.
One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like. [Emphasis added]

Make sure your Senators understand what's at stake. The Internet is the great intellectual commons of today's world. Ceding control to a few giant corporations, by government fiat, would be an enormous step backward.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Stephen Colbert In Full

The full performance by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents dinner is available here. Seeing the whole thing, including reaction shots of President Bush, one can only agree with Jon Stewart's assessment last night: Colbert's performance was "ballsylicious". The stuff of comic legend.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:53 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

April 30, 2006

Bush: I Decide What's Law

President Bush, alone among modern presidents, has never vetoed a bill. Why veto bills when he can just disobey them? Boston Globe:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to "execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws — many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

"There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. "This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

...[T]wice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act. [...]

[The administration says] "the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words "in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files "signing statements" — official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills — sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

"He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises — and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass — including the torture ban — involve the military.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and "to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military.

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief. [...]

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. [...]

[A] new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector "shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration. [Emphasis added]

Hello? Why do we even have a Congress anymore if Bush can ignore its laws? Why do we have a Supreme Court if Bush decides what's Constitutional? Is The Decider now Der Fuehrer?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:49 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Stephen Colbert Has Brass Balls

Stop what you're doing and go watch Stephen Colbert at last night's White House Correspondents dinner. Seriously. Stop what you're doing and go watch.

The clip is only the second half of his performance, but it's stunning. Bush was not amused, nor were many of the White House correspondents present.

The truth hurts.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:17 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

April 28, 2006

Whose Cultural Heritage?

One of Digby's readers asks:

Please tell us again why the Spanish translation of the National Anthem is making wingnut heads explode when they all but genuflect at the waving of the Confederate Rebel flag?
Tell me please, which of these was meant to turn hearts to America, and which is meant to tear the country apart?

Good question.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:06 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

April 27, 2006

What's In A Name?

This is just weird.

According to a CNN poll, people's opinion of Hillary depends significantly on whether she's refered to as Hillary Clinton or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Among Republicans, 16% approve of HC, but 23% approve of HRC. Among Independents, 42% approve of HC, but 48% approve of HRC. Tell me people aren't that clueless.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:26 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Oil Drum To Politicians: Get A Clue

Peak Oil Politics

The political posturing — on both sides of the aisle — in response to rising oil/gas prices is both disheartening and disgusting. Politicians of both parties seem to think the answer is to scapegoat oil companies with a lot of blather about price gouging and oil company profits. Yes, oil profits are obscenely large, but they are effect, not cause, of high oil prices. American oil companies control neither the futures markets nor the rate of oil production in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Apparently, almost no one in Washington understands where oil comes from.

The Oil Drum has written an important press release on this topic. It's so good I'm just going to quote it at length:

We strongly feel that the leaders of both political parties are not only headed in the wrong direction with respect to gas prices, but we also worry that they fundamentally misunderstand the factors behind the current situation at gasoline stations around the US. Public statements by political figures over the past several days would seem to suggest that oil companies and their record profits are the sole factor determining the price of gasoline. Not only is this untrue, but it is dangerous to give the American people the impression that only oil companies are to blame. The American people need to understand that the phenomenon of high gas prices cannot be attributed to a single source. They also need to understand that no one political party will be able to fix our current woes.
The major factor that determines gas prices is the price of crude oil from which gasoline is derived. When crude oil prices are high, so are gas prices. The following are just a few factors that affect the price of a barrel of oil:

Oil companies do not single-handedly determine the price of oil. The price of oil is set on the crude oil futures market. Simply put, these prices are affected by supply and demand because, at present, oil trades in a global commodity market where increased demand or reduced supply in one place instantly translates into price shifts everywhere. A variety of publicly available information sources show that supply is relatively static at the moment, while world demand continues to grow as economies grow.

We have provided evidence many times at The Oil Drum that the output of major oilfields is declining and that we may now have reached a peak or plateau in global oil supply. Oil companies have not been able to increase production for a number of years, and it is unclear that OPEC is accurately reporting their reserves. Even if there were significant sources of high quality oil remaining, it is getting increasingly difficult and expensive to drill. These factors, along with aging infrastructure for oil exploration and a retiring workforce are also contributing to high oil prices.

The geopolitical situation is volatile, and...every time there is news from Nigeria or Iran, the price of oil goes up because of the potential and real effects of these situations on world oil supply. Again, oil traders are fearful that the supply will not remain stable forever.

Countries like China and India are industrializing at a great pace...China is working furiously to secure new oil supplies...

These points demonstrate that disruptions in the supply of oil that affect the price of gasoline at the pump are not just a temporary glitch. For various reasons — decreased discoveries of new oilfields, geopolitical instability, international competition for oil supply — we can no longer assume that we will be able to consume as much oil as possible, or ever get it again for $1.50 a gallon.

Demagoguery and grandstanding are not strategies for addressing our energy problems. As an alternative, the editors of The Oil Drum put forth the following recommendations:

It is nonsensical for political leaders of both parties to eliminate the gas tax temporarily or permanently as this will only worsen our dependence on oil by disincentivizing the innovation of oil alternatives and oil conservation efforts.

Both mainstream American political parties are doing their country a disservice by accusing convenient scapegoats of price gouging or price fixing instead of educating the public about how the price of gas is actually set.

Right now, governments should be focused on helping us cure our "addiction to oil." The answer does not lie in lowering gas prices, which will only encourage people to drive more and further waste our valuable resources. As the Department of Energy funded Hirsch Report on Peak Oil laid out, the consequences of not taking steps to transition away from oil could be dramatic to our economic system. Appropriate solutions include large-scale research, development, and implementation programs to improve the scalability of alternative sources of energy, other projects geared towards improving mass transit and carpooling programs across the country, providing incentives to buy smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles, and promoting a campaign to increase awareness about conservation.

The political discourse on this topic is simply so devoid of fact, and constructive discourse so buried and out of the mainstream, that we felt we needed to raise a voice of reason. Public officials will continue to misinform and obfuscate if we allow it.

The only solution is to educate the public about the most important problem we face as a generation. We, the citizens of the US and the world, must move our attention to this the issue of energy more than any other. We must hold our representative governments accountable for having an open and honest debate on the subject.

Simply put, we must learn more about where our energy comes from. [Emphasis added]

Last summer, I had the opportunity to talk with Senator Feingold for a few minutes, and I quickly outlined for him the evidence on peak oil. I was somewhat taken aback that it seemed like news to him. And he's one of the good guys.

All the price gouging posturing is worse than useless, it's harmful. It perpetuates myths about what are the causes and what, therefore, are the cures. It's time for politicians to get a clue, start acting like grownups, and tell people the honest truth. The world energy situation is not a temporary hiccup. We are faced with an extraordinarily serious long-term problem. Given the sheer scale of world energy use, solutions will require a long lead time. When the crisis hits in full force, it will already be too late.

If you ask me, there's a real opportunity here for Progressives, Greens, and Democrats. People are hungry for some politicians who actually speak the unvarnished truth. And we never needed the truth more than we do now.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:56 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

April 26, 2006

Class Cleansing

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, I wrote that New Orleans was going to be subject to a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. Black neighborhoods were going to be razed and replaced by a Disney-fied New Orleans for yuppies. Some readers thought that was over the top: surely, once the smoke cleared, poor Blacks would be allowed to return to the city.

Guess again. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune, yesterday:

U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson shed little light Monday on the future of public housing in hurricane-battered New Orleans, but said that "only the best residents" of the former St. Thomas housing complex should be allowed into the new mixed-income development that replaced it.
In a wide-ranging interview with reporters, Jackson was asked about the relatively small number of apartments in the 60-acre River Gardens development in Uptown that have been set aside for former residents of St. Thomas. Jackson estimated it was 18 percent to 20 percent, although housing advocates said it is less.

"Some of the people shouldn't return," Jackson said. "The (public housing) developments were gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country. People hid and took care of those persons because they took care of them. Only the best residents should return. Those who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked."

The blunt-spoken Jackson, who is black, acknowledged his comments might be seen as racially offensive because virtually all of the former St. Thomas residents were African-American. He told a white reporter, "If you said this, they would say you were racist."

He went on to say, "I don't care what color they are, if they are devastating a community, they shouldn't be allowed to return." [...]

[Housing Authority of New Orleans] spokesman Adonis Expose also confirmed Monday that the agency is considering a long-rumored policy change that would require all public housing residents in New Orleans to have a job or be in a job-training program.

Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, the future of the 10 public housing complexes in New Orleans remains an open question. Times have never been tougher for low-income people, as a shortage of rental housing after Hurricane Katrina has seen rents rise to historic levels.

While HUD has reopened some complexes, such as Iberville, most remain closed and surrounded by fencing. Eager to return, former residents have marched in protest to force the government to open more, but HUD has refused. [Emphasis added]

These are American citizens who want to return to their homes, but the Federal government thinks it gets to decide who's good enough to come home. Where are the rest supposed to live? In government camps and trailer parks, forever? Maybe ethnic cleansing isn't exactly the right term. It's more like class cleansing, though in New Orleans, as in much of America, that turns out to be pretty much the same thing.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:53 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

April 25, 2006

Political Instability And The Price Of Gas

Energy Peak Oil Politics

As gas prices move higher, Republican politicians are sweating. With good reason. The graph below (from Professor Pollkatz, whom we first linked to back in 2004) plots Bush's approval rating in blue and the price of gasoline (inverted — i.e., lower on the graph means higher in price) in red (click to enlarge). Talk about correlation.

And so we're treated to Republican Bush today posed in front of a backdrop more befitting a granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing Green, speaking about investigating Big Oil for price-gouging.

Republicans in both houses of Congress are jumping on the bandwagon. WaPo:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said this week that a windfall-profits tax on oil companies is "worth considering."
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, joined other lawmakers yesterday in condemning high oil prices by taking aim at oil companies. Barton said his committee will hold hearings into the imbalance of supply and demand. He added that "it troubles me" that Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive received a large pay and retirement package "while refinery capacity continues to lag behind demand in this country."

Republicans talking about taxing profits, of all things.

It would be nice if the Dems would use the opportunity to take the high ground via straight talk about the world supply future and the urgent need to take serious steps on fuel efficiency and development of alternatives. But, as usual, their proposals are mostly Republican Lite. (Although Bill Clinton, at least, did recently acknowledge Peak Oil in a speech in London.)

Meanwhile, the inverse correlation between gas prices and political fortunes bodes ill for our political future. So long as Americans are addicted to oil, the US political picture is going to be increasingly unstable. Billmon has a good post on this. Excerpt:

It's a little disconcerting to think that gas prices — not Iraq, not Katrina, not the extra-constitutional power grabs — could decide whether Shrub's presidency recovers or collapses into complete irrelevancy for the next three years. [...]
[The inverse correlation between gas prices and political fortunes] should be enough to make any would-be president (Demopublican or Republicrat) extremely nervous, since it seems high energy prices are likely to be a major fact of life for years to come — and maybe forever. If that turns out to be the case, then an absolutely necessary condition for future presidential success, or even survival, might be making sure the go juice keeps flowing at prices that won't drive the average American SUV owner onto the war path.

But that isn't going to be easy — not in a world in which everybody and their Chinese cousin is scrambling to lock up the available supply, where a number of major oil producing countries are a coup away from becoming failed states (if they're not there already), and that is already producing about as much of the light, sweet cheap stuff as it ever will.

Given the political incentives, it's possible to look a ways down the road — not a long ways — and see a U.S. military policy (formerly known as a foreign policy) that begins and ends with the protection of the oil lifeline. [...]

America's oil lifeline spans the earth...All of it has to be watched and guarded, stabilized and supervised. Even a partial loss of control could turn into a disaster, since in a global market supply disruptions anywhere can send prices soaring everywhere. And yet some of the most serious threats — like the separatist movement in the Niger delta — are outside the U.S. security "umbrella," traditionally defined.

What this implies, of course, is a terrible case of imperial overstretch, one which technology, firepower and Special Forces mojo may not be able to cure, no matter how much money gets thrown at the Pentagon. When the objective is to protect vital economic infrastructures, rather than blow them up, the U.S. military machine clearly lacks many of the right tools — like an adequate number of combat boots with soldiers' feet inside them.

For those who fear above all else the threat of hostile Middle Eastern regimes armed with WMD, this is potentially very bad news, at least in the long run. Unless stopping the (insert nationality here) Hitler can be done in a way that doesn't jack up the price of a gallon of regular, future U.S. administrations may be unwilling, or politically unable, to risk it.

Unfortunately, in the short run this could be even worse news for those of us who fear a wider war in the Middle East more than the future possibility of a nuclear Iran. Having seen what high gas prices have done to his popularity ratings, Bush may feel confirmed in his reported conviction that no future president will have the guts to take down Tehran. And having fallen into Jimmy Carter territory, he may also feel he has nothing left to lose, at least politically, by doing it himself. [Emphasis added]

Billmon goes on to suggest that Bush's failure may lead future administrations to return to a more cautious and prudent posture. I wonder.

At the end of the film 1975 Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford's character, a CIA analyst, confronts his superior, played by Cliff Robertson. Remember, this was 1975:

Turner (Robert Redford): "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?"
Higgins (Cliff Robertson): "Are you crazy?"

Turner: "Am I?"

Higgins: "Look, Turner..."

Turner: "Do we have plans?"

Higgins: "No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a régime? That's what we're paid to do."

Turner: "Go on. So Atwood just took the game too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he?”

Higgins: "It was a renegade operation. Atwood knew 54-12 would never authorize it. There was no way, not with the heat on the Company.”

Turner: "What if there hadn't been any heat? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on a plan? Say nobody had?"

Higgins: "Different ball game. The fact is there was nothing wrong with the plan. Oh, the plan was alright. The plan would have worked."

Turner: "Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"

Higgins: "No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Turner: "Ask them."

Higgins: "Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them." [Emphasis added]

The correlation between oil prices and political fortunes will, as prices inevitably climb higher, open the door to opportunistic demagogues and hardliners, here in the US and throughout the world. Reason number 1,001 why we need to conserve — now.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:02 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

April 24, 2006

Highway Robbery

Corporations, Globalization Media Politics

Congress is getting ready to hand control of the information superhighway over to the giant telecom carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. Carriers heretofore have adhered to the principle of net neutrality, which says that all data on the Internet is to be treated equally; carriers don't discriminate based on content. My lowly blog has as much right to a fair share of Internet bandwidth as any giant commercial site.

The big carriers want to do away with net neutrality, however, so they can create a two-tiered Internet. Commercial sites that can pay the freight will get to use the "fast lane." Everybody else will be relegated to the "slow lane." Congress is getting ready to grant their wish via a bill with the Orwellian name of COPE: Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006. Read more about it here, here, and here.

Funny how these huge giveaways to corporate America always go unmentioned in the mainstream media until it's already too late.

Voting is scheduled for Wednesday. Contact your House members and tell them to vote NO. The Internet is not the private property of a handful of corporations, no matter how big their campaign contributions.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Slip Slidin' Away

A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll has Bush's approval rating at 32%, a new low.

Only 40% rate Bush as "honest and trustworthy".

If the Congressional elections were held today, 50% would vote Democratic, 40% Republican.

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

April 20, 2006

Freefallin'

Fox News:

President Bush's job approval rating slipped this week and stands at a new low of 33 percent approve, down from 36 percent two weeks ago and 39 percent in mid-March. A year ago this time, 47 percent approved and two years ago 50 percent approved (April 2004).
Approval among Republicans is below 70 percent for the first time of Bush's presidency. Two-thirds (66 percent) approve of Bush's job performance today, down almost 20 percentage points from this time last year when 84 percent of Republicans approved. Among Democrats, 11 percent approve today, while 14 percent approved last April. [Emphasis added]

Need I say it? Worst. President. Ever.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:48 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

April 19, 2006

Uncertainty Is No Excuse

Bush says the jury's still out on whether human activity causes global warming. Even if that were true (it isn't), as Nicholas Kristof (via RealClimate) noted in yesterday's NYT, it's no excuse for doing nothing. The real world is always subject to uncertainty. Excerpt:

The White House has used scientific uncertainty as an excuse for its paralysis. But our leaders are supposed to devise policies to protect us even from threats that are difficult to assess precisely — and climate change should be considered even more menacing than a nuclear-armed Iran....The best reason for action on global warming remains the basic imperative to safeguard our planet in the face of uncertainty, and our leaders are failing wretchedly in that responsibility. [Emphasis added]

There's no such thing as a sure thing, not even in science. But there is such a thing as taking prudent measures based on the best available evidence and analysis. Assuming, that is, that one cares about doing the right thing, rather than the thing that provides short-term rewards to one's political base.

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

April 18, 2006

Clueless In DC

Iran Politics

American Prospect posted an extraordinary article yesterday on VP Cheney's enormously secretive and powerful staff. I hope to comment on it at some length, but in the meantime, check out this quote:

[O]fficials who have opposed Cheney believe that President Bush has "views" only about basic principles, and that in making dozens of complex decisions he relies on pre-determined staff papers. Says one insider deeply involved in U.S. policy toward North Korea: "The president is given only the most basic notions about the Korea issue. They tell him, 'Above South Korea is a country called North Korea. It is an evil regime.'...So that translates into a presidential decision: Why enter into any agreement with an evil regime?" [Emphasis added]

Bush says he's a decider and a delegator, but that's wishful thinking. He thinks he doesn't have to know anything, he can just listen to his "gut." He's a C-minus frat boy who never grew up, and he's in over his head like few people in history. Watch him take some new reckless course (think, Iran) to try to prove that he's a "decider" and a bold leader.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:07 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

April 16, 2006

Looting The Treasury

Here's what Bush had to say in his weekly radio address yesterday as he argued for making his tax cuts permanent:

Monday is tax day, and that means many of you are busy finishing up your tax returns. The good news is that this year Americans will once again keep more of their hard-earned dollars because of the tax cuts we passed in 2001 and 2003.

Maybe he thinks only rich people listen to the radio. NYT:

The first data to document the effect of President Bush's tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.

Citizens for Tax Justice (click to enlarge):

If you're a millionaire, don't you think you already have enough? And for the rest of us: we're being robbed. They're looting the Treasury, in broad daylight.

[Via DailyKos]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:17 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 14, 2006

Bush And Rumsfeld's Secret War

Iran Politics

What's behind the generals' revolt?

Six retired generals, including three who commanded troops in Iraq under Rumsfeld's leadership, have publicly stated their criticism of Rumsfeld's leadership and called for his resignation.

And Bush's stubborn support?

"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation," Bush said in a statement.

Go read Digby. He quotes Colonel Sam Gardiner, retired, who taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval Warfare College. Gardiner appeared on CNN today:

GARDINER: Actually,...I would say — and this may shock some — I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way [in Iran]. [...]
[T]he Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year. I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, "Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units."

He said, quite frankly, "Yes, we know they are. We've captured some of the units, and they've confessed to working with the Americans."

The evidence is mounting that that decision has already been made, and I don't know that the other part of that has been completed, that there has been any congressional approval to do this.

My view of the plan is, there is this period in which some kinds of ground troops will operate inside Iran, and then what we're talking about is the second part, which is this air strike. [...]

CNN: If they do decide on a military option...

GARDINER: Right?

CNN: ... what's the realistic chance of success? What's your — your prognosis for that kind of reaction here?

GARDINER: Yes. Let me give you two answers to that. First of all, the chance of getting the facilities and setting back the program, I think the chances go from maybe two years to actually accelerating the program. You know, we could cause them to redouble their efforts. That's on one side.

The other side is this sort of horizontal escalation by the Iranians.

My assessment is — and it's because of regime problems at home — that if we strike, they're likely to want to blame Israel. Now that's — because that sells well at home.

Blaming Israel means that there's a chance that we could see Hezbollah, Hamas targeting Israel. We could very easily see this thing escalate into a broader Middle East war, particularly when you add Muslim rage.

You know, if you take the cartoon problem and multiply it times a hundred — you know, the Danish cartoons, you could see how we could end up very quickly with a very serious problem in the Middle East. [Emphasis added]

As Digby points out, what it boils down to is this: Bush, Rumsfeld, et al are running a secret war in Iran. The operation's already underway, and has been for some time. They're doing it all on their own, without even a semblance of Congressional approval. It's treason. The generals are desperately throwing themselves in front of the runaway train. Meanwhile, not a peep from Congress.

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

April 13, 2006

Immigration Polling

A regular reader of Past Peak, who describes himself as conservative-leaning, wrote me earlier today to suggest that poll results on illegal immigration might have a different interpretation than what I wrote yesterday. Namely, he suggested, respondents may disapprove of Bush's handling of the issue not because they have a less punitive view than Bush's, but rather because they have a more punitive view. Bush talks about amnesty. Maybe poll respondents want to see all illegals deported.

Certainly possible, and definitely worth looking into. So what do the polls show? Polling Report collects the results of a number of recent polls here. The picture that emerges is murky and a bit contradictory, but I think overall it's clear that most Americans do not favor drastic punitive action. They see illegal immigration as a significant problem, but they oppose blanket deportation and favor a program that would allow law-abiding immigrants to stay.

USA Today/Gallup Poll. April 7-9, 2006
Immigration should be...
kept at its present level or increased: 50%
decreased: 47%

Illegal immigration is...
out of control: 81%
not out of control: 16%

Illegal immigrants currently residing in the US should be...
all deported: 18%
allowed to remain for a limited time: 17%
allowed to remain if they meet certain requirements: 63%

Effectiveness of ways to reduce illegal immigration:

Very
effective Some-
what Not
very Not
at all

Penalties on employers 52% 32% 9% 5%

More border patrol officers 37% 44% 13% 5%

Bar access to schools, hospitals 30% 30% 20% 17%

Raise living standards abroad 28% 39% 16% 15%

Build wall on Mexico border 18% 30% 19% 30%

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. April 4-5, 2006

Do immigrants help the country and make it a better place to live or hurt it and make it worse?
Help: 42%
Hurt: 30%
It depends: 20%

How serious a problem is illegal immigration?
Very: 60%
Somewhat: 30%
Not very: 6%

How serious a problem is illegal immigration in your community?
Very: 23%
Somewhat: 24%
Not very: 26%
Not at all: 24%

That last item is intriguing. People say illegal immigration is a very serious problem in the abstract. But in their community, not so much. This may be because some communities just don't have many illegals residing there, but I'd like to think it's also because when people actually come into contact with the immigrants around them, they find that the overwhelming majority are hard-working, decent folks.

It will be very interesting to see the results of polls conducted after the nationwide marches on Monday (the polls cited above were taken before the marches). Some conservative pundits have predicted a backlash. I'm inclined to think the opposite. On Monday, people got to see that immigrants and their supporters are peaceful, law-abiding people with families to support. Time will tell.

[Thanks, Mike]

Posted by Jonathan at 09:52 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

April 12, 2006

Americans Reject GOP, Bush On Immigration

Republicans thought immigration was going to be a winning wedge issue for them, but they were wrong. Spectacularly so. WaPo:

[I]n the new Post-ABC News poll, completed Sunday [i.e., before Monday's massive peaceful demonstrations], 50 percent of respondents said they trusted the Democrats to better handle the immigration issue, while 38 percent trusted Republicans. A third of Americans approved of the president's handling of the immigration issue, while 61 percent disapproved. Only his handling of gas prices showed lower approval ratings.
Three-quarters of those responding said the United States is not doing enough to secure its borders, but they appeared to have rejected the argument that immigrants are an economic threat. About 68 percent said illegal immigrants are filling jobs Americans do not want, compared with 29 percent who believe they are taking jobs from Americans. [Emphasis added]

Americans are proving themselves to be fundamentally decent and compassionate on this issue. Republicans bet on xenophobia, economic resentment, and racism, and it's a bet they're losing. The immigrants who are targeted by the GOP are overwhelmingly upstanding, honorable, incredibly hard-working people. We know them. They're all around us. They're good folks who are making enormous sacrifices to help their families, and they're a true credit to their adopted country. The GOP's attack is contemptible, and for once they're not getting away with it.

And while we're at it, since the Republicans try to convince us they're God's Own Party, let's ask ourselves which side of this issue Jesus would be on. Could the Republican position possibly be any more un-Christian?

Posted by Jonathan at 08:20 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

"Casualness And Swagger"

Iraq Politics

Three-star General Gregory Newbold, retired director of operations at the Pentagon's military joint staff, writes in Time magazine (via Sojourners):

From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq — an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.
I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice. [...]

I will admit my own prejudice: my deep affection and respect are for those who volunteer to serve our nation and therefore shoulder, in those thin ranks, the nation's most sacred obligation of citizenship. To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results. [Emphasis added]

It really does matter when you put a bunch of empty suits in power. These people are superficial, immature, and deeply, deeply foolish. High time for grownups to take back the reins.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Lies, Lies, Lies

Iraq Politics

WaPo:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories. [Emphasis added]

All governments lie. But this government seems to lie about absolutely everything.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 11, 2006

Heckuva Job

They're still finding bodies in New Orleans. The USA just ain't what it used to be. NYT:

The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. [...]
A landlord in the Lakeview section put a "for sale" sign outside a house, unaware that his tenant's body was in the attic. Two weeks ago, searchers in the Lower Ninth Ward found a girl, believed to be about 6, wearing a blue backpack. Nearby, they found part of a man who the authorities believe might have been trying to save her.

On Friday, contractors found a body in the attic of a home in the Gentilly neighborhood that had been searched twice before, officials said.

This, in a major city in what is supposedly the most prosperous and powerful nation on Earth. If the victims were rich, white Republicans, does anyone doubt that somebody would have bothered to locate their bodies before now?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:23 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

April 06, 2006

Energy Execs To Senate: Cap Us!

Activism Energy Environment Politics

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, executives representing a number of major energy companies actually requested federal legislation that would place caps on carbon emissions. Why? They're afraid of local and regional regulations that are gaining momentum. Grist:

Tuesday saw a tectonic shift in the climate-change debate during an all-day Senate conference on global-warming policy. A group of high-powered energy and utility executives for the first time issued this directive to Washington: Bring on the carbon caps!
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard statements from leaders representing eight big energy companies, including General Electric, Shell, and the two largest owners of utilities in the U.S., Exelon and Duke Energy. Six of the eight said they would either welcome or accept mandatory caps on their greenhouse-gas emissions. Wal-Mart too spoke in favor of carbon caps. The two outliers from the energy sector, Southern Company and American Electric Power, delivered pro forma bids for a voluntary rather than mandatory program, but they, too, broke with tradition by implicitly acknowledging that regulations may be coming, and offering detailed advice on how they should be designed.

Many industry players are increasingly concerned about the inconsistent patchwork of climate regulations that are being proposed and adopted throughout the U.S., from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that seven Northeastern states put forward in December to plans for greenhouse-gas caps unveiled in California this week. Worried companies say federal regulations would bring stability and sureness to the market. [...]

Senate hearings rarely manage to draw a crowd of 60, but for this one some 300 members of Congress, lobbyists, and advocates crammed themselves into the hearing room...and more watched via a live webcast.

"It's the most widely attended hearing that I've ever been to for this committee," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), "and that shows the gravity of this issue."

Said John Stanton, a vice president of National Environmental Trust, "I began the morning far more cynical than I felt at the end of the day." The conference was "remarkably devoid of the climate-skeptic malarkey that usually derails the debate at these sorts of events," he said. "You actually had real experts making real progress — hashing out the nitty-gritty of exactly how this emissions-trading system could be implemented."

Of course, there are still plenty of energy companies that oppose caps, and the conference didn't hear from anyone in the auto industry, a major contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions and a major opponent of moves to curb them. [Emphasis added]

Take note: local and regional activism matters! Getting local/regional regulations enacted forces the feds to act on the national level. That's the good news. The bad news is that federal legislation may turn out to be a watered-down version of what local/regional activists accomplished. Still, it's good to see the beginnings of movement on this front.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:00 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 05, 2006

The Onion Does DeLay

The Onion on Tom DeLay:

Tom DeLay To Pursue Corruption In Private Sector
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is facing several ethics violations and felony charges, announced Tuesday that he will resign from Congress in order to concentrate on corruption in the private sector. "I can say with a clear lack of conscience that, after 21 years of public disservice, I have done everything I could to the American people," DeLay said in a televised statement to constituents. "I have a lot to offer the corporate world, such as money laundering and influence-peddling."

Or, he'll do a Chuck Colson and come out of prison and declare himself to be a born-again preacher. At which point, if DeLay isn't instantly struck by lightning where he stands, we will have final proof of God's non-existence.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Fuzzy Math

Is there anything they won't lie about?

Last week the Interior Department made news by claiming that the nation's wetlands had actually increased, the first time that's happened. Except it's a lie. Real wetlands continue to shrink, but the administration now counts artificial ponds — water hazards on golf courses, for example — as wetlands. St. Petersburg Times:

By counting golf course ponds and ornamental lakes as wetlands, the federal government announced Thursday a massive gain in the number of wetlands nationwide, the first such gain ever reported.
But a chorus of critics called the report misleading, saying the nation lost wetlands without those man-made bodies of water.

More than 520,000 acres of wetlands were wiped out from 1998 to 2004, according to the study done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But the report contends that the losses were offset by creating more than 715,000 acres of new wetlands, mainly artificial ponds that do not provide the same environmental benefit as wetlands.

Federal officials hailed the results as a positive sign.

"Although the overall state of our wetlands is still precarious, this report suggests that nationwide efforts to curb losses and restore wetlands habitats are on the right track," said outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

And as for the ponds, Norton said: "People like having ponds as an amenity...Even ponds that are not a high quality of wetlands are better than not having wetlands." [...]

Not even the federal agency in charge of protecting wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, considers such ponds to be a replacement for wetlands, and neither do the state agencies in charge of regulating wetland losses. [...]

Wetlands - marshes, swamps, bogs, salt flats and dozens of areas that have wet soil and plants that thrive there - are supposed to be protected under the Clean Water Act because they are vital for water supplies, flood control, pollution filtering and wildlife habitat.

In 1989 President George Bush declared the nation's policy on wetlands would be No Net Loss - whatever is wiped out will be replaced. The policy proved so popular that it has been embraced by both Presidents Clinton and Bush. President Bush two years ago promised to go beyond No Net Loss and add millions of acres more wetlands.

But a study by an arm of the National Academies of Science pointed out five years ago that no one knows how well No Net Loss is working because no agency has complete and reliable data on the nation's wetlands. And most of the efforts to make up for wetland losses end in failure, the scientific study found.

Mitigation - making up for wetlands losses - is the linchpin of the No Net Loss policy. Even research by the corps paints a dim picture on what's being done to offset losses.

In New England, researchers for the corps found that forested wetlands that were being destroyed by development were most often replaced with shallow ponds, devoid of the trees that were lost. Other corps studies found projects that were supposed to make up for wetlands losses lacked any wetlands at all. [Emphasis added]

This is a wetland:

In the real world that most of us inhabit, this is not:

Something I don't understand: why do so many self-styled "conservatives" have such utter disregard for conservation of the environment? And why, for that matter, are they such liars? Some adolescent minds at the Interior Department thought this was a clever gimmick. Did they really think no one would notice? Did they really think these issues don't matter?

Do these people have no regard for the truth? Have they, when all is said and done, no desire to do the right thing? No notion of the common good? No awareness of their posterity? No conscience? Are there no grownups among them?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 03, 2006

DeLay Out

O how the mighty have fallen. CNN reports that Tom DeLay won't seek reelection.

Tom-freakin-DeLay. Used-to-be Master of the Universe. Sweet!

Posted by Jonathan at 10:22 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 31, 2006

Somebody Tell Bush: That "Fundamental Debate" Is Over

Two days ago, in response to a questioner from Australia, President Bush said this about global warming:

We — first of all, there is — the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural. Put that aside.

RealClimate, an excellent site run by working climate scientists, had this response:

The first part is the silver lining: despite receiving novelist Michael Crichton in the White House recently, Bush obviously has not bought his theory that the globe is in fact not warming. Crichton is one of the last trend sceptics who deny the warming trend is real.
Rather, Bush adopts an attribution sceptic position: warming yes, but is it caused by humans? This position is equally out of step with science, where the debate over this question has also now been settled.

Data show that carbon dioxide levels are rising, they are now 30% higher than at any time during at least the past 650,000 years, and likely even the past several million years. This rise is caused entirely by human activities. This is also demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt by data - for a start, we know how much CO2 we have emitted, and the observed rise is equal to 57% of this (the rest has been taken up by ocean and biosphere). That carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping longwave radiation, is also a measured fact and well-established physics since the 19th Century...In equilibrium, you [would] expect a warming of 2 ºC based solely on the human-caused rise in greenhouse gas concentration. But there's a time lag due to ocean heat uptake ("thermal intertia"), so that up to half the expected warming would still be in the pipeline and not here yet (this is shown by models and confirmed by oceanographic data...). That means: this rough calculation shows that the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases can explain at least 1 ºC of global warming. The observed warming is 0.8 ºC - this is less than what would be expected from greenhouse gases alone, because greenhouse gases are of course not the only factor that affects climate - there is a cooling effect by aerosols which counteracts part of the warming.

What about a "natural" explanation for the observed global warming? There is none. Indicators and measurements of solar activity show no increasing trend over the past 60 years. The orbital cycles, which cause the ice ages, would currently tend towards cooling, if anything. There is no remotely feasible alternative explanation for the observed warming published in the scientific literature. The "fundamental debate" postulated by Bush is a media phenomenon - to use the words of ABC News, a "con job" by special interest groups. It is not a debate that is ongoing in the scientific community. The numerous, often hair-raising arguments that have been brought forward as part of this "con job" have been thoroughly refuted many times.

In summary, the following scientific findings can no longer credibly be argued to be in dispute:

(1) The observed large-scale warming of the atmosphere and ocean is an entirely expected, and in fact well-predicted, consequence of the human-caused accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

(2) There is no other reasonable scientific explanation for the observed warming. [Emphasis added]

It's impossible to know if Bush actually believes what he's saying. He is such an intellectually lazy and incurious man that it's entirely possible. But that's no excuse. Far from it. With the fate of millions hanging in the balance, a man in Bush's position has an absolute moral duty to educate himself on the issue and act in consonance with the best scientific opinion. This is no time for know-nothing frat boy leadership. This is a time for leadership by smart, conscientious, serious-minded grownups.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

March 30, 2006

New Orleans: The Disaster Continues

Republican ideologues believe government cannot solve problems, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who believe in government and who want government to succeed: those are the people who can govern well. Consider New Orleans. Bill Quigley:

In New Orleans, seven months after Katrina, senior citizens are living in their cars...Korean War veteran Paul Morris, 74, and his wife Yvonne, 66,...have been sleeping in their two-door sedan since January. They have been waiting that long for FEMA contractors to unlock the 240 square foot trailer in their yard and connect the power so they can sleep inside it in front of their devastated home.
This tale of lunacy does not begin to stop there.

Their 240 square foot trailer may well cost more than their house. While FEMA flat out refuses to say how much the government is paying for trailers, reliable estimates by the New York Times and others place the cost at over $60,000 each.

How could these tiny FEMA trailers cost so much?

Follow the money.

Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time, that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a website.

Here is how it works. The original contractor takes their cut and subcontracts out the work of constructing the trailer to other companies. Once it is built, they subcontract out the transporting the trailers to yet other companies which pay drivers, gas, insurance and mileage. They then subcontract out the hookups of the trailers to other companies and keep taking cuts for their services. Usually none of the people who make the money are local workers.

With $60,000 many people could adequately repair their homes.

Why not just give the $60,000 directly to the elderly couple and let them fix up their home? Ask Congress. FEMA is not allowed to give grants of that much. Money for fixing up homes comes from somewhere else and people are still waiting for that to arrive.

While many corporations are making big money off of Katrina, Mr. and Mrs. Morris wait in their car.

Craziness continues in the area of the right to vote.

You would think that the nation that put on elections with satellite voting boxes for Iraqis and Afghanis and Haitians and many others would do the same for Katrina evacuees. Wrong. There is no satellite voting for the 230,000 citizens of New Orleans who are out of state. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, ACORN and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund have all fought for satellite voting but Louisiana and the courts and the U.S. Justice Department have said no.

The rule of thumb around here is that the poorer you are, the further you have been displaced. African Americans are also much more likely to be poor and renters — the people who cannot yet come back to a city where rents have doubled. They are the ones bearing the burdens of no satellite voting.

The people already back are much more affluent than the pre-Katrina New Orleans. The city is also much whiter. Many of those already back in New Orleans are not so sure that all of New Orleans should be rebuilt. The consequence of that is not everyone will be allowed to return. Planners and politicians openly suggest turning poor neighborhoods into green spaces. No one yet has said they want to turn their own neighborhood into green space — only other people's neighborhoods — usually poor people's neighborhoods. Those who disagree are by and large not here.

New Orleans has not been majority white for decades, but it is quite possible that a majority of those who are able to vote in the upcoming election will be white. Thus the decisions about the future of New Orleans are poised to be made by those who have been able to get back and will exclude many of those still evacuated. Guess what type of plans they will have for New Orleans? [Emphasis added]

The majority party in Washington thinks their responsibility ends when they decide which political crony to reward with a contract. They have no interest in governing, no interest in managing. Their interest is in plundering the treasury and accumulating power. Banana Republicans.

What is happening in New Orleans is a disgraceful national failure. Every time we countenance such failure, we grow weaker as a nation. Morally weaker. And if there ever was a time when we needed all our strength to face the challenges ahead, this is that time.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 26, 2006

Good Ol' Wikipedia

This cuts right to the chase. Great stuff.

[Thanks, Kent]

Posted by Jonathan at 06:25 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Reporting For The CIA

Media Politics

Americans are naive. We're brought up to believe that we've got a free news media, we've got real representative politics, and so on. The game may be rigged in other countries, but not here. So, we know that the NSA listens to every scrap of electronic communications overseas, but we take it on faith that they don't listen to communications here in the US. But then it turns out they do.

We know also that the CIA is skilled in manipulating the news media overseas. We know they manipulate other countries' political processes, funding this candidate, smearing that one, bolstering a regime here, creating chaos there. But we take it on faith that they don't apply those skills internally. Why? If they believe the national security is at stake, why wouldn't they conclude it is their duty to bring to bear every tool at their disposal?

Actually, we don't have to guess. In 1977, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame wrote an article for Rolling Stone that exposed the fact that hundreds of American journalists, including some of the biggest names in news, had secretly carried out assignments on behalf of the CIA. Bernstein:

[M]ore than 400 American journalists...in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. [...]
The Agency's relationship with the [New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy...to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.

...[T]he Agency's working relationship with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper...

CBS was unquestionably the CIA's most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and [CIA Director] Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship...[CBS] allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings. [Emphasis added]

200 reporters, Bernstein said, had gone so far as to sign secrecy agreements with the CIA. That was in 1977. But CIA infiltration of the American news media isn't exactly something a CIA-infiltrated news media is going to report on, so, in the 30 years since Bernstein's article, we haven't heard much more about it.

But SusanG at DailyKos (link via Xymphora) has posted an interview she did with Daniel Ellsberg, who speculates on the current state of affairs as seen through the prism of the Judith Miller affair. Excerpt below the fold.

Excerpt:

Over 200 reporters, according to Bernstein, had signed secrecy agreements with the CIA. There were a number of individuals who did really work to put stories in that they wanted, to publish stuff they wanted. I believe that's what they were saying about Joe Alsop and Stewart Alsop, that they were essentially assets of the CIA, which means they would put out CIA line. Not because they were literal employees, but because they were friends with people in the CIA.
Q: But that's a thin line isn't it? I'm not sure that anybody said specifically, write a story that's very positive about X so that we look good. I think a lot of it is just an understanding of being a part of that establishment back then and they saw it as patriotism, from what Bernstein said.

Certainly that is a major aspect to the whole thing. They're not under the impression that they're working for and with the city machine or the mafia or something. This is the U.S. government, this is the CIA, this is the establishment.

But let me put a slightly different spin on it: Remember Sy Sulzberger was mentioned as one person who had a clearance. He had a column, and he denied it, but several people from the CIA said that on one occasion he called up for information, they gave him the briefing paper and he simply put the briefing in under his byline. He literally reproduced the whole briefing paper.

Now how often is that done? Remember, a lot of these people were putting out mainly opinion columns, not reporting news...like Joe Alsop and Stewart Alsop. How often did they call up their friend at the CIA who simply told them, here's what's going on. And they then go on to print, here's what's going on. They don't say, I was told by a high official. See, they say, this is the reality. This is what's really happening, here's the real news. Sometimes they would say, yes, I got this from some official, but other times they would just say, this is a result of my observations or this is they way I see it. How often was the way they saw it in their highly read column simply what Allen Dulles or Richard Helms told them and they believed it? It wasn't that they were just being servile, they're just presenting a crafted CIA line which has been given to them.

Here's the point I was really coming to: I was most struck in that by the idea of a secrecy clearance, as somebody who had had a dozen simultaneous clearances.

The relationship that that implies has a number of dimensions to it. One of them - it's just one, but it's an important one - is that you are led to believe (quite misleadingly actually) that if you violate that agreement, you will be prosecuted. You are violating a law. And even if you're not prosecuted, you will know you are violating a law if you break the terms of that agreement. They mention to you 18 USC 793 (d) and (e) and so forth - what I was charged with. And indeed, I was prosecuted.

Now the catch is, I was the first person ever prosecuted for it. No one had ever been prosecuted, but I didn't know that, and they don't know that, and most people don't know it to this day. Not one reporter in a hundred have I ever met - and I've talked to audiences of journalists - knows that I was the first person ever to be prosecuted.

However, every time you sign that agreement, you are confronted with these laws that say you are subject to prosecution, so they think they're violating a law if they put that out, that they will get prosecuted having agreed to this. A reporter who is just slipped something under the cover on one particular day or who was told something over lunch, a reporter who hasn't signed an agreement, I think, is unlikely to believe that he or she is in trouble if he puts it out. He's more likely to believe that the source will get in trouble.

A reporter who has signed that agreement is definitely led to believe that he or she is subject to prosecution if he breaks that agreement. That's the number one point.

Number two point is... Judith Miller said, I had a security clearance. Now I think she was telling the truth. They said, no, it was just a simple non-disclosure agreement or some misunderstanding, I think that's the cover story. She had a clearance. What would that mean?

It means that she's trusted by these people as one of the team. They're not giving it to her under threat, they're giving it to her because they trust her to carry this out. Wonderful self-esteem there and the feeling of being an insider, and your fellows don't have that. It means you will now get information that people who don't have that clearance will not get. You'll get it in part because you're trusted and because you have something to lose, they'll take it away. If you violate it, you won't get that stuff anymore. You infer from that that you will get information that others don't get because you'll be trusted not to print it unless they tell you it's all right.

My guess is very strongly that Judith Miller did have such a clearance and did have a background check and it meant that she was entitled to get information authoritatively that others were not entitled to get on the understanding that she has a lot to lose - namely a clearance - and not just the one source, but from a lot of sources. It gives her entrée. [...]

If she has a clearance, he could take her to a meeting, to a place, to anybody, and say, "This woman is okay, she's cleared."

I thought right away: Judith Miller, Judith Miller. She's one of Bernstein's people here. And remember, he says it was one of their most carefully guarded secrets that they had, that they kept the Church Committee from putting out. They gave them stuff on assassination instead; that was less scary.

In every case, Bernstein said, where a journalist had such an agreement, it was known to their boss - to their editor or publisher or both. So I infer from that that probably Bill Keller - possibly not - or Howell Raines, but certainly the publisher, Sulzberger, did know. Now let's go one step further. Bernstein quotes somebody at the CIA as saying, "Our greatest asset is the New York Times." All right. [...]

...I'm sorry, I would not be happy to have it proved that the New York Times, which is the first thing I read every morning is, after all, a government newspaper. And obviously there are limitations to that because there's no question that they do put out from time to time things that the government does not want out. I can say that I know that better than most.

But keep in mind that Nixon was not in fact unhappy to see the Pentagon Papers out, and he wanted to put more stuff out.

Q: And in order to be an effective instrument of the government, it has to sometimes challenge the government.

It should show a certain amount of independence from time to time, yes.

But the stuff that was coming out during the first Gulf War was exactly like what was coming out in the invasion of Iraq this time. If the coverage had been coming right out of a shop in the Pentagon, controlling every aspect of the television coverage of the first Gulf War, how different would it have been? I didn't see how it could have been different.

It's still going on.

Q: So how did they do it?

...The control of the war coverage was very, very effective. And these PR guys know what they're doing. They did it in Grenada. I believe they didn't allow any reporters in when the actual operation was going on. And in Panama, there was hardly any coverage and to this day there's never been any investigation of how many Panamanians had been killed in that attack on Noriega's headquarters.

Just from the outside, you look at that and you say: You know, they're acting as though it's a controlled press. So let me put into the pot just the hypothesis that to a greater extent than we are really aware, it is a controlled press. And it's not 100 percent and some of the exposes occasionally - not that many - even go beyond what is necessary to establish an appearance of independence and constitutes a real degree of independence. But I think it's just possible that when you look a flagship like the New York Times from which other papers take their cues as to what is news and what isn't, there may be a critical element of top-level people being actually on the team. It's clear that Judith Miller was on the team. I'm suggesting that that goes beyond a mere groupie-type enthusiasm for the policy. She was on the team, period. She was one of us. She's an insider, not an outsider, let's say.

The Bush family has intelligence ties going back several generations. George H. W. Bush was CIA Director. The name of CIA headquarters is the George Bush Center for Intelligence, for pete's sake. Think back to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Do they pass the smell test? Or did the Bush forces manipulate them the way the CIA has long since learned to manipulate elections abroad?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:21 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 22, 2006

Feingold On Daily Show Tonight

Media Politics

Senator Russ Feingold is scheduled to appear on "The Daily Show" tonight. Should be good.

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

March 15, 2006

Incompetent-Idiot-Liar

A new Pew Research poll (via Atrios) has Bush's approval rating at 33%, a new low.

But that's not the fun part. Check this out:

President Bush's declining image also is reflected in the single-word descriptions people use to describe their impression of the president. Three years ago, positive one-word descriptions of Bush far outnumbered negative ones. Over the past two years, the positive-negative balance has been roughly equal. But the one-word characterizations have turned decidedly negative since last July.
Currently, 48% use a negative word to describe Bush compared with just 28% who use a positive term, and 10% who use neutral language.

The changing impressions of the president can best be viewed by tracking over time how often words come up in these top-of-the-mind associations. Until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. Other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great" terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys.

The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." [Emphasis added]

Too funny.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:20 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 12, 2006

Feingold: Censure Bush For Spying

Russ Feingold will introduce a Senate resolution tomorrow censuring Bush for the NSA eavesdropping program. AP:

"The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told The Associated Press in an interview.
A censure resolution, which simply would scold the president, has been used just once in U.S. history — against Andrew Jackson in 1834.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., called the proposal "a crazy political move" that would weaken the U.S. during wartime.

The five-page resolution to be introduced on Monday contends that Bush violated the law when, on his own, he set up the eavesdropping program within the National Security Agency in the months following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. [...]

The resolution says the president "repeatedly misled the public" before the disclosure of the NSA program last December when he indicated the administration was relying on court orders to wiretap terror suspects inside the U.S.

"Congress has to reassert our system of government, and the cleanest and the most efficient way to do that is to censure the president," Feingold said. "And, hopefully, he will acknowledge that he did something wrong." [...]

The president's actions were "in the strike zone" in terms of being an impeachable offense, Feingold said. The senator questioned whether impeaching Bush and removing him from office would be good for the country.

In the House, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is pushing legislation that would call on the Republican-controlled Congress to determine whether there are grounds for impeachment. [...]

Frist, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said that he hoped al-Qaida and other enemies of the U.S. were not listening to the infighting.

"The signal that it sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong," Frist said. [Emphasis added]

"Making our homeland safer." Frist thinks we're idiots.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:32 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 10, 2006

They're All Bozos On That Bus

It just keeps getting more grotesque. Somebody please make it stop. AP via the Guardian:

The agency entrusted with protecting the U.S. homeland is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters, say private security guards at the complex.
The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats.

For instance, when an envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby.

The scare, caused by white powder that proved to be harmless, "stands as one glaring example" of the agency's security problems, said Derrick Daniels, one of the first guards to respond to the incident.

"I had never previously been given training...describing how to respond to a possible chemical attack," Daniels told The Associated Press. "I wouldn't feel safe nowhere on this compound as an officer."

Daniels was employed until last fall by Wackenhut Services Inc., the private security firm that guards Homeland's headquarters in a residential area of Washington. The company has been criticized previously for its work at nuclear facilities and transporting nuclear weapons. [Emphasis added]

Besides the obvious Catch-22 lunacy of this, there's a deeper subtext that's very, very serious. The current occupants of the White House think their responsibility ends when they decide which political crony to reward with a contract. They have no interest in governing, no interest in managing. Their interest is in plundering the treasury and accumulating power. They think government can't solve problems, so that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many of them, in fact, would prefer to see government fail, for ideological reasons.

Wackenhut's an ally, so they get the contract. Nobody pays the slightest attention to whether Wackenhut's actually doing the job it was hired to do.

Only people who believe in government can govern well. People who believe that government can do good, that government can solve problems and make people's lives better, are people who will try their best to make government succeed, people who will pay attention and follow through. That's why the Clinton administration was infinitely more effective than the Bush administration has been. And Clinton was no progressive. He's basically what a Republican used to be — Eisenhower, say, or even Nixon. But at least he wanted government to perform well, and he hired a bunch of other people who felt the same way. That really does matter.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

March 09, 2006

House Votes To Dump States' Food Safety Laws

SF Chronicle (via BuzzFlash):

The House approved a bill Wednesday night that would wipe out state laws on safety labeling of food, overriding tough rules passed by California voters two decades ago that require food producers to warn consumers about cancer-causing ingredients.
The vote was a victory for the food industry, which has lobbied for years for national standards for food labeling and contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers' campaigns. But consumer groups and state regulators warned that the bill would undo more than 200 state laws, including California's landmark Proposition 65, that protect public health.

"The purpose of this legislation is to keep the public from knowing about the harm they may be exposed to in food," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, a chief critic of the measure.

Several critics argued that the bill was rushed through the House without complete hearings as a favor to a specific industry — at the same time that members are talking about the evils of lobbying and proposing stricter ethical rules.

Under the bill, any state that wanted to keep its own tougher standards for food labeling would have to ask for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which has been criticized by food safety groups as slow to issue consumer warnings.

The measure was approved after a debate in which House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco accused the Republican majority of "shredding the food safety net that we have built in this country."

The measure passed 283 to 139, with the support of many Democrats...The legislation faces a tougher battle in the more evenly divided Senate, and there are signs of growing opposition to the measure. [...]

A major target of the legislation is Prop. 65, which was approved by two-thirds of California voters in 1986 and requires labeling of substances that may cause cancer or birth defects. The law has inspired other states to follow suit with their own rules on food labeling that are more stringent than federal standards. [Emphasis added]

Absolutely disgusting. Republicans claim they want to limit Federal power, that they're the party of states' rights, and they pull something like this. And a bunch of Democrats help them. Bought and paid for by the food industry giants. What a bunch of whores (with apologies to whores).

I don't know about you, but I care about what I eat. I care about what my children eat. I'd kind of like to know if I'm eating something that causes cancer or birth defects. Call me picky. And in case you can't tell, this story just makes me furious.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:17 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this

Poking Out Our Own Eyes

Politics Science/Technology

AP reports that budget cuts are endangering the US fleet of remote-sensing satellites that monitor weather and the environment. Excerpts:

Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of our eyes in orbit, America's fleet of environmental satellites, vital tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and predicting global warming.
"The system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse," said Richard A. Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. "Every year that goes by without the system being addressed is a problem." [...]

Since [just last year], NASA has chosen to cancel or mothball at least three planned satellites in an effort to save money. Cost overruns have delayed a new generation of weather satellites until at least 2010 and probably 2012, leading a Government Accountability Office official to label the enterprise "a program in crisis." [...]

NASA officials say that tight budgets tie their hands, forcing them to cut all but the most vital programs. The agency's proposed 2007 budget request contains $2.2 billion for satellites that observe the Earth and sun, compared to $6.2 billion for operating the space shuttle and International Space Station and $4 billion for developing future missions to the moon and Mars. [...]

Meanwhile, the list of delayed, downsized and canceled satellites is a long one:

NASA's Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet's oceans, atmosphere and land surface. It was originally intended to send three generations of spacecraft into orbit at five-year intervals, but budget shortfalls limited the project to only one round of launches.

Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing a gap in service. Landsat 7, launched in April 1999, is scheduled to be replaced by a next-generation satellite in 2011. But if the existing satellite fails before that date and NASA has not developed a contingency plan, scientists, land managers and others who depend on Landsat images could be out of luck.

The launch of a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, can't possibly last that long. That means there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and flooding.

In December, scientists working on the Hydros mission received a letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades. The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.

Last month Scripps' Valero was notified that the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be canceled. The spacecraft has already been built, but NASA is reluctant to spend the $60 million to $100 million it would cost to launch and operate it. [...]

The observatory would have provided valuable information about how clouds, snow cover, airborne dust and other phenomena affect the balance between the amount of sunlight Earth absorbs and the amount of heat energy it emits. And because it would have hovered between Earth and the sun at a distance of roughly a million miles, it would have been able to observe the entire sunlit surface of the planet constantly. Such observations could greatly enhance scientists' understanding how much the planet has warmed in recent years and help them predict how much warmer it will get in the future. [Emphasis added]

This is so dumb, so ignorant, so monumentally irresponsible, that it beggars belief. At a time when the Earth is going through changes that pose a significant threat to human welfare — maybe even human existence — we are voluntarily poking out our own eyes. Ground the space shuttle, if necessary. Better yet, take some money from the DOD. But for God's sake, if we ever needed this data, it's now.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:29 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

March 02, 2006

Capturing Bin Laden

9/11, "War On Terror" Afghanistan Politics

In Afghanistan yesterday, Bush vowed that Osama bin Laden will be "captured and brought to justice." The FreewayBlogger replies:

Well put.

(See also this.)

Posted by Jonathan at 03:08 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

March 01, 2006

Caught On Tape

AP reports that it has obtained video tape and transcripts of pre-Katrina briefings that show that Bush and Chertoff were warned explicitly that the levees might fail and that New Orleans residents gathering at the Superdome and elsewhere were very much at risk. AP:

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.
Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Linked by secure video, Bush expressed a confidence on Aug. 28 that starkly contrasted with the dire warnings his disaster chief and numerous federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the video footage.

"I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing," presidential spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times." [...]

"I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now," [New Orleans Mayor Ray] Nagin said. "I was listening to what people were saying — they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware."

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. [...]

Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"...He later clarified [sic], saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm — and Bush was worried too. [...]

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him. Neither asked questions in the Aug. 28 briefing.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event. [...]

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing. Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated. [Emphasis added]

FEMA's Mike Brown comes off comparatively well in the AP account, if you read the whole thing. Brown may have been in over his head, but he clearly was a whole lot more engaged than Chertoff and Bush. We all may have fallen for White House spin when we accepted Brownie as the designated scapegoat.

Update: [8:49 PM] Crooks and Liars has video.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:43 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

February 28, 2006

Subsidizing What's Bad For You

Corporations, Globalization Environment Politics

Why do Americans — especially, poor Americans — eat such unhealthy diets? Why are American obesity and diabetes rates skyrocketing? Partly it's because government policy, policy shaped by the lobbying muscle of agribusiness giants like ADM, makes an unhealthy diet a lot cheaper than a healthy diet. The USDA tells people to eat fruits and vegetables, but it pays farmers to grow corn. Grist:

If you're going to talk about poverty, food, and the environment in the United States, you might as well start in the Corn Belt.
This fertile area produces most of the country's annual corn harvest of more than 10 billion bushels, far and away the world's largest such haul. Where does it all go? The majority — after accounting for exports (nearly 20 percent), ethanol (about 10 percent, and climbing), and excess (another 10 percent) — anchors the world's cheapest food supply in purchasing-power terms.

Our food system is shot through with corn. It feeds the animals that feed us: more than 50 percent of the harvest goes into domestic animal operations. About 5 percent flows into high-fructose corn syrup, adding a sweet jolt to soft drinks, confections, and breakfast cereal. All told, it's a cheap source of calories and taste. Yet all this convenience comes with a price — and not just an environmental one.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the amount Americans spend on food as a percentage of disposable income has fallen from 15.4 percent in 1980 to 10.8 percent in 2004. But while we've spent less money on food, our waistlines have expanded. The obesity rate, after hovering around 15 percent from 1960 to 1980, surged to 31 percent in the last 25 years, USDA figures show. The percentage of overweight children tripled in the same time period. Meanwhile, incidence of type II diabetes, a diet-related condition with a host of health-related complications, leapt 41 percent from 1997 to 2004.

This trend has hit low-income groups particularly hard. The obesity rates for "poor" and "near-poor" people stand at 36 percent and 35.4 percent, respectively, against an overall average of 29.2 percent for "non-poor," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. While the CDC doesn't break down diabetes rates by income, a look at the disease through the lens of ethnicity shows that those rates tend to align with economics: African Americans and Mexican Americans, for instance, have higher diabetes rates than whites, and lower median incomes.

Why do low-income people tend to exhibit more diet-related health problems? Adam Drewnowski, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, posits a simple answer: people are gaining weight and getting sick because unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food — thanks in large part to federal policies.

If the USDA's food pyramid recommends two to five cups of fruits and vegetables per day, its budget — mandated by Congress through the Farm Bill — encourages different behavior altogether.

Under the Farm Bill, the great bulk of USDA largesse flows to five crops: corn, soy, cotton, wheat, and rice. Of the $113.6 billion in commodity subsidy payments doled out by the USDA between 1995 and 2004, corn drew $41.8 billion — more than cotton, soy, and rice combined. By contrast, apples and sugar beets, the only other fruit or vegetable crops that draw federal subsidies, received $611 million over the same period. (The latter are generally processed into sweeteners.)

The huge corn payouts encourage overproduction, and have helped sustain a long-term trend in falling prices. According to figures from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the inflation-adjusted global commodity price for corn plunged 61 percent between 1983 and 2002. Today a bushel, roughly 56 pounds, fetches about $2.

Cheap corn, underwritten by the subsidy program, has changed the diet of every American. It has allowed a few corporations — including Archer Daniels Midland, the world's largest grain processor — to create a booming market for high-fructose corn syrup. HFCS now accounts for nearly half of the caloric sweeteners added to processed food, and is the sole caloric sweetener for mass-market soft drinks. Between 1975 and 1997, per-capita consumption jumped from virtually nothing to 60.4 pounds per year — equal to about 200 calories per person, per day. Consumption has generally hovered around that level since. [...]

From a short-term economic viewpoint, ...Ding Dongs present a better deal [than wild salmon]: 360 calories per dollar, and no need for the time or skill to cook. "If you're on a limited income trying to feed a family, in a sense you're behaving rationally by choosing heavily sweetened and fat-laden foods," Drewnowski says.

The price gap between these two categories is growing. Drewnowski and Monsivais show that the overall cost of food consumed at home, when adjusted for inflation, has been essentially unchanged since 1980. But over the same time, the price of soft drinks plunged 30 percent, and the price of candy and other sweets fell 20 percent. Meanwhile, the price of fresh fruits and vegetables rose 50 percent.

"Energy-dense foods ... are the cheapest option for the consumer," Drewnowski says. "As long as the healthier lean meats, fish, and fresh produce are more expensive, obesity will continue to be a problem for the working poor."

Thus far, government efforts to address diet-related health problems among low-income Americans have done little to reduce incidence of obesity and diabetes. One reason may be that even when they do account for the economics of different types of foods, such programs often neglect other pressures faced by low-income families.

In 1999, for example, the USDA began promoting a revised "Thrifty Food Plan," designed to help people choose low-cost, healthy foods. But as Diego Rose of Tulane University's Department of Community Health Sciences showed in a 2004 study, the plan failed to account for time stresses on working-class families. Rose calculated that it would take an average of 16 hours per week to prepare the meals outlined in the Thrifty plan, and that working women tended to have only about six hours per week to devote to the kitchen at the time the plan was unveiled. [Emphasis added]

It's crazy. We subsidize a diet that makes people sick, then wonder why health care costs are sky-high. Meanwhile, the agribusiness giants and pharmaceutical and health care giants use campaign contributions to keep the juggernaut rolling along. Their profits are built on our disease. Is this any way to run a civilized society?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:48 PM | Comments (10) | Link to this

February 27, 2006

Favorable: 29%

New CBS Poll. How's Bush doing?

Approve Disapprove

Overall job performance 34% 59%

Iraq 30% 65%

Economy 32% 60%

Energy 27% 60%

Does Bush care about people like you?
A lot: 17%
Some: 30%
Not much/none: 51%

View of George W. Bush
Favorable: 29%
Unfavorable: 53%
DK: 17%

Theoretically, anyway, Bush works for us. Is there any other job where you can get a 29% favorable rating from your employer and not be asked to clean out your desk?

Posted by Jonathan at 08:56 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

February 26, 2006

Dubya's Sales Pitch

Why is Dubya suddenly banging the drum for alternative energy? Here's a clue. Reuters (via sustainablog):

The Carlyle Group is set to boost its investment in the renewable energy sector as demand from U.S. state entities is rising, the firm's founder and managing director, David Rubenstein, said on Wednesday.
"We intend to be much more active in the wind, power, solar energy, biomass and geothermal areas," Rubenstein said.

"We think it's an extremely attractive area in which to invest, particularly because many states in the U.S. now require that utilities buy a certain percentage of their energy from solar, biomass, geothermal or wind power sources," he told Reuters at a private equity conference in Frankfurt where he also predicted that some buyout firms would go public within the next several years.

To meet the energy demand, Carlyle, one of the world's largest private equity firms, is raising a fund that will invest in renewable energy infrastructure, sources familiar with the matter said.

Carlyle declined to comment on the fund. Rubenstein did, however, say the firm was set to launch a hedge fund within the next several weeks after announcing the move last year. [...]

U.S. President George Bush in his State of the Union address outlined details of a federal initiative to provide a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research.

Viewers of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and readers of Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud will recognize the Carlyle Group as the private equity fund that has lined the pockets of the Bush family, among others. According to Wikipedia:

George W. Bush was appointed in 1990 to the Board of Directors of one of Carlyle's first acquisitions, an airline food business called Caterair, which Carlyle eventually sold at a loss. Bush left the board in 1992 to later become Governor of Texas, where he was responsible for appointing several members of the board which controlled the investment of Texas teachers' pension funds. A few years later, the board decided to invest $100m of public money in the Carlyle Group.

Must to be nice to have the President of the United States pumping your investments.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:21 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

February 20, 2006

Bush: Energy Breakthroughs Coming

Energy Politics

Bush has taken his show on the road to talk up the energy proposals he outlined in the State of the Union. AP:

Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans, President Bush on Monday outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil. [...]
One of Bush's proposals would expand research into smaller, longer-lasting batteries for electric-gas hybrid cars, including plug-ins. He highlighted that initiative with a visit Monday to the battery center at Milwaukee-based auto-parts supplier Johnson Controls Inc. [...]

While Bush is highlighting his budget proposals to help wean America from foreign oil, the lab he visited is meeting a $28 million shortfall by cutting its staff by 32 people, including eight researchers. [...]

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., questioned Bush's energy policies Monday, saying the administration also supports subsidies for luxury SUVs.

"This single tax subsidy dwarfs anything being done for hybrid batteries," Markey said in a news release. [Emphasis added]

More inadvertent irony, as he makes his big speech at a lab that's cutting back for lack of funding.

It's a good thing, I guess, that Bush is calling attention to energy issues. But if he were a serious-minded grownup, he'd be pushing conservation as our highest priority. Raising CAFE standards. Ending subsidies on gas-guzzlers. Incentivizing fuel efficiency. But it's more expedient politically to tell people that technology will wave a magic wand and somehow make our problems go away, painlessly, no behavior changes required. Unfortunately, that's the exact wrong message to be sending.

The idea that technology will save us even if we do nothing — let alone do the wrong thing — is an idea that could prove fatal.

[Thanks, Charyn]

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

February 18, 2006

Bush Unpopular Pretty Much Everywhere

Bush's approval rating is back in the 30s, but that only tells part of the story. State by state polling data (via Glenn Greenwald) shows Bush's disapproval beats his approval in all but 10 states.

The states with a negative net approval rating include the following red states where Bush won in 2004: SC (1%), KY (-2%), MS (-3%), ND (-3%), LA (-4%), IN (-5%), GA (-6%), TN (-6%), VA (-7%), WV (-7%), AZ (-8%), NC (-10%), SD (-10%), NM (-11%), FL (-13%), AR (-15%), NV (-16%), MO (-18%), CO (-19%), IA (-19%), and OH (-23%).

The November elections will be interesting. Assuming the votes are counted fairly.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 17, 2006

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any More Grotesque

From Fred Barnes' laudatory Rebel-in-Chief (via Chris Mooney):

The president later provoked worldwide protests when he formally withdrew the United States from the Kyoto global warming treaty. The environmental lobby in this country fumed, but Bush didn't flinch. The treaty had never been ratified and stood little chance of winning Senate approval. Though he didn't say so publicly, Bush is a dissenter on the theory of global warming. To the extent it's a problem, Bush believes it can be solved by technology. He avidly read Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear, whose villain falsifies scientific studies to justify draconian steps to curb global warming. Crichton himself has studied the issue extensively and concluded that global warming is an unproven theory and that the threat is vastly overstated. Early in 2005, political adviser Karl Rove arranged for Crichton to meet with Bush at the White House. They talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement. The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more. [Emphasis added]

With the health and well-being — and quite possibly the lives — of millions of people in the balance, we've got a know-nothing president getting briefed in secret by a novelist.

Bush's greatest sin is that he never stops to consider that he's completely unqualified to be president and to make the judgments he makes. Here's a man who is utterly ignorant of science, as of most things, who yet imagines himself to be in a position to overrule the near-unanimous consensus of the scientific community. I believe the term is narcissistic personality disorder.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:33 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

The Nutshell

As Josh Marshall says, a headline for the time capsule:

The Bush years, in a nutshell.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:58 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 16, 2006

Halliburton Stock Split

Iraq Politics

At Halliburton, war is our business, and business is good. MarketWatch:

Halliburton Co., coming off a banner year in the energy sector and flush with Pentagon contracts abroad, announced Thursday a series of measures to share the spoils with shareholders.
The Houston-based company said its board of directors approved a two-for-one stock split that would double its shares outstanding to 2 billion. Stockholders must still sign off on the split.

The quarterly dividend for Halliburton stock was also raised 20% to 15 cents a share. The higher payout is set for March 23 for shareholders as of March 2.

A $1 billion share buyback is also in the works, the company said.

The moves come as Halliburton is gearing up to spin off part of its KBR division, which last year became the U.S. Army's biggest contractor. In terms of defense contracts with all branches of the military, Halliburton now ranks sixth overall. [Emphasis added]

The country may be circling the drain, but Halliburton shareholders are raking it in.

Blood money.

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

Feingold Filibusters Patriot Act

Russ Feingold is filibustering the extension of the USA Patriot Act, all by himself. AP:

In a case of legislative deja vu, Sen. Russell Feingold launched another lonely filibuster against the USA Patriot Act, but sponsors predicted enough support to overcome the objection and extend parts of the law set to expire March 10.
Feingold, D-Wis., said protracted talks with the White House over the law's protections for civil liberties produced only a "fig leaf" to cover weaknesses that leave people vulnerable to government intrusion.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he had the 60 votes required to overcome Feingold's filibuster, as soon as this week. He agreed, though, that any revisions to a House-Senate accord blocked last year were "cosmetic.

"But sometimes cosmetics will make a beauty out of a beast and provide enough cover for senators to change their vote," Specter told reporters Wednesday.

Indeed, the filibuster seemed doomed. No Democrats were expected to join Feingold, according to officials of both parties. Several senior senators of his party have said they would vote for the bill, including Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard Durbin of Illinois. [Emphasis added]

The thing is, Feingold's a man of principle. I don't what Harry Reid is. We need a third party.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:23 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

55%: Iraq War A Mistake

Iraq Politics

New CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll:

"In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?"
Made a mistake: 55%
Did not: 42%

"Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war with Iraq?"

Favor: 40%
Oppose: 56%

I've commented on this before, but it's a remarkable feature of politics in America (and probably elsewhere) that as the majority comes around to agreeing with the position that progressives took from the outset, it never occurs to them that maybe progressives are people they ought to listen to in the future. They now find themselves agreeing with something that was transparently obvious to many of us, but it's as if they think we didn't come by the position honestly, that first you have to be wrong before you can be right. And so the next time we'll go through the whole process again. And the time after that.

Funny creatures, humans.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 14, 2006

Our Dick

Dick Cheney's a weird guy. There's no shortage of evidence, but the thing that always stands out for me is this photo of Cheney, Vice President of the United States, officially representing the US last year in Auschwitz at the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation:

That's the president of Israel to Cheney's right, Lynne Cheney to his left. Everyone else is in somber, dress attire, befitting the occasion. Cheney's in hiking boots, a knit cap that says "Staff 2001" and — well, you see the rest. There are few places on Earth where symbolism matters more than at Auschwitz, and he shows up like this.

He's either sulking because he got sent to an event he didn't want to attend (my first reaction, given his body language), or he's too dysfunctional to be allowed out in public, or he's being deliberately disrespectful. In any case, it's weird.

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

February 13, 2006

Take Cover

Tonight should be fun, as Jon Stewart and the late night comics get to tee off on Cheney for his Elmer Fudd moment. (If you can't wait that long, DallasDem at Kos has the Top Ten Cheney Excuses For Shooting that Guy. My favorite: "Pheasants? I thought we were hunting peasants.")

That aside, the whole episode's pretty fishy, the way they kept a lid on the story for a day. It could be that secrecy's just a reflex with these people. It could be, as John Robb points out, that these kinds of hunting accidents usually involve drinking. Maybe they needed time to sober Cheney up. Or, it could be that they were trying to decide whether to claim somebody else pulled the trigger.

None of which is terribly important on its own, but it is telling that their first instinct, as always, was to cover up, hide, lie.

Update: [7:22 PM] Go watch Scott McClellan's press briefing of today here, starting especially at around the 5:20 mark. No way this passes the smell test. To hear McClellan tell it, the telegraph lines were down. What, Cheney's Secret Service detail doesn't have, you know, cell phones?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 11, 2006

CIA's Top Iraq Analyst: White House Ignored Intelligence

Iraq Politics

Somehow, the White House continues to get away with claiming that the decision to invade Iraq was based on "flawed intelligence", an "intelligence failure," when it's long been clear that they came into office already looking for a pretext to justify an attack. Iraq was in their crosshairs from the outset.

Now the CIA's leading counterterrorism analyst, the man who was responsible for coordinating all Iraq assessments for the entire intelligence community, confirms that the administration requested no strategic assessments and paid little attention to the intelligence that was available to it. WaPo:

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

Pillar's critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of the administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.

It is also the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration's handling of intelligence.

Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency's leading counterterrorism analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.

It's remarkable that over, and over, and over again, the left's critique of administration actions and policies is proven right — but nobody notices. Politics is driven by psychology, not rational judgments. When you pick your auto mechanic, say, or your doctor, you want somebody who usually gets it right. But in politics, people tend to go with the person who confirms their prejudices and resonates with them on an irrational, psychological level. Even if they're wrong about absolutely everything. It's hard not to conclude that we are just superstitious primates, after all. Superstitious primates with guns.

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

February 10, 2006

Who You Gonna Believe?

At the end of a column at Salon that looks at the importance of a highly educated populace in the 21st century and Bush's announced initiative to boost support for R&D and education, Andrew Leonard makes an arresting point:

[T]he truly odd thing is that when the leaders of China, who are not in the least bit accountable to the people and have no love for a free press or dissent of any kind, pledge to vastly increase spending on R&D and continue to upgrade their educational systems, I believe every word. But when the President of my own country addresses his citizens and makes bold promises, I don't buy it for a second.

And of course he's right. Any one of us would have the same reaction. Astonishing, when you think about it. That it's come to this.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:23 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 09, 2006

Libby Fingers Cheney

Murray Waas writes in National Journal (via BuzzFlash) that Scooter Libby has testified that Dick Cheney authorized him to leak classified information. Excerpt:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war. [...]

The new disclosure that Libby has claimed that the vice president and others in the White House had authorized him to release information to make the case to go to war, and later to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence...significantly adds to a mounting body of information that Cheney played a central and personal role in directing efforts to counter claims by Wilson and other administration critics that the Bush administration had misused intelligence information to go to war with Iraq. [...]

Libby's legal strategy in asserting that Cheney and other Bush administration officials authorized activities related to the underlying allegations of criminal conduct leveled against him, without approving of or encouraging him to engage in the specific misconduct, is reminiscent of the defense strategy used by Oliver North, who was a National Security Council official in the Reagan administration. [...]

If Libby's defense adopts strategies used by North, it might be in part because the strategies largely worked for North and in part because Libby's defense team has quietly retained John D. Cline, who was a defense attorney for North. [Emphasis added]

Not sure what this means for Cheney, so I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:39 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

February 08, 2006

Military Budget Growing Like Cancer

Politics War and Peace

WaPo:

In the White House budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007, Pentagon funding would increase by nearly 7 percent and, for the first time in Bush's presidency, claim more than half the government's expenditure on discretionary programs, those that get set each year. The $439.3 billion that the plan devotes to the military is 45 percent greater than the Pentagon budget when Bush took office five years ago. [Emphasis added]

But that's only a portion of military spending. WaPo:

The proposed budget is only a part of the costly national defense picture. It does not include $120 billion in planned new funding for military and other operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, $70 billion for this year and $50 billion for 2007.
That money is included in separate legislation and would come on top of the $320 billion the White House budget office said has been allocated for the wars so far, pushing costs since the start of the conflicts through early next year to about $440 billion.

The Pentagon budget also does not include $9.3 billion in the Energy Department's budget for maintaining the nuclear arms stockpile. [Emphasis added]

These people are bankrupting the country, and to what end? It's insanity. Literally.

Suppose this were put to a vote: Do you want the country to spend well over a half trillion dollars on war while social programs, environmental programs, health and education are being cut across the board? I don't think there's a snowball's chance that voters would opt for pissing the country's wealth away like this. The fact that it happens anyway tells you all you need to know about the health of American democracy.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 07, 2006

Attaboy Russ

Russ Feingold gave a kick-ass speech in the Senate today on President Bush's illegal wiretapping program. CSPAN-2 carried it, and hopefully they'll post the video online. It's well worth watching. In the meantime, the text is online here. I urge you to read it in full, but here's an excerpt:

[L]ast week the President of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America's leadership in the world, and called on all of us to "lead this world toward freedom." Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.
But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.

The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment — to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA's domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions. [...]

To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions — and to see so many Members of Congress cheer him on — is appalling.

The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control executive branch.

That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here — to ensure balance between the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.

Feingold then examined each of the White House's justifications and claims regarding the legality of the wiretaps, and demolished them one by one. He resumed with this:

None of the President's arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA's domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn't break the law, you haven't broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal." But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.
And what's particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered. [...]

In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law. [Emphasis added]

That's what a patriot sounds like. That's what the rest of the Democrats ought to sound like. That's how it's meant to be done.

Today, I'm very proud to say that I'm from Wisconsin, and Russ Feingold is my Senator.

[Thanks, Mark]

Posted by Jonathan at 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Blackmailing Their Own

Go read Digby, including the punchline.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 05, 2006

Bush's Dangerous Ignorance

Iraq Politics

The memo referenced in this earlier post talks about a meeting that took place on January 31, 2003. The article includes this jaw-dropper:

There was also a discussion of what might happen in Iraq after Saddam had been overthrown. President Bush said that he "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups". [Emphasis added]

Bush apparently thought he was competent to make such a judgment — he's President, after all — but we know from other sources that only five days earlier Bush had no idea that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite. According to Peter Galbraith:

January 2003 the President invited three members of the Iraqi opposition to join him to watch the Super Bowl [on January 26]. In the course of the conversation the Iraqis realized that the President was not aware that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He looked at them and said, "You mean...they're not, you know, there, there's this difference. What is it about?"

There's ignorant, and there's so ignorant you don't know you're ignorant. Or maybe he just doesn't care: he's President, so he thinks he can just follow his gut.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:30 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Somebody Please Make It Stop

A high Justice Dept. official argues that Bush has the power to order assassinations on US soil. See firedoglake.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:36 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

New Leaked Memo On Bush-Blair Prewar Discussions

Iraq Politics

In the unlikely event that there's anybody out there who still doubts that Bush's (and Blair's) kabuki with UN Resolutions, WMD claims, etc., came long after the decision to attack Iraq had already been made, you might want to read this.

Bush wanted, among other things, to paint a U2 spy plane in UN colors and fly it over Iraq in hopes the Iraqis would take a potshot at it. Foreign policy à la Inspector Clouseau.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:22 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

February 03, 2006

Write A Book, Get Banned From Flying

James Moore, bestselling author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential discovers he's now on the No Fly list:

I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.

Nixon's enemies list was small potatoes. These people have way too much power, and they're way too eager to misuse it. It's maddening to think that if you get on the list you've got no recourse. Kafka meets Orwell.

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

Wind Blah, Ethanol Blah, Alternative Energy Blah Blah Blah

Energy Politics

There's talk, and there's action. Buried at the very bottom of a NYT article today on Bush's energy talk in the SOTU, we find this:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. [Emphasis added]

Of course, we knew it was just speechifyin', but still. This is kinda, shall we say, ironical.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:35 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Assorted Links Of Interest

Crazy deadline pressure at work, but here are a few links of interest...

Some people don't know how not to cheat. House Republicans rig their own internal election.
According to this analysis (via John Robb), GDP growth has been negative for the past five years if housing construction is subtracted out. If the numbers are right, it corroborates James Kunstler's assertion that suburban sprawl is pretty much the only engine driving the US economy lately.
Now that I've ordered my Prius, Peugeot has announced diesel/electric hybrids that will get 80 mpg. Still in the prototype stage, however, so I don't feel too bad yet.
A new book claims broadband companies have outright stolen $200 billion of our money by not delivering on already paid-for upgrades. That's $2000 per household involved. The US has fallen to 16th in broadband, with DSL rates 100 times slower than countries like Japan and Korea.

That's it for now. Gotta run.

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

February 02, 2006

Good Ol' Onion

The Onion proves once again why it deserves to call itself America's Finest News Source (the Daily Show aside):

President Creates Cabinet-Level Position To Coordinate Scandals
In his State of the Union address to the nation last night, President Bush announced a new cabinet-level position to coordinate all current and future scandals facing his party.

"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush's plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

The Scandal Secretary will log all wiretaps and complaints of prisoner abuse, coordinate paid-propaganda efforts, eliminate redundant payoffs and bribes, oversee the appointment of unqualified political donors to head watchdog agencies, control all leaks and other high-level security breaches, and oversee the disappearance of Iraq reconstruction funds. He will also be responsible for issuing all official denials that laws have been broken.

"Many of the current scandals in Washington are crucial to the success of my priorities for the nation," Bush said. "The Department of Corruption will safeguard these important misdeeds."

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card characterized the president's announcement as part of a larger effort to usher in a "new era of scandal management." [...]

The Scandal Secretary will choose the elected official or business leader who will assume full responsibility for each scandal once it reaches fruition. His department will pen all tearful apologies and plea agreements and make all necessary arrangements for the designated scapegoat's transition to a think tank, consultancy, law-partner position, or, if unavoidable, cursory stint in a minimum-security prison.

Leading candidates for Scandal Secretary include Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, and FEMA's Brownie. Formidable competition indeed.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

February 01, 2006

On Reducing US Dependence On Middle East Oil

Energy Peak Oil Politics

Bush has gotten a lot of press today for his SOTU vow to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by 75% by 2025. Except, the White House now hastens to add, he didn't really mean it. Knight-Ridder:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region," he said. [Emphasis added]

So it was bull, and they knew it was bull, but they said it anyway because it was something "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands". How you "understand" something that's not true is left as an exercise for the reader.

On the other hand, oil geologist Byron King notes, a 75% reduction in US oil imports from the Middle East is really a prophesy, not a goal. It's going to happen, but not for the reasons Bush cited:

Replace 75% of US oil imports from the Mideast by 2025? Viewed in another way, this is not a "goal," it is a prophesy. There is no way that the US will be importing as much oil from the Mideast in 2025 as it imports today. And there is no way that the nations of the Mideast will be exporting as much oil in 2025 as they are exporting today.
Whether or not the Bush statement is a "goal," in 2025 the US will not be importing much in the way of petroleum from the Mideast, nor from anyplace else. The oil just will not be there for one side to export, nor for the other side to import. Welcome to the future. [Emphasis added]

Bush had nothing to say about coal other than a mention of "zero-emission coal-fired plants" — the idea here is to store carbon dioxide emissions below ground. No mention at all of natural gas, which is likely to become a critical problem even sooner than oil.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:27 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Cindy Sheehan's Side Of The Story

Activism Politics Rights, Law

You've probably heard that Cindy Sheehan was arrested in the House chamber last night before the SOTU address, and you may have heard various versions of what happened.

Cindy tells what actually happened, here.

Glenn Greenwald explains that US law is clear — wearing a t-shirt on Capitol grounds is specifically called out as not constituting a "demonstration":

In Bynum v. U.S. Capitol Police Bd. (Dist. D.C. 1997) (.pdf), the District Court found the regulations applying 140 U.S.C. § 193 — the section of the U.S. code restricting activities inside the Capitol — to be unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. Bynum involved a Reverend who was threatened with arrest by Capitol Police while leading a small group in prayer inside the Capitol. The Capitol Police issued that threat on the ground that the praying constituted a "demonstration."
That action was taken pursuant to the U.S. Code, in which Congress decreed as follows: "It shall be unlawful for any person or group of persons wilfully and knowingly...to parade, demonstrate or picket within any Capitol Building." 140 U.S.C. § 193(f)(b)(7).

As the Bynum court explained: "Believing that the Capitol Police needed guidance in determining what behavior constitutes a 'demonstration,' the United States Capitol Police Board issued a regulation that interprets 'demonstration activity,'" and that regulation specifically provides that it "does not include merely wearing Tee shirts, buttons or other similar articles of apparel that convey a message. Traffic Regulations for the Capitol Grounds, § 158" (emphasis added).

I wish I had a t-shirt for every time Bush mouthed the words "liberty" and "freedom" in his speech last night. Orwell lives.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 31, 2006

NASA's Top Climate Scientist Says He Is Being Censored

NASA's top scientist on global warming issues says the Bush administration is trying to shut him up since he called for prompt greenhouse gas emissions reductions in a speech in December. NYT:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, [NASA's] deputy assistant administrator for public affairs...[said] that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen. [...]

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan. [...]

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide. [...]

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents. [...]

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said...that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." [...]

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews. [...]

But Dr. Hansen and some of his colleagues said interviews were canceled as a result.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority. [...]

Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Mr. Deutsch was asked about the conversations, he flatly denied saying anything of the sort. Mr. Deutsch referred all interview requests to Mr. Acosta.

Ms. McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen? I don't have a dog in this race. And what does Hansen have to gain?" [...]

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading independent scientific body, praised Dr. Hansen's scientific contributions and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the world," Dr. Cicerone said. "I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've read many of his papers, starting in the late 70's. Every single time, in writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration it's been."

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing. [Emphasis added]

This is both infuriating and sickening, to put it mildly. We already know that the Bush administration is the most anti-science administration in living memory, but given what's at stake, stifling of debate on an issue like global warming is nothing short of criminal.

Scientists can only be interviewed in the presence of handlers. That's how totalitarian regimes operate. America ain't what it used to be.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:55 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 30, 2006

Congressional Staffers Routinely Edit Wikipedia Entries

I guess it was inevitable, but the Lowell Sun reports that Congressional staffers have made more than 1,000 edits of Wikipedia entries in just the past six months:

The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan [D-MA] wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.
The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.

Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said he authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker.

Your tax dollars at work.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 23, 2006

Molly Ivins Has Had It Up To Here

You've probably seen this, but in case not, here's Molly Ivins on Hillary Clinton and the weak-kneed Democratic Party establishment:

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief. [...]

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF? [...]

You [Washington Democrats] sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this — that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town. [Emphasis added]

Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily smart, talented woman. She could be a towering figure. Let's hope she gets a clue.

(One minor quibble with Ivins' piece: I'm not sure Eugene McCarthy was quite the hero people remember. Yes, it was inspiring when he stepped forward in 1968 and ran against the Vietnam War, and it made an important difference, but it's also hard not to see it as a piece of political opportunism: when he lost the nomination he completely disappeared from the antiwar scene. (By 1980, he was endorsing Ronald Reagan.) The antiwar movement did have real heroes: people who stayed in the struggle year after year after year, not just for the length of a primary campaign. None of which has anything to do with Ivins' critique. I'm just saying.)

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

January 19, 2006

Insider Trading By Frist And DeLay Staffers Alleged

There is such a foul stench blowing out of Republican Washington these days.

In an Air America interview, Congressman Brian Baird says that staffers working for Bill Frist and Tom DeLay, and possibly others, have used insider information about provisions in upcoming bills to daytrade in the stocks of affected companies. In some cases, they did their own daytrading; in other cases, they passed the information on to allies. This isn't illegal, for some reason (Martha Stewart can't be happy about that), but it sure is unethical. Their gains came at the expense of other investors who lacked inside information.

Listen to the four-minute interview here (courtesy of AmericaBlog).

Posted by Jonathan at 08:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

The Dems Are Blowing It

Digby makes a convincing case that the Dems, by following in the Republicans' footsteps and coming out with their own "corruption reform" package, are blowing it. The Republicans have been operating a corrupt criminal enterprise. The solution lies in the criminal justice system, not in assorted changes to the rules in Congress. That should be the message. Excerpt:

By coming up with this "reform package" we [Democrats] have managed to make people think this is about reforming arcane congressional rules when it is actually about a bribery and protection racket. And that is exactly what the Republicans wanted us to do. After all, if it's only a matter of changing a few rules, they can do that themselves and just move along. [...]
The problem is that Democrats listen to conventional wisdom and bad strategists who all insist that you have to have a positive agenda or people will hate you. This is because when they do focus groups people always say they hate all the negativity and they just want politicians to tell us what they are going to do to fix things.

That is bullshit. People say that because they think that's what they are supposed to say. They don't know how much they are being manipulated by all the negative images and so they simply say they don't like them. It doesn't mean they don't respond to them. It's subliminal. The Democratic party needs to hire a top psychologist to explain this to them — or find a politician who has good instincts. [...]

The problem is that Reid and the rest of the Democratic party believed that they had to "offer a solution" because otherwise the public would think they are just being negative...But had they simply said, "this is way beyond lobbying reform. Republicans like Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have been running a criminal enterprise out of the US congress," they could have framed the argument as Republican criminality instead of systemic problems that can be fixed with a few changes in the rules. [...]

[T]he Democrats have stepped on their own most potent argument — the Republicans are in charge and they are running a corrupt criminal enterprise out of the House and Senate. Even a Republican Justice department could not avert its eyes from the rampant criminality. Duke, DeLay, Abramoff, Rove, Libby, Safavian.... all of them and many more are either under indictment, pled guilty or remain under suspicion. This is not business as usual and the solution isn't another package of rules changes about who buys the pizza. [Emphasis added]

Have Washington Democrats been asleep for the past dozen years? Republicans impeached the President of the United States over a meaningless blowjob. They didn't worry about sounding negative. They hammered home the same basic message for years on end: Clinton is a liar and a cheat. And it worked for them. Just think if Clinton had actually been guilty of one-tenth of what the Republicans have been doing.

Maybe some Democrats think that playing hardball makes them no better than Republicans. Well, guess what. Duke, DeLay, Abramoff, Rove, Libby, Safavian, et al — unlike Clinton — are up to their eyeballs in serious crimes that need to be prosecuted. It's not some phoney Ken Starr witchhunt. And if they can do this kind of stuff and emerge with just a few minor bruises, then it's game over. The Democratic Party may just as well go out of business.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:13 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

January 16, 2006

Superpower No More

Economy Iraq Politics

A post from last week pointed out that US GDP growth is being fueled entirely by debt. Old-school conservative Paul Craig Roberts (former Senior Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former Asst. Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan — which is to say, no liberal) agrees. He goes further, blaming the Bush administration and its disastrous war for bringing the US to the brink of an economic abyss. Excerpts:

President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy, along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This figure is five to 10 times higher than the $200 billion Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated.

Lindsey was fired by Bush because his estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for Dub-ya.

Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. [...]

Stiglitz's $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz's.

Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war's diversion of the nation's attention away from the ongoing erosion of the U.S. economy. [...]

>In 2005, for the first time on record, consumer, business and government spending exceeded the total income of the country.>

America can consume more than it produces only if foreigners supply the difference. China recently announced that it intends to diversify its foreign exchange holdings away from the U.S. dollar. If this is not merely a threat in order to extort even more concessions from Bush, Americans' ability to consume will be brought up short by a fall in the dollar's value, as China ceases to be a sponge that is absorbing an excessive outpouring of dollars. Oil-producing countries might follow China's lead.

Now that Americans are dependent on imports for their clothing, manufactured goods and even high technology products, a decline in the dollar's value will make all these products much more expensive. American living standards, which have been treading water, will sink.

A decline in living standards is an enormous cost and will make existing debt burdens unbearable. Stiglitz did not include this cost in his estimate. [...]

The ladders of upward mobility are being rapidly dismantled by offshore production for U.S. markets, job outsourcing and importation of foreign professionals on work visas. [...]

This fact is made abundantly clear from the payroll jobs data over the past five years. December's numbers, released on Jan. 6, show the same pattern that I have reported each month for years. Under pressure from offshore outsourcing, the U.S. economy only creates low-productivity jobs in low-pay domestic services.

Only a paltry number of private sector jobs were created — 94,000. Of these 94,000 jobs, 35,800 — or 38 percent — are for waitresses and bartenders. Health care and social assistance account for 28 percent of the new jobs, and temporary workers account for 10 percent. These three categories of low-tech, nontradable domestic services account for 76 percent of the new jobs. This is the jobs pattern of a poor Third World economy that consumes more than it produces.

America's so-called First World superpower economy was only able to create in December a measly 12,000 jobs in goods-producing industries, of which 77 percent are accounted for by wood products and fabricated metal products — the furniture and roofing metal of the housing boom that has now come to an end. U.S. employment declined in machinery, electronic instruments, and motor vehicles and parts. [...]

When manufacturing leaves a country, engineering, R&D and innovation rapidly follow. Now that outsourcing has killed employment opportunities for U.S. citizens and even General Motors and Ford are failing, U.S. economic growth depends on how much longer the rest of the world will absorb our debt and finance our consumption.

How much longer will it be before "the world's only remaining superpower" is universally acknowledged as a debt-ridden, hollowed-out economy desperately in need of IMF bailout? [Emphasis added]

The guy sounds like James Kunstler. Kunstler has long insisted that the US economy consists nowadays of little more than the creation and servicing of suburban sprawl: construction, retail, hair cutting and fast food — the stuff that cannot be outsourced overseas. Roberts' figures bear this out, at least as regards new job creation. When the construction bubble bursts, what then?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:20 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

January 15, 2006

Suicidally Dumb

Boldly moving to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the House Democratic Caucus has announced its choice to lead the Dems' Abramoff ethics probe: Rep. James Clyburn, who himself is under an ethics shadow for taking a junket on Abramoff's dime. It just doesn't get any dumber than this.

The only positive: the left blogosphere at least has the integrity not to make up some lame justification just to toe the party line. Here, for example, is Jane Hamsher:

We're not Michelle Malkin or the Powertools sitting here, please don't expect us to line up behind this shit just because you Say So. I'm not going to look for excuses to make this right. It undermines every argument we're trying to make about Abramoff and the architecture of the dirty GOP money machine.
This is just so stupid and wrong in so many ways I don't have words for it.

Me either.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:53 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

January 14, 2006

A Fiery Wreck

Atrios on the new Medicare prescription drug plan:

By all accounts a FIERY WRECK, unsurprisingly. Tried to warn you.
If I were the Democratic version of Grover Norquist, tasked with sending out their weekly telepathic talking points, every single Democrat would be fanning out throughout the land over the next couple of weeks demanding emergency legislation to overhaul the program and fix its problems. Town Halls with seniors, video with weeping granny unable to get her drugs from the local pharmacy, etc...

Right on.

Under a normal administration, the Medicare drug plan would be considered a major disaster and a blatant giveaway to Big Pharma. Front-page news. But these people have got so many major screwups active, it's hard to keep track. We can't let it go unnoticed.

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

January 13, 2006

Army Finally Commits To Sending New Body Armor

Iraq Politics

As reported here recently, a secret Pentagon study leaked to the NYT found that some 80% of the approximately 340 US troops who've died from torso wounds in Iraq could have been saved if they'd had proper body armor.

Now, three years too late, the Army is finally committing to production of 230,000 new sets of ceramic body armor plates this year. It remains to be seen if they'll meet their goal.

These guys never seem to do anything without a political motivation. Troops die; they drag their feet. A front-page story appears in the New York Times; they swing into action. Draw your own conclusions.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Reid Compares GOP Corruption To Organized Crime

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says GOP lobbying-related corruption reminds him of his time fighting the mob in Nevada. And he says it in Tom DeLay's hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle (via Atrios):

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.
Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family's station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.

Our nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.

The gangsters are the lobbyists, cronies and lawmakers who have banded together and abused their power to serve their own self-interest. The casinos are the Capitol, which has had its doors thrown open for special interests to waltz in and help themselves, and the victims, of course, are the American people. [Emphasis added]

For the particulars, read the rest. Give 'em hell, Harry.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 11, 2006

Alito, CAP, and ROTC

Alito's repeated claims that his membership in the openly racist and sexist Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) was based on his desire to defend ROTC and accord respect to the military not only doesn't ring true when he says it, it doesn't square with the record. See this.

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

January 09, 2006

Alito The Freeper

Go read Digby's take on Alito and his resentful ilk. Excellent.

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

Falwell: Alito Would Be Biggest Win In 30 Years

As the Alito hearings open, Jerry Falwell tells us what's at stake:

Christian conservative leader Rev. Jerry Falwell said on Sunday that confirming Federal Appeals Court judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court U.S. Supreme Court would be the biggest victory for his constituency in three decades.
"What we‘ve worked on for 30 years, to mobilize people of faith and value in this country, what we've done through these years is coming to culmination right now," Falwell said at a rally on the eve of Alito's confirmation hearing.

"Now we're looking at what we really started on 30 years ago, reconstruction of a court system gone awry," Falwell said at a rally at a Baptist church in Philadelphia and broadcast on Christian radio and television.

"There could be a reconstruction of the U.S. Supreme Court in our immediate lifetime," said Falwell. [...]

"Go to the telephone, write your letter, get to your U.S. senators. Let's confirm this man, Judge Alito, to the U.S. Supreme Court," Falwell said. "And let's make one more step toward bringing America back to one nation under God." [Emphasis added]

Let's hope the Dems are listening.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 08, 2006

Ministers Apply "Holy Oil" To Alito Hearing Seats

Three evangelical ministers says they applied "holy oil" to the seats in the hearing room for Alito's confirmation hearings. WSJ (via AmericaBlog):

Insisting that God "certainly needs to be involved" in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.
Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.

"We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.

Rev. Schenck called the consecration service the kick-off in a series of prayer meetings that will continue throughout the confirmation hearing.

Capitol Hill police said they weren't aware that the three had entered the hearing room earlier, but added that hearing rooms typically aren't locked because "they're not of interest to anyone." [...]

The three ministers insisted they weren't taking sides in the Alito debate. "This is not a pro-Alito prayer," insisted the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. With abortion, public prayer, gay marriage and right-to-life issues among those topping public debate, however, "God...is interested in what goes on" in the nomination hearing, Rev. Schenck said. [Emphasis added]

Simpletons.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:13 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Feingold Won't Rule Out Bush Impeachment

Vermont Guardian (via BuzzFlash):

If Pres. George Bush broke laws when ordering wiretaps and secret spying on U.S. citizens, a key Senate Democrat said he would not rule out calling for his impeachment.
"I think there is an orderly and dignified way to find out what happened," said Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. "And, if there was a legal violation there needs to be accountability ... you can't put the cart before the horse, but I would not rule out any form of accountability."

That would include impeachment, Feingold told reporters. [Emphasis added]

You go, Russ.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:23 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Dean Crushes Blitzer On Abramoff

Oh, baby. Stop what you're doing and watch this video clip (via Atrios). Howard Dean leaves Wolf Blitzer sputtering.

I'll be back later with a transcript.

UPDATE: Ok, here's my transcript, but watch the video if you can to get the full effect.

BLITZER: Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, who's now pleaded guilty to bribery charges among other charges, a Republican lobbyist in Washington — should the Democrats who took money from him give that money to charity or give it back?
DEAN: There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff. Not one. Not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a Republican, every person under investigation is a Republican, every person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal. There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money, and we've looked through all those FEC reports to make sure that's true.

BLITZER: [Stammering] But through various Abramoff-related organizations, and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that presumably originated with Jack Abramoff.

DEAN: That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either, there's no evidence...

BLITZER: What about Senator, what about, what about, what about Senator Byron Dorgan?

DEAN: Senator Byron Dorgan and some others took money from Indian tribes. They're not agents of Jack Abramoff. There's no evidence that I've seen that Jack Abramoff directed any contributions to Democrats. I know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved in this. They're scared. They should be scared. They haven't told the truth, and they have misled the American people, and now it appears they're stealing from Indian tribes. The Democrats are not involved in this.

BLITZER: [Long pause, apparently getting direction in his earpiece] [Sigh] Unfortunately, we, uh, Mr. Chairman, we've got to leave it right there.

I love how Blitzer says that money donated by Indian tribes "presumably originated with Jack Abramoff," with absolutely no evidence or basis in fact. Objective journalism at its finest.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:16 PM | Comments (113) | Link to this

January 07, 2006

Al Qaeda Stopped Using Phones Long Ago

9/11 changed everything. Al Qaeda terrorism demands warrantless eavesdropping. It's a dangerous new world, blah, blah, blah. Except for one little thing. Washington Times (via Digby):

U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.
"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United States." [Emphasis added]

So, if it wasn't al Qaeda they were monitoring...

Posted by Jonathan at 07:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

56% Say Get Warrants First

Bush supporters ballyhooed a poll a couple of weeks ago that said:

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States.

But of course the question isn't whether the NSA should be allowed to do intercepts. The question is whether the NSA should be allowed do intercepts illegally — i.e., without warrants. A new AP poll shows most Americans think warrants should be required:

56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism. [...]
According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided.

Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants. [Emphasis added]

Republicans fancy themselves to be the party of Liberty, the party of limited government, the party that wants to keep government out of people's lives, but here they are, by a two to one margin, voluntarily surrendering their rights. Whatever happened to "give me libery or give me death"?

At least young people still care about their rights, which is encouraging.

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

Supporting The Troops

Iraq Politics

Support the troops, blah, blah, blah. But actions speak so much louder than words. NYT:

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials. [...]
The vulnerability of the military's body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until this September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine Corps officials acknowledge.

The Army, which has the largest force in Iraq, is still deciding what to purchase, according to Army procurement officials. They said the Army is deciding between various sizes of plates to give its 130,000 soldiers; the officials said they hope to issue contracts this month.

Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's unit that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops have died solely from torso wounds. [...]

The shortfalls in bulletproof vests are just one of the armor problems the Pentagon continues to struggle with as the war in Iraq approaches the three-year mark, The Times has found in an ongoing examination of the military procurement system. [...]

Almost from the beginning, some soldiers asked for additional protection to stop bullets from slicing through their sides. In the fall of 2003, when troops began hanging their crotch protectors under their arms, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force shipped several hundred plates to protect their sides and shoulders. Individual soldiers and units continued to buy their own sets. [...]

"Our preliminary research suggests that as many as 42 percent of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest," the study concludes. Another 23 percent might have been saved with side plates that extend below the arms, while 15 percent more could have benefited from shoulder plates, the report says. [Emphasis added]

The article has lots more on the extraordinary series of Pentagon screwups that continue to plague production of body armor and armored vehicles. The incompetence is stunning. It defies explanation. It's the icing on the cake of this whole Iraq disaster. An observer from Mars might conclude that the Pentagon's been taken over by a foreign power out to destroy the US military. They seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:59 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 06, 2006

AP Poll: Bush And GOP Continue To Sink

A new AP poll conducted January 3-5:

Direction of country — Wrong track: 65%
Bush's job approval — Disapprove: 59%
Bush's handling of economy — Disapprove: 59%
Bush's handling of domestic issues like health care, education and the environment — Disapprove: 62%
Bush's handling of foreign policy issues and the war on terrorism — Disapprove: 54%
Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq — Disapprove: 54%
Bush's handling of Social Security — Disapprove: 60%
Congress's job approval — Disapprove: 63%
If the election for Congress were held today, would you want to see the Republicans or Democrats win control of Congress? — Republicans: 36%, Democrats: 49%

If you think their backs are against the wall now, wait until the corruption indictments start coming in earnest. How long before they manufacture some new crisis, some new war? What else can they do? They can't offer us hope, or optimism, or solutions. Who would listen, who would believe them? They need us to be afraid. Fear's their only out.

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

January 05, 2006

Game, Set, Match

Glenn Greenwald, sitting in for Digby, explains with devastating clarity why the phony legal justifications being marshalled in defence of Bush's illegal wiretaps are just that — phony. Go read it.

Case closed. Court adjourned.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:32 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

"Signing Statements" — The Law Means What The President Says It Means

Courts often use "legislative intent" for guidance in interpreting laws: they look at statements legislators made during the discussion and debate accompanying a law's passage to flesh out what the legislators themselves intended the law to mean.

Twenty years ago, Bush's Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito suggested that presidents should similarly create a record of what they intend a law to mean when they sign it. WaPo:

As a young Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to help tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress's reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

Such "interpretive signing statements" would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent." [...]

The Reagan administration popularized the use of such statements and subsequent administrations continued the practice. (The courts have yet to give them much weight, though.)

President Bush has been especially fond of them, issuing at least 108 in his first term...Many of Bush's statements rejected provisions in bills that the White House regarded as interfering with its powers in national security, intelligence policy and law enforcement...

The Bush administration "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress," [says historian Phillip J. Cooper]..."This tour d'force has been carried out in such a systematic and careful fashion that few in Congress, the media, or the scholarly community are aware that anything has happened at all." [Emphasis added]

Is this just a matter of academic interest? Hardly. Last week, Bush used Alito's technique to signal that he reserves the right to ignore the McCain bill outlawing torture of prisoners. Boston Globe:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.
After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a "signing statement" — an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law — declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

"The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President...as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach "will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President...of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law. [...]

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

"The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,'" he said. "They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on." [Emphasis added]

There's a real constitutional crisis underway here. It's time people in Congress and around the country step up and start calling it what it is.

The White House is engaged in a game of constitutional chicken. It pretends that Commander in Chief means not what the Framers clearly intended — Commander in Chief of the army and navy — but Commander in Chief of the nation. And, the White House claims, as a coequal branch of government, the Executive is not bound by the laws of Congress.

That's where this is headed. That's the claim. The president is trying to become a law unto himself: let Congress and the courts stop him if they can. And now one of the architects of this view of presidential power, Samuel Alito, is about to be elevated to the Supreme Court. If Congress doesn't act, and forcefully, it may be hard to stuff this particular genie back into the bottle ever again.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 04, 2006

Sixty

ThinkProgress:

"Mr. Abramoff says he has information that could implicate 60 lawmakers," the WSJ reports.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Abramoff In A Nutshell

The LA Times nails the Abramoff story:

The corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff shows the significant political risk that Republican leaders took when they adopted what had once seemed a brilliant strategy for dominating Washington: turning the K Street lobbying corridor into a cog of the GOP political machine.
Abramoff thrived in the political climate fostered by GOP leaders, including Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who have methodically tried to tighten the links between the party in Congress and business lobbyists, through what has become known as the "K Street Project."

GOP leaders, seeking to harness the financial and political support of K Street, urged lobbyists to support their conservative agenda, give heavily to Republican politicians and hire Republicans for top trade association jobs. Abramoff obliged on every front, and his tentacles of influence reached deep into the upper echelons of Congress and the Bush administration.

Now, in the wake of a plea agreement in which Abramoff will cooperate in an influence-peddling investigation that might target a number of lawmakers, some Republicans are saying that the party will need to take action to avoid being tarnished.

"This is going to be a huge black eye for our party," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.)... [...]

Conservatives are worried about possible political fallout for all Republicans, not just those who might be implicated, once Abramoff starts cooperating with prosecutors.

"This is the one thing that could result in a change in who controls the Congress," said Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist. [...]

Abramoff did not just ply lawmakers with meals; he opened a restaurant and plied them with his meals. He did not simply hand out tickets to sporting events; he offered access to several luxury skyboxes. He did not arrange garden-variety golf outings; he brought golfers to the world's most exclusive courses. [...]

Critics of the campaign finance system say it would be a kind of rough justice if Republicans were hobbled by their relationships with a lobbyist, because they worked so hard to increase coordination between their party and K Street.

Republicans said their efforts were no different than what Democrats did for years to raise money and organize support from their constituencies, including labor unions and civil rights advocates. But Democratic critics said the GOP went much further in linking political money to policy outcomes, and that Abramoff was a master at maneuvering in a system that required lobbyists to "pay to play" on Capitol Hill.

"Jack Abramoff is a classic example of the pay-to-play system carried out in the extreme," said Fred Wertheimer, head of Democracy 21, a campaign-finance watchdog group. [Emphasis added]

That's it in a nutshell.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Liberal Media

Media Politics

A partial list of newspapers who editorialized that Bill Clinton should resign for lying about sex:

NATIONAL:
USA Today
ALABAMA:
The Mobile Register
Montgomery Advertiser

ARIZONA:
Tucson Citizen

CALIFORNIA:
San Jose Mercury News
The Orange County Register
The North (San Diego) County Times
The Record, Stockton

COLORADO:
The Denver Post

CONNECTICUT:
The Day of New London
Norwich Bulletin

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
The Washington Times

FLORIDA:
The Orlando Sentinel
The Tampa Tribune

GEORGIA:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Augusta Chronicle

ILLINOIS:
Chicago Tribune

INDIANA:
The Indianapolis Star
Chronicle-Tribune of Marion
South Bend Tribune
The Times of Northwest Indiana

IOWA:
The Des Moines Register

KANSAS:
The Topeka Capital-Journal

LOUISIANA:
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans
The News-Star, Monroe

MICHIGAN:
The Grand Rapids Press
Detroit Free Press

MINNESOTA:
Post-Bulletin of Rochester

MISSISSIPPI:
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo

MISSOURI:
Jefferson City News-Tribune

NEBRASKA:
Lincoln Journal Star

NEVADA:
Reno Gazette-Journal

NEW JERSEY
The Trentonian, Trenton

NEW MEXICO:
Albuquerque Journal
The Santa Fe New Mexican

NEW YORK:
Sunday Freeman of Kingston
Utica Observer-Dispatch

NORTH CAROLINA:
The Herald-Sun of Durham
Winston-Salem Journal

OHIO:
The Repository, Canton
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Cincinnati Post

OKLAHOMA:
The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
Tulsa World

OREGON:
Statesman Journal, Salem

PENNSYLVANIA:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

SOUTH CAROLINA:
The State, Columbia

SOUTH DAKOTA:
Argus Leader, Sioux Falls

TEXAS:
San Antonio Express-News
El Paso Times

UTAH:
Standard-Examiner, Ogden
The Spectrum, St. George
The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

VIRGINIA:
Daily Press of Newport News

WASHINGTON:
The Seattle Times

WISCONSIN:
The Post-Crescent, Appleton
The Journal Times, Racine

Clinton's mistake: he should have lied the country into war. Lied about weapons of mass destruction. Lied about torture. Lied about illegal surveillance of American citizens. Lied about leaks to smear his opponents. Anything. Just not about sex.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bipartisan, My Ass

Media Politics

Much of the mainstream media's tying itself in knots trying to portray the Abramoff scandal as bipartisan. It's nonsense. They are caving in to what is doubtless crushing pressure from the Republicans, but Abramoff's operation was at the very core of the Republican political machine. Everybody in Washington knows it.

Go read Digby.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:31 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

January 03, 2006

2006 Off To A Promising Start

Jack Abramoff has flipped. AP:

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff will plead guilty to federal charges in Washington and Miami, clearing the way for him to cooperate in a massive government investigation of influence peddling involving members of Congress, lawyers said Tuesday.
As part of the deal, prosecutors filed conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges against the embattled lobbyist. The filing outlined lavish gifts and contributions that it said Abramoff gave an unnamed House member, identified elsewhere as Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee, in return for Ney's agreement to use his office to aid Abramoff clients. [...]

Abramoff will plead guilty to two of the six charges in a federal indictment...Four other charges in Florida will remain pending. [...]

Abramoff's travels with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay are already under criminal investigation. The lobbyist's interactions with the Texas Republican's congressional office frequently came around the time of campaign donations, golf outings or other trips provided or arranged by Abramoff for DeLay and other lawmakers. In all, DeLay received at least $57,000 in political contributions from Abramoff, his lobbying associates or his tribal clients between 2001 and 2004. [Emphasis added]

You'd think these people would realize they're in the public eye and that the odds of exposure are therefore pretty good. It's like they just can't control themselves.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:25 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

January 02, 2006

Two Essential Points

Two essential points about the illegal NSA domestic eavesdropping that hadn't occurred to me before.

First point. If the Bush administration truly is interested in finding and bringing to justice terrorists within our borders, illegal wiretaps hurt that effort, since they produce information that is inadmissible in court. Think Progress:

Today, President Bush attempted to justify his secret domestic spying program:
The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people. In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they’re calling and why.

In fact, according to this explanation, the program was not only illegal but unnecessarily puts the American people at risk. [...]

Why? Because evidence obtained by Bush's warrantless domestic spying program is probably not admissible in court. Convictions obtained with evidence from this program may be overturned. Suspected terrorists are already pursuing appeals. [Emphasis added]

Second point. FISA was enacted specifically to prevent the NSA from turning its eavesdropping technology against Americans. This directly refutes White House claims that we're in a new world, one that FISA could not have anticipated. From security expert Bruce Schneier:

Decades before 9/11, and the subsequent Bush order that directed the NSA to eavesdrop on every phone call, e-mail message, and who-knows-what-else going into or out of the United States, U.S. citizens included, they did the same thing with telegrams. It was called Project Shamrock, and anyone who thinks this is new legal and technological terrain should read up on that program. [...]
A lot of people are trying to say that it's a different world today, and that eavesdropping on a massive scale is not covered under the FISA statute, because it just wasn't possible or anticipated back then. That's a lie. Project Shamrock began in the 1950s, and ran for about twenty years. It too had a massive program to eavesdrop on all international telegram communications, including communications to and from American citizens. It too was to counter a terrorist threat inside the United States. It too was secret, and illegal. It is exactly, by name, the sort of program that the FISA process was supposed to get under control.

Twenty years ago, Senator Frank Church warned of the dangers of letting the NSA get involved in domestic intelligence gathering. He said that the "potential to violate the privacy of Americans is unmatched by any other intelligence agency." If the resources of the NSA were ever used domestically, "no American would have any privacy left.... There would be no place to hide.... We must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is an abyss from which there is no return."

Bush's eavesdropping program was explicitly anticipated in 1978, and made illegal by FISA. There might not have been fax machines, or e-mail, or the Internet, but the NSA did the exact same thing with telegrams. [...]

This issue is not about terrorism. It's not about intelligence gathering. It's about the executive branch of the United States ignoring a law, passed by the legislative branch and signed by President Jimmy Carter: a law that directs the judicial branch to monitor eavesdropping on Americans in national security investigations.

It's not the spying, it's the illegality. [Emphasis added]

Interesting that you have to learn stuff like this from blogs.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

January 01, 2006

Tales Of The Weird

Let's face it. Our president is a strange, strange man. So strange it's scary. Digby knows.

(See also this blast from the past.)

Posted by Jonathan at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 29, 2005

Show Biz

Media Politics

Via Digby, some interesting thoughts on show biz and contemporary American politics. The people who create America's movies, comedy, music, and tv are overwhelmingly liberal, but somehow the Democrats fail to put all that talent to good use. Digby:

In the final days of the presidential campaign as John Kerry was being introduced by Bruce Springsteen on the stump with a moody, soulful solo rendition of "No Surrender" (which I loved) George W. Bush was landing in stadiums at sunset on the Marine one helicopter to fireworks and the theme to "Top Gun" screaming from the speakers. Which one do you suppose felt more like a rally?

The White House never misses an opportunity to turn every Bush appearance into a spectacle. They've got pros on their payroll. NYT:

Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops. [...]
The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.

For a speech that Mr. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone.[...]

"We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what the American people see," [White House communications director Dan] Bartlett said. "Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."

Liberals tend to view Republican night-rally stagecraft as distasteful, unethical, gauche — but it works. Digby quotes Nick Stoller, screewriter for "Fun With Dick and Jane":

Why didn't Michael Bay direct an awesome action adventure ad where John Kerry singlehandedly blows up the terrorist insurgency with a solemn nod of his granite-chiseled chin? Why weren't the writers of SNL and the Daily Show brought in to create hilarious, ruthless anti-Bush spots that would have been forwarded all around the internet? Why wasn't James Brooks hired to create a touching, pull-the-heartstrings Kerry-Edwards-cares-about-the-voter commercial? This schlock works — remember that 9/11 Bush ad where he's holding the crying girl? With the Hollywood talent the Democratic party has at its disposal, we could have blown that spot out of the water, made it look like a mediocre episode of Touched by an Angel next to our sinking of the Titanic. I don't care if you think "I am king of the world" is a cheesy line — it made people cry. Nothing Kerry said made people cry. Except perhaps accidentally, out of boredom or pain.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of the Republican Lite faction of the Democratic Party. Nor do I want to see liberals adopt a style based on disinformation and Republican-style up-is-down, black-is-white propaganda. But there is such a thing as making an honest point in a way that moves people, that uses imagery or satire to cut through the media fog in fresh and unforgettable ways. Comedy, especially, seems like an untapped resource. Funny clips spread on the web like viral wildfire. No airtime buy required.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bush's Numbers Continue To Tank

The conventional wisdom lately is that Bush's numbers are on the rebound. The facts say otherwise. The most recent CNN/USA Today Gallup polls:

Bush's job approval rating:
Approve: 41%
Disapprove: 56%
Opinion of Bush personally:
Favorable: 46% (a new low)
Unfavorable: 53%

So you've really got to love this 1998 item linked to by Digby:

(AllPolitics, December 20) — In the wake of the House of Representatives' approval of two articles of impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval rating has jumped 10 points to 73 percent, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows.

None of which seems to make much of a dent in the consensus narrative. Please stop saying that Bush is widely liked and well respected. He just isn't.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:55 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 28, 2005

Swift-Boating The War

Iraq Media Politics

Even President Bush admits the White House's prewar characterization of the threat posed by Iraq was mistaken, but that doesn't stop Move America Forward from airing tv ads claiming that Saddam Hussein did indeed have WMD and "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. WSJ:

The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions."
The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest — and most controversial — voices in the Iraq debate.

While even Mr. Bush now publicly acknowledges the mistakes his administration made in judging the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, the organization is taking to the airwaves to insist that the White House was right all along.

Similar to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — the advocacy group that helped derail John Kerry's presidential campaign — Move America Forward has magnified its reach by making small television and radio ad buys and then relying on cable- and local-television news outlets to give the commercials heavy coverage. Move America Forward has no discernible formal ties to the White House or the Republican National Committee, and the group says it operates independently from the Republican Party establishment. Still, the organization provides a clear benefit to the administration by spreading a pro-war message that goes beyond what administration officials can say publicly. [...]

Liberals question how the group has maintained its status as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, which requires strict nonpartisanship, given the anti-Democratic tone of its campaigns. The group's Web site, www.moveamericaforward.org1, for example, attacks the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, referring to "Howard Dean types who only see a future of failure for this country."

"When you have people participating in partisan activities with nonprofit dollars, that's really something the IRS needs to look at," says Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, another frequent target for Move America Forward's rhetoric. "An organization with a shady tax status participating in partisan activities and saying things that aren't true is a rogue element in American politics." [...]

MoveOn is a "political action committee," meaning its donations aren't tax-deductible and must be disclosed. [Emphasis added]

If an equivalent tax-exempt group existed on the left, does anyone doubt for an instant that the IRS would be all over them?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 27, 2005

Organized Crime

Economy Media Politics

From Jerome-a-Paris.

Once upon a time, a rising tide did lift all boats:

Then came the Reagan Revolution:

The after-tax picture is even worse:

How corrupt is American political/media culture? Ask yourself: how often do you see graphs like these in the mainstream.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:10 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 26, 2005

Unfair To Emperors

Steve Chapman in Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.
He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

Even people who should be on Bush's side are getting queasy. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says in his efforts to enlarge executive authority, Bush "has gone too far." [...]

[Bush] claims he can ignore the law because Congress granted permission when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. But we know that can't be true. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales says the administration didn't ask for a revision of the law to give the president explicit power to order such wiretaps because Congress — a Republican Congress, mind you — wouldn't have agreed. So the administration decided: Who needs Congress?

What we have now is not a robust executive but a reckless one. At times like this, it's apparent that Cheney and Bush want more power not because they need it to protect the nation, but because they want more power. Another paradox: In their conduct of the war on terror, they expect our trust, but they can't be bothered to earn it. [Emphasis added]

Something to bear in mind: the stuff we know about is doubtless only the tip of a very large iceberg. Yes, what we know is bad, but the full story — not that we'll ever learn it — is inevitably much, much worse.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:57 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

December 24, 2005

Data Mining Confirmed

What I've been saying for several days now — that the reason the White House didn't get warrants from FISA was because they were doing automated monitoring of enormous numbers of calls — data mining, in other words — appears to have been confirmed. NYT:

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said. [...]

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation. [...]

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. [...]

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists. [...]

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches. [...]

[T]he N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said. [Emphasis added]

The NSA has long had the capability to monitor, scan, and analyze international electronic communications. They vacuum up everything and run it through their computers. That's why they exist. But they've always been constrained, in theory anyway, from turning that capability inward to monitor US communications. It now seems clear, though, that what the Bush White House has done is turn the NSA loose to monitor US communications as well.

Don't be surprised if we still haven't got anywhere close to the bottom of this. The NYT article follows the White House spin by making it sound like the administration drew the line at communications that had an international endpoint. Don't be surprised, though, if it turns out they were gobbling up everything, international and domestic.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 23, 2005

Tip Of The Iceberg

News of more warrantless surveillance at US News (via Atrios):

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts. [Emhasis added]

There's lots more, here.

The stuff we're learning about is surely just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Robert Parry On The Imperial Presidency

This piece by investigative journalist Robert Parry (via ICH), gives the controversy over Bush's warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detentions, etc., much-needed historical context. It's a history Parry knows well, through personal involvement. Recommended.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:50 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

WaPo Debunks RNC Lies

WaPo (via ThinkProgress) debunks RNC lies:

The RNC asserted that Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter both authorized comparable forms of "search [or] surveillance without court orders." [...]
The RNC's quotation of Clinton's order left out the stated requirement, in the same sentence, that a warrantless search not involve "the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person." Carter's order, also in the same sentence quoted, said warrantless eavesdropping could not include "any communication to which a United States person is a party." [Emphasis added]

WaPo, good for you. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Posted by Jonathan at 01:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Alito v. Roe

In a newly-released 1985 memo, Samuel Alito called for overturning Roe v. Wade. AP:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned, a finding certain to enliven January's confirmation hearings.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said that the government "should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled." [...]

In paperwork released earlier from Alito's time in the Justice Department's solicitor general's office, he recommended a legal strategy of dismantling abortion rights piece by piece. And as part of an application for a job as deputy assistant attorney general, Alito said the Constitution does not guarantee abortion rights. [...]

Charles Fried, a Reagan administration solicitor-general, two decades ago noted the implications of the memo in his introduction, "I need hardly say how sensitive this material is, and ask that it have no wider circulation." [Emphasis added]

"No wider circulation" didn't exactly pan out.

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

Daschle: White House Sought War-Making Powers Within US

In the days immediately following 9/11, the White House wanted the Senate to grant President Bush open-ended war-making powers, included war-making powers within the United States. So writes Tom Daschle, Senate Majority Leader at the time, in Friday's Washington Post. The Senate refused. The White House claims now that the Senate implicitly gave the president the power to wiretap Americans without warrants; those claims are groundless. Daschle:

In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused. [...]

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress — but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language. [...]

If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. [Emphasis added]

So the White House wanted the Senate to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force in the United States and against those nations, organizations or persons" responsible for 9/11. They're lunatics.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:33 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 22, 2005

Here Comes Santa Claus, Here Comes Santa Claus...

Abramoff's going to flip. NYT:

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under indictment for fraud in South Florida, is expected to complete a plea agreement in the Miami criminal case, setting the stage for him to become a crucial witness in a broad federal corruption investigation, people with direct knowledge of the case said.
One participant in the case said the deal could be made final as early as next week. [...]

[A]fter a lengthy bargaining phase, Mr. Abramoff's lawyers and prosecutors in the Florida case appear closer to resolving several of the central issues in the plea deal, in which the defendant would receive a reduced prison sentence - most likely in the range of five to seven years, though that is fluid - in exchange for pleading guilty and agreeing to testify against his former associates.

Mr. Abramoff was indicted in Florida on Aug. 11 on charges stemming from his purchase of a fleet of casino boats in 2000. Prosecutors said Mr. Abramoff and a business partner, Adam Kidan, falsified documents and lied about their financing in order to complete the purchase. Mr. Kidan pleaded guilty last week, leaving Mr. Abramoff to face six criminal counts and up to 30 years in prison as case's sole defendant.

At the same time, prosecutors in Washington have been sifting through evidence of what they believe is a corruption scheme involving at least a dozen lawmakers and their former staff members, many of whom worked closely on legislation with Mr. Abramoff and accepted gifts and favors from him. Although Mr. Abramoff is also in negotiations in that case, it is unclear whether a settlement can be reached in time for both agreements to be announced at once.

Michael Scanlon, a close business associate of Mr. Abramoff in Washington who also worked on the SunCruz casino boat deal, pleaded guilty in October in exchange for testifying in both inquiries. The case, being worked on by dozens of investigators as part of a multiagency task force, has expanded in recent months to put senior Republican officials and prominent party lobbyists under immense scrutiny. [Emphasis added]

Joy to the world.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Darling Of The Right

Media Politics

Ann Coulter, yesterday:

I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

Lovely.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:44 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

CIFA	9/11, "War On Terror" Politics Rights, Law

The Pentagon has a three-year-old counterterrorism agency, size and budget secret, whose activities include "surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States." It's called CIFA. Ever heard of it? Me either. WaPo:

The Pentagon's newest counterterrorism agency, charged with protecting military facilities and personnel wherever they are, is carrying out intelligence collection, analysis and operations within the United States and abroad, according to a Pentagon fact sheet on the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, provided to The Washington Post.
CIFA is a three-year-old agency whose size and budget remain secret. It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities of units within the military services and Pentagon agencies to an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and ever-widening authority.

Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time . . . support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.

This is just one illustration of the growth of Pentagon activities in the United States and abroad as part of the terrorism fight. Last week, news accounts revealed that President Bush authorized secret eavesdropping on Americans with suspected ties to terrorist groups. [...]

CIFA manages the Pentagon database that includes Talon reports, consisting of raw, unverified information picked up by the military services on suspicious activities that could involve terrorist threats. The Pentagon acknowledged last week that the Talon database contained reports on peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations that should have been purged long ago under Defense Department regulations. [...]

A former senior Pentagon intelligence official, familiar with CIFA, said yesterday, "They started with force protection from terrorists, but when you go down that road, you soon are into everything...where terrorists get their money, who they see, who they deal with."

He added, noting that there had been no congressional oversight of CIFA, that the Defense Department is "too big, too rich an organization and should not be left unfettered. They rush in where there is a vacuum."

A former senior counterterrorism official, also familiar with CIFA, said, "What you are seeing is the militarization of counterterrorism."

CIFA's authority is still growing. In a new move to centralize all counterterrorism intelligence collection inside the United States, the Defense Department this month gave CIFA authority to task domestic investigations and operations by the counterintelligence units of the military services. [Emphasis added]

Operating within the US. No Congressional oversight. Secret budget. This stuff's out of control. Way out of control. I thought Republicans were supposed to be the party of limited government. Guess not.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Appeals Court Slams White House In Padilla Case

For more than three years, the Bush administration held Jose Padilla — an American citizen arrested on American soil but classified by the White House as an enemy combatant — in military custody, without charge and without trial. But when Padilla's lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department suddenly decided to indict Padilla on criminal charges and transfer him to an ordinary prison. The intention was obvious: to sidestep a Supreme Court confrontation. Wednesday, a clearly pissed-off appeals court told the administration they weren't having it. NYT:

A federal appeals court delivered a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration Wednesday, refusing to allow the transfer of Jose Padilla from military custody to civilian law enforcement authorities to face terrorism charges.
In denying the administration's request, the three-judge panel unanimously issued a strongly worded opinion that said the Justice Department's effort to transfer Mr. Padilla gave the appearance that the government was trying to manipulate the court system to prevent the Supreme Court from reviewing the case. The judges warned that the administration's behavior in the Padilla case could jeopardize its credibility before the courts in other terrorism cases.

What made the action by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., so startling, lawyers and others said, was that it came from a panel of judges who in September had provided the administration with a sweeping court victory, saying President Bush had the authority to detain Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, indefinitely without trial as an enemy combatant.

But the judges were clearly angered when the administration suddenly shifted course on Nov. 22, saying it no longer needed that authority because it now wanted to try Mr. Padilla in a civilian court. The move came just days before the government was to file legal papers in Mr. Padilla's appeal to the Supreme Court. The government said that as a result of the shift, the court no longer needed to take up the case. Many legal analysts speculated at the time that the administration's sudden change in approach was an effort to avoid Supreme Court review of the Fourth Circuit ruling.

In the opinion on Wednesday, written by Judge J. Michael Luttig, the court said the panel was denying permission to transfer Mr. Padilla as well as the government's suggestion that it vacate the September decision upholding Mr. Padilla's detention for more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant.

Judge Luttig, a strong conservative judicial voice who has been considered by Mr. Bush for the Supreme Court, said the panel would not agree to the government's requests because that would compound what was "at least an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court, and also because we believe that this case presents an issue of such especial national importance as to warrant final consideration by that court."

Judge Luttig wrote that the timing of the government's decision to switch Mr. Padilla from military custody to a civilian criminal trial, just as the Supreme Court was considering the issue of the president's authority to detain him as an enemy combatant, had "given rise to at least an appearance that the purpose of these actions may be to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court."

Prof. Carl W. Tobias of the University of Richmond Law School, who has written about the government's legal strategy in terrorist cases, said that the ruling on Wednesday was an extraordinary rebuff to the Bush administration by the judicial branch. [Emphasis added]

Not having a very good month, are they? Remember when they were riding so high, when everybody thought they were — and always would remain — untouchable? But the gods don't like hubris. Dumb hubris, least of all.

Their hubris told them this stunt with Padilla was a clever little gambit, but it was just dumb: transparent, clumsy, adolescent, and dumb. Like the appeals court wouldn't see through it.

They're unraveling.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:21 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 21, 2005

An Unscientific Poll

MSNBC online poll: Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

40,733 responses

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 88%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors." 4%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 7%
I don't know. 1%

Not a scientific poll, just an online click poll. Partly, it's the power of Atrios. Still, kinda fun.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

NYC Shut Down For $7 Million A Year

NYC remains in the grip of a transit strike which, it turns out, was provoked when the city blindsided the union with a deal-breaker proposal at the 11th hour of negotiations. The kicker is that the proposal in question would have saved the city a mere $20 million over the three-year life of the contract. For that, the city's shut down at the peak of holiday shopping. NYT:

[J]ust hours before the strike deadline, the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority's] chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in the authority's soaring pension costs, he asked that all new transit workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the first time in a quarter-century.
Yet for all the rage and bluster that followed, this war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years [the life of the contract].

It seemed a small figure, considering that the city says that every day of the strike will cost its businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. But the authority contends that it must act now to prevent a "tidal wave" of pension outlays if costs are not brought under control.

Roger Toussaint, the president of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said the pension proposal, made Monday night just before the 12:01 a.m. strike deadline, would effectively cut the wages of new workers by 4 percent. [...]

[T]he authority's pension demands would apparently save less over the next three years than what the New York City Police Department will spend on extra overtime during the first two days of the strike. [Emphasis added]

Maybe it was just testosterone poisoning or simple stupidity, but it's hard not to suspect that the city was looking for an excuse to turn people against municipal workers' unions. If I were a New Yorker, though, it wouldn't be the union I'd be cursing. The city brought this on. And it's not like the MTA's strapped for cash: this year they're running a surplus of $1 billion dollars.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:01 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Barbara Boxer Petition

Barbara Boxer's got an online petition urging Arlen Specter to hold hearings on Bush's wiretaps:

We, the undersigned Americans, urge you to hold thorough public hearings into the program of secret, warrant-less wiretaps authorized by President Bush since 2001. Congress must act to thoroughly investigate the President's actions now.
Clearly, protecting Americans from terrorism here at home must be the top priority of any Administration. But we certainly can do that without trampling on the Constitution in the process. Defending America means protecting our homeland as well as preserving our very rights and freedoms as citizens.

That's why Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, to protect national security while still preserving civil liberties. Why did President Bush consciously choose to violate federal law, even though the Act clearly states that FISA "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...and the interception of domestic wire and oral communications may be conducted"?

This egregious and repeated violation of American civil liberties by President Bush and his Administration requires a thorough Congressional investigation. That's why we urge you to hold hearings before you take up Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

I don't agree that "protecting Americans from terrorism here at home must be the top priority of any Administration" — if we really want to protect Americans we might want to do something about health insurance, poverty, cigarette smoking, auto safety, etc., all the things that kill far more Americans every month than were killed on 9/11 — but then that's not really the point of the petition, is it.

Sign here, and help keep the pressure on.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

FISA Was Adequate For Case Bush Cited

The LA Times reports that the case Bush cited to justify his warrantless domestic spying program is actually one that could easily have been handled under FISA. Moreover, Congress and the 9/11 Commission repeatedly asked the Bush administration what changes, if any, were needed in the FISA law. The administration chose instead to ignore the law. LAT:

In confirming the existence of a top-secret domestic spying program, President Bush offered one case as proof that authorities desperately needed the eavesdropping ability in order to plug a hole in the counter-terrorism firewall that had allowed the Sept. 11 plot to go undetected.
In his radio address Saturday, Bush said two of the hijackers who helped fly a jet into the Pentagon — Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar — had communicated with suspected Al Qaeda members overseas while they were living in the U.S.

"But we didn't know they were here until it was too late," Bush said. "The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."

But some current and former high-ranking U.S. counter-terrorism officials say that the still-classified details of the case undermine the president's rationale for the recently disclosed domestic spying program.

Indeed, a 2002 inquiry into the case by the House and Senate intelligence committees blamed interagency communication breakdowns — not shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any other intelligence-gathering guidelines. [...]

The current and former counter-terrorism officials, who requested anonymity, said there were repeated phone communications between a safe house in Yemen and the San Diego apartment rented by Alhazmi and Almihdhar. The Yemen site already had been linked directly to the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and to the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, several current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials familiar with the case said.

Those links made the safe house one of the "hottest" targets being monitored by the NSA before the Sept. 11 attacks, and had been so for several years, the officials said.

Authorities also had traced the phone number at the safe house to Almihdhar's father-in-law, and believed then that two of his other sons-in-law already had killed themselves in suicide terrorist attacks. Such information, the officials said, should have set off alarm bells at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Under authority granted in federal law, the NSA already was listening in on that number in Yemen and could have tracked calls made into the U.S. by getting a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Then the NSA could have — and should have — alerted the FBI, which then could have used the information to locate the future hijackers in San Diego and monitored their phone calls, e-mail and other activities, the current and former officials said.

Instead, the NSA didn't disclose the existence of the calls until after Sept. 11, according to these officials and U.S. documents produced in two independent inquiries.

"The NSA was well aware of how hot the number was...and how it was a logistical hub for Al Qaeda, and it was also calling the number in America half a dozen times after the Cole and before Sept 11," said one senior U.S. counter-terrorism official familiar with the case. [...]

This week, [former NSA chief] Hayden said that the program to eavesdrop without obtaining FISA warrants was necessary to respond to fast-moving terrorist threats, and that getting a FISA warrant was inefficient and slow.

But NSA and Bush administration officials were urged repeatedly by members of the joint inquiry and by the Sept. 11 commission to recommend FISA reforms that they felt were needed, said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint inquiry and former inspector general for the Pentagon.

She also said congressional committees held hearings on whether FISA needed an overhaul to better track international terrorism communications.

"The question was always asked of these witnesses: 'What do you need?'...There was plenty of time to raise this issue," Hill said Tuesday. "You don't just take it upon yourself to circumvent FISA. That attitude ignores the absolutely critical need for oversight." [...]

"It's total hubris. It's arrogance by the people doing this," said a second senior U.S. counter-terrorism official. "This is a 24-hour thing, and you can get these kinds of warrants immediately. I think they are just being lazy." [Emphasis added]

This is all beside the point if what they were really doing wasn't targeted wiretaps but broad-based, automatic call-scanning — basically taking the outward-facing machinery of the NSA and turning it inward, toward US citizens. It does, however, demonstrate that the publicly-presented rationales are completely bogus.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Cheney: War Powers Act Unconstitutional

Dick Cheney's views on presidential authority (ABC):

"I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it. And to some extent, that we have an obligation as the administration to pass on the offices we hold to our successors in as good of shape as we found them," he said. [...]
"Either we're serious about fighting the war on terror or we're not," the vice president said. "The president and I believe very deeply that there is a hell of a threat."

The vice president also told reporters that in his view, presidential authority has been eroded since the 1970s through laws such as the War Powers Act and anti-impoundment laws.

"Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam both during the '70s served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Cheney said. But he also said the administration has been able to restore some of "the legitimate authority of the presidency." [...]

Cheney said that "many people believe" the War Powers Act, enhancing the power of Congress to share in executive branch decision-making on war, is unconstitutional and said "it will be tested at some point. I am one of those who believe that was an infringement on the authority of the president." [Emphasis added]

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifically assigns to Congress the power to declare war, though there is apparently some debate among constitutional scholars exactly what that means.

In any case, in their zeal to expand presidential power, Bush and Cheney have shown us all how dangerous unchecked presidential power is. Let's hope the end result will be to usher in a new period of reform like the 70s Cheney so despises.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

FISA Judge Quits

One of the FISA judges has quit in protest of Bush's illegal program of warrantless surveillance. WaPo (via Atrios):

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work. [Emphasis added]

Momentum's building.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:15 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 20, 2005

Abramoff To Sing?

The GOP: from downhill slide to full-blown avalanche. NYT:

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.
Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."

Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

Prominent party officials, including the former House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, are under scrutiny involving trips and other gifts from Mr. Abramoff and his clients. The case has shaken the Republican establishment, with the threat of testimony from Mr. Abramoff, once a ubiquitous and well-connected Republican star, sowing anxiety throughout the party ranks. [Emphasis added]

If Abramoff sings, they're all toast.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:21 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Conservatives Use The I-Word

Conservative scholars Bruce Fein and Norm Ornstein yesterday on the Diane Rehm show, courtesy of ThinkProgress:

QUESTION: Is spying on the American people as impeachable an offense as lying about having sex with an intern?
BRUCE FEIN, constitutional scholar and former deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration: I think the answer requires at least in part considering what the occupant of the presidency says in the aftermath of wrongdoing or rectification. On its face, if President Bush is totally unapologetic and says I continue to maintain that as a war-time President I can do anything I want — I don’t need to consult any other branches — that is an impeachable offense. It's more dangerous than Clinton's lying under oath because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that...would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant.

NORM ORNSTEIN, American Enterprise Institute scholar: I think if we’re going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed. [Emphasis added]

And from Knight-Ridder (via ThinkProgress):

[Bush’s] explanation fueled more anger over the domestic spying, and some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment.
"The president's dead wrong. It's not a close question. Federal law is clear," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance law. "When the president admits that he violated federal law, that raises serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors." [Emphasis added]

Now we get to see who's a real conservative, and who's just in it for the tax cuts.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:08 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Liberty Or Death

The Hill (via dKos):

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: "Give me liberty or give me death."

Touché.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Straight Up Liar

Bush, April 20, 2004 (via Atrios):

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution. [Emphasis added]

Ok, he's not lying about sex, but still...

Update: Video here.

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

Bush Personally Tried To Derail NYT Story

Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek that Bush called the NYT's publisher and executive editor into the Oval Office two weeks ago to try to persuade them not to run their story on Bush's authorizing illegal wiretaps. And Alter uses the I-word. Excerpts:

President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate — he made it seem as if those who didn't agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda — but it will not work. We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president's desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists — in fact, all American Muslims, period — have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that "the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy." But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a "shameful act," it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story — which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year — because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had "legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force." But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary force" in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism. [...]

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [Emphasis added]

Quite an article for a mainstream news outlet. It could be they're dusting off the hot seat for Bush.

Like Nixon, Bush has forgotten that there are centers of elite power in this country who are quite capable of protecting their interests when a president gets out of control. He thinks he's all-powerful, a law unto himself, and that nobody can touch him, but he may be about to get an education.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 19, 2005

Rockefeller Wrote Cheney In July, 2003

Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence committee, was so concerned about the NSA program that he wrote Dick Cheney a handwritten letter about it back in July, 2003. It's clear that he was very, very disturbed by what he had learned in a briefing. Go read what Rockefeller says now, and read his letter here (PDF). [Via Digby]

An excerpt from the letter:

As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveiliance. [...]
I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate Intelligence Committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication. [Emphasis added]

His invoking of Poindexter's TIA suggests that my surmise in the previous post is probably correct: what they put in place was a very broad-based call-scanning operation, one that could not have been managed under FISA. Rockefeller's taking the step of saving a copy of the letter "in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces" of the committee is downright chilling. The guy sounds scared.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:10 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Is This Why They Couldn't Use FISA?

From Bush's press conference this morning:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Getting back to the domestic spying issue for a moment. According to FISA's own records, it's received nearly 19,000 requests for wiretaps or search warrants since 1979, rejected just five of them. It also operates in secret, so security shouldn't be a concern, and it can be applied retroactively. Given such a powerful tool of law enforcement is at your disposal, sir, why did you see fit to sidetrack that process?
THE PRESIDENT: We used the process to monitor. But also, this is a different — a different era, a different war, Stretch. So what we're — people are changing phone numbers and phone calls, and they're moving quick. And we've got to be able to detect and prevent. I keep saying that, but this is a — it requires quick action. [Emphasis added]

It's hard to read that without imagining Jon Stewart doing Bush. But, that aside, the following needs to be stressed one more time: all this stuff about FISA not being quick enough doesn't add up. Under FISA, you can wiretap now and get a warrant three days later. Your odds of getting turned down for the warrant are less than one in three thousand. But that doesn't matter anyway if the monitoring in question is over before the 72 hours expires.

So why didn't they use FISA? One possibility is that they were monitoring people they shouldn't have been and they didn't want anyone to know, not even a special national security judge operating in secret.

Another possibility, though, one that strikes me as more plausible, is that they were monitoring so many people, so many calls, that they didn't want the numbers to show up in FISA statistics. I.e., what they've done is put in place a broad-based, illegal, automatic call-scanning mechanism. FISA stats would have made that clear, so they couldn't go there.

In the context of a broad-based call-scanning operation, their complaint about FISA being "outdated" starts to make sense. FISA protects civil liberties by requiring that monitoring be targeted and specific. Under FISA, the NSA can't legally go fishing by scanning bazillions of calls. With good reason.

These are the same people, remember, who thought the Geneva Conventions' provisions against torture were "quaint". To them, FISA would seem equally so. They'd be unlikely to let it stand between them and a program to use NSA technology to broadly scan international calls, perhaps domestic calls as well.

Pure speculation, but plausible.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:46 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

What Checks? What Balances?

Digby:

[Bush is] trying to make the case that the congress somehow "approved" this action as a check to executive power.
This is not true. Notifying members of congress in a classified briefing they cannot disclose publicly is not a check. Intelligence committee members cannot give authorization to the president to break the law in the first place. And to say that "telling" them what they are going to do and then classifying the information so they cannot reveal it amounts to a check on executive power is to invoke dictatorial powers.

As an exasperated Carl Levin just pointed out, the check on executive power in these circumstances is written into the law. It's called the FISA court. And they have not yet given any reasonable explanation as to why they could not have applied for a review within the 72 hour period they are alotted after initiating the intercepts. They keep saying that they have to move fast and cannot wait and other gibberish about "long term monitoring" none of which adequately explains why they had to break the law.

The only thing we can assume from the information we have is that they didn't want anyone, not even a rubber stamp secret court, to know who they were monitoring. Now why would that be? [Emphasis added]

Maybe they didn't want anyone to know who they were monitoring (Howard Dean? Cindy Sheehan? Russ Feingold?). Or maybe they just wanted to assert their doctrine that 9/11 gives them carte blanche. Either way, we're at a fork in the road. Does the President have to obey the law or not?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Gonzales Q&A

Some good questions today at the press conference by Atty. Gen. Gonzales and former NSA chief Hayden. Excerpts from the White House transcript:

Q General, what's really compromised by the public knowledge of this program? Don't you assume that the other side thinks we're listening to them? I mean, come on.
GENERAL HAYDEN: The fact that this program has been successful is proof to me that what you claim to be an assumption is certainly not universal. The more we discuss it, the more we put it in the face of those who would do us harm, the more they will respond to this and protect their communications and make it more difficult for us to defend the nation. [...]

Q I wanted to ask you a question. Do you think the government has the right to break the law?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Absolutely not. I don't believe anyone is above the law.

Q You have stretched this resolution for war into giving you carte blanche to do anything you want to do.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, one might make that same argument in connection with detention of American citizens, which is far more intrusive than listening into a conversation. There may be some members of Congress who might say, we never —

Q That's your interpretation. That isn't Congress' interpretation.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, I'm just giving you the analysis —

Q You're never supposed to spy on Americans.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I'm just giving the analysis used by Justice O'Connor — and she said clearly and unmistakenly the Congress authorized the President of the United States to detain an American citizen, even though the authorization to use force never mentions the word "detention" — [...]

Q If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be — that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that — and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.

Q And who determined that these targets were al Qaeda? Did you wiretap them?

GENERAL HAYDEN: The judgment is made by the operational work force at the National Security Agency using the information available to them at the time, and the standard that they apply — and it's a two-person standard that must be signed off by a shift supervisor, and carefully recorded as to what created the operational imperative to cover any target, but particularly with regard to those inside the United States.

Q So a shift supervisor is now making decisions that a FISA judge would normally make? I just want to make sure I understand. Is that what you're saying? [...]

Q General, when you discussed the emergency powers, you said, agility is critical here. And in the case of the emergency powers, as I understand it, you can go in, do whatever you need to do, and within 72 hours just report it after the fact. And as you say, these may not even last very long at all. What would be the difficulty in setting up a paperwork system in which the logs that you say you have the shift supervisors record are simply sent to a judge after the fact? If the judge says that this is not legitimate, by that time probably your intercept is over, wouldn't that be correct?

GENERAL HAYDEN: What you're talking about now are efficiencies. What you're asking me is, can we do this program as efficiently using the one avenue provided to us by the FISA Act, as opposed to the avenue provided to us by subsequent legislation and the President's authorization.

Our operational judgment, given the threat to the nation that the difference in the operational efficiencies between those two sets of authorities are such that we can provide greater protection for the nation operating under this authorization.

Q But while you're getting an additional efficiency, you're also operating outside of an existing law. If the law would allow you to stay within the law and be slightly less efficient, would that be —

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALEZ: I guess I disagree with that characterization. I think that this electronic surveillance is within the law, has been authorized. I mean, that is our position. We're only required to achieve a court order through FISA if we don't have authorization otherwise by the Congress, and we think that that has occurred in this particular case. [Emphasis added]

Their position is ridiculous, but they don't care. They're saying: here's our argument, and we don't care if you think it's ridiculous, because there's nothing you can do to make us stop.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Briefing Congress

Senator Harry Reid (via Atrios):

The President asserted in his December 17th radio address that "leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it." This statement gives the American public a very misleading impression that the President fully consulted with Congress.
First, it is quite likely that 96 Senators of 100 Senators, including 13 of 15 on the Senate Intelligence Committee first learned about this program in the New York Times, not from any Administration briefing.

I personally received a single very short briefing on this program earlier this year prior to its public disclosure. That briefing occurred more than three years after the President said this program began.

The Administration briefers did not seek my advice or consent about the program, and based on what I have heard publicly since, key details about the program apparently were not provided to me.

Under current Administration briefing guidelines, members of Congress are informed after decisions are made, have virtually no ability to either approve or reject a program, and are prohibited from discussing these types of programs with nearly all of their fellow members and all of their staff. [Emphasis added]

They don't even try to tell the truth any more.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Making Their Own Laws

Making up their own laws as they go along. WaPo:

In a wide-ranging news conference this morning, Bush said his authority to have the National Security Agency eavesdrop without judicial involvement derived from his inherent constitutional powers as commander in chief as well as from the authorization for the use of military force approved by Congress in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Congress gave me authority," he said. [...]
Bush's comments followed a morning of television appearances and a briefing by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, seeking to rebut criticism from Democratic as well as some Republican members of Congress, who have questioned the source of the president's power to engage in eavesdropping without the involvement of a judge, as required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.)

Gonzales said that while FISA prohibits eavesdropping without court approval, it makes an exception where Congress "otherwise authorizes." That authorization, he said, was implicit in the authorization for the use of military force.

Responding to Gonzales this morning was Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) "Nobody, nobody, thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror, including myself who voted for it, thought that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States," Feingold said on NBC's "Today" show.

Bush and Gonzales both argued that they resorted to the new eavesdropping program because wiretaps under FISA were too slow because of the judicial participation.

"This is a different era, a different war," the president said. "People are changing phone numbers. We've got to move quick." [...]

"We also believe the authorization to use force that was passed by the Congress . . . constituted additional authorization for the president to engage in this kind of signals intelligence," he said.

FISA says that, "A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally . . . engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." Congress did indeed authorize the newly disclosed eavesdropping by statute, said Gonzales, when it passed the 2001 resolution called "Authorization for the Use of Military Force."

The resolution does not mention eavesdropping or detention, which the administration has also said is supported by the authorization. It says, "The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." [...]

At the briefing this morning, Gonzales was accompanied by the former head of the agency doing the eavesdropping, the National Security Agency, Michael V. Hayden, who now serves as deputy to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

"The whole key here is agility," Hayden said, explaining why the government avoided the court approval required by FISA. The program requires a "quicker trigger and softer trigger" than the FISA-approved eavesdropping, he said. [Emphasis added]

The "FISA is too slow" excuse is complete and utter bullshit. Josh Marshall:

FISA specifically empowers the Attorney General or his designee to start wiretapping on an emergency basis even without a warrant so long as a retroactive application is made for one "as soon as practicable, but not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General authorizes such surveillance."

The whole point of the FISA apparatus is to provide the kind of "quick trigger" they say they need. If they're not happy with the law as it stands, they don't get to just break the law. It's not up to them to decide what's legal. It's up to Congress.

The bottom line: this all shows why we badly need restrictions on the Patriot Act. This administration has demonstrated once and for all that "trust us, we won't abuse our powers" arguments are some kind of sick joke. And how do so-called "conservatives" justify lining up the way they do behind the breathtaking expansion of Federal power under these thugs? I thought their whole pitch was that government power needs to be limited. It's all too grotesque.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Please, Santa

What James Wolcott wants for Christmas: that this is true.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:02 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 18, 2005

The Heart Of The Matter

Regarding Bush's authorization of NSA wiretaps without warrants, Digby gets to the heart of the matter:

Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It's that the administration adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn't really John Yoo's theory at all; it was Dick Cheney's muse, Richard Nixon who said, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
This was not some off the cuff statement. It was based upon a serious constitutional theory — that the congress or the judiciary (and by inference the laws they promulgate and interpret) have no authority over an equal branch of government. The president, in the pursuit of his duties as president, is not subject to the laws. Citizens can offer their judgment of his performance every four years at the ballot box.

After the election, George W. Bush said this:

The Post: ...Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election.

He, like Nixon, believes that the president has only one "accountability moment" while he is president. His re-election. Beyond that, he has been given a blank check. And that includes breaking the law since if the president does it, it's not illegal, the president being the executive branch which is not subject to any other branch of govenrment.

John Yoo, the former deputy attorney general who wrote many of the opinion undergirding these findings (on torture as well as spying) explains that the congress has no right to abridge the president's warmaking powers. Its only constitutional remedy to a war with which they disagree is to deny funding; they can leave the troops on the field with no food or bullets.

I suspect that there are many more of these instances out there in which the administration has simply ignored the law. They believe that the constitution explicitly authorizes them to do so. [Emphasis added]

Let that sink in. Their doctrine is that the Executive, being a branch of government equal to the Congress, is not subject to the laws of Congress. I.e., Congress' laws are for the rest of the us, but the President is a law unto him/herself. It's hard to imagine a more radical reinterpretation of presidential powers. It's tantamount to a coup d'état. Russ Feingold was not indulging in hyperbole when he told CNN yesterday:

We have a president, not a king, and that's the way he's talking. What he's doing, I believe, is illegal. And it's really quite a shocking moment in the history of our country.

Feingold's written statement included the following:

The President's shocking admission that he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, without going to a court and in violation of the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, further demonstrates the urgent need for these protections. The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king.
On behalf of all Americans who believe in our constitutional system of government, I call on this Administration to stop this program immediately and to fully cooperate with congressional inquiries and investigations. We have had enough of an Administration that puts itself above the law and the Constitution. [Emphasis added]

This is serious. As Feingold said, this really is "quite a shocking moment in the history of our country." The White House has declared itself to be above the law and dares anyone to try and stop them.

The Republican-controlled Congress refuses to act. In an absolutely world-class understatement, Rep. Thomas Davis (R-VA), chair of the House Government Reform Committee said last week, "Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own." How lopsided is it? WaPo:

Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents. [Emphasis added]

Nauseating. And more than a little terrifying. You think it can't get any worse, and then it does.

If these people aren't stopped, democracy is over at the national level. You think I'm exaggerating, but just wait.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 17, 2005

Congress Does Not Have Same Access To Intelligence

Iraq Politics

I wish I had a dollar for every time Bush, Cheney, and their supporters made the claim that Congress had access to the same intelligence Bush did prior to the war.

This assertion has always been ridiculous on its face. Members of Congress don't get a daily briefing from the CIA. They can't pick up the phone and get the Director of the CIA, DIA, NSA, or FBI into their office any time they want. And members of Congress don't get raw intelligence before it's been shaped and filtered for their eyes. I.e., Congress gets what the the Executive chooses to give them. You don't need a security clearance to figure this out. It's obvious.

Now there's corroboration via a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The CRS writes:

By virtue of his constitutional role as commander-and-in-chief and head of the executive branch, the President has access to all national intelligence collected, analyzed and produced by the Intelligence Community. The President's position also affords him the authority — which, at certain times, has been aggressively asserted — to restrict the flow of intelligence information to Congress and its two intelligence committees, which are charged with providing legislative oversight of the Intelligence Community. As a result, the President, and a small number of presidentially-designated Cabinet-level officials, including the Vice President — in contrast to Members of Congress — have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods. They, unlike Members of Congress, also have the authority to more extensively task the Intelligence Community, and its extensive cadre of analysts, for follow-up information. As a result, the President and his most senior advisors arguably are better positioned to assess the quality of the Community's intelligence more accurately than is Congress.
In addition to their greater access to intelligence, the President and his senior advisors also are better equipped than is Congress to assess intelligence information by virtue of the primacy of their roles in formulating U.S. foreign policy. Their foreign policy responsibilities often require active, sustained, and often personal interaction, with senior officials of many of the same countries targeted for intelligence collection by the Intelligence Community. Thus the President and his senior advisors are uniquely positioned to glean additional information and impressions — information that, like certain sensitive intelligence information, is generally unavailable to Congress — that can provide them with an important additional perspective with which to judge the quality of intelligence. [Emphasis added]

The report stresses that what Congress sees are "finished intelligence products", i.e., reports that have been filtered and shaped by analysts:

Congress generally receives access to most finished intelligence products that are published for general circulation within the executive branch. A finished intelligence product is one in which an analyst evaluates, interprets, integrates and places into context raw intelligence.
...[C]ongressional access is limited to such finished products...

A number of classified intelligence products are not shared with Congress:

The President's Daily Brief (PDB) is a written intelligence product which is briefed daily to the President orally by a small cadre of senior Intelligence Community analysts...[I]ts dissemination is limited to the President and a small number of presidentially-designated senior administration policymakers.
Presidential Daily Brief Memoranda are products containing responses to questions posed by the President and any of the small number of designated senior policymakers who receive the PDB. After briefing the handful of designated policymakers, members of the analytic briefing team return to CIA each morning, and task Intelligence Community personnel to provide answers to the various inquiries posed during the each briefing session.

Senior Executive Memoranda are tailored analytic products that also can be produced in response to policymaker questions arising from PDB briefings.

National Terrorism Brief (NTB) is prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, is appended to the daily PDB, and is briefed to the President by the DNI.

The Director's Daily Report is prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and is used by the FBI Director to verbally brief the President.

Red Cell analyses are products that are speculative in nature and sometimes take a position at odds with the conventional wisdom.

Raw intelligence is unevaluated intelligence.

TDs (Telephonic Disseminations) are raw intelligence reports disseminated by the CIA's Directorate of Operations. TDs are slightly finished intelligence, in that they contain some commentary as to the credibility of the source providing the intelligence.

Chief of Station (COS) Reports are reports prepared by the CIA's chief representative in a particular country and contain the COS's views of the current situation. The COS can share his reports with the resident ambassador for comment, but is under no obligation to incorporate any comments by the ambassador into his final report.

Now, perhaps, the next time Bush or Cheney tells an interviewer that Congress had access to the same intelligence as they did before the war, the interviewer will call him on it. But don't hold your breath.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 16, 2005

Cafferty

9/11, "War On Terror" Media Politics

This is good.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:04 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Democracy, Ohio-Style

Ohio was the corrupt heart of the last election. Now, Ohio Republicans are pushing through a law that will pretty much guarantee their stranglehold on the Ohio vote in perpetuity. The Free Press:

A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor. Despite massive corruption scandals besieging the Ohio GOP, any hope that the Democratic party could win this most crucial swing state in future presidential elections, or carry its pivotal US Senate seat in 2006, are about to end.
House Bill 3 has already passed the Ohio House of Representatives and is about to be approved by the Republican-dominated Senate, probably before the holiday recess. Republicans dominate the Ohio legislature thanks to a heavily gerrymandered crazy quilt of rigged districts, and to a moribund Ohio Democratic party. The GOP-drafted HB3 is designed to all but obliterate any possible future Democratic revival. Opposition from the Ohio Democratic Party, where it exists at all, is diffuse and ineffectual.

HB3's most publicized provision will require positive identification before casting a vote. But it also opens voter registration activists to partisan prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. [Emphasis added]

Outrageous doesn't even begin to describe it. These people are gangsters, pure and simple.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:57 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Poll: Bush Least Popular, Most Warlike, Worst For The Economy

Dubya, the guy everybody was supposed to want to have a beer with, now ranks as the least popular of the last ten US presidents. Reuters (via Atrios):

President George W. Bush ranks as the least popular and most bellicose of the last ten U.S. presidents, according to a new survey.
Only nine percent of the 662 people polled picked Bush as their favorite among the last 10 presidents. John F. Kennedy topped that part of the survey, with 26 percent, closely followed by Bill Clinton (25 percent) and Ronald Reagan (23 percent).

Bush was also viewed as the most warlike president (43 percent), the worst for the economy (42 percent) and the least effective (33 percent). [Emphasis added]

They're on to him.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:50 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Score One For Feingold

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's efforts bore fruit today as the Senate snubbed the White House and the Senate Republican leadership by refusing to override a filibuster against reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act. AP:

The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.
In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent. [Emphasis added]

Way to go, Russ.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

US Torture Didn't Start With Bush

9/11, "War On Terror" Politics War and Peace

In their zeal to point out just how bad the Bush administration is, many of its critics talk as if the pre-Bush US was a paragon of virtue. So, for example, Bush's war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands, possibly more than 100,000, Iraqis. A horrifying number, to be sure, worthy of condemnation and outrage. But let's not forget that many times that number of Iraqis died because of the Clinton administration's economic sanctions against Iraq during the 90s. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people the US and its agents killed in Central America under Reagan and Bush I, or the 3-4 million people the US incinerated in Southeast Asia under Johnson and Nixon.

Perhaps nowhere is this historical amnesia more evident than in the current discussion of the Bush administration's use of torture. As Naomi Klein reminds us, the US has been making systematic use of torture for decades. Excerpts:

[T]he US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture."...[It is there that] the roots of the current torture scandals can be found. According to declassified training manuals, SOA students — military and police officers from across the hemisphere — were instructed in many of the same "coercive interrogation" techniques that have since migrated to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib: early morning capture to maximize shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food "manipulation," humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions — and worse. In 1996 President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment." [...]
[T]he embrace of torture by US officials long predates the Bush Administration and has in fact been integral to US foreign policy since the Vietnam War.

It's a history that has been exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records and truth commissions. In his upcoming book A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy [author of The Politics of Heroin] synthesizes this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an indispensable and riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture," based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training programs.

It's not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they blame abuses on "a few bad apples" — so too do many of torture's most prominent opponents. Apparently forgetting everything they once knew about US cold war misadventures, a startling number have begun to subscribe to an antihistorical narrative in which the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11, 2001, at which point the interrogation methods used in Guantánamo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact.

The principal propagator of this narrative...is Senator John McCain....McCain says that when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them." It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as McCoy writes, "its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam that killed more than twenty thousand suspects and tortured thousands more." [...]

Does it somehow lessen the horrors of today to admit that this is not the first time the US government has used torture to wipe out its political opponents — that it has operated secret prisons before, that it has actively supported regimes that tried to erase the left by dropping students out of airplanes? That, at home, photographs of lynchings were traded and sold as trophies and warnings? Many seem to think so. On November 8 Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott made the astonishing claim to the House of Representatives that "America has never had a question about its moral integrity, until now." Molly Ivins, expressing her shock that the United States is running a prison gulag, wrote that "it's just this one administration...and even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Dick Cheney." [...]

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never Before"? I suspect it has to do with a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of this Administration's crimes. And the Bush Administration's open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented — but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it: not the torture but the openness. Past administrations tactfully kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were practiced in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush Administration has broken this deal: Post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimized by new definitions and new laws.

Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the Bush Administration's real innovation has been its in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by US citizens in US-run prisons and transported to third countries in US planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette, more than the actual crimes, that has so much of the military and intelligence community up in arms: By daring to torture unapologetically and out in the open, Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability.

For those nervously wondering if it is time to start using alarmist words like totalitarianism, this shift is of huge significance. When torture is covertly practiced but officially and legally repudiated, there is still the hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and when those responsible merely deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the juridical person in man"; soon enough, victims no longer bother to search for justice, so sure are they of the futility (and danger) of that quest. This impunity is a mass version of what happens inside the torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them.

In Latin America the revelations of US torture in Iraq have not been met with shock and disbelief but with powerful déjà vu and reawakened fears...Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured in a Guatemalan jail, said, "I could not even stand to look at those photographs...so many of the things in the photographs had also been done to me. I was tortured with a frightening dog and also rats. And they were always filming."

Ortiz has testified that the men who raped her and burned her with cigarettes more than 100 times deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with an American accent whom they called "Boss." It is one of many stories told by prisoners in Latin America of mysterious English-speaking men walking in and out of their torture cells, proposing questions, offering tips. Several of these cases are documented in Jennifer Harbury's powerful new book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way. [...]

The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the current torture debate is that in the name of eradicating future abuses, these past crimes are being erased from the record. Every time Americans repeat the fairy tale about their pre-Cheney innocence, these already hazy memories fade even further. The hard evidence still exists, of course, carefully archived in the tens of thousands of declassified documents available from the National Security Archive. But inside US collective memory, the disappeared are being disappeared all over again. [...]

Already there are signs that the Administration will deal with the current torture uproar by returning to the cold war model of plausible deniability. The McCain amendment protects every "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government"; it says nothing about torture training or buying information from the exploding industry of for-profit interrogators. And in Iraq the dirty work is already being handed over to Iraqi death squads, trained by US commanders like Jim Steele, who prepared for the job by setting up similarly lawless units in El Salvador. [...]

Lawmakers will respond to pressure by eliminating one small piece of the torture apparatus — closing a prison, shutting down a program, even demanding the resignation of a really bad apple like Rumsfeld. But, McCoy says, "they will preserve the prerogative to torture." [Emphasis added]

As Klein points out, there is something truly ominous about a society's openly embracing torture while blandly proclaiming that whatever it does is, by definition, not torture. This is the stuff of Orwell and Pravda. But let's not kid ourselves. The US, like all exceptionally powerful nations throughout history, has routinely engaged in any number of bloody crimes.

We have the opportunity now, with torture out in the open and staring us in the face, to work to end it once and for all. We must resist all moves merely to push it back into the shadows so we can once again pretend our hands are clean.

And the mention of an "exploding industry of for-profit interrogators" is particularly horrifying. Please let's not let it come to that.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 15, 2005

A Christmas Poem From Rep. Dingell

Here (via Atrios).

Posted by Jonathan at 06:40 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Tax Cuts For Rich Followed By Cuts To Education

A week after passing another $100 billion in tax cuts, more than half of which go to people making $1 million or more, Republicans in Congress have cut education for the first time in more than a decade, as well as cutting medical research funding. Next up: cuts to Medicaid. The GOP's program of transfering wealth from America's neediest to America's wealthiest continues. AP:

Congressional Republicans made progress on twin tracks Wednesday toward their end-of-year budget goals, passing a bill freezing or cutting back spending on medical research and education and nearing agreement on cuts to the Medicaid health care program for the poor.
The first measure, a $602 billion bill funding a wide variety of health, education and labor programs, passed the House on a 215-213 vote. It would cut federal aid to education for the first time in a decade, and spread about $1.4 billion in cuts across the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

The separate budget bill is a cornerstone of the Republican agenda in Congress. [...]

Programs funded under President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law would face a 4 percent cut, while aid for special education and Title I funding for disadvantaged children would be frozen at last year's levels, assuming the across-the-board cut is imposed.

Passage of the bill caps a successful drive by Bush and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill to trim the budgets of most domestic agencies below prior-year levels. [...]

Democrats harshly attacked the bill as an assault on children and the poor.

"The holidays are supposed to be a time of generosity — a time when Santa Claus fills children's stockings," said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis. "Instead, this Congress is emptying them in order to provide a tax cut that gives 50 percent of the benefit to people making more than $1 million." [Emphasis added]

Bush, the self-styled education president, cuts 4% from his much-ballyhooed No Child Left Behind programs. Meanwhile, tax cuts for the rich are non-negotiable.

There's a name for this: class warfare.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

December 12, 2005

Pat Robertson: Criticism Is Treason

Iraq Media Politics

In Pat Robertson's world, the Iraq war has already been won, and wartime criticism of the president is treason. Here's Robertson last week (via MediaMatters):

We've won the war already, and for the Democrats to say we can't win it — what kind of a statement is that? And furthermore, one of the fundamental principles we have in America is that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and attempts to undermine the commander in chief during time of war amounts to treason. I know we have an opportunity to express our points of view, but there is a time when we're engaged in a combat situation that carping criticism against the commander in chief just doesn't cut it. And I think that yes, we have freedom of speech — of course we do — but this has gone over the top and I think the Republicans are — well, they've taken advantage. [Emphasis added]

The war's already been won — but it's also ongoing, so criticism is treason. We've got freedom of speech — but you can't use it to criticize the president, cuz he's commander in chief. Which, of course, is a "fundamental principle" of our democracy.

Poor Pat.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:48 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

December 09, 2005

US Delegation Walks Out Of Climate Talks

The Bush administration has been doing whatever it can to scuttle the global warming talks in Montreal, including walking out of the room when the subject of emissions reductions is raised (NYT):

Two weeks of treaty talks on global warming neared an end today with the world's current and projected leaders in emissions of greenhouse gases, the United States and China, still refusing to take any mandatory steps to avoid dangerous climate change.
The Bush administration was sharply criticized by environmental groups for walking out of a round of informal discussions shortly after midnight that were aimed at finding new ways of curbing gases beyond steps taken so far.

The walkout was widely seen here as the capstone of two weeks of American efforts to prevent any fresh initiatives from being discussed.

"This shows just how willing the U.S. administration is to walk away from a healthy planet and its responsibilities to its own people," said Jennifer Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund. [Emphasis added]

Compare that with what Bill Clinton told the delegates:

"I think it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future," Mr. Clinton said. "We know what's happening to the climate, we have a highly predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we know we have an alternative that will lead us to greater prosperity." [Emphasis added]

Money rules US politics and global warming doesn't show up on anybody's balance sheet, so it's all engines ahead full here on the Titanic.

If we don't do something significant, and quickly, future generations will despise us.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:28 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 08, 2005

Jon Stewart's Kwanzaa Gift To Bill O'Reilly

Humor & Fun Media Politics

A follow-up on yesterday's Bill O'Reilly and the fake war against Christmas item: Jon Stewart did a funny bit on it last night. Go here, and click "Secular Central".

And Atrios makes a good point: as silly as all this is, it's annoying that the wingnuts are managing to politicize what most people think of as a nice, loving holiday season that brings people together. Wedge Issues R Us.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

CFR Snubs Bush

What does the Establishment foreign policy elite think of Dubya? When Bush spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday — in Washington, no less — things didn't go so well. WaPo (via ThinkProgress):

The White House was not allowed to hang its usual slogans, such as "Plan for Victory," behind the presidential lectern. At the same time, Bush refused to honor the council tradition of taking questions from the audience, as Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have done. [...]
Only a few hundred members showed up for the hastily organized event at a Washington hotel and empty chairs were removed from the back of the ballroom before Bush arrived. The audience interrupted Bush for applause only once during the speech and even then, many, if not most, did not clap. There was polite applause when he finished.

He'd better stick to speaking at military bases.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

American Plan To Destroy European Support For Kyoto

Economy Environment Politics

The fundamental problem with unregulated capitalism: if it's more profitable to liquidate the global environment than to sustain it, capitalism will liquidate it. Even if it's ultimately suicidal to do so. Corporations are machines programmed to make short-term, tunnel-vision decisions based on a single prime directive: maximize profits. Here's the kind of thing that results (The Independent, via The Oil Drum):

A detailed and disturbing strategy document has revealed an extraordinary American plan to destroy Europe's support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change.
The ambitious, behind-the-scenes plan was passed to The Independent this week, just as 189 countries are painfully trying to agree the second stage of Kyoto at the UN climate conference in Montreal. It was pitched to companies such as Ford Europe, Lufthansa and the German utility giant RWE.

Put together by a lobbyist who is a senior official at a group partly funded by ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company and a fierce opponent of anti-global warming measures, the plan seeks to draw together major international companies, academics, think-tanks, commentators, journalists and lobbyists from across Europe into a powerful grouping to destroy further EU support for the treaty.

It details just how the so-called "European Sound Climate Policy Coalition" would work. Based in Brussels, the plan would have anti-Kyoto position papers, expert spokesmen, detailed advice and networking instantly available to any politician or company who wanted to question the wisdom of proceeding with Kyoto and its demanding cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

It has been drawn up by Chris Horner, a senior official with the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and a veteran campaigner against Kyoto and against the evidence of climate change. [...]

Mr Horner, whose CEI group has received almost $1.5m (£865,000) from ExxonMobil, is convinced that Europe could be successfully influenced by such a policy coalition just as the US government has been. [...]

Mr Horner believes the moment for his coalition is at hand and has been seeking support for it from multinational companies. In his pitch to one major company, he wrote: "In the US an informal coalition has helped successfully to avert adoption of a Kyoto-style programme by maintaining a rational voice for civil society and ensuring a legitimate debate over climate economics, science and politics. This model should be emulated... to guide similar efforts in Europe."

Elsewhere he claimed: "A coalition addressing the economic and social impacts of the EU climate agenda must be broad-based (cross industry) and rooted in the member states. Other companies (including Lufthansa, Exxon, Ford) have already indicated their interest!" [...]

While there is nothing illegal about the lobbying, the documents reveal a rare insight into the well-funded efforts within the US to influence opinion at senior levels of European corporations. Campaigners say the campaign is similar to a notorious lobbying effort carried out during the 1990s to undermine support for Kyoto within the US.

The revelation comes as international negotiators in Montreal are discussing the next step within Kyoto and the possibility of introducing new emissions targets. The Bush administration which has rejected the treaty has insisted it will not agree to any measures that legally bind it to reduce emissions. Mr Horner has been present this week in Montreal. [Emphasis added]

Individual corporations and their shareholders get to make a profit, but everyone on earth pays the price. The fatal flaw in the logic of (unregulated) capitalism: the entities acting on the environment don't bear the resulting costs, so they act as if the costs are zero. Right up until the day the world ends.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:16 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

December 04, 2005

Even Their Lies Are Idiotic

Iraq Politics

Paul Krugman on Bush's much-hyped National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (via Free Democracy):

It's an embarrassing piece of work. Yet it's also an important test for the news media. The Bush administration has lost none of its confidence that it can get away with fuzzy math and fuzzy facts — that it won't be called to account for obvious efforts to mislead the public. It's up to journalists to prove that confidence wrong.
Here's an example of how the White House attempts to mislead: the new document assures us that Iraq's economy is doing really well. "Oil production increased from an average of 1.58 million barrels per day in 2003, to an average of 2.25 million barrels per day in 2004." The document goes on to concede a "slight decrease" in production since then.

We're not expected to realize that the daily average for 2003 includes the months just before, during and just after the invasion of Iraq, when its oil industry was basically shut down. As a result, we're not supposed to understand that the real story of Iraq's oil industry is one of unexpected failure: instead of achieving the surge predicted by some of the war's advocates, Iraqi production has rarely matched its prewar level, and has been on a downward trend for the past year. [Emphasis added]

Read the rest for more examples.

It is amazing that the White House thinks it can get away with fakery this ham-handed and obvious. Your average blog couldn't get away with it; commenters would be all over it.

In a related story, Andrew Natsios has resigned as head of USAID. Natsios, you'll remember, is the clown who confidently predicted that Iraq's reconstruction would cost US taxpayers a mere $1.7 billion. Here's Natsios on Nightline in April of 2003 (via Think Progress):

TED KOPPEL: I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. [...]

KOPPEL: You’re saying the, the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion. No more than that?

NATSIOS: For the reconstruction. And then there's 700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don't competitively bid 'cause it's charities that get that money.

KOPPEL: I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?

NATSIOS: That is our plan and that is our intention. And these figures, outlandish figures I've seen, I have to say, there's a little bit of hoopla involved in this.

Unbelievable. Give him Brownie's old job over at FEMA.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:05 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 03, 2005

When In Doubt, Shoot 'Em Dead

Here's a deal-breaker on Alito. LA Times:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s views on abortion caused a stir this week, but another memo that surfaced from his years as a Reagan administration lawyer was notable for its strong support of the police.
Alito wrote that he saw no constitutional problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed teenager who was fleeing after a $10 home burglary.

I think the shooting [in this case] can be justified as reasonable," Alito wrote in a 1984 memo to Justice Department officials.

Because the officer could not know for sure why a suspect was fleeing, the courts should not set a rule forbidding the use of deadly force, he said.

"I do not think the Constitution provides an answer to the officer's dilemma," Alito advised.

The officer could not know why the suspect was fleeing, but he could probably safely assume that whatever his reason for fleeing, it wasn't something that had the death penalty attached.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw it differently than Alito:

A year later, however, the Supreme Court used the same case to set a firm national rule against the routine use of "deadly force" against fleeing suspects who pose no danger.
"It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape," wrote Justice Byron White for a 6-3 majority in Tennessee vs. Garner. "Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so."

The 4th Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government, and the high court said that killing an unarmed suspect who was subject to arrest amounted to an "unreasonable seizure."

Said White: "A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead."

The kid was 15 years old. He stole $10.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:54 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

Decline And Fall

From the PoorMan, via Digby:

Imagine that. Elect gangsters, get gangsterism. Look, it's a great thing that DeLay and Abramoff & Co. are getting in a bit of legal trouble now, but don't pretend that this is some example of the system working and the balance being restored, because it isn't. The worst case scenario for these guys is to spend a few years in a the nicest prison on Earth, followed by a career as an absurdly well-compensated and influential lobbyist, and kickbacks galore for you and yours. You can get a few years in prison for downloading mp3's on the internets, and your chances of getting a trashbag full of cash and a cake job when you come out the other end are very, very, very slim. And a decade or so of federal legislation is arguably worth even more than kelis_milkshake.mp3. Justice for these people, and for us, would be massive jail sentences for everyone involved, a mass nullification of nearly every piece of legislation and every judicial appointment since 1994 (at least), and the guilty parties and their bagmen paying us restitution with interest. That would make things right. Lots of luck. Whatever slap on the wrist these guys get, we got taken. [Emphasis added]

The current crop of Republicans have managed to make a virtue of corruption in a way that's new in my lifetime. When have we ever known public corruption to be this blatant, this shameless, this colossal in scale?

The following story from GNN, even though it's small potatoes compared to the billions stolen in Iraq and in the process of being stolen in the Katrina reconstruction, neatly captures, in its shamelessness, the state of our public morality:

It may go down in history as the world's most obscene birthday party...David H. Brooks, CEO of bulletproof vest maker DHB Industries, spared no expense for his 13-year old daughter's entry into adulthood. The girl and 300 of her closest [friends] were entertained recently in New York's Rainbow Room by Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Kenny G, Aerosmith and, believe it or not, 50 Cent...It was hosted by Tom Petty. The reported cost: $10 million. See the pics here. [...]
[W]here does a guy get $10 million to blow on a Bat Mitzvah? Well, it appears, from you, the American taxpayer. According to United for a Fair Economy, Brooks and Co. have made a tidy profit outfitting our nation's fighting men and women in body armor that allegedly couldn’t take a hit from a 9mm round:

David H. Brooks, CEO of bulletproof vest maker DHB Industries, earned $70 million in 2004, 13,349% more than his 2001 compensation of $525,000. Brooks also sold company stock worth about $186 million last year, spooking investors who drove DHB’s share price from more than $22 to as low as $6.50 [DHB was trading at $4.20 Wednesday]. In May 2005, the U.S. Marines recalled more than 5,000 DHB armored vests after questions were raised about their effectiveness. By that time, Brooks had pocketed over $250 million in war windfalls. [...]

According to a government memo uncovered in an eight-month investigation by the Marine Corps Times, the company's vests, made by DHB subsidiary Point Blank Body Armor, failed tests when they suffered "multiple complete penetrations" of 9mm pistol rounds and other ballistics. In the memo, government ballistics expert James MacKiewicz said his office "has little confidence in the performance" of the body armor.

It feels more and more like Rome after the Republic fell, never to be restored. And as bad as Caligula and Nero were, Rome still had a lot further to fall. Which is to say, things may get a whole lot worse before they get much better.

Once the idea of the public good is discredited, elites steal everything that's not nailed down, until there's nothing left — or until people rise up and stop them.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:24 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

December 02, 2005

"Two Words: Cheney's Guilty."

Media Politics

Crooks and Liars has the video of Dave Letterman's quite good interview of Maureen Dowd, here. I haven't watched Letterman in years, but I remember him as always playing dumb when it comes to politics. Not this time, though. Worth watching, but here are a few high points.

On Judy Miller and WMD:

Dowd: Well, basically the problem with Judy [Miller] was the same problem as Bob Woodward. They just needed a little more adult supervision.
Letterman: So, so she was printing stories about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And she was getting – her source was who, for those stories?

Dowd: Well, she was very close to Chalabi and the neocons in the administration. And then when she wrote her own account of it in the New York Times, she said that, um, she had gotten it totally wrong on weapons of mass destruction, but that she was only as good as her sources. So, then I wrote a column, I just said that’s not good enough because investigative reporting is not stenography, you can’t just put it in the paper and then let the administration use it to help make the phony case for war.

On Plamegate:

Dowd: "You don't have to pay attention to anything that's happening and you only need to remember two words"
Letterman: "Uh-huh."

Dowd: "Cheney's guilty."

On Bush:

Dowd: "He has Harriet Miers and Condi and Karen Hughes, and he's surrounded by sort of nanny governesses, like a little boy."

I'd transcribe more, but I gotta run. Watch it in full here.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Nutjob-In-Chief

According to Seymour Hersh, Bush believes he's God's instrument in the "war on terror":

Bush's closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush's first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President's religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that "God put me here" to deal with the war on terror. The President's belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that "he's the man," the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose. [...]
"The President is more determined than ever to stay the course," the former defense official said. "He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'" He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. "They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway," the former defense official said. Bush's public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. "Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House," the former official said, "but Bush has no idea." [Emphasis added]

Like everything else in George Bush's mental world, his religion is the cartoon religion of an especially simpleminded child. How smugly arrogant (and dim) do you have to be to believe that of all the people in the world you were hand-picked — not in some metaphorical sense, but literally — by the omnipotent and omniscient Creator of the Entire Universe? How dull-witted do you have to be to imagine that God meddles directly in human affairs, but the best He/She can come up with is to steer some election results? Is this how grownups think? And where do we get off pointing fingers at the religious fanaticism of Osama, et al, when our very own Osama believes he's killing on the instructions of ~~Allah~~ ~~God~~ the Invisible Avenger in the Sky?

In some societies, leaders are elders selected for their maturity and wisdom. Imagine.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:42 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

November 27, 2005

Open Source Politics, Part II

[Continued from Part I, yesterday]

The open source methodology has moved beyond software to all sort of things, from computer-based services like Wikipedia (which, if you haven't started to use, you should) to "bricks and mortar" activities like Architecture for Humanity. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently published an interesting list of projects that he thinks are worthy areas for open source/gift culture development in the near future.

But let me tell you why I'm writing all this.

Recently, as I was reading John Ralston Saul (thanks, DL), I was struck by this passage:

Nothing frightens those in authority so much as criticism. Whether democrats or dictators, they are unable to accept that criticism is the most constructive tool available to any society because it is the best way to prevent error. The weakness of rationally based power can be seen in the way it views criticism as an even more negative force than a medieval king might have done. After all, even the fool has been banished from the castles of modern power. What is it which so frightens these elites?

Reading that, it struck me that what we need is open source politics. I.e., transparent political processes that fearlessly invite inspection, critique, and alternative proposals. Political processes that harness the collective wisdom of us all, that aren't just the product of a handful of minds operating behind closed doors.

Think of it. Everything out in the open. Every idea judged on its merits, not according to its profitability or the constituency that stands to benefit from it. Every idea gone over with a fine-tooth comb, light shone into every dark corner, into every nook and cranny. Politics done by grownups.

One of the extraordinary features of the best open source projects is that they operate as meritocracies. Partly because the profit motive has been removed, people who work on open source projects tend to be smart, idealistic people who want the very best ideas to win. They're in it for the excellence. Open source projects don't succeed in spite of the lack of a profit motive; they succeed in part because of the lack of a profit motive.

It is doubtless overly idealistic to expect nations to be governed in such fashion — for now, anyway — but it's an ideal we can strive for, a model that holds a mirror up to politics as it's practiced today. In the meantime, it is a model that can be applied at the local level, or by groups working to development alternative proposals and policies.

It's a methodology that works. Let's expand its scope.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:35 AM | Comments (8) | Link to this

November 26, 2005

Open Source Politics, Part I

Activism Essays Politics

A particularly significant evolutionary development enabled by the Internet is the "open source" phenomenon.

First, there was open source software (like Linux), where a system's source code is published openly and a number of individuals scattered around the world — people who often have never met in person — collaborate loosely in its creation and improvement.

To the surprise of many, it turned out that people are eager to contribute their efforts and expertise in projects of importance, with no expectation of profit beyond the emotional satisfaction of doing quality work and gaining the respect and appreciation of others. I.e., people jump at the chance to take part in the "gift culture", as opposed to the "exchange culture" of ordinary work and commerce. (Non-commercial blogs can also be seen as part of the gift culture, or free culture, phenomenon.)

Maybe even more surprising, given the loose, largely decentralized organization of the average open source project, was the discovery that the results of open source development were in many cases of higher quality than what was being developed in closed, for-profit settings. In closed source development, a given section of code is typically examined by at most a handful of people, and often only by the author herself. In the open source model, hundreds or even thousands of people may inspect every line of code. The result, ideally, is that defects are quickly spotted and fixed.

Most of you reading this are using Microsoft Windows-based computers, and you may think open source software like Linux has only marginal importance. But read what Tim O'Reilly says in an illuminating essay on what he calls the open source paradigm shift:

I have a simple test that I use in my talks to see if my audience of computer industry professionals is thinking with the old paradigm or the new. "How many of you use Linux?" I ask. Depending on the venue, 20-80% of the audience might raise its hands. "How many of you use Google?" Every hand in the room goes up. And the light begins to dawn. Every one of them uses Google's massive complex of 100,000 Linux servers, but they were blinded to the answer by a mindset in which "the software you use" is defined as the software running on the computer in front of you. Most of the "killer apps" of the Internet, applications used by hundreds of millions of people, run on Linux or FreeBSD. But the operating system, as formerly defined, is to these applications only a component of a larger system. Their true platform is the Internet.

In another article, O'Reilly explains further how the Internet is based on open source software. Here are a few examples among the many he gives:

Every single internet address — both web and email — depends on the Domain Name System, or DNS. At the heart of the DNS is an open-source program called BIND...Given the importance of the Internet today, BIND is arguably one of the most mission-critical programs in the world.
And that's not all. Virtually any email message sent over the net relies on sendmail, the [open source] mail transport server that serves approximately 75% of all internet sites (including many at large companies that don't even know they are using it.) Because email messages are always handled by at least two mail servers in going from one site to another, chances are very good that almost every message relies on sendmail.

The Internet is based on open source software, developed for free. Open source software just works.

[To be concluded in Part II, tomorrow]

Posted by Jonathan at 02:49 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

November 23, 2005

The New Map

Remember all those red-state, blue-state maps after the 2004 election?

dreamingonempty at DailyKos had an inspired idea, creating this new map:

It's a whole new ballgame.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 22, 2005

Bush Planned To Bomb Al-Jazeera

Iraq Politics

President Bush isn't known for his deep thinking or emotional maturity, but still. Mirror:

President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem." [...]

[A]nother source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions." [...]

Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.

At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. [...]

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.

To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre. [Emphasis added]

Bombing al-Jazeera would have been an act of extreme recklessness, profoundly immoral, dumb beyond belief. The product of an adolescent mind. Not to mention, a war crime. Bush is a dangerous man: immature, amoral, and foolish.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:04 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

November 21, 2005

Jon Stewart Nails Cheney

Humor & Fun Iraq Politics

Go here and click on "Weakened Update" to watch The Daily Show With Jon Stewart nail a variety of targets, Dick "We'll be greeted as liberators" "Last throes of the insurgency" Cheney most of all. Be sure to catch the end.

Puts the rest of the media to shame.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 18, 2005

Fitzgerald Expects New Grand Jury Proceedings

Reuters:

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court filings that the ongoing CIA leak investigation will involve proceedings before a new grand jury, a possible sign he could seek new charges in the case.
In filings obtained by Reuters on Friday, Fitzgerald said "the investigation is continuing" and that "the investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury than the grand jury which returned the indictment" against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Fitzgerald did not elaborate in the document. [Emphasis added]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 17, 2005

Turning Point?

Iraq Politics

Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha is a Democrat, but he's no peacenik. Former Marine drill instructor and much-decorated Vietnam vet, Murtha rose through the ranks to retire as a colonel after 37 years of service.

Today Murtha introduced a resolution in Congress to "terminate" the US presence in Iraq. Murtha's military background means his stance is going to get people's attention; it may even come to be viewed as an important turning point in the debate on the war. From the resolution:

Section 1. The deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date.
Section 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S Marines shall be deployed in the region.

Section 3. The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy. [Emphasis added]

Murtha's statement was characteristically blunt and to the point. Excerpts:

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region. [...]
The main reason for going to war has been discredited. [...]

The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. [...]

George Washington said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." We must rebuild out Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in the coming decades. This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. The burden of this war has not been shared equally; the military and their families are shouldering this burden.

Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. [...]

[I]nsurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American causalities have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.

I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won "militarily." I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraq security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United Stated occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a "free" Iraq. [...]

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home. [Emphasis added]

Murtha's taken a bold step, one that will help move the debate forward. Still, it's incredibly frustrating, horrifying — and flat out weird, when you step back and look at it — how the whole arc of the war has been entirely predictable from the outset: defeating an army in the field is one thing, occupying a hostile population is something else again. All one has to do is read a little history. And yet we have insisted on dragging ourselves and the people of Iraq through the whole horrific disaster, step by bloody step, like sleepwalkers.

The Greek tragedians had it right. Hubris leads people to go down paths that inevitably, inexorably end in tragedy. It's like a magnet that draws us to our doom, and the tragedy doesn't end until the disaster is complete. Unfortunately, that suggests that this whole adventure may be far from over: Murtha is right, but the White House won't listen. They may even try to widen the war, gambling that a new 9/11 and a new war will rally public support.

Hubris. Ending in disaster.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:27 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Intelligence Officials: Suspend Rove's Clearance

Knight-Ridder:

Sixteen former CIA and military intelligence officials on Tuesday urged President Bush to suspend his top political adviser Karl Rove's security clearance following revelations that he played a role in outing CIA officer Valerie Plame.
"We are asking that you immediately suspend the clearances of all White House personnel who spoke to reporters about (Plame's) affiliation with the CIA. They have mishandled classified information and no longer deserve the level of trust required to have access to this nation's secrets," the former officials, some of whom were covert operatives, wrote Bush. [...]

They also urged Bush to make clear that he wouldn't pardon anyone who is convicted in the outing of Plame, who apparently was targeted because her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized the administration's justification for going to war in Iraq.

"If you take these steps you will be sending a clear message that your first priority is the nation's security, rather than your aides' well-being," they wrote.

Rove, identified as "Official A," in the Libby indictment, spoke with columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 about the fact that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee. Novak revealed Plame's identity in a July 14, 2003, column. [Emphasis added]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 15, 2005

Meltdown?

The right-wing Washington Times's Insight Magazine (via AmericaBlog) reports that President Bush is losing it like Nixon at the end:

President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration sources say. The president's reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity. [Emphasis added]

The rest of the article is subscription-only, but Drudge has more from it:

"The atmosphere in the Oval Office has become unbearable," a source said. "Even the family is split."
INSIGHT: Sources close to the White House say that Mr. Bush has become isolated and feels betrayed by key officials in the wake of plunging domestic support, the continued insurgency in Iraq and the CIA-leak investigation that has resulted in the indictment and resignation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions. [Emphasis added]

Drudge and the Moonie Times, whatever else they may be, are mouthpieces of the Right. So either Bush is losing it, or there are forces in the GOP who want people to think he's losing it. The former seems more plausible, but either is decidedly ominous. Add the persistent reports that Bush is drinking again, and the picture isn't a good one.

If it's true that Bush is only talking to his wife, his mother, Condi Rice, and Karen Hughes — women all, women he can count on to prop him up and hold him accountable for nothing — it suggests a man who, psychologically speaking, has curled up into a fetal position, pulled the covers up over his head, and just wants his Mommy. A man who's terrified. Who'd crawl back into the womb if he could. But as I wrote last month:

This is a [man]...who happens to command enough nuclear and conventional weapons to destroy the world many times over.
There is something unbelievably archaic and reckless about putting that much power in the hands of a single human being. It's like we think we're still a small band of primates living in the forest somewhere. The alpha male calls the shots.

Nobody should have that much power. Nobody. Human beings are highly fallible creatures. Sometimes, they're just flat out crazy. The only reason we accept the current state of affairs is that we are completely and foolishly in denial about its implications. But down here in the real world, not all stories have happy endings.

It has always been obvious to anyone with a modicum of psychological insight that Bush, the untreated alcoholic, is a very stilted, immature, and unstable man, and yet we entrusted him with the nuclear trigger. What does that make us?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:42 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

No Pardons

Harry Reid has an emergency petition addressed to President Bush, calling on Bush to pledge not to pardon Scooter Libby or anyone else convicted in the Fitzgerald probe:

Dear President Bush,
Scooter Libby should not be allowed to rely on his close relationship with you to obtain the kind of extraordinarily special treatment unavailable to ordinary Americans. To put it simply, a pardon in these circumstances would signal that this White House considers itself above the law. Only swift public action will make clear that you take seriously perjury and obstruction of justice at the highest levels of our government and that you meant what you said about bringing honor and dignity to the White House.

You must pledge not to pardon Scooter Libby or anyone else convicted as part of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation.

If Libby goes to trial, Cheney and others will be called to testify under oath. Bush can prevent all that by pardoning Libby up front. Would Bush even consider doing something so outrageous?

George Bush Senior derailed justice by pardoning half a dozen Iran-Contra figures (Caspar Weinberger, Dewey Clarridge, Clair George, Robert McFarlane, Elliott Abrams, and Alan Fiers) as one of his last acts in office. Former Secretary of Defense Weinberger's pardon stopped Weinberger from having to stand trial. One of the people who would have been compelled to testify under oath in that trial was Bush himself, and Bush had a lot to hide. Handy things, pardons.

Junior's going to want to follow in Poppy's footsteps. The petition can't prevent that, but it can raise public awareness of the pardon issue, and it helps to lay a foundation for embarrassing the Republicans if pardons do come down.

Go sign.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:54 PM | Comments (6) | Link to this

November 14, 2005

US Bars Prize-Winning Cuban Scientist

This is so unbelievably petty. AP:

A Cuban scientist who helped develop a low-cost synthetic vaccine that prevents meningitis and pneumonia in small children says he was offended the U.S. government denied his request to travel to the United States to receive an award.
Vicente Verez-Bencomo was to accept the award recognizing his team's technological achievement during a Wednesday ceremony at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif. He had also been invited to address a gathering of the Society for Glycobiology in Boston on Friday.

Verez-Bencomo said the State Department denied him a visa because the visit would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States."

"That is really offensive to me," the chemical engineer told The Associated Press as he sat on a stool inside the University of Havana's Synthetic Antigens Laboratory, where the vaccine was developed. "It's really a shame." [...]

"It's incomprehensible that a civilized nation can confuse someone who has dedicated his life to saving the lives of children with someone who goes against the interests of the United States," Verez-Bencomo said with a sigh. "I wasn't going there to talk about politics, I was going to talk about science."

Verez-Bencomo led a team that developed a vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type B, also known as Hib, a bacteria that causes meningitis and pneumonia. The diseases kill up to 700,000 children worldwide each year.

Before the development of a similar vaccine more than a decade ago, Hib was the biggest cause of meningitis among infants in the United States. That earlier vaccine has all but stamped out the disease in the western world, but mass immunizations are too expensive for many poor countries.

The synthetic vaccine created by Verez-Bencomo's team can be produced at a relatively low cost because antigens don't have to be grown in a bacterial culture, making it an attractive alternative for poorer nations.

So far more than 1 million doses have been administered to Cubans. Science Magazine last month said the vaccine "may someday save millions of lives." [Emphasis added]

How nice it would be to live in a civilized country with actual grown-ups in charge.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:08 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

November 13, 2005

Plastered

Is Bush drinking again? Go watch this. Tell me he's not loaded.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 12, 2005

Kennedy Assassination Site

The Mary Ferrell Foundation has launched a major new website (link via Xymphora) on the Kennedy assassination — the John Kennedy assassination, that is. It contains some 100,000 pages of scanned, searchable documents, many of them recently declassified. All kinds of stuff.

Such as the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, where we can read, for example, the testimony of Dallas motorcyle cop Bobby Hargis (read here, continued here), who describes how he was splattered with blood and brain when Kennedy was shot in the head. Thing is, Hargis was riding to the left and "just a little bit back" of the Kennedys. Which is to say, exactly where we would expect someone to be splattered as a result of a shot originating from the right and slightly ahead of Kennedy — i.e., from the Grassy Knoll, not the Texas School Book Depository building. You know — physics.

Or, read this, describing a memo from FBI Director Hoover himself, which says that information on the assassination was, within days of the assassination, "orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency". How about that.

There's a mountain of stuff there, and it's all searchable. Go poke around.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 11, 2005

Sound Familiar?

Why do Bush's speeches on Iraq all sound the same? Maybe because they are the same. See SadlyNo (via Atrios).

Posted by Jonathan at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Cracks In The Edifice

Moderate Republicans are beginning to get the picture. Knight-Ridder:

In a stunning breakdown of Republican unity, House leaders failed Thursday to muster enough votes to pass $50 billion in budget savings, their ranks torn between moderate and conservative wings that rejected pleas for party discipline.
The GOP leaders, faced as well with unified Democratic opposition, were forced to pull the budget bill off the House floor rather than see it defeated.

At the same time, rebellion by Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine, blocked the Senate Finance Committee from approving a $70 billion tax-cut package, another Republican priority.

The disruptive rifts in Republican ranks in Congress underscored the changing political landscape in Washington, as President Bush's popularity is waning and the governing party faces mounting public opposition on everything from the war in Iraq to sky-high gasoline prices.

In addition, Democratic victories and Republican defeats in Tuesday's elections signaled to Republican moderates that voters may be tiring of hard-edged conservatism, stiffening the moderates' spines and will to challenge the leaders.

The House leadership's failure to pass budget cuts came even after Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., agreed to placate moderate Republicans by removing a provision authorizing oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) — a provision long sought by the Bush administration but opposed by environmentalists. [Emphasis added]

Abandoning a sinking ship.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 09, 2005

Get Me Rewrite!

Via Think Progress, the White House doctors the transcript of a crucial press gaggle. Go listen and judge for yourself.

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

November 08, 2005

Flailing Wildly

Washington Republicans continue with their collective nervous breakdown.

Earlier today, Congress' top Republicans, Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, made a big, self-righteous stink about the Washington Post article that revealed the CIA's secret gulag. Frist and Hastert — shocked! shocked! — that anyone would leak classified national security information, demanded an immediate investigation to get to the bottom of it. LA Times:

With pressure mounting on the administration over its detainee policies, Republican House and Senate leaders today sought a Congressional probe into who leaked information on the existence of CIA-run secret prisons abroad to the Washington Post.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) circulated a letter asking the intelligence committees to "immediately initiate a joint investigation into the possible release of classified information to the media," about the existence of the prisons.

"As you know, if accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences," the pair said in their letter to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. [Emphasis added]

Dumb move. How dumb? Well, forget for the moment that the whole thing reeks of panic and desperation, with the GOP under investigation for national security leaks of its own. Forget that the investigation they were calling for, if they were to get it, would focus national attention on this administration's use of secret imprisonment and torture for months to come. Forget that the intelligence committees don't investigate leaks, that it's a Justice Department function.

Forget all that. But maybe, just maybe, at the very least, they should have figured out who leaked before they called the press conference.

CNN (via Atrios):

[Republican] Trent Lott stunned reporters by declaring that this subject was actually discussed at a Senate Republican luncheon, Republican senators only, last Tuesday, the day before the story ran in the Washington Post. Lott noted that Vice President Cheney was also in the room for that discussion and Lott said point blank "a lot of it came out of that room last Tuesday," pointing to the room where the lunch was held in the capitol. He added of senators, "We can't keep our mouths shut." He added about the vice president, "He was up here last week and talked up here in that room right there in a roomful of nothing but senators, and every word that was said in there went right to the newspaper." He said he believes when all is said and done it may wind up as an ethics investigation of a Republican senator, maybe a Republican staffer as well. Senator Frist's office is not commenting on this development. [Emphasis added]

Frist once again proves himself to be pretty much an out-of-control lunatic.

The question now is: since it appears that Republicans were the source of the leak, will Frist and Hastert stand by their assessment that it was "an egregious disclosure" with "damaging and dangerous consequences"?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bob Graham: Cheney Was A "Conspirator"

Iraq Politics

Miami Herald (via BuzzFlash):

Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida said Friday that he thinks Vice President Dick Cheney was a "conspirator" in a Bush administration campaign to discredit former ambassador Joe Wilson and expose Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
"This was one of the most reprehensible and damaging breaches of American security in modern times," said Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the fall of 2002, when the administration made its case for war against Iraq.

Graham called on Cheney to "defend and explain himself" in the wake of the indictment of Cheney's top aide, Lewis Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case. [...]

"It's impossible to believe that Scooter Libby would have done this on his own, but rather this was part of a larger conspiracy to attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson," Graham said. [...]

Asked directly if White House officials lied to the public about Iraq intelligence, Graham said "yes." [Emphasis added]

Clinton was impeached for what, again?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:47 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

November 04, 2005

Report: Kerry Thinks Election Was Stolen

Mark Crispin Miller has a very good new book (Fooled Again) that makes a convincing case that the 2004 persidential election was stolen. Miller appeared on Democracy Now today along with Mark Hertsgaard. In the interview, Miller dropped this bombshell:

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Speaking of John Kerry, I have some news for you. On Friday, this last Friday night, I arranged to meet Senator Kerry at a fundraiser to give him a copy of my book. He told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He said he doesn't believe that he is the person who can go out front on the issue, because of the sour grapes, you know, question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues about this with his Democratic colleagues on the Hill. He had just had a big fight with Christopher Dodd about it, because he said, you know, "There's this stuff about the voting machines; they’re really questionable." And Dodd was angry. "I don't want to hear about it," you know, "I looked into it. There's nothing there."
Well, there's plenty there, and let me add one thing: This is not a criminal case, okay? We don't have to prove guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is our election system, right? This is a system based on consent of the governed. If many, many millions of Americans are convinced that they got screwed on Election Day and couldn't vote, or if 3.4 million more Americans claim that they voted than the actual total of voters — this is what the Census Bureau told us last May — this is grounds alone for serious investigation, and I think Mark would agree with me here. We have to have serious investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: Did Senator Kerry say, when he said on Friday night, according to you, that he does think the election was stolen, did he say why he raced out the next day after, for months, the Democratic candidates had assured the voters that they would make sure every vote was counted? I mean, Mark Hertsgaard says in his own piece in Mother Jones, "It didn't help that Kerry conceded immediately, despite questions about Ohio. The American press is less an independent truth seeker than a transmission belt for opinions of movers and shakers in Washington. If the Democratic candidate wasn’t going to cry foul, the press certainly wasn't going to do it for him."

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, that's true. That was a real body blow to the democratic system, and it demoralized a lot of people when Kerry pulled out. It's hard to forgive him for that. Why did he do it? Well, according to my evidence and I've got this in Fooled Again, Kerry was swayed by the brain trust around him. These are people like, you know, Bob Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill — they’re, you know, Democratic Party war horses. I don't think they have a stellar record of winning campaigns, and I don't really understand how it is that they were hired to do this, but they persuaded him up in Martha's Vineyard that he should pull out, otherwise, he told John Edwards in his call, Kerry said, "They say that if I don't pull out, they are going to call us sore losers," as if there's — [...]

AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying, Mark Crispin Miller, that John Edwards didn't want to concede?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Absolutely not. I spoke to someone, a relative of his who was with him when the phone call came from Kerry. This is this in the book, Fooled Again. Kerry called him on the cell phone, and don't forget that Edwards himself, four hours before, had just been on national TV promising righteously to count every vote, got a big hand. Now he felt he was being made to look like a fool, and he argued with Kerry vehemently. He said, "It's too soon, you know. Wait." Kerry, you know, said this thing about how they will call us sore losers, as if that's worse than the country, you know, going fascist, whatever. And Edwards said quite understandably, "So what?" You know, "So what if they call us sore losers?" I mean, they are going to call them names in any case. But it's true, Mark is right, Kerry's caving in like that gave an enormous gift to the right wing. They could now claim, "Well, even their candidate doesn't think it was stolen." And they left, you know, the American people hanging out to dry there. [Emphasis added]

There is no more important story in America right now than the disgusting state of our election process. So of course we hear essentially zero serious discussion of it in mainstream media. As for Kerry, well, he is a Bonesman, after all.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Dicked

Afghanistan Iraq Politics

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff when Powell was Secretary of State, recently caused a flap by saying that US foreign policy had been hijacked by a "cabal" centered on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Yesterday, Wilkerson went further, saying Cheney's office was the source of directives that led to torture abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Cheney ran his own shadow NSC that spied on the official NSC. IHT:

Vice President Dick Cheney's office was responsible for directives that led to U.S. soldiers' abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a former top State Department official said Thursday.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, told National Public Radio he had traced a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office directly to Cheney's staff.

"The secretary of defense under cover of the vice president's office," Wilkerson said, "regardless of the president having put out this memo" - "they began to authorize procedures within the armed forces that led to what we've seen."

He said the directives contradicted a 2002 order by President George W. Bush for the U.S. military to abide by the Geneva conventions against torture.

"There was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense, down to the commanders in the field," authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, Wilkerson said.

The directives were "in carefully couched terms," Wilkerson conceded, but said they had the effect of loosening the reins on U.S. troops, leading to many cases of prisoner abuse, including at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, that were contrary to the Geneva Conventions.

"If you are a military man, you know that you just don't do these sorts of things," Wilkerson said, because troops will take advantage, or feel so pressured to obtain information that "they have to do what they have to do to get it."

He said that Powell had assigned him to investigate the matter after reports emerged in the media about U.S. troops abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both men had formerly served in the U.S. military [unlike Cheney].

Wilkerson also called David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, "a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions."

On Monday, Cheney promoted Addington to his chief of staff to replace I. Lewis Libby, who has been indicted over the unmasking of a CIA agent.

Wilkerson also told National Public Radio that Cheney's office ran an "alternate national security staff" that spied on and undermined the president's formal National Security Council.

He said National Security Council staff stopped sending e-mails when they found out Cheney's staff members were reading their messages.

He said he believed that Cheney's staff prevented Bush from seeing a National Security Council memo arguing strongly that the United States needed many more troops for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. [Emphasis added]

Billmon likes to refer to the White House as "the Cheney Administration". Looks like that's a whole lot more than just a figure of speech. And now Cheney has replaced Scooter Libby with a man who thinks the Geneva Conventions don't apply to President Bush. What is happening to this country?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:28 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 03, 2005

Evolution Deniers

In spite of everything that's happened (Osama still at-large, nonexistent WMD, the disaster that is Iraq, letting Katrina ruin a major American city, investigations and indictments galore, John Bolton, Karen Hughes, Harriet Miers, etc. etc.), 35% of Americans say they still approve of the job Bush is doing. Who are these people?

Another CBS poll may shed some light: a majority (51%) of Americans believe God created humans in their present form. Which makes you want to ask, "Dude, um, fossils?" I mean, it's one thing to question the neo-Darwinist explanation for evolution. But to say evolution did not occur at all?

A mere 15% of Americans take the scientific view: humans evolved without God's intervention.

God created humans in present form 51%

Humans evolved, God guided the process 30%

Humans evolved, God did not guide process 15%

In addition, the poll asked, "Is it possible to believe in both God and evolution?"

Yes No

All 67% 29%

Believe in evolution 90% 8%

Believe God created humans 48% 48%

There are just a lot of people out there who think they have to choose between God and science, that being religious means shutting one's eyes and one's mind to enormous quantities of objective data and scientific inference. If your intellectual world is one where evolution never occurred, evidence about things like WMD are unlikely to make much of a dent.

CBS didn't ask, but I think we can safely assume that the people who believe God created humans in their present form are many of the same people who believe — based on what actual evidence, one has to wonder — that Bush is a "Godly" man and therefore doing a job that by definition is worthy of approval.

Somehow, it doesn't seem to bother educated Republicans (they do exist) that their base is disproportionately made up of people untouched by the last century and a half of progress in science.

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

November 02, 2005

Worst. President. Ever.

A new CBS poll has Bush's approval rating at an all-time low. Again.

Favorable/unfavorable:

Favorable Unfavorable

George Bush 33% 51%

Dick Cheney 19% 44%

Bush's job approval:

Approve Disapprove

35% 57%

Question: "How important to the nation is the CIA leak matter?"

Scandal Great importance Some importance Little/none

CIA Leak 51% 35% 12%

Clinton-Lewinsky (1/98) 41% 21% 37%

Whitewater (3/94) 20% 29% 45%

Iran-Contra (2/87) 48% 33% 19%

Watergate (5/73) 53% 25% 22%

That last table is pretty stunning. The percentage of people who think the CIA leak is of great importance/some importance is greater than during any of the other major scandals, even Watergate. Imagine what would happen if the media actually started moving the story forward, a la Watergate. Washington Republicans must be flipping out. If the Dems play their cards right, 2006 could be a rout. One can hope.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:24 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Unhinged

Sometimes sarcasm says it best. Here's an Amazon reader's review of the latest dim-witted suppuration from the obnoxious Michelle Malkin:

Oh. My. God. This book... I, I just don't have the words to describe it. I don't know if there are enough words in the English language to describe Michelle Malkin. Fantastic? Amazing? Astounding? All that and so much, much more. In all honesty, I would have to say that this is the most important book since the Bible. No, make that INCLUDING the Bible.
This book is the most truthful book EVER written. If you only read one book in your LIFETIME, it should be this book. This book should ABSOLUTELY be required reading in ALL American high schools. And in junior high. And in elementary school, they could make an easy-to-read version. And they should make the kids read it over and over and over, memorize it in fact. It's all they'll ever need.

I would say that Michelle Malkin should be President, except that that office would be beneath her. That's how good she is. Journalist? She isn't a journalist. She's as beyond being a mere "journalist" as I am beyond being a single-celled protazoa. No, farther than that. If this world had any sense, she would be worshipped as a living goddess.

I can't give this book five stars, because five start just isn't enough. It should be ten stars, no twenty stars, no an INFINITY of stars. I guess zero is sort of the flip side of infinity so I gave it zero stars.

Hah!

Posted by Jonathan at 03:48 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Libby's Libido

The New Yorker (via Pandagon) has a review of sorts of a novel authored by one Scooter Libby. It's creepy stuff. This being a family blog, I won't quote much, but here's a sample:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

Nice imagination, fella. As the New Yorker article points out, right-wingers have a penchant for writing sleazy sex fiction, from Safire to Buckley to Liddy to Ehrlichmann to O'Reilly. And let's not forget the Starr Report. What is it with these guys?

Posted by Jonathan at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

November 01, 2005

How The News Works Now

Humor & Fun Media Politics

Tom Tomorrow sums it up.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 29, 2005

What About Rove?

Karl Rove wasn't indicted yesterday, but he clearly isn't off the hook. Rove's name is conspicuously absent from the Libby indictment narrative, and it's obvious he's "Official A", "senior official in the White House", the only figure not specifically named. AP confirms:

Late Friday, three people close to the investigation, each asking to remain unidentified because of grand jury secrecy, identified Rove as Official A.

Fitzgerald doesn't name Rove because Rove is the one figure in the narrative who still may be indicted. Fitzgerald is scrupulously avoiding prejudicing a possible future case against him. As Billmon says:

[O]f all the officials not mentioned by name in the indictment, Rove is the only one who isn't even identified by title. What does that tell you? He's special.
It's fairly clear now that the others — Marc Grossman, Ari Fleischer, John Hannah, etc. — aren't going to be indicted. They're cooperating witnesses, and Fitzgerald isn't worried about prejudicing their trials, because there aren't going to be any. Rove, er, I mean, Official A, on the other hand, is treated with studious neutrality. [...]

In other words, someone has tried very hard to keep Official A on ice, so to speak, while roasting Libby over an open Plame/Flame. Of course, that doesn't mean Fitzgerald will indict Rove, but it's the most tangible evidence that Rove remains in deep legal doo doo.

It's crunch time now for Libby. Does he try to cut a deal, or does he go away? Here's Jane Hamsher's take:

As it stands now, Fitzgerald has Libby on 30 years worth of counts and he's got him cold. No wiggle room. Libby may not do 30 years, but he ain't doing 6 months. Scooter's screwed. It was the Vice President's boon companion himself, David Gergen, who said on MSNBC today that this is squeeze time. John Dean reiterated it later on. [...]
There is no wobble in the indictments handed down today. It's pretty clear. Libby can cut a deal with Fitzgerald or swing. [...]

That's just the way Patrick Fitzgerald works. If the Hollinger case, and the Ryan case, and the Daley Case, and the Al Quaeda case and the Gambino case are any indication, Fitzgerald will now use what he's got to get more.

So if I were Dick Cheney, I wouldn't be sleeping very easy tonight. At the very best, his chief of staff was just popped for lying to protect him, and he can now look forward to being questioned in open court.

So, where does it go from here? I have no idea. But it does look like there are sound reasons for thinking this thing's not over yet. Fitzgerald has a history of taking things one step at a time. But even if no one else is indicted, if Libby stands trial, Fitzgerald will have the opportunity to get Dick Cheney under oath. That would be interesting.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:34 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 28, 2005

Libby Indictment

The indictment is here.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 27, 2005

Fitzgerald's Office Expanding

According to The Washington Note, Fitzgerald isn't shutting down his operation, he's expanding it. Excerpt:

What I have learned is that the Office of the Special Counsel has signed a lease this week for expanded office space across the street at 1401 New York Avenue, NW. [...]
More office space needed to shut down the operation?

I think not. Fitzgerald's operation is expanding.

Update: [10/27 3:00PM] TWN now says the story was wrong. Oops.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 26, 2005

Fitzgerald To Get New Grand Jury?

If UPI terrorism correspondent Richard Sale is right, things are about to get very interesting. Excerpt:

[M]ost press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.
The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.

Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.

That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes as no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament investigation into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeries or their dissemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said. [Emphasis added, several typos corrected]

Sale also says Libby and Rove will be indicted, and:

Others are to be named as well, these source said. According to U.S. officials close to the case a bill of indictment has been in existence [since] before October 17 which names five people. [Emphasis added]

The fact that Fitzgerald delivered detailed questionnaires to Cheney as recently as Monday certainly suggests that he's looking to take this higher than Libby and Rove.

If Sale is right and Fitzgerald gets a new grand jury, we may be looking at another Watergate. If Sale is right.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Waiting For Fitzy

Bloomberg:

The U.S. grand jury hearing evidence in the leak of a CIA agent's identity won't announce any indictments today, a Justice Department official said.

[Via Billmon]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 25, 2005

Indictments Tomorrow, Press Conference Thursday

The Washington Note claims to have this from an uber-insider source:

1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.
The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

Is any of this reliable? I have no idea.

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

Raw Story: Fitzgerald To Seek Indictments

Raw Story, which seems to have good sources on the Cheney/Libby/Rove/Plame investigation, says it has learned that Fitzgerald will indeed seek at least two indictments. Excerpt:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided to seek indictments in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and has submitted at least one to the grand jury, those close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.
Fitzgerald will seek at least two indictments, the sources say. They note that it remains to be seen whether the grand jury will approve the charges.

Those familiar with the case state that Fitzgerald may not seek indictments that assert officials leaked Plame's name illegally. Rather, they say that he will focus charges in the arena of lying to investigators. The sources said, however, they wouldn't rule out charges of conspiracy.

The specifics of the charges remain unclear, and they are not final, so charges beyond lying to the grand jury could certainly be handed down.

Any possible indictments are now in the hands of the grand jury. They are expected to be made public later this week.

Raw Story does not have information on who will be named in the indictments.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 22, 2005

Cabal Of Crazies

A couple of days ago, I quoted at length from a Financial Times report on a startlingly frank speech given by Colin Powell's former top aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Going back now and reading the speech itself, I see that there are some truly startling passages that weren't noted in the FT piece. You have to bear in mind that Wilkerson is a loyal soldier and government insider, not a bomb thrower, but he's clearly reached the end of his rope. Read this:

I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran. Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita — and I could go on back — we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence... what the founders say in a very different language than we use today. Read in there what they say about the necessity of the people to throw off tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do. And you're talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together. [My emphasis]

Let's recall what it is that the Declaration of Independence says on the subject:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [My emphasis]

Yikes.

The Washington Note (via Digby) reproduces in full an edition of "the uber-insider Nelson Report" (not available on the web), that looks at the Wilkerson speech and the question of whether Wilkerson was speaking for Powell and Richard Armitage. Excerpt:

[T]here is no question from private remarks and public grimaces, some reaching back to early 2001, neither Powell nor Armitage had or has much trust or respect for Rice, and they share with other senior Republican wisemen the conviction that Rumsfeld is quite literally mad, and Cheney a dangerous, vindictive monomaniac. [...]
Implicitly, President Bush must be faulted for not seeing how he was being manipulated by Rumsfeld/Cheney. We noted in a Report several years ago an eye-witness account of Cabinet meetings discussing Iraq WMD which confirms the picture painted yesterday by Wilkerson: the gist of our quote was that "Rummy and Cheney spend their time spinning-up Bush, while Condi sits there saying nothing, leaving Powell totally isolated and ineffective." [...]

Another topic of emotional importance in Wilkerson's talk, which clearly echoes Powell's personal concerns, was his denunciation of the "torture memo" and its effects, predicting "ten years from now, when we have the whole story, we are going to be ashamed."

What is he hinting? In some of the private chats noted above, Powell and Armitage have quoted President Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney as leading a collective round of ridicule when Powell, at Cabinet meetings, and Armitage, at Subcabinet, sought to put limits on mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo...long before the cancer of Abu Ghraib. [...]

The Bush Administration may well be imploding before our eyes, with incalculable complexities for the country, as a leadership vacuum makes rational government even more difficult that it is already, and Democrats remain rudderless and devoid of a coherent idea. [...]

No wonder Colin Powell looks ashamed as he talks about his pre-Iraq war WMD testimony to the UN...he was the witting tool of fools. [My emphasis]

Yikes.

Going back to Wilkerson's speech, we read this:

The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption...[W]e consume 60 percent of the world's resources. Well, we have an economy and we have a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation — and I don’t see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind — or we better be ready to take those assets. We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That's how serious we thought about it.

Yikes.

And this:

I haven't heard anyone lately saying they want a war with North Korea, for example. And the president was wonderful in that regard during some very tense deliberations over North Korea. He essentially put his foot down: I do not want a war on the Korean peninsula. And that was very helpful. It was very helpful. It didn't help us open negotiations, but it did help us fight off some other more — less desirable results. [My emphasis]

What does that mean? In the context of the speech, it almost certainly means that Cheney and Rumsfeld were pushing for war with North Korea, and it took Bush to stop them.

Yikes.

These guys are nuts, and the signs are everywhere that the Establishment has had enough. Monday's New Yorker will carry a blistering critique by Brent Scowcroft. UPI reports that the "article also contains some critical comments on the handling of U.S. foreign policy by the current President Bush from his father".

Yikes.

If you're of a conspiratorial frame of mind, you have to wonder if this isn't all purposefully building to a Watergate-like crescendo, with indictments to follow. I noted some time ago that the Bush White House was courting disaster by taking on the CIA. In these power struggles, the CIA has a way of coming out on top.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:45 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Rush Limbaugh, Satirist

Rush Limbaugh does satire. Who knew? The Rushbo (via Wampum):

My idea is this: The solution to the Harriet Miers issue. The president announces that he's withdrawing her from nomination to the Supreme Court because he's decided to appoint her to succeed Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve. He trusts her. She has filled out her own income tax forms all of her life, and she has done her personal banking all of her life. She knows banks, she knows tax reform, tax policy, and the president trusts her, so she could go to the Federal Reserve.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 20, 2005

Powell Aide: Cheney, Rumsfeld "Hijacked" Foreign Policy

Colin Powell's top aide charged that US foreign policy had been "hijacked" by a "cabal" centered around Cheney and Rumsfeld. Today's Financial Times (via Buzzflash):

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.
In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

"Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences."

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

"If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran." [...]

Among his other charges:

The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was "a concrete example" of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. "You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it."

Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was "part of the problem". Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, "she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president".

The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, "start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam...and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel". [My emphasis]

These are Bush's people, operating in Bush's administration. Final blame rests with him.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 18, 2005

Richard Clarke On Bush Administration Disaster Response

Former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke sure has a gift for trenchant criticism. Here he is in the November issue of The Atlantic:

Imagine if, in advance of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of trucks had been waiting with water and ice and medicine and other supplies. Imagine if 4,000 National Guardsmen and an equal number of emergency aid workers from around the country had been moved into place, and five million meals had been ready to serve. Imagine if scores of mobile satellite-communications stations had been prepared to move in instantly, ensuring that rescuers could talk to one another. Imagine if all this had been managed by a federal-and-state task force that not only directed the government response but also helped coordinate the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other outside groups.
Actually, this requires no imagination: it is exactly what the Bush administration did a year ago when Florida braced for Hurricane Frances. Of course the circumstances then were very special: it was two months before the presidential election, and Florida's twenty-seven electoral votes were hanging in the balance. It is hardly surprising that Washington ensured the success of "the largest response to a natural disaster we've ever had in this country." The president himself passed out water bottles to Floridians driven from their homes. [My emphasis]

Clarke goes on to explain how the administration has politicized FEMA and neglected to undertake even the most obvious homeland security preparations. All true, but his own example shows that FEMA is capable of moving when the White House wants it to — i.e., when people at the White House thinks there's something in it for them politically — so FEMA's failure in responding to Katrina isn't simply a matter of an agency that's been crippled. The White House either couldn't be bothered to pay attention as Katrina approached, or they made a conscious decision that it was in their interest to let New Orleans get creamed and then control the reconstruction. And now Karl Rove's in charge of doling out the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of reconstruction money. Funny how that works.

(For more on the administration's response to Hurricane Frances in Florida, see this. For more on the Katrina reconstruction slush fund, see this, this, this, and this.)

Posted by Jonathan at 01:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 17, 2005

Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby

Iraq Politics

NYT's Frank Rich puts the Rove-Libby case in perspective. What's at stake is a great deal more than a dirty trick against Valerie Plame Wilson. It's the White House's secret program to subvert democracy by lying the country into war. Excerpt:

[W]hat matters most in this case is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney.
Mr. Wilson and his wife were trashed to protect that larger plot. Because the personnel in both stories overlap, the bits and pieces we've learned about the leak inquiry over the past two years have gradually helped fill in the über-narrative about the war. Last week was no exception. Deep in a Wall Street Journal account of Judy Miller's grand jury appearance was this crucial sentence: "Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group."

Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a war in Iraq.

Of course, the official Bush history would have us believe that in August 2002 no decision had yet been made on that war. [...]

On the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 8, Ms. Rice warned that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and Mr. Cheney, who had already started the nuclear doomsday drumbeat in three August speeches, described Saddam as "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The national security journalist James Bamford, in "A Pretext for War," writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate "exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group had been set up to stage-manage."

The administration's doomsday imagery was ratcheted up from that day on. As Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post would determine in the first account of WHIG a full year later, the administration's "escalation of nuclear rhetoric" could be traced to the group's formation. Along with mushroom clouds, uranium was another favored image, the Post report noted, "because anyone could see its connection to an atomic bomb." It appeared in a Bush radio address the weekend after the Rice-Cheney Sunday show blitz and would reach its apotheosis with the infamously fictional 16 words about "uranium from Africa" in Mr. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address on the eve of war.

Throughout those crucial seven months between the creation of WHIG and the start of the American invasion of Iraq, there were indications that evidence of a Saddam nuclear program was fraudulent or nonexistent. Joseph Wilson's C.I.A. mission to Niger, in which he failed to find any evidence to back up uranium claims, took place nearly a year before the president's 16 words....When, months later, a national security official, Stephen Hadley, took "responsibility" for allowing the president to address the nation about mythical uranium, no one knew that Mr. Hadley, too, had been a member of WHIG. [...]

Members of WHIG had a compelling motive to shut [Joseph Wilson] down. In contrast to other skeptics, like Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner), Mr. Wilson was an American diplomat; he had reported his findings in Niger to our own government. He was a dagger aimed at the heart of WHIG and its disinformation campaign. Exactly who tried to silence him and how is what Mr. Fitzgerald presumably will tell us. [...]

It is surely a joke of history that even as the White House sells this weekend's constitutional referendum as yet another "victory" for democracy in Iraq, we still don't know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war. [My emphasis]

If laws were broken, as seems likely, Fitzgerald has an opportunity to demonstrate that the American system of checks and balances still counts for something. The legal system is the only check left, the Congress and the media having long since lost their nerve.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:11 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 14, 2005

Getting Past "Likability" And Appearances

It is remarkable — and more than a little peculiar, when you think about it — the extent to which our national political life is shaped by journalists' perceptions of political figures' likability. Not policies, not proposals, not facts. Likability. Paul Krugman comments:

The 2000 election would have ended in a chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters hadn't taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader. [...]
Right now, with the Bush administration in meltdown on multiple issues, we're hearing a lot about President Bush's personal failings. But what happened to the commanding figure of yore, the heroic leader in the war on terror? The answer, of course, is that the commanding figure never existed: Mr. Bush is the same man he always was. All the character flaws that are now fodder for late-night humor were fully visible, for those willing to see them, during the 2000 campaign.

And President Bush the great leader is far from the only fictional character, bearing no resemblance to the real man, created by media images.

Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media. [...]

[It is] all too easy for coverage to be shaped by what reporters feel they can safely say, rather than what they actually think or know. Now that Mr. Bush's approval ratings are in the 30's, we're hearing about his coldness and bad temper, about how aides are afraid to tell him bad news. Does anyone think that journalists have only just discovered these personal characteristics? [...]

What we really need is political journalism based less on perceptions of personalities and more on actual facts. Schadenfreude aside, we should not be happy that stories about Mr. Bush's boldness have given way to stories analyzing his facial tics. Think, instead, about how different the world would be today if, during the 2000 campaign, reporting had focused on the candidates' fiscal policies instead of their wardrobes. [My emphasis]

Krugman isn't just another johnny-come-lately commenting on Bush's foibles now that Bush's numbers are tanking. Back in 2000, Krugman wrote that Bush "values loyalty above expertise", has "a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost entirely bound up with his own," and likes to surround himself with "obsequious courtiers." Now, five years and an incalculable amount of damage later, lots of people have suddenly "discovered" what Krugman had been saying all along.

It's a constant in our national political culture that people on the Left who are right never get the credit for being right. There are people, for example, who've said from the outset that the war in Iraq would be a disaster. Millions of them took to the streets to protest the war before it even began. But no one's ever going to turn to them and say, you were right, next time we need to listen to you. It didn't happen with Vietnam, and it won't happen now. The war is only one example among many. But people prefer to stick with their preconceptions and their stereotypes about what a leader's supposed to look like. So, Colin Powell's a sober, responsible statesman, and someone like Dennis Kucinich, say, is a flake — even if Powell is always wrong and Kucinich is always right.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:31 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

October 12, 2005

Ipsos Poll: Impeach Bush If He Lied About Reasons For War

Iraq Politics

A new Ipsos poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org shows astonishingly high levels of support for impeaching President Bush if [sic] he lied about the reasons for war. Excerpt:

By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 6-9.

The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

Among those who felt strongly either way, 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.

"The results of this poll are truly astonishing," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik. "Bush's record-low approval ratings tell just half of the story, which is how much Americans oppose Bush's policies on Iraq and other issues. But this poll tells the other half of the story — that a solid plurality of Americans want Congress to consider removing Bush from the White House." [My emphasis]

Reality and the supposedly liberal media's version of reality have long since parted company. Bush continues, for the most part, to be represented as a well-liked, well-respected leader. Meanwhile, his approval ratings are in the 30s and half the country thinks his lies are an impeachable offense. Imagine where he'd be if the media actually reported the truth.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:42 PM | Comments (11) | Link to this

Rattled

President Bush has any number of reasons to feel anxious these days. It shows. Dana Milbank analyzes the body language Bush displayed in a recent Today Show interview:

[T]his much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.
The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer — along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. [My emphasis]

Bush is a fragile bundle of insecurity and nerves. That's why he surrounds himself with people who will never probe him or press him. People like Harriet Miers.

Not the psychological profile you want in the Leader of the Free World.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:16 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

October 11, 2005

Libby And Frist

Via Atrios, two stories on the noose tightening around various Republicans' necks. First, Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby (National Journal):

In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony.
Libby also did not disclose the June 23 conversation when he was twice interviewed by FBI agents working on the Plame leak investigation, the sources said.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently learned about the June 23 conversation for the first time just days ago, after attorneys for Miller and The New York Times informed prosecutors that Miller had discovered a set of notes on the conversation. [...]

The new revelations regarding Libby come as Fitzgerald has indicated that he is wrapping up his investigation and making final decisions as to whether criminal charges will be brought in the case. The term of the grand jury that is hearing evidence expires on October 28. [My emphasis]

Second, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Miami Herald):

Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show.
The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate.

However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict. [My emphasis]

Cell mates?

Posted by Jonathan at 07:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 08, 2005

Friendly Fire

9/11, "War On Terror" Afghanistan Iraq Politics

Football star Pat Tillman quit the NFL to enlist in the elite Army Rangers after 9/11, served in the Iraq invasion, and was ultimately killed fighting in Afghanistan. The Army said he died a hero's death, awarding him a Silver Star, Purple Heart, and a posthumous promotion. In fact, he was killed by friendly fire — and the Army knew it at the time — and yet the medal citations included "a detailed account of the alleged battle (which the Army knew had never taken place)."

Tillman's death came when the Bush administration needed a hero: the Abu Ghraib torture scandal was about to break. Tillman's funeral was nationally televised, and the Pentagon PR machine built him up as the ultimate American hero, a man who walked away from the pinnacle of professional sports to fight and heroically die in the War on Terror. Ann Coulter, mimicking Nazi rhetoric as only she can do, gushed that Tillman was "an American original — virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be."

A recent San Francisco Chronicle story, however, reveals that in life Tillman was a much more complicated man:

Interviews...show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author. [...]
...Tillman’s unique character...was more complex than the public image of a gung-ho patriotic warrior. He started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.) Mary Tillman [Pat's mother] said a friend of Pat's even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, "Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war."

[Spc. Russell] Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, told one anecdote that took place during the March 2003 invasion as the Rangers moved up through southern Iraq.

"I can see it like a movie screen," Baer said. "We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, [Pat's brother] Kevin and Pat, we weren't in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so f**king illegal.' And we all said, 'Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was against Bush."

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry. [My emphasis]

At least three investigations have purportedly looked at Tillman's death, but the results are full of contradictions, omissions, and constantly changing testimony. See the SFC article for details. One excerpt:

One soldier dismissed by the Rangers for his actions in the incident submitted a statement in the third investigation that suggests the probe was incomplete: "The investigation does not truly set to rest the events of the evening of 22 April 2004. There is critical information not included or misinterpreted in it that could shed some light on who is really at fault for this," he wrote.

Noam Chomsky confirms that he was to meet with Tillman upon Tillman's return. Imagine the PR disaster for the White House and the Pentagon if their hero had returned and publicly stood with Chomsky in outspoken criticism of Bush and Bush's war in Iraq.

All we know for sure is that Tillman was killed by "friendly fire", but as The Chronicle notes:

...[T]he medical examiner's report said Tillman was killed by three bullets closely spaced in his forehead...

Whatever the true facts of his death may have been beyond that, this much is clear: Tillman wasn't the White House's hero or the Pentagon's hero. As Dave Zirin writes in The Nation, Pat Tillman was, if anything, our hero. The real Pat Tillman, however, was erased, transformed into a cartoon image that is the complete opposite of the real man.

The very definition of Orwellian.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:42 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

October 07, 2005

Hearing Voices

Politics Religion War and Peace

Bush says God speaks to him. He calls him George. Guardian:

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.
Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." [My emphasis]

This is not just a person who believes God speaks to him. This is a person who believe God speaks to him, who also happens to command enough nuclear and conventional weapons to destroy the world many times over.

There is something unbelievably archaic and reckless about putting that much power in the hands of a single human being. It's like we think we're still a small band of primates living in the forest somewhere. The alpha male calls the shots.

Nobody should have that much power. Nobody. Human beings are highly fallible creatures. Sometimes, they're just flat out crazy. The only reason we accept the current state of affairs is that we are completely and foolishly in denial about its implications. But down here in the real world, not all stories have happy endings.

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

CBS Poll: Worst Numbers Yet

A new CBS Poll has 69% of respondents saying the country is on the wrong track, "the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983". Bush's approval has fallen to 37%, a new low.

Direction of the country
Right direction: 26%
Wrong track: 69%
President Bush's job approval
Approve: 37%
Disapprove: 58%

Does President Bush share your priorities for the country?
Yes: 32%
No: 65%

Does President Bush have strong qualities of leadership?
Yes: 45%
No: 52%

Confidence in Bush administration appointees?
A lot: 22%
Some: 30%
A little/none: 47%

Economy is getting
Better: 10%
Worse: 54%
Same: 34%

US troops in Iraq should
Stay as long as it takes: 36%
Leave as soon as possible: 59%

If any of us got a performance review like that in our jobs, we'd be out on the street.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 06, 2005

Is Rove Toast? Who Else?

If Lawrence O'Donnell is right, some high-level heads are about to roll. O'Donnell:

This just in from the AP:
Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

What this means is Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, believes his client is defintely going to be indicted. So, Luskin is sending Rove back into the grand jury to try to get around the prosecutor and sell his innocence directly to the grand jurors. Legal defense work doesn't get more desperate than this. The prosecutor is happy to let Rove go under oath again — without his lawyer in the room — and try to wiggle out of the case. The prosecutor has every right to expect that Rove's final under-oath grilling will either add a count or two to the indictment or force Rove to flip and testify against someone else. [My emphasis]

The bottom line? O'Donnell again:

Prediction: at least three high level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators.

One or more high level unindicted co-conspirators? Sure sounds like...

Well, let's just wait and see.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 05, 2005

More Indictments For The Party Of Values

Another day, another indictment. Well, five, actually. AP:

The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The five felony counts in the indictment charge David H. Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.

Both probes looked into an August 2002 golf outing that Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and others.

Safavian, a former lobbying associate of Abramoff, is the first person beyond Abramoff himself to face charges arising out of the probe of the lobbyist, who is a major Republican fundraiser with close ties to GOP leaders in Congress.

The indictment covers May 16, 2002, until January 2004, when Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, the government housekeeping agency. From November 2004 until late last month when he resigned three days before his arrest, he headed the government's top procurement officer in the Office of Management and Budget. [My emphasis]

These indictments bring prosecutors one step closer to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is at the heart of the web of corruption involving Tom DeLay and various other high-profile Republicans. Abramoff is the brass ring.

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

October 03, 2005

The Plot Thickens

Tom DeLay has been indicted on new charges. WaPo:

A Texas grand jury indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on a new charge of money laundering Monday, less than a week after another grand jury leveled a conspiracy charge that forced DeLay to temporarily step down as House majority leader. [My emphasis]

After the first indictment, DeLay told interviewers that he had never been called to testify before the grand jury. This was supposed to be evidence of political motives for the prosecution. Only one problem: the grand jury foreman and DeLay's own lawyer both now say DeLay's not telling the truth. Houston Chronicle:

The day after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's grand jury indictment, his lawyer and the jury foreman on Thursday appeared to contradict the Texas politician's assertions that he was not given a chance to speak before the jury.
The foreman, William M. Gibson Jr., a retired state insurance investigator, said the Travis County grand jury waited until Wednesday, the final day of its term, to indict him because it was hoping he would accept jurors' invitation to testify.

DeLay said in interviews that the grand jury never asked him to testify.

In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.

"Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."

On Thursday, DeLay said in another broadcast interview that he was under the impression that he wasn't going to be indicted because he hadn't been called to testify before the grand jury.

"I have not testified before the grand jury to present my side of the case, and they indicted me," said DeLay, according to the Associated Press.

Dick DeGuerin, the attorney representing DeLay, said Thursday that DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath. The Houston attorney was not yet on the legal team when DeLay was asked to appear, but he said other attorneys advised him not to testify — a decision DeGuerin supports.

DeGuerin said that DeLay may have been referring in the interviews to the fact that the grand jury did not subpoena him to testify.

Gibson said there was an open invitation, but the grand jury decided not to force him to appear. [My emphasis]

The real heart of the growing scandals regarding Republican corruption may lie in the activities of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, already under indictment in Florida and under investigation by grand juries in Washington and Guam. Abramoff, a leading fundraiser for President Bush, was said by Tom DeLay to be one of his (DeLay's) "closest and dearest friends."

Josh Marshall is the go-to source for all things Abramoff. Here's an excerpt from a post of his from Friday:

Just to refresh everyone's memory about what happened last week, three reputed mob soldiers were arrested in Florida for the February 2001 gangland-style murder of Gus Boulis, founder and one-time owner of Sun Cruz, the Florida casino boat line. Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan muscled Boulis into selling them Sun Cruz. And it is for fraud in that acquisition that both were indicted last month.
That's all known.

It's also been a matter of public record for more than four years that around the time of Boulis's murder, for no clear reason, Kidan paid roughly a quarter million dollars to one of those three men now under indictment for the crime. For that and other reasons, those of us who live in the world where gravity always pulls down and never up, can probably conclude that the cops believe Kidan's [hands] are somehow dirty in this matter.

In any case, here's the point I haven't seen discussed at any length. That money did not come out of Kidan's pocket. He may have authorized the payments. But those checks came from Sun Cruz itself, the company Kidan and Abramoff then co-owned.

Articles on this subject almost always throw in a line to the effect that no one suspects Abramoff himself of knowledge or involvement in Boulis's death. And I know of little tangible [evidence] to contradict that. But he was the co-owner, with Kidan, of the company which made the tainted payments. And Abramoff and Kidan were in pretty close and regular contact in how they used Sun Cruz's money for the DC lobbying operations. At a minimum Abramoff might be able to shed some light on whether there is some innocent explanation for the money that went to the guy who's been indicted for Boulis's murder. [...]

As far as I know, too, the local police investigating the crime have still failed in their efforts to get an interview with Abramoff to find out what he might know about Boulis's death. [Italics and links in the original, bold added]

Meanwhile, one waits in vain for someone in the Democratic Party to grow a spine and take on the Republicans directly on the issue of corruption. What's it going to take?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Voices From The Right On Miers

A chorus of voices from the Right are decrying the nomination of Harriet Miers. The common thread: Miers' only real qualification is that she's a crony of Bush's. And that's what the Right is saying.

Who knows, though, why they expected anything different from an adminstration that brought us Alberto Gonzales, John Bolton, Karen Hughes, Michael Brown, Michael Chertoff, Bernie Kerik, etc., etc., etc.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:13 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Another Bush Insider Gets Her Reward

Harriet Miers has never been a judge. What are her qualifications? Well, there's this.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:47 AM | Comments (5) | Link to this

October 02, 2005

Big Names

Some big names appear to be at risk in the Valerie Plame affair. First, Rove and Libby. WaPo:

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.
With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct." [My emphasis]

But the big news today is that a source tells George Stephanopoulos that Cheney and Bush were also directly involved. Think Progress:

Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:
Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it's a manageable one for the White House especially if we don't know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.

This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to "get to the bottom of it." As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable. [My emphasis]

There was a time when the White House had a Teflon coating. That time has passed. If Bush and Cheney were involved, this might just stick.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

October 01, 2005

"Covert Propaganda"

The Government Accountability Office has ruled that the White House broke the law when it paid Armstrong Williams and others to produce news favorable to the administration. The GAO report went so far as to call the administration's efforts a program of "covert propaganda". NYT:

Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education."

The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds." [...]

The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to "procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition" in federal law. [...]

In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the "declining science literacy of students," was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the department's role in promoting science education.

The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the Education Department. The segment, a "video news release" narrated by a woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing remedial instruction and tutoring to children "gets an A-plus."

Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." [My emphasis]

Who else among journalists is or was on the administration's payroll? Why don't reporters even ask that question?

Posted by Jonathan at 05:39 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

September 29, 2005

Karen Hughes Is An Idiot — A Dangerous Idiot

Karen Hughes, Bush's asinine former communications director, now an undersecretary of State charged with burnishing the image of the US overseas, proves she's as big a know-nothing as Brownie, Chertoff, and the rest. Sidney Blumenthal:

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the — is proud of the saying that 'all are Turks.'" [...]
"Terrorists," she said in Egypt at the start of her trip, "their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up." Somehow, magically, these evildoers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve. "Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why President Bush mentions God in his speeches, she asked him "whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.'" [It doesn't.] He said, "Well, never mind."

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. "It is stunning ... the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden," Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists, is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, and recently briefed the Pentagon and the National Counterterrorism Center. "If you set out to help bin Laden," he said, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."

Pape's research debunks the view that suicide terrorism is the natural byproduct of Islamic fundamentalism or some "Islamo-fascist" ideological strain independent of certain highly specific circumstances. "Of the key conditions that lead to suicide terrorism in particular, there must be, first, the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize. The second condition is a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals. If you read Osama's speeches, they begin with descriptions of the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, driven by our religious goals, and that it is our religious purpose that must confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful not only to religious Muslims but secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case." [...]

Hughes' trip "would be a folly," Pape says, "were it not so dangerous." [My emphasis]

An awful lot of Americans hate the idea of politicians who are smarter than they are. Television's got something to do with it. People raised on television don't want to listen to a lot of words, and they don't want to have to think too hard. And they don't want to know what a politician thinks, either — it's enough if a politician looks the part on the tube.

And so we wind up with a complete ignoramus like Bush in the Oval Office, and he staffs his administration end-to-end with fatuous, ignorant, self-satisfied mediocrities. The Mayberry Machiavellis. Could these people possibly be in any farther over their heads?

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

September 28, 2005

The Party Of Values

Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted by a Texas grand jury on conspiracy charges.

Last November, in a stirring demonstration of their commitment to ethics in government, House Republicans repealed a rule that would require any leader to step aside if indicted. Public reaction forced them to reinstitute the rule in January, so DeLay now has to step aside. Karma.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:33 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

September 20, 2005

Kerry Awakes

Haven't heard much from John Kerry since November. He got off a nice zinger here, though:

[Ex-FEMA director Mike Brown] is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive."

Hah!

Posted by Jonathan at 02:46 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

September 19, 2005

MIT: Environmental Regulation An Enormous Net Boon To Economy

Economy Environment Politics

Republicans are fond of portraying environmental regulation as a drag on the economy. But they're wrong. A new MIT study finds that just the public health benefits alone of pollution reduction make environmental regulation an enormous net boon to the economy. MIT:

Epidemiological studies have shown that specific pollutants cause specific health problems ranging from cough to congestive heart failure and even premature death.
"Such adverse health outcomes are not just quality-of-life issues," said [MIT's Kira] Matus, [a member of the research team]. "They incur a real cost to the economy, both in the provision of health services and in the labor and leisure time that's lost every time an individual becomes ill."

Thus, while regulation that cuts pollution can be costly, it also can bring economic gains by improving people's health as well as labor productivity — gains that must be recognized in cost-benefit analyses. "In fact, the biggest economic benefits of an environmental policy are often those associated with improved human health," said [MIT's] John Reilly. [My emphasis]

Previous studies of the health effects of pollution reduction have been criticized for making overly-simplistic assumptions. The MIT study used a far more sophisticated model, but still shows enormous net gains. They used the model to estimate the net gains from pollution reduction dues to environmental regulation in the US from 1975 to 2000. From the study report (PDF):

The estimated welfare gain rises steadily from about $50 billion in 1975 to about $400 billion in 2000 (in 1997 dollars). [...]
"Looked at another way, our estimated benefit in 2000 of reduced
pollution is equal to about a quarter of total health care expenditure in the US," said [one of the study's authors]. [My emphasis]

If the grownups were in charge, this kind of research would guide policy. But with gangsters in charge, policy is determined by what lines the pockets of the administration and its allies.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:56 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

September 14, 2005

Miserable Failure

Go to Google's home page, type "miserable failure", and click "I'm Feeling Lucky". Computers don't lie.

[Thanks, Kevin]

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

September 08, 2005

Pew Poll: Bush Approval 40%, Races Differ On Katrina

A new Pew poll has Bush's approval rate at 40%. Excerpt:

The American public is highly critical of President Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Two-in-three Americans (67%) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28% think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush's overall job approval rating has slipped to 40% and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52%, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president's ratings have slipped the most among his core constituents — Republicans and conservatives. [...]

There's an enormous racial divide in how people perceived the government's response to Katrina. Excerpt:

[B]lacks and whites draw very different lessons from the tragedy. Seven-in-ten blacks (71%) say the disaster shows that racial inequality remains a major problem in the country; a majority of whites (56%) say this was not a particularly important lesson of the disaster. More striking, there is widespread agreement among blacks that the government's response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the storm's victims had been white; fully two-thirds of African Americans express that view. Whites, by an even wider margin (77%-17%), feel this would not have made a difference in the government's response. [...]
More than eight-in-ten blacks (85%) say Bush could have done more to get relief efforts going quickly, compared with 63% of whites. Blacks are also considerably more critical of the federal government's performance in general — 77% say the federal government's response was only fair or poor, compared with 55% of whites. While both of these attitudes are also strongly related to partisanship, these racial differences remain even when party affiliation is taken into account. [My emphasis]

As so often happens in America, race is put forward as the key factor; class is invisible.

I would have loved to see numbers on the question of whether the government's response would have been different if the victims had been rich rather than poor. Millionaire Republican campaign contributors, say.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone, in their heart of hearts, could doubt for a moment that the response would have been very different indeed.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

September 07, 2005

The Daily Show On Bush And Katrina

Disasters Humor & Fun Politics

The Daily Show does it again. Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Watch - Windows Media
Watch - QuickTime

Posted by Jonathan at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

September 04, 2005

Update On The Estate Tax Repeal

How much revenue will the federal government lose by the Republican plan to repeal the estate tax? Enough to pay for the Iraq war. New Yorker (via Xymphora):

Next week, even as the national debt grows by another $11 billion and military recruiters scramble with ever-mounting desperation to fill their quotas, the Senate will reassemble to take up the proposal, already passed by the House, to permanently eliminate the estate tax, thereby shifting some $1.5 billion a week — about the same as the Iraq war — from the public treasury to the bank accounts of the heirs to the nation’s twenty thousand biggest fortunes.

It's like they're running around the Titanic stealing the silverware and china.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:41 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Republican Response: Cut Taxes For The Rich — Again

Senate Republicans plan to push ahead with plans to permanently repeal the estate tax. The tax currently affects only people with estates exceeding $1.5 million. Even Alan Greenspan opposes its repeal, on the grounds that it will only increase the Federal deficit.

The truly grotesque thing about repealing the tax at this time is that repeal will take many billions of dollars from the coffers of charitable organizations. Think Progress:

Senate Finance Committee members were informed this morning that Sen. Bill Frist will move forward with a vote to permanently repeal the estate tax next week, likely on Tuesday, ThinkProgress has learned.
One stands in awe of Sen. Frist's timing. Permanently repealing the estate tax would be a major blow to the nation's charities. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has "found that the estate tax encourages wealthy individuals to donate considerably more to charity, since estate tax liability is reduced through donations made both during life and at death." If there were no estate tax in 2000, for example, "charitable donations would have been between $13 billion to $25 billion lower than they actually were." [My emphasis]

These people are monsters.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

September 03, 2005

Most Incompetent Government Ever

Paleocon Paul Craig Roberts:

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history.

Roberts says, "Impeach Bush Now". Good idea.

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

September 02, 2005

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Disasters Essays Politics

[Originally posted September 1st, but re-posted now to bring it back to the top of the page.]

The Federal response to the disaster along the Gulf coast, and in New Orleans (Lake George) in particular, is so thoroughly and completely incompetent that I am almost — I say almost — tempted to believe they're doing it on purpose, to burn into people's consciousness an image of government as incapable of solving social problems, of making things better, not worse. These Republican ideologues make no secret of their desire to denude government of all of its social welfare functions. The last thing they want is for people to see government coming to their rescue in ways no one else can or will.

I say almost. I don't think it's quite that simple. But I do think there's an important connection between the Republican view of government and the total incompetence they're demonstrating in the present crisis. They don't believe in the public good, and they don't believe that government has a legitimate, useful role in safeguarding and supporting the public good. They don't trust government, and they are actively trying to undermine it, especially its social welfare functions.

It is small wonder, then, that they are so bad at it. If you don't believe in government, you're not going to be any good at governing. If you don't believe government can help people, you're not going to be any good at planning and organizing to use government to help people.

I.e., they believe government is incapable of helping people, and that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What we need in government are people who actually believe in government and in governing well. People who want to see government succeed. People who are willing to do the work required to make government succeed. People who are the exact opposite of what we've got.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:22 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this

September 01, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts On New Orleans And Iraq

Disasters Iraq Politics

Paul Craig Roberts is no liberal. His pedigree includes the Reagan administration, the Hoover Institution, the Cato Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review. Here's what he has to say about the disaster unfolding in New Orleans:

Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.
There were not enough helicopters to repair the breeched levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guards available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

The situation is the same in Mississippi.

The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fool's mission in Iraq.

The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconservatives in the Bush administration were determined to invade the Middle East and because the incompetent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.

After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but, shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.

The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place massive sandbags to repair the levee. However, someone called the few helicopters away to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water.

What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war – one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city.

Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the US government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corp of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers’ projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." [...]

What we have is a Republican war for oil company profits while New Orleans sinks beneath the waters. [My emphasis]

Chickens come home to roost. You don't have to be a liberal to see it.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:17 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Lying Bastard

President Bush, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America" this morning:

I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.

From Echidne here's an excerpt of an article published in New Orleans' Times Picayune more than a year ago:

For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.
"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place." [...]

"I can't tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season if we get a major storm," Naomi said. "It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us.

"But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised,...and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects." [...]

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year." [My emphasis]

Still, did anyone really anticipate what's now taking place in New Orleans? Here's an article from May, 2005:

In the event of a slow-moving Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane (with winds up to or exceeding 155 miles per hour), it's possible that only those crow's nests would remain above the water level. Such a storm, plowing over the lake, could generate a 20-foot surge that would easily overwhelm the levees of New Orleans, which only protect against a hybrid Category 2 or Category 3 storm (with winds up to about 110 miles per hour and a storm surge up to 12 feet). Soon the geographical "bowl" of the Crescent City would fill up with the waters of the lake, leaving those unable to evacuate with little option but to cluster on rooftops — terrain they would have to share with hungry rats, fire ants, nutria, snakes, and perhaps alligators. The water itself would become a festering stew of sewage, gasoline, refinery chemicals, and debris. [My emphasis]

Which is exactly what has happened.

Bush is a lying bastard.

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

Empathy From The Right

Disasters Media Politics

Here's conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of National Review Online:

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg]
I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared.

Goldberg wrote that before the horror unfolding in New Orleans was fully evident, but still...

And then he added this:

NOT THAT I WANT TO OFFEND ANYBODY [Jonah Goldberg]
But it would be pretty cool if Fox played to caricature and repeatedly referred to the hurricane as Katrina vanden Heuvel [editor of The Nation].
"The destruction from Katrina vanden Heuvel is expected to be massive."

"...the poor and disabled are particularly likely to suffer from the effects of Katrina vanden Heuvel ...."

"Coming up: how to explain Katrina vanden Heuvel to your children."

Etc.

Right-wing humor. Juvenile twit.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:52 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 31, 2005

Poverty And Uninsured Up — Again

The number of Americans in poverty has increased nearly 20% under President Bush. NYT:

Even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million — up 1.1 million from 2003 — according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.
It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure.

The Census Bureau also said household income remained flat, and that the number of people without health insurance edged up by about 800,000 to 45.8 million people. [...]

While disappointed, the Bush administration — which has not seen a decline in poverty numbers since the president took office — said it was not surprised by the new statistics. [...]

The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, during the Clinton administration, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold. Since then, the number of people in poverty has increased steadily from 32.9 million in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 35.9 million in 2003. [My emphasis]

Poverty went down under Clinton. Under Bush, poverty has gone up every single year. But wait, look over there: gay marriage!

Posted by Jonathan at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Dismantling FEMA

According to an op-ed in yesterday's WaPo by the director of Seattle's Office of Emergency Management, the Bush administration has decimated the federal capability to respond to diasters like Hurricane Katrina. Excerpt:

In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.
Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events — FEMA — is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make? [...]

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed [director]. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into [DHS].

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission. [...]

Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. [My emphasis]

It's uncanny. They're wrong about everything. Absolutely everything.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 29, 2005

Criticize Halliburton, Get The Axe

The Pentagon has fired the Army Corps of Engineers' top procurement official, who just happens to have been an outspoken critic of the Pentagon's practice of awarding mammoth no-bid contracts to Halliburton. WaPo:

A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.
Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine H. Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a "sufficient record" was available to address her allegations.

The Army said last October that it would refer her complaints to the Defense Department's inspector general. The failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances of the removal "are the hallmark of illegal retaliation," Kohn wrote to Rumsfeld. He said the review Strock cited to justify his action "was conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's allegations, including the general.

Carol Sanders, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps, said she could not comment on personnel matters, but noted that the Department of the Army approves all actions involving members of the senior executive service.

Greenhouse came to prominence last year when she went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Corps without competition. The Houston-based oil services giant already had a competitively awarded contract to provide logistics support for the military in the Middle East and was awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraq oil fields on the eve of the war there in 2003.

Greenhouse complained internally about that contract. Last fall she started giving interviews to national publications. And in June she testified before a Democrat-sponsored Capitol Hill event on contracting in Iraq.

"I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts, Greenhouse said at the Democratic forum.

She said the independence of the Corps' contracting process was compromised in the handling of the contact. "I observed, first hand, that essentially every aspect of the [Restore Iraqi Oil] contract remained under the control of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This troubled me and was wrong."

Greenhouse has been the Army Corps' top procurement official since 1997. [...]

In the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Greenhouse objected to a decision to give a five-year, no-bid contract to KBR for putting out the oil fires that Pentagon officials believed retreating Iraqi troops would set as the United States invaded. KBR had earlier been hired to write the plans for how that work would be conducted.

When the time came to award the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, the terms stipulated that the contractor had to have knowledge of KBR's plan. KBR was the only contractor deemed eligible. Normally, contractors that prepare cost estimates and plans are excluded from bidding on the work that arises from those plans. [My emphasis]

It's enough to make you want to tear out your hair. Bill Clinton gets hounded for years because of the $80,000 Whitewater land development deal where the Clintons actually lost money. Then the Republicans steal billions and the media — the supposedly liberal media — give them a free pass. Argh.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:34 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 26, 2005

Regaining Our National Soul

Ethics Iraq Politics

Ex-Senator Gary Hart has an extraordinary op-ed in Wednesday's WaPo in which he calls on Democrats who supported the war to step forward and forthrightly admit they were wrong. Exerpt:

In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."
To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

Further, this leader should say: "I am now going to give a series of speeches across the country documenting how the administration did not tell the American people the truth, why this war is making our country more vulnerable and less secure, how we can drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents and outside jihadists and leave Iraq for the Iraqis to govern, how we can repair the damage done to our military, what we and our allies can do to dry up the jihadists' swamp, and what dramatic steps we must take to become energy-secure and prevent Gulf Wars III, IV and so on." [My emphasis]

"I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

My God, what an extraordinary vision. Can you imagine it? It makes me want to weep just to think of it. How cleansing, how profoundly moving, how revelatory that would be. We could regain our national soul.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:59 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

Defending Fascism

Following Digby, I'd like to quote an article of Spencer Ackerman's in TNR. Ackerman examines the Bush administration's stubborn defense of its enormously counterproductive policies regarding detention at Guantanamo. This is extremely important stuff:

The Bush administration has adopted this radical approach because it is defending the idea that the Constitution empowers the president to conduct war exclusively on his terms. A series of memos written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 effectively maintained that any law restricting the president's commander-in-chief authority is presumptively unconstitutional. (When GOP Senator Lindsey Graham recently quoted to Pentagon lawyer Daniel Dell'Orto the inconvenient section of Article I, Section 8, granting Congress the authority to "make rules concerning captures on land and water," he farcically replied, "I'd have to take a look at that particular constitutional provision.") Last month, when some GOP senators tried to bar "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of detainees in an amendment to the 2006 defense bill, the White House sent them a letter threatening to veto any attempt to "restrict the President's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice," and Vice President Dick Cheney warned senators against usurping executive power. For good measure, the White House instructed the Senate leadership to pull the entire half-trillion-dollar bill from the floor, lest the offending language within it pass.
It would not be difficult to solve the indefinite-detention problem: Pass a law allowing for a circumscribed period in which officials interrogate the detainee and accumulate evidence before bringing charges against him. This is how it works in countries like Great Britain and Israel, both mature democracies that have fought terrorist threats militarily and legally for decades. But the administration has strongly resisted any move to introduce legal protections to Guantánamo Bay. When the Supreme Court ruled last year that Guantánamo inmates could bring habeas corpus challenges to their detentions in federal court — settling the question of whether detainees had recourse to the U.S. legal system — the Justice Department adopted the bewildering position that, once detainees file their claims, they possess no further procedural or substantive legal rights at all, an absurdity to which the administration is sticking.

That's not all. Before a Senate panel last month, Dell'Orto argued that Congress shouldn't create a statutory definition of the term "enemy combatant," since the administration needs "flexibility in the terminology in order to ... address the changing circumstances of the type of conflicts in which we are engaged and will be engaged." The very next week, before an appellate court panel, Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing for the continued detention without charge of American citizen and suspected Al Qaeda terrorist José Padilla, explained what the administration has in mind for its "flexible" definition. Federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig, a Bush appointee, noted that, since Padilla was arrested not on an Afghan battlefield but at a Chicago airport, the administration's discretion to detain an American citizen ought to be fettered, "unless you're prepared to boldly say the United States is a battlefield in the war on terror." Clement immediately replied, "I can say that, and I can say it boldly." In essence, the administration is claiming authority to detain anyone, captured anywhere, based not on any criteria enacted by law but rather at the discretion of policy, and to hold that individual indefinitely.

That position — that the war on terrorism requires executive latitude at odds with hundreds of years of law — has animated every single step of the administration's approach to the war. It's why Bush has kept NATO allies at arm's length while simultaneously trumpeting their absolute necessity to the defeat of Al Qaeda. It's why he didn't just oppose the creation of an independent 9/11 Commission to investigate the history of counterterrorism policy, he also argued it would be an unacceptable burden on his prosecution of the war. And it's why he's blasted any move by the courts to exercise oversight of the war as a dangerous judicial overreach: When a district court judge last year challenged the constitutionality of the administration's military commissions for the trial of enemy combatants, the Justice Department "vigorously disagree[d]," as a spokesman put it, and contested the ruling until the commissions were reinstated on appeal last month. For the administration, its expansion of executive power is synonymous with victory in the war — regardless of the real-world costs to the war effort. [My emphasis]

What they are defending is their vision of a future in which the US remains in a constant state of war and where the White House can detain anyone it wants, for however long it wants, for whatever reason. That's the future they want. If that's not fascism, I don't know what is.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 25, 2005

¡Viva Chávez!

Pat Robertson, supposed follower of Jesus "love your neighbor as yourself" Christ, called, as you know, for the assassination of Venezuela's popularly elected President Hugo Chávez. Robertson, at least, was forthright about the reason: Chávez controls "a huge pool of oil" and insists that his country has the right to control its own resources.

Besides the oil, there's also the fact that Chávez represents what Noam Chomsky has called "the threat of a good example." He uses his country's oil revenue to provide for its poor. He offers oil to other Latin American countries at below-market prices in exchange for barter in goods and services. He shows by his example that there is another way, a better way, for nations to conduct their affairs.

And you've got to love his sense of humor. In the face of attacks by the Bush administration and its allies like Pat Roberston, Chávez has responded by offering to sell half-price oil to poor Americans and by offering them Venezuela's free health care as well. America can strut about on the world stage all it wants, Chávez implies, but even lowly Venezuela does a far better job of providing for its own people. Take that! Guardian:

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hit back vigorously at calls by an ally of President George Bush for his assassination by offering cheap petrol to the poor of the US at a time of soaring fuel prices. [...]
"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," he said. [...]

Venezuela, the world's fifth largest crude exporter, supplies 1.3m barrels of oil a day to the US. It remains unclear how poor Americans might benefit from the cheap petrol offer, but Mr Chávez has set up arrangements with other countries for swapping services in exchange for oil. Cuban doctors are working in the poorer areas of Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil going to Cuba.

Jamaica yesterday became the first Caribbean country to reach an agreement with Venezuela for oil at below-market terms. The Petrocaribe initiative is a plan to offer oil at flexible rates to 13 Caribbean countries. Jamaica will pay $40 a barrel, against a market rate of more than $60. [My emphasis]

All of which makes Chávez Public Enemy Number One here at the center of the empire of greed.

Who is the more authentic follower of Jesus? Chávez, who champions the welfare of the poor and powerless, or Pat Robertson, who sits on hundreds of millions of dollars and issues his lunatic fatwas? When will right-wing Christians in America wake up to the sort of "Christians" they are following?

Jesus was their exact opposite, as is obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to read what Jesus actually said and did. For example, Jesus said this:

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. — Matthew 19:21-24

What could be clearer?

Posted by Jonathan at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 23, 2005

Grooming Fundamentalist Fanatics For Political Power

Here's a disturbing report from the LA Times on fundamentalist Christian efforts to train future political leaders and place them in positions of influence and power. Excerpts:

In the blue and gold elegance of the House speaker's private dining room, Jeremy Bouma bowed his head before eight young men and women who hope to one day lead the nation. He prayed that they might find wisdom in the Bible — and govern by its word.
"Holy Father, we thank you for providing us with guidance," said Bouma, who works for an influential televangelist. "Thank you, Lord, for these students. Build them up as your warriors and your ambassadors on Capitol Hill."

"Amen," the students murmured. Then they picked up their pens expectantly.

Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Through seminars taught by conservative college professors and devout members of Congress, the students learn that serving country means first and always serving Christ.

They learn to view every vote as a religious duty, and to consider compromise a sin.

That puts them at the vanguard of a bold effort by evangelical conservatives to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God.

"We help them understand God's purpose for society," said Bouma, who coordinates the program, known as the Statesmanship Institute, for the Rev. D. James Kennedy. [...]

The center sponsors Bible studies, prayer meetings and free "Politics and Principle" lunches for members of Congress and their staffs, often drawing crowds in the hundreds. [...]

It's one of half a dozen evangelical leadership programs making steady inroads into Washington.

The most prominent is Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va., an hour's drive from the capital. The college was founded five years ago with the goal of turning out "Christian men and women who will lead our nation with timeless biblical values." Nearly every graduate works in government or with a conservative advocacy group.

The Witherspoon Fellowship has had similar success, placing its graduates in the White House, Congress, the State Department and legislatures nationwide. The fellowship brings 42 college students to Washington each year to study theology and politics — and to work at the conservative Family Research Council, which lobbies on such social issues as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Such programs share a commitment to developing leaders who read the Bible as a blueprint.

As Kennedy put it: "If we leave it to man to decide what's good and evil, there will be chaos." [...]

Now the director of the Eagle Forum, a conservative lobbying group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, [23-year-old Jessica] Echard says Jesus would approve of a call for lower taxes: "God calls on us to be stewards of our [own] money."

She dips into the Bible to explain her opposition to most global treaties, reasoning that Americans have a holy obligation to protect their God-given freedom by avoiding foreign entanglements. [...]

Kennedy offers a similar take on education policy in the gilt-edged, leather-bound Bible his staff delivers to each new member of Congress. In an introductory essay, Kennedy quotes Scripture to explain God's views on taxes, capital punishment, gay rights and a dozen other issues. Most of the policy prescriptions he finds in the Bible dovetail neatly with the Republican agenda. [My emphasis]

It takes a member of a cult, really, to have the unthinking, unquestioning arrogance to believe he or she knows what the purported Creator of the Universe's positions are on taxes, science instruction, gay marriage, and everything else. People who have so completely surrendered their (God-given, if you like) faculties for critical thinking about the real world all around them are dangerous people to have in power.

When people think they directly and literally represent the side of Good in a Cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, when they believe compromise is a sin, they become capable of an extremism that knows no bounds. What wouldn't you be willing to do if you believed your adversary was the Antichrist and the fate of the universe hung in the balance?

We have no difficulty recognizing the danger of religious fundamentalist extremism when it involves somebody else's religion. Well, guess what. It applies to your religion, too.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:39 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

Bush Approval Falls To 36%

In a new poll from American Research Group, President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to an abysmal 36%. ARG:

Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove. [...]
Among Republicans (35% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 77% approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 18% disapprove. Among Democrats (37% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 15% approve and 81% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job. Among Independents (28% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 21% approve and 72% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president. [...]

A total of 29% of Americans say that the national economy is getting better, 17% say it is staying the same, and 53% say the national economy is getting worse.

From the White House's perspective, these are — obviously — horrible numbers, nearly as bad among Independents as among Democrats.

The worry, of course, is that the White House will decide that they need a new terror event or war to rally people around the flag.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 19, 2005

Cheney: US Will Hunt Insurgents One At A Time If Necessary

Iraq Politics

Despite President Bush's approval rating having fallen five percentage points in a mere five days, largely because of increasing opposition to continuing the war in Iraq, Dick Cheney's talking tough. WaPo:

Vice President Cheney declared yesterday that the United States "will not relent" in the war in Iraq and will hunt down insurgents there "one at a time if necessary," implicitly rebutting escalating pressure on the Bush administration to bring U.S. troops home.
Addressing a friendly audience of combat veterans a day after antiwar candlelight vigils were held around the nation, Cheney cast victory in Iraq as "critical to the future security of the U.S." and said the country should not lose its resolve to defeat the militants.

"They believe that America will lose our nerve and let down our guard," he said at the 73rd national convention of the Military Order of the Purple Heart held in Springfield, Mo., according to a transcript provided by the White House. "They are sorely mistaken."

Cheney's speech represented the first high-profile White House response in the past week to gathering antiwar demonstrations galvanized by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. [...]

Some Republicans have concluded that the White House mishandled the Sheehan situation. Bush sent two top aides to talk with her but refused to see her himself, having already met her once last year as part of a larger session with relatives of war casualties. [...]

Two months after declaring that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes," Cheney painted a starker picture yesterday, acknowledging that "there is still tough fighting" to come. Rather than promising quick victory, he reminded Americans that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Bush warned that the broader struggle with terrorism would be "a lengthy campaign."

The vice president cited the darkest days of the American Revolution, when the war was going badly and ragtag rebels were ready to go home until George Washington rallied them. "They stayed in the fight, and America won the war," he said. "From that day to this, our country has always counted on the bravest among us to answer the call of duty." [My emphasis]

Oh, how I hate this kind of atavistic, macho rhetoric. What are we, Neanderthals?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:26 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 18, 2005

Feingold: Withdraw Troops By End Of 2006

Iraq Politics

Our Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold has called for a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq by the end of next year, the first Senator to do so. WaPo:

Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin called on the White House yesterday to withdraw all US forces from Iraq by the end of next year and criticized fellow Democrats for being too "timid" in challenging the Bush administration's war policy.
Feingold, who is among the Democrats considering a run for president in 2008, became the first senator to propose a specific deadline for pulling all 138,000 US troops from Iraq. His comments also laid bare the rising tension within his party about how to respond to President Bush on the war. [...]

In a telephone interview from Wisconsin, Feingold said he has heard a wave of public disenchantment at 15 town hall meetings so far during the August recess, leading him to propose a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline.

"There's a deepening feeling of dismay in the country about the way things are going in Iraq," Feingold said. He rejected Bush's assertion that a deadline would make it easier for insurgents to simply hang on. "I think he's wrong. I think not talking about endgames is playing into our enemies' hand." [My emphasis]

He's got a point. By not setting a deadline for withdrawal, we give Iraqis every reason to believe we will be there indefinitely, which cannot help but fuel the insurgency.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 16, 2005

Bush On Democracy

Listen (mp3).

[Thanks, Maurice]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 15, 2005

Moving The Goal Posts Waaaay Down Field

What do you do if you want to let political cronies log and mine the national forests, but the numbers show there is a far greater economic benefit to preserving the forests as recreation areas? If you're the Bush administration, you change the numbers. By a factor of ten. WaPo (via TreeHugger):

Forest Service officials have scaled back their assessment of how much recreation on national forest land contributes to the American economy, concluding that these activities generate just a tenth of what the Clinton administration estimated.
Under President Clinton, the Forest Service projected that by 2000, recreation in U.S. forests would contribute nearly $111 billion to the nation's annual gross domestic product, or GDP. Bush administration officials, by contrast, have determined that in 2002 these activities generated about $11 billion. [...]

But critics of the administration said they fear that the new numbers, which were obtained from the nonprofit Natural Resources News Service, will be used to justify more logging and mining on national forests. Under the old estimates, recreation accounted for 85 percent of the system's contribution to the GDP, compared with extraction's 11 percent; under the new formula, recreation represents 59 percent.

"Would I expect anything different from the Bush administration? No," said Michael Francis, who directs the national forest program at the Wilderness Society, an advocacy group. "They will cook the books for whatever they want." [My emphasis]

It's like the Mob is running the country. Come to think of it...

[Thanks, Kent]

Posted by Jonathan at 03:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Get Ready For WWIII?

Iraq Politics

Paleocon Paul Craig Roberts, former Senior Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, and former Asst. Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan (i.e., definitely no liberal) writes, Get Ready for WWIII. Excerpt:

With every poll showing majorities of Americans both fed up with Bush's war against Iraq and convinced that Bush's invasion of Iraq has made Americans less safe, the White House moron proposes to start another war by attacking Iran. VP Cheney has already ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to come up with plans to strike Iran with tactical nuclear weapons. [...]
Iran has signed the nonproliferation pact and is willing for the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the nuclear energy program.

Bush, however, dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel's paranoia.

Bush can ignore the American public, because the Democrats, like the Tory Party in the UK, have completely collapsed as an opposition party. [...]

The only check on Bush is the lack of U.S. troops. Bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, U.S. commanders are stating that a third rotation of our exhausted and demoralized troops in Iraq can be avoided only by troop withdrawals by next spring.

However, on Aug. 11, Bush nixed the military's talk of reducing U.S. troops in Iraq. The next day, the commander of U.S. logistics in Iraq announced that the number of insurgent attacks on US forces along supply routes has doubled in the last year, making it clear that far from winning, the U.S. is not even holding its own.

Cindy Sheehan has the right question for Bush: What noble cause is being served by all this suffering and destruction?

Bush is in hiding from Mrs. Sheehan, because he knows only ignoble causes are being served. According to the CIA, the main beneficiary of the war is Osama bin Laden's recruitment drives. While America's military recruitment falters and U.S. generals announce that the war has broken the Reserves and National Guard, the cause of Islamic extremism basks in the Iraqi war.

Gentle reader, do you realize the danger of having a president so disconnected from reality that he plots to attack Iran — a country three times the size of Iraq — when he lacks sufficient forces to occupy Baghdad and to protect the road from Baghdad to the airport? [...]

The Bush administration is insane. If the American people do not decapitate it by demanding Bush's impeachment, the Bush administration will bring about Armageddon. This may please some Christian evangelicals conned by Rapture predictions, but World War III will please no one else. [My emphasis]

Roberts' point about the Democrats is an important one. Is the two-party system now nothing more than window dressing? Why is there no significant opposition from what is ostensibly the opposition party?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Keeping A Balanced Life

Activism Iraq Politics

President Bush seems incapable of realizing the utter grotesquerie of a lot of the stuff he says. From Cox News Service (via Digby):

President Bush, noting that lots of people want to talk to the president and "it's also important for me to go on with my life," on Saturday defended his decision not to meet with the grieving mom of a soldier killed in Iraq.
Bush said he is aware of the anti-war sentiments of Cindy Sheehan and others who have joined her protest near the Bush ranch.

"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job," Bush said on the ranch. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say."

"But," he added, "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

The comments came prior to a bike ride on the ranch with journalists and aides. [...]

In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading. "I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy," he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him. "And part of my being is to be outside exercising." [My emphasis]

A two-hour bike ride, lunch with Condi, a nap, some fishing, some reading, a Little League game. Yeah, that's what the people want from their president when the country's losing a pointless war.

Just how juvenile is this guy? Could the contrast between Cindy Sheehan's dignity and seriousness of purpose and Bush's adolescent superficiality possibly be any more stark?

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

August 10, 2005

Red State Focus Groups: It's All About The Hot Buttons

Digby has an illuminating, if somewhat disheartening, post on the results of some red state focus groups. Digby's summary:

In an effort to find out how we can win back the independent rural and red state Bush voter, Democracy Corps did some focus groups. They found that while there was deep dissatisfaction with the country's direction, they still blame Democrats because Democrats are immoral. Or something like that.

Findings: People's brains are fogged by the hot-button "issues" — abortion, gay marriage. Other issues, they know little about. They agree the country's going down the tubes, but fail to make the connection to the leadership that's taken us there. And they tend to believe if somebody's "right" on the hot-button issues, then that somehow transfers to their being right on everything else.

There's a lot more in Digby's post. Go read it here. Recommended.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Air Force Colonel Tags Cars Bearing Pro-Bush Bumper Stickers

Iraq Politics

At least one Air Force colonel's not happy with the president. AP:

An Air Force Reserve colonel could face criminal charges for allegedly vandalizing cars at Denver International Airport bearing pro-Bush bumper stickers.
Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, director of operations for reserve forces at the National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, is believed responsible for defacing at least 10 parked vehicles between December and June, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Tuesday. [...]

Jackson said Fecteau is suspected of blacking out the Bush bumper stickers and then spray painting an expletive and the president's name on the vehicles. [My emphasis]

[Thanks, Kent]

Posted by Jonathan at 04:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 07, 2005

Circling The Wagons

The Deputy AG overseeing Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the Rove-Plame affair, is leaving his post, and Newsweek reports that his replacement is likely to be an "old friend" of Bush's who just happens to have been in Bush's Skull and Bones class at Yale. Newsweek:

The departure this week of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has accepted the post of general counsel at Lockheed Martin, leaves a question mark in the probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Comey was the only official overseeing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation. With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recused, department officials say they are still trying to resolve whom Fitzgerald will now report to. Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is "likely" to be named as acting deputy A.G., a DOJ official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter tells NEWSWEEK. But McCallum may be seen as having his own conflicts: he is an old friend of President Bush's and a member of his Skull and Bones class at Yale. One question: how much authority Comey's successor will have over Fitzgerald. When Comey appointed Fitzgerald in 2003, the deputy granted him extraordinary powers to act however he saw fit — but noted he still had the right to revoke Fitzgerald's authority. The questions are pertinent because lawyers close to the case believe the probe is in its final stages. [My emphasis]

It would be politically explosive to pull the plug on Fitzgerald now, but if he's poised to indict senior members of the administration, who knows? Remember Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Cindy Sheehan Comes To Crawford

Iraq Politics

As President Bush settles in for his month-long vacation at his "ranch", Cindy Sheehan has come to Crawford to ask him why her son had to die in Iraq. AP (with photo):

CRAWFORD — The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush's ranch today, demanding an accounting from the president of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.
Supported by more than 50 shouting demonstrators, Cindy Sheehan, 48, told reporters, "I want to ask George Bush: Why did my son die?"

Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, "Impeachment Tour."

Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an Army specialist, a Humvee mechanic.

Sheehan, from Vacaville, Calif., had been attending a Veterans for Peace Convention in Dallas. She vowed she would camp out as close as she could get to the president's ranch until Bush comes out and talks to her.

Local law enforcement officials were keeping Sheehan four to five miles away from the ranch's entrance. [My emphasis]

Good for Cindy Sheehan for focusing the spotlight on Bush and his unearned month-long vacation in time of war. Sheehan has her own particular reasons for detesting Bush: see this account.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:20 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 06, 2005

Newsweek Poll: More Bad News For Bush

A new Newsweek poll echoes the disastrous (for Bush) numbers of the recent AP/Ipsos poll. Newsweek:

As U.S. troops endured a deadly week in Iraq, 61 percent of Americans polled say they disapprove of the way President George W. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll. Thirty four percent say they approve. This is Bush's lowest rating on Iraq and the first time it has dropped below 40 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll. And 50 percent of those polled say the United States is losing ground in its efforts to establish security and democracy in Iraq; just 40 percent say the U.S. is making progress there.
A NEWSWEEK poll taken one month ago showed that 41 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq; 54 percent did not. [...]

Meanwhile, Bush's approval ratings have dropped to 42 percent; 51 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president. Bush's approval ratings reached a high of 88 percent in his first term, in the month after the September 11 attacks. Forty-two percent is his low.

Fifty-four percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Just over a third say they are satisfied. [...]

In general, 28 percent say the war in Iraq has made Americans safer from terrorism; 64 percent say it has not, the poll shows. [My emphasis]

The surest way for Bush to get his numbers back up (and to generate support for an attack on Iran, for a military draft, for new PATRIOT Act-like restrictions on our civil liberties, etc.) is for there to be another terrorist attack on US soil. At best: a conflict of interest. At worst: an invitation to collusion.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bush's "Loyalty"

When baseball slugger Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for steroids, President Bush, despite having made a point of denouncing steroid use in his 2004 State of the Union address, shot from the hip to say he believed Palmeiro's denials:

"Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him," Bush said Monday. "He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him. Still do."

Some people see in this an example of Bush's loyalty to his friends. Digby has another take:

It's not that his administration can do no wrong. It's that he can do no wrong. If he picked these people for his administration or for his friends, thay are, by definition, good people who are above suspicion. To say otherwise would be to admit that his judgment is imperfect and that is impossible. Dear Leader is an infallible child. [...]
Honestly, this blind defense of Palmeiro has little to do with loyalty. It's about Bush's faith based approach to everything. If he believes it, it must be true. He does not use reason to come to conclusions. He makes decisions based on feelings and beliefs and "instinct." In this case, his instinct is that Palmeiro is a good guy and therefore could not have lied. His "instinct" is that creationism makes sense and therefore, is as legitimate as evolution. His "instinct" was that Saddam was a threat and therefore, we had to invade.

We have a man with a child's mind running this country. Millions of us can see this as clearly as we can see his face on our television screens. People can call me an elitist and a snob for pointing this out but I will never stop. It's like telling me it's rude to notice that the sun came up this morning or that gravity exists. It is observable fact that this president is intellectually stunted. I'm not going to pretend otherwise so that certain people's feelings don't get hurt. I'll lose my mind. [My emphasis]

I think it's also that loyalty is part of Bush's grandiose self-image. I.e., it's not that he's genuinely loyal, it's that he likes to think he's loyal, he likes what he thinks it says about him. Just as he's proud of making decisions based on "instinct" and of following his "gut", he's proud of being "loyal". He likes to think it's part of being a "strong" leader.

Much of what he likes to thinks of as loyalty, however, is really motivated by a desire to surround himself with a lot of second-rate people (Alberto Gonzalez, John Bolton, Karen Hughes, Condollezza Rice) who've proven they won't challenge his fragile ego. It's the private version of his public insistence on appearing only before audiences that have been hand-picked. He's the Boy in the Bubble.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

August 05, 2005

CBS Poll On Rovegate

You might think the public regards the Valerie Plame affair as a tempest in a teapot. According to a new CBS poll, you'd be wrong.

"There is currently a grand jury investigating whether a crime was committed when a CIA officer's identity was revealed to reporters. How important do you think the investigation is to the nation — of great importance, some importance, or very little importance?"

Great Some Very
Little None Unsure

41% 39% 15% 1% 4%

"In their statements about the possible leak of the CIA officer's identity, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the entire truth, are mostly telling the truth but are hiding something, or are mostly lying?"

Entire
Truth Hiding
Something Mostly
Lying Unsure

12% 55% 22% 11%

[Link via Kos]

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

New AP/Ipsos Poll

Bush's numbers continue to tank:

Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track? Right direction: 37%
Wrong track: 59%
Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President?
Approve: 42% (Strongly approve: 23%)
Disapprove: 56% (Strong disapprove: 38%)

Handling of the economy
Approve: 41%
Disapprove: 56%

Handling domestic issues like health care, education, the environment and energy
Approve: 37%
Disapprove: 60%

Handling foreign policy issues and the war on terrorism
Approve: 47%
Disapprove: 51%

Handling the situation in Iraq
Approve: 38%
Disapprove: 59%

Do you think President Bush is honest?
Yes: 48%
No: 50%

Do you think President Bush is arrogant?
Yes: 56%
No: 43%

Few, if any, presidents in my lifetime have had numbers this bad. Once again, one has to ask why Bush continues to be portrayed in the media generally as a popular and successful commander-in-chief, instead of a clueless failure. What's it going to take? 100% disapproval?

Posted by Jonathan at 11:40 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

August 02, 2005

Playing God

It is a striking fact that a number of conservative libertarians are a lot more critical of — and frightened by — the Bush administration than many mainstream Democrats will admit to being.

For a thoughtful, intelligent, and chilling analysis by one such conservative libertarian, let me recommend this post by Arthur Silber. Read it, follow the links to other posts of Silber's, explore his thinking. Highly recommended.

There is so much there that I won't even try to summarize it, but let me excerpt a few passages (the italics are Silber's, the boldface is mine):

As a libertarian, I don't have much use for ordinary Republicans or ordinary Democrats. Both parties now represent an advanced statism...But, and this is the first point that deserves emphasis, the Bush administration and its program have nothing to do with ordinary Republicans, or with what we have recently understood as "conservatism." This is not a difference of degree: it is a difference in the very nature of what the Bush administration stands for on the most fundamental level. It is a difference in kind. [...]
What many people still do not see...is that the Republicans' intrusion into the Schiavo case and the administration's neo-imperialist foreign policy are not separate phenomena: they are part of the same program, springing from identical intellectual roots. [...]

People need to understand the immense evil represented by this program. I use the word "evil" with great care — but in this case, the word is fully justified. A program which embraces authoritarianism in every area of life, both at home and abroad, which relies on brute force to achieve its aims, and which would destroy liberty, freedom and the value of life itself can be described in many ways — but it is most assuredly evil. It is also crucial to appreciate that this program is a fully comprehensive one: there is no area of human life that it fails to include. It seeks to dictate how everyone on earth should live, even with regard to the most private of concerns. That is one fact that the Schiavo lunacy demonstrated beyond all possible doubt. [...]

Whether Bush and his enablers will admit it or not, in fact the policies they seek to implement would make the United States itself into one gigantic Guantanamo: where any one of us can be detained indefinitely merely upon the word or desire of one person, with no charges ever filed against us, and where we can be abused or tortured, and perhaps even murdered, at will. And no one and nothing would be able to stop or even question them. That's the future they want so desperately — and I suggest that you always keep it in mind and never, ever forget it. [...]

[The neoconservative] intellectual legacy was revealed with startling clarity in Bush's inaugural address earlier this year...[E]ven Peggy Noonan was concerned about Bush's speech. What she sensed, without understanding it fully, was that Bush is playing God. Even though she is deeply religious herself, and despite the fact that her admiration for Bush is largely unbounded, Noonan still sees the profound dangers in this approach. When people play God, they end up destroying the world. [...]

The great danger that now faces us — and that faces the world — is that Bush’s "revolutionary" program has its own terrible logic. His [inaugural speech made] one conclusion starkly and terrifyingly clear: he has learned absolutely nothing from the events of the last few years, and that logic continues to drive him. He and his supporters therefore seek further destruction, on a still wider scale — and they may not be satisfied until a worldwide conflagration finally stops them. Of course, such an outcome would also stop all of us, and would put an end to much of civilization. Not coincidentally, it is this same inner logic that causes the overheated statements of Bush's supporters to grow ever more desperate: as the consequences of their ideas become more obvious, the fiction that their program is "noble" and "idealistic" becomes more and more difficult to maintain. Another result of this same desperation is the increasingly vicious attacks on anyone who dares to challenge them. [...]

...[P]eople like Bush cannot be reasoned with, or talked out of their beliefs. Those beliefs are an essential part of their psychological makeup, and to give up those beliefs would be to give up themselves and their very identity, which they will not do. [...]

Understand that appeasement and compromise will not work. This is directed especially to Democrats in Washington. In a number of posts, I've discussed the Democrats' failure to oppose Bush almost everywhere it matters: even though many Democrats oppose Bush's conduct of foreign policy, they vote for every bill to fund that foreign policy — just as they oppose permanent bases in Iraq, but vote to fund them and will not discuss the fact that such bases are now being built. [...]

...What in hell are the Democrats waiting for?

I think many Democrats believe that, if they give the Bush administration some victories, then the administration will be more willing to compromise elsewhere. I would simply ask: what evidence can you offer to support such a contention? There isn't any. I emphasized above that Bush's program is all-encompassing and comprehensive. This is what the Democrats haven't grasped: Bush and his supporters want it all. They're not interested in having part of their program enacted, or getting some of their nominees approved. They want it all.

There's lots more. I urge you to go read it. The Republic is in far greater peril than most of us realize.

Silber's post concludes with some suggestions for action. Among them is this wise advice:

[F]acts and argument can't be used against Bush and his most fervent supporters. They have rejected facts, logic and argument. They have thus exempted themselves from the realm of the human altogether, in terms of trying to reach their minds. They have dispensed with their minds, so forget about them.
But recent polls indicate that more and more Americans are becoming seriously disenchanted with Bush and his program. They are beginning to see how destructive and dangerous that program is, and that it achieves the opposite of everything Bush claims. So I think there may well be a critical mass of Americans who are now willing to reconsider their support for Bush, in whole or in significant part. And it isn't necessary to change their minds altogether. What I always try to do with everyone I know is to focus on any specific area where someone indicates he might be starting to have doubts. Then I zero in on that one area, and offer all the evidence I can to make the doubt grow larger. Don't view such people as your antagonists: view them as potential allies. Be supportive in every way you can, and help them see that supporting Bush will help to destroy that which they themselves care about. Use their own values to bring them around, by making the connections clear and helping them to see just how dangerous Bush is. If you approach them in a friendly, positive and supportive manner, they may well end up thanking you for it.

Silber's point that Bush is playing God, that he and his closest supporters have "exempted themselves from the realm of the human altogether", is, I think, an enormously important — and enormously alarming — psychological insight. When a man as fundamentally immature and psychologically stunted as Bush is allows his psyche to be inflated by the kind of archetypal energy that lets him believe he is God's agent on earth, he becomes capable of destructiveness on what has to be called a cosmic scale. As I have written in the past:

Is there anything more dangerous than people who believe they're doing God's work, especially those who believe they're playing for eternal stakes in a temporal world? As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote, "To do evil, a human being must first of all be convinced he is doing good." [Link]
If Bush believes he is God's instrument, here to establish the Christian God's dominion on earth, answering only to that God, he will never compromise, he will never bend, he will never see himself as subject to earthly laws and limits. What is the Constitution compared to God's Will? [Link]

[O]nce people believe they are participating in the final battle between God and Satan, Cosmic Good and Ultimate Evil, they can justify any amount of ruthlessness and treachery. What wouldn't you be willing to do if you believed your adversary was the Antichrist and the fate of the universe hung in the balance? [Link]

If they are not stopped, these emperors-in-their-own-imaginations are going to crash and burn in a cataclysm of world historical proportions. It is inevitable. Goetterdaemmerung, on a scale commensurate with the scale of their inflation and hubris. Just as the Greek tragedians taught us all those centuries ago. [Link]

What we are talking about here is the same kind of messianic energy that fueled the Third Reich. We forget that after Hitler ascended to power it took him a mere 12 years to reduce Germany, one of the world's most advanced and civilized nations, and much of the rest of Europe and the Soviet Union as well, to smoking rubble. And comparing the destructive power of the weaponry at Bush's command to that at Hitler's command is like comparing a freight train to a feather. Hitler had no nuclear weapons.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:42 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

August 01, 2005

EPA To Gut Environmental Justice Policy

Literally hundreds of studies have shown that poor and minority communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental pollution. In 1994, President Clinton responded with an executive order requiring federal agencies to identify and address federal activities that contribute to this disparity. The Bush administration's EPA wants to reverse that policy. Grist:

It may surprise some people to hear that the Bush administration's EPA just drafted a strategic plan on environmental justice. Insidiously, and perhaps less surprisingly, advocates say, the move threatens to redefine that term into irrelevance.
The agency's new plan defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

That sounds uncontroversial enough on the surface, but the trouble lies in the word regardless. The field of environmental justice is based on the idea that some people — specifically, racial minorities and the poor — are more affected by environmental problems than others. It's an idea based on substantial evidence, which has been accumulating for decades. For example, in the early 1980s, a landmark U.S. General Accounting Office study found that three out of four landfills in the Southeast were located in communities of color. A 1992 National Law Journal study found that Superfund offenders paid 54 percent lower fines in communities of color than in white communities. And recent studies have found that Latinos and blacks are much more likely to develop — and die of — diseases related to pollution, like asthma.

As Diane Takvorian, executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition, a 25-year-old group focusing on border communities in San Diego and Tijuana, explains, "We have always worked in low-income communities of color, because that's where the pollution is the worst." These areas are often ignored by local and state environmental authorities, she says, and activists in her group "have had to take enforcers by the hand into their communities" because the officials were afraid to go into "bad" neighborhoods.

In 1994, after years of pressure from the environmental-justice movement, then-President Clinton issued an executive order decreeing that all relevant federal agencies must work to identify and address "disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States." The EPA's new draft plan, by contrast, removes race and income from special consideration.

In the years since Clinton's executive order, says Takvorian, things have improved, "especially at the regional level. The EPA has had a greater sensitivity, and taken approaches more appropriate to our communities." She is not optimistic about the implications of the new plan: "We assume that sensitivity, and the resources now applied to environmental justice, will disappear."

Robert Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University has called the EPA's draft "a giant step backwards." Other advocates agree. "We think this is the wrong direction for the EPA to go," says Will Rostov, staff attorney for Communities for a Better Environment, a California-based environmental-justice group. "Essentially what they're trying to do is not have an environmental-justice program." Eliminating considerations of race and income, he says, "makes the program meaningless." [...]

It's not as if there is any doubt that race and income affect a person's likelihood of living in a polluted neighborhood, or suffering from the effects of inadequate environmental policies, observers say. "There is a disparate impact," says Takvorian. "There are 200-plus studies that demonstrate that. So the question isn't, 'Is this true?' We know it's true. The question is, 'What are we going to do about it?'" [My emphasis]

Unless you're a campaign contributor, you can forget about getting any kind of help or justice from these people. One person one vote has been replaced by one dollar one vote. Democracy is over.

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

July 31, 2005

Questions Of Power

Media Politics

In August's Harper's, Lewis Lapham quotes Theodor Adorno:

Things have come to pass where lying sounds like truth, truth like lying....The confounding of truth and lies, making it almost impossible to maintain a distinction, and a labour of Sisyphus to hold on to the simplest piece of knowledge...[marks] the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power. [My emphasis]

Adorno, writing in 1945, had in mind the propaganda machine of Nazi Germany, but his statement applies all the more forcefully to our age of infotainment media and privatized propaganda, in which the media ocean submerges all and leaves no dry land on which to stand. Lapham:

The infotainment to which we've become accustomed..., for the most part made with the machinery of the electronic media, replaces narrative with montage, substitutes for history the telling of fairy tales, grants authority to the actor, not the act. The country swarms with whistleblowers willing to provide particulars about any number of high government crimes and misdemeanors — whistles blowing every hour on the hour somewhere in the blogosphere, secrets revealed on every week's best-seller list — but who among the truth-tellers can compete for attention against the rumors of Brad Pitt's once and future marriages...
...What President Bush says or does matters as little as how well or poorly J. Lo sings; it is the weight of the publicity — face time in front of a camera, column inches in the magazines — that moves the tide of emotion and alters the geography of nations. In Washington hearing rooms and Hollywood restaurants, names take precedence over things (the who, not the what)...

...News broadcasts come and go as abruptly as the advertisements winking on and off in Tokyo and Times Square, the messages equivalent in their weightlessness, demanding nothing of the audience except the duty of ritual observance. Who knows or cares to know whether Rush Limbaugh's truths are truer than Toyota's?...

...[Joseph Goebbels] understood that arguments must be crude and emotional, instinctual rather than intellectual, endlessly repeated. The electronic media do the work on their own strategic initiative, and without the guidance and supervision once provided by the Gestapo...

Our collective media-drenced mind is like a society-wide drug trip — images come and go, only the present moment exists, the psychological distance between image and observer is erased. Logic, intellect, rational discernment fade from consciousness. It's just a trip.

Whenever anybody points to government conspiracies (the stealing of the 2004 presidential election, say), the usual rejoinder is: how could any large-scale conspiracy remain secret in the age of 24-hour cable news channels? The answer is simple: secrecy hardly matters anymore. All kinds of evidence can make its way into the public domain, but in a blink of the collective eye it disappears from view, crowded out by images with greater commercial appeal and staying power. Media exist to attract viewers, so the only political scandals with staying power are ones that attract viewers. So far, that seems to mean only ones that involve illicit sex (Bill Clinton, Gary Condit).

The conspirators don't have to worry about secrecy. They just have to wait us out. We'll click the tv remote and move on.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:54 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 29, 2005

Fuehrer Worship

Media Politics

This one's making the rounds, but in case you haven't seen it here's what Time's 2004 Blog of the Year had to say on the subject of Our Leader (via Kos):

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

They're not joking, and it's not funny. It's idiotic, it's ridiculous, but it's also, to me anyway, frightening. Nazi comparisons tend to be counter-productive, but really — what does this kind of rhetoric call to mind if not the swooning adulation accorded to Der Fuehrer?

Posted by Jonathan at 03:32 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

July 27, 2005

Dropping The Other Shoe

Republicans (and a number of Democrats) gave the credit card companies what they wanted by making it much harder for people to declare personal bankruptcy and make a fresh start. Now they are dropping the other shoe. Yahoo News:

If you have a high balance on your credit cards, you may be in for a shock when the next bill comes.
Within the next month, Bank of America, MBNA and Citigroup will raise minimum monthly payments on their cards from 2 percent of the balance to up to 4 percent, not including interest. Other card issuers are expected to make similar changes by the end of the year. [...]

Credit card companies are under mounting pressure by the government to raise the minimum monthly payments to help Americans get out of debt more quickly. If you can't afford the increase, experts recommend that you contact your credit card company and try to negotiate a lower interest rate, which could offer some relief. [My emphasis]

So if you're one of the many unfortunate people who can manage only to make the minimum payment each month, your payment is about to double, all at once, without warning. It's not going to be pretty.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:38 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Majority: Bush Deliberately Lied On WMD

Iraq Politics

A new USA Today poll shows a majority of Americans now think that the White House "deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction", that the US will not be able to establish a stable, democratic Iraq, and that the US will not win the war. USA Today:

For the first time, a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — the reason Bush emphasized in making the case for invading. The administration's credibility on the issue has been steadily eroding since 2003.
By 58%-37%, a majority say the United States won't be able to establish a stable, democratic government in Iraq.

About one-third, 32%, say the United States can't win the war in Iraq. Another 21% say the United States could win the war, but they don't think it will. Just 43% predict a victory.

Still, on the question that tests fundamental attitudes toward the war — was it a mistake to send U.S. troops? — the public's view has rebounded. By 53%-46%, those surveyed say it wasn't a mistake, the strongest support for the war since just after the Iraqi elections in January.

"I think the American people understand the importance of completing the mission," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said when asked about the poll results. "Success in Iraq will help transform a dangerous region." [My emphasis]

More likely explanations why slightly fewer people (46%) call the war a mistake are that people don't want to say the nearly 1800 US troops killed in Iraq were killed for a mistake and they don't like the idea of "losing" a war. Clearly, though, people are unhappy.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:50 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

July 22, 2005

Ex-Intelligence Officers Rip Bush

Ex-intelligence officers who testified before Congressional Democrats this morning didn't mince words in attacking President Bush for failing to act on the Valerie Plame leak. WaPo:

Former U.S. intelligence officers criticized President Bush on Friday for not disciplining Karl Rove in connection with the leak of the name of a CIA officer, saying Bush's lack of action has jeopardized national security.
In a hearing held by Senate and House Democrats examining the implications of exposing Valerie Plame's identity, the former intelligence officers said Bush's silence has hampered efforts to recruit informants to help the United States fight the war on terror...

"I wouldn't be here this morning if President Bush had done the one thing required of him as commander in chief — protect and defend the Constitution," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst. "The minute that Valerie Plame's identity was outed, he should have delivered a strict and strong message to his employees." [...]

Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel and defense intelligence officer, said Bush's silence sends a bad signal to foreigners who might be thinking of cooperating with the U.S. on intelligence matters.

"This says to them that if you decide to cooperate, someone will give you up, so you don't do it," Lang said. "They are not going to trust you in any way."

Johnson, who said he is a registered Republican, said he wished a GOP lawmaker would have the courage to stand up and "call the ugly dog the ugly dog."

"Where are these men and women with any integrity to speak out against this?" Johnson asked. "I expect better behavior out of Republicans." [My emphasis]

Johnson's question is a good one. There are, undoubtedly, some honest conservatives left in this country. What's it going to take before they step up and do their part to defend their country against the neocon thugs?

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

July 21, 2005

Giving The President Carte Blanche

On July 15, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously ruled that the president has the power to declare anyone an "enemy combatant", beyond the reach of the Geneva Conventions, to be tried before a military tribunal without the usual protections afforded by US and international custom and law. AP:

A Guantanamo detainee who once was Osama bin Laden's driver can be tried by military tribunal, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, apparently clearing the way for the Pentagon to resume trials suspended when a lower court ruled the procedures unlawful.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni.

More broadly it said that the 1949 Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war does not apply to al-Qaida and its members. That supports a key assertion of the Bush administration, which has faced international criticism for holding hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay without full POW protections.

"I think pretty much the entire opinion would be welcomed by the administration. I think there's nothing in there that is adverse to the administration's positions," Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said in a telephone interview. "It's a very pro-administration decision." [...]

Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, denies conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism and denies he was a member of al-Qaida. His lawyers say that by working as bin Laden's driver he simply wanted to earn enough money to return to Yemen, buy his own vehicle and support his family as a driver.

Two lawyers representing Hamdan, Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift, said the appeals court ruling "is contrary to 200 years of constitutional law."

"Today's ruling places absolute trust in the president, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress and long-standing treaties ratified by the Senate of the United States," the two defense lawyers said in a statement.

Katyal said in an interview that the detainee's legal team plans a further appeal. [My emphasis]

As Deep Blade Journal points out, the question whether the Geneva Conventions apply is no small matter. Deep Blade points to:

...an excellent article by former US Representative Elizabeth Holtzman appearing in The Nation for July 18, 2005. Holtzman cites the 1996 War Crimes Act, a Clinton-era domestic statute:
This relatively obscure statute makes it a federal crime to violate certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions. The Act punishes any US national, military or civilian, who commits a "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. A grave breach, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, includes the deliberate "killing, torture or inhuman treatment" of detainees. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in death carry the death penalty.
In a memo to President Bush, dated January 25, 2002, Gonzales urged that the United States opt out of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghanistan war — despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's objections. One of the two reasons he gave the President was that opting out "substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act". [My emphasis]

It seems likely that numerous high officials, up to and including the President, could be liable under this statute if their outlandish re-definition of the word "humane" and opt-out of international law does not stick. Unfortunately, the power relationships within the US government suggest that the Republican investigative apparatus will never allow such a formulation of charges to occur.

Deep Blade wrote the above the day after the appeals court decision. Just three days later, one of the judges responsible for that decision, John G. Roberts, was rewarded with nomination to the US Supreme Court, where he will be in a position once more to rule on Hamdan's appeal.

The President of the United States is not supposed to be a dictator who can declare anyone, US citizens included, to be an "enemy combatant" who can be imprisoned indefinitely, tortured, held essentially incommunicado. The legal claims that provide the supposed justification for the arrogation of such powers are as dangerous as they are dubious. And yet they are, via decisions like that of July 15, rapidly taking on the status of settled law.

The Supreme Court is the last remaining government institution that can stem the tide. With appointments like that of John Roberts (and eventually, perhaps, Alberto Gonzalez), Bush aims to remove the one remaining check on his power.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:26 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 20, 2005

WHIG And The Eight Blacked-Out Pages

Iraq Politics

Bernard Weiner, of Crisis Papers, says the Rove/Plame investigation may be headed for much deeper waters than the Plame leak per se. Excerpts:

It would appear that this scandal goes way beyond Karl Rove and who said what to whom when about Ms. Plame. It certainly is true, though, that turning over that slimy Rove-Plame rock was the way into the larger issues upon which Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his grand jury apparently are focusing.
(Ain't it almost always so in Washington? The cover-up is always a greater problem for the perpetrators than the original crime, for inevitably even seamier scandals are unearthed one by one...)

What's being covered up in the Plame/Rove case seems to revolve around the Bush Administration's orchestrated, and perhaps illegal, propaganda campaign to justify its invasion of Iraq. Valerie Plame and her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson...are just the tips of very large icebergs, and one of those icebergs has a name: the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which we'll examine below.

One of the ruling judges on the case of the two reporters who refused to divulge their Plame-outing source was about to go easy on them when he read Fitzgerald's new information — eight pages of which were redacted from the public — and said that the national-security seriousness of what he read changed his mind. The court then ordered Time's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller to testify or else; Cooper finally did, and Miller is in jail for contempt of court.

We don't know what is in those eight blacked-out pages...[b]ut apparently they provide the locus around which Fitzgerald is building a case that could result in perjury indictments, at the least, for a number of Administration officials and perhaps journalists as well.

(Another judge said that the prosecutor's classified filing — those missing eight pages — "decides the case." In other words, to quote Lawrence O'Donnell: "All the judges who have seen the prosecutors secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.")

Further, depending on what Bush and Cheney knew and when they knew it — and what they did or covered-up in the possible light of such knowledge — there may be plenty of ammunition for likely impeachment hearings. (Note: Bush hired a private attorney last summer for this CIA-leak case.) [...]

Why Judith Miller is not testifying apparently goes to the heart of Fitzgerald's case. There are reasonable grounds for wondering whether Miller might have been aiding, inadvertently or consciously, Rove and the rest of the WHIG to help move the country toward war with Iraq. [...]

But, from what Fitzgerald has suggested, he and the grand jury long ago determined who the leakers were. That's not what is at issue now. The investigation is all tied in with the national-security matters talked about on those blacked-out eight pages.

And, a reasonable guess is that those pages deal in some fashion with the actions — legal or illegal, overt or covert, actual or covered-up — of the members of an inner council of Administration heavies called the White House Iraq Group.

Just one example of the WHIG's function and influence: "The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago [in 2002], including the introduction of the term 'mushroom cloud' into the debate, coincided with the formation of ... WHIG, a task force assigned to 'educate the public' about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it." (This quote comes from a groundbreaking 2003 article by investigative reporters Barton Gelman and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.) [...]

[A]s Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz later said, the Administration settled on WMD ("for bureaucratic reasons"), apparently realizing that it would be the most effective, frightening, and thus acceptable justification. And so the WMD scare campaign began, with nightmarish tales of biological and chemical agents (which senators were told could be delivered by a drone Iraqi air force over East Coast cities), huge missile armadas, and, most tellingly, nuclear weapons. Of course, none of this was true. [...]

But someone, or some entity, within the Administration had to coordinate these concerted propaganda campaigns. That was the bailiwick and job-assignment of the WHIG, chaired by Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card, the regular members of which were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff. In other words, WHIG included the key decision makers (Rove, Rice, Card, Cheney-via Libby), and the key propaganda specialists (Hughes, Matalin, et al.).

They waited a month to launch their first public-relations bombardment. Why September? Andy Card let slip the reason in an interview with the New York Times: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said. [...]

In sum, the White House Iraq Group was tasked to come up with propaganda campaigns that would work on the Congress and American people — no matter how great the fib; indeed, the bigger the lie, the easier it seemed to be to sell it. And their mission included coordinating those campaigns through the various stages, and denouncing and destroying the reputations of those [like Joseph Wilson] who dared to confront their lies and deceptions. [...]

Again, it's not totally clear how far Special Counsel/U.S Attorney Fitzgerald is willing to go to clear out this nest of Administration vipers. He could choose to stick close to the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson case itself, or he could keep heading in the direction of indicting a good many Administration officials — perhaps with Bush and Cheney as unindicted co-conspirators — for their part in lying about classified national-security matters to the Congress and American people. A wild card: If Judith Miller were to trade immunity for prosecution and decide to testify about Rove/Libby/Cheney, anything could happen. [My emphasis]

Word is that Patrick Fitzgerald is a tenacious, take-no-prisoners kind of prosecutor. Several days ago, Billmon told the following anecdote:

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine, a veteran investigative reporter, who in turn said he recently talked to one of his old editors, who covered Patrick Fitzgerald when he was an assistant U.S. attorney going after mob guys in New York. So my friend asked him what he thought of the guy.
This is from my friend's memory, but given that he's got 20+ years in the business, and I've known him longer than that, I trust his quotes:

"Fitzgerald is a prosecution machine," the old editor said. "When he wants somebody, he goes after them with whatever he's got. If he can't make the case he started with, he'll figure out what you did do and hit you with that. He's relentless, and he doesn't give a flying fuck about the press or the First Amendment. He'd throw us all in jail if it would help him make his case." [My emphasis]

It would be nice if the mainstream media's attention span were up to the task of following through on this story. But if Fitzgerald is half the Terminator he's said to be, it may not even matter what happens in the media.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:00 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

"Along The Lines Of A Scalia Or A Thomas"

On Bush's selection of John Roberts for the Supreme Court, we have this reaction from the Right. NYT:

"The president is a man of his word," said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. "He promised to nominate someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done."

Please, please, say it ain't so.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:45 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 19, 2005

CIA Officers On Plamegate