Once again, California is out front on the environment with an impressive effort to curb global warming. From the L.A. Times:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders agreed Wednesday on a plan to cut by 25% the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from California electric power plants, refineries and other sources by the year 2020.
A 25 percent reduction wouldn't be nearly enough. Some experts have argued that carbon emissions must be cut worldwide by as much as 70 percent over the next several decades for the trend towards global warming (and possibly massive and largely unpredictable climate change) to be reversed. (This in parallel with a rapid expansion of renewable, non-carbon energy supplies.)
President Bush clearly isn't serious about tackling the problem in any serious way, and nor is Prime Minister Harper here in Canada. For them, Kyoto, as inadequate (and obsolete) as is, seems to be a nuisance, a burden on their oil-friendly short-sightedness. Europe, however, is taking the lead. In Britain, for example, Prime Minister Blair, who recently linked up with California after getting nowhere with Bush, has committed to reduce emissions by 60 percent by 2050. Similar or even more progressive commitments have been made in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Still, the California plan is a significant step in the right direction. In the absence of federal leadership from Republicans in Congress and the White House, states will have to pursue emissions cuts on their own or in regional partnerships (as is the case in Northeast), and California's leadership may prompt others to take action. Ultimately, however, leadership must come from Washington, which is in a position to coordinate nation-wide action and to negotiate international agreements.
I applaud efforts in California and elsewhere to try to deal with global warming, but the urgency of the problem, a problem that could profoundly alter our world as we know it, demands even more far-reaching and aggressive initiatives. Our planet requires nothing less.
The rhetoric is overwhelming. If they call me an appeasing, terrorist-hugging, cut-and-run coward one more time I may just start believing I really want to give terror a chance. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't want Iraq to fall into the hands of al Qaeda? Who wouldn't want Iran to have the bomb? Besides, I'm kinda looking forward to an endless war against a faceless enemy who wants to take away my freedom. It'll be good for my blogging. Fuckin' assholes and their adapt-to-win talking points.
When Bush names the enemy fascists, I say, look in the mirror. When Bush says the terrorists desire the Iraqi's oil, I say, look in the mirror. When Rumsfeld says the majority of the American people are morally and intellectually confused, I say, look in the mirror.
Today the president will put his official stamp on all this indecent rhetoric with a speech before the American Legion. Today the president should use a mirror instead of a teleprompter when delivering his campaign speech--a speech he insists has nothing to do with politics--then maybe the truth of who he is would be reflected in the reality of his words.
UPDATE: The Washington Post sets the stage for today's defeatist speech.
No, this isn't Katie's doing. At least it doesn't appear to be. So, no, she doesn't deserve the blame (just as she didn't necessarily deserve the blame the last time she was mixed up in a SOTA -- see here). In fact, she claims, she likes the original image, the real Katie, more than the touched-up one. Fair enough, but the fact is someone somewhere has inched us closer, a wee bit closer, to the Apocalypse. And that sucks.
What the hell am I talking about? Well, surely you've heard that "[t]he incoming 'CBS Evening News' anchor appears significantly thinner in a network promotional magazine photo thanks to digital airbrushing". Like, 20 pounds thinner.
Who cares, you ask? This goes on all the time, you say.
I'm sure it does. And, obviously, there are far, far more important things to care about. But the SOTA-worthy issue here isn't simply the appearance of a digitally thinner TV news anchor, it's the far more serious problem of the presentation of reality in the media and the willful transmission of media-generated reality to consumers who perceive that reality to be truth. In short, the Couric photo fiasco, as innocuous as it may seem, serves to remind us that the truth is not always as it appears to be, that in fact the truth is often, and far more often than we realize, only what it is manipulated to be.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates presents to his interlocutors the famous parable of the cave. The vast mass of humanity, which sits chained facing a wall, mistakes the shadows of objects flickering in front of them, objects controlled by those above them, to be the objects themselves. That is, they mistake the manipulation of reality for reality itself. They mistake the shadow of the truth for the truth itself.
The parable is a universal expression of a key facet of the human condition. Does it not also apply to us? Our media control us through the manipulation of reality. All the more reason for us to be educated media consumers, to know how to interpret the media-generated reality that threatens to overwhelm us. All the more reason for us to be angry at that someone somewhere who airbrushed Katie Couric.
Why? Do you even need to ask? Well, fine. Consider the latest piece of evidence:
CNN has confirmed that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has placed a hold on a bill that would require the government to publish online a database of federal spending.
The identity of the so-called "secret senator" who has put the kibosh on the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act has been a source of much speculation in the blogosphere of late.
No longer. Now we know. And it should come as no surprise.
If Stevens has his way, and he often does, there will be no accountability and no transparency. And certainly no good governance. There will be bridges to nowhere, but no bridge to the people, to the sort of open democracy Americans have fought for throughout their history. This is, after all, a senator who, in the words of Steve Benen (linking to Justin Rood), is "a notorious pork-lover". Consider, for more, the damning evidence at Wikipedia.
Ted Stevens is clearly an idiot and clearly dangerous.
A terrifying picture, from WaPo, of a new arena of violence in Iraq:
In Baghdad these days, not even the hospitals are safe. In growing numbers, sick and wounded Sunnis have been abducted from public hospitals operated by Iraq's Shiite-run Health Ministry and later killed, according to patients, families of victims, doctors and government officials...
In most cases, family members and hospital workers said, the motive for the abductions appeared to be nothing more than religious affiliation. Because public hospitals here are controlled by Shiites, the killings have raised questions about whether hospital staff have allowed Shiite death squads into their facilities to slaughter Sunni Arabs.
Last year, almost to the day, I wrote a post on the latest census numbers with respect to the state of poverty in the U.S. -- you can find it here.
I quoted John Edwards: "America should be showing true leadership on the great moral issues of our time -- like poverty -- instead of allowing these situations to get worse."
I quoted Michael Harrington: "This suffering is such an abomination in a society where it is needless that anything that can be done should be done... In any case, and from any point of view, the moral obligation is plain: there must be a crusade against this poverty in our midst... How long shall we ignore this underdeveloped nation in our midst? How long shall we look the other way while our fellow human beings suffer? How long?"
How long? Well, the situation seems to be getting worse. Over at The Carpetbagger Report, our friend Steve Benen has a must-read post on the new census numbers. They paint a disturbing picture:
In 2005, 46.6 million people were without health insurance coverage, up from 45.3 million people in 2004;
The percentage of people without health insurance coverage increased from 15.6 percent in 2004 to 15.9 percent in 2005;
The median earnings of men declined 1.8 percent to $41,386. The median earnings of women declined 1.3 percent to $31,858; and
In 2005, 37.0 million people were in poverty, not statistically different from 2004.
37 million people, or 12.6 percent of the population, live in poverty. There is no crusade. There is no true leadership. There is only this appalling abomination as too many of us, too many of our leaders, continue to look the other way.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Holocaust may have been invented by the victorious Allied powers in World War II to embarrass Germany.
Yes, Ahmadinejad, the Madman of Tehran, said it is "a reasonable possibility that some countries that had won the war made up this excuse to constantly embarrass the defeated people... to bar their progress".
Merkel was not amused. And rightly so.
Not that we need yet more proof of Ahmadinejad's disturbed state of mind, but is he really this crazy? Yes, quite possibly. He may have meant this strange letter more for domestic consumption than for Merkel herself, and one wonders if he truly believes what he has to say about the Holocaust, but this is the political leader of a major Middle Eastern power with a nuclear program that may soon produce weapons who questions the Holocaust and denies Israel's right to exist.
For most people who are following Canadian politics, the headline "Tories more ready than any other party for an election" comes as no surprise. It seems that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been election-ready since he won a minority government in January of this year. In June, I mentioned that Harper was already dropping not-so-subtle hints about the e-word when his nominee for an accountability appointment was soundly rejected, saying: "We'll obviously need a majority government to do that in the future. That's obviously what we'll be taking to the people of Canada at the appropriate time,"
The latest of such blustering comes after a sort of break in the softwood lumber dispute -- a deal negotiated by the party-switching Member of Parliament, David Emerson (who, as you may recall, jumped the Liberal ship for a ministerial position in the new Conversative government). The Prime Minister proudly stated that a large number of timber companies were getting behind the deal, but refused to give actual numbers, merely stating, "it's a very strong majority."
However, some in the lumber industry were leery towards the new deal. Hank Ketcham, President of West Fraser Timber, said that his company "had serious reservations about both the substance of the (agreement) and the process by which it has been developed."
Why? According to The Vancouver Sun, "The agreement will return $4.3 billion to Canadian producers. The companies, in turn, would have to drop their largely successful legal challenges before panels established under the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization." In addition to this, the United States gets to keep $1 billion of the illegal tariffs it collected.
In other words, all those rulings that came in Canada's favour from NAFTA and the WTO in the softwood lumber dispute will be have to be forgotten, as if they counted for nothing (for a brief overview of the softwood lumber controversy, see here). And what's the point of having an international agreement when we agree not to adhere to the terms?
But I digress.
The main point of this matter is that on August 22 Harper announced that he would put this deal before the House of Commons in September as a bill -- adding that its failure to pass would lead to (surprise, surprise) an election.
Harper is placing a bill, practically as a confidence motion, before the House that the New Democrats, the Bloc Quebecois and most of the Liberals feel they cannot support (one NDP MP, Peter Julian, called the deal a "sellout"), with what is essentially an ultimatum: "Pass it or face an election."
Now, let's break this down:
The last election in Canada was held in January 2006. The election before that was in the summer of 2004. The very idea of three elections in the span of two years (and two in ONE year!) is exhausting, and the very exercise itself is costly and a cause for general crankiness among the Canadian electorate. Any party that triggers or is perceived to have triggered one now would likely be looking at a poor showing in the polls.
Add to that: The Liberals (the main and strongest opposition to Harper's Conservatives) are currently without a leader. The convention in which one will be chosen is set for December. A snap election called in September could catch them, not unawares (there are contingencies being put in place for such a political emergency), but in a very shaky position.
So what are the options? It's the lesser of two evils in this case: Vote for a bill most of the opposition parties view as being bad for the country, or get trounced by the public and see a reduction in seats and power in Parliament. The Bloc, the NDP, and the Grits have the most to lose, and Harper wins either way. In the first scenario, his bill gets passed. In the second, he may get that majority he's been salivating over for the past eight months, because he will shift the blame onto the opposition for toppling the government.
All in all, someone's playing a game of political brinksmanship with a trigger finger on the election button.
According to the AP, Republican Jack Kemp -- former NFL star, Congressman, Cabinet secretary, and Veep candidate -- is heading to Connecticut to campaign with (and for) "Democrat" Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman leads in the polls but obviously needs all the help he can get. With Democrats flocking to Lamont, the winner of the Democratic primary, Lieberman's hopes in November rest largely on luring Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to his candidacy. And he can do that by campaigning with Republican stars.
And by being, for all intents and purposes, a Republican himself. Which, these days, isn't much of a stretch. Not much at all.
There's something maddeningly nauseating (and funny in a really bad way) about President Bush's far-too-little-far-too-late proclamations in commemoration of the one-year anniversary of Katrina. Here's how WaPo begins its account:
President Bush, marking the one-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, promised today a "better and more effective response" in the event of another hurricane, saying the catastrophic storm exposed government failure at "all levels."
This is like admitting that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. In ignorance -- in straying from the talking points or in sticking to ones with fissures, unintentional or not -- comes a kernel of truth. In promising a "better and more effective response," Bush is admitting, unwittingly or not, that the response to Katrina, a response that was ultimately his own responsibility, was neither good nor effective. How else to explain the fact that New Orleans remains a disaster zonea year after Katrina? Katrina may have "exposed government failure at 'all levels,'" but it exposed it most acutely in the Oval Office.
Bush said that "[w]e will stand with the people of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi until the job is done".
Israel has appointed a top general to oversee a war against Iran, prompting speculation that it is preparing for possible military action against Tehran's nuclear program.
Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's air force chief, will be overall commander for the "Iran front," military sources told the London Sunday Telegraph.
This may* mean nothing more than prudent preparedness. But what's wrong with that? After all, we all know what Iranian President Ahmadinejad thinks of Israel and how Iran supportsHezbollah.
Right?
(* If Israel really is preparing for an imminent strike, well, my preliminary view is that any such strike ought to wait for serious diplomatic efforts to run their course -- successfully, one hopes.)
According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Democrat Ted Strickland leads Republican Ken Blackwell 57 percent to 32 percent in the Ohio gubernatorial race, a whopping and rather "intimidating" spread of 25 points. And the trend is looking good: Strickland was up by just 4 points in January, and the three-poll rolling average indicates that the spread has been widening consistently since late last year.
Now we just need Sherrod Brown to pull ahead of Mike DeWine in the Senate race. How would that be for a Democratic one-two punch in one of America's most notorious swing states?
Death seems to be in decline in Baghdad this month, according to the L.A. Times:
An ambitious military sweep appears to be dramatically reducing Baghdad's homicide rate, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday -- even as violence nationwide killed at least 80 people, including six U.S. soldiers in and around the capital.
Last month, the Baghdad morgue received more than 1,800 bodies, a record high. This month, the morgue is on track to receive less than a quarter of that.
I have no doubt that the Baghdad sweep is doing some good. And perhaps the numbers really have declined as much as the L.A. Times is reporting they have. Perhaps, to some degree, the U.S. military is right that "the capital's declining violence to a sweep involving 8,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops aimed at stopping sectarian violence". I have far less confidence in Prime Minister Maliki's seemingly idiotic claim that there will never be a civil war in Iraq (define civil war) and that there is now "is an atmosphere of reconciliation" in Iraq (between whom exactly?).
And consider the probing questions posed by Juan Cole, who responds directly to the L.A. Times's seemingly misguided article:
This article says that killings are down substantially in Baghdad itself, what with thousands of US and Iraqi troops making security sweeps through the most dangerous neighborhoods. The first question is whether the decline in deaths in Baghdad (which is only relative) has been offset by violence in Mosul, Baqubah and elsewhere. The second question is whether the violence will remain lower when the sweeps end, as inevitably they will. Can the Iraqi troops take over at that point and continue to be effective against the guerrillas? My guess is, "no." In which case the US "Battle for Baghdad" is just a delaying tactic, putting off the day when the west of the capital falls altogether into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas. If that happened, the Green Zone might not be far behind.
I am eager to see the violence end. The point of our "Just another day" and "Just another month" series here at The Reaction is to highlight the underreported violence in Iraq, to emphasize in a non-partisan way the human cost of this ongoing war. But it is only with sadness that we do this. The violence under Saddam was deplorable. So is the violence in the post-Saddam era.
Yet it seems to me that this "good" news is dangerously misleading. The violence in Baghdad, and only in Baghdad, has been lessened by an American effort that, as Professor Cole stresses, will end. It has thus been artificially lessened. Once the American effort ends, or perhaps even before it does, the violence will likely return to its pre-sweep levels. The only way to end the violence, or at least to reduce it to manageable levels, is to build a sustainable peace, that is, a legitimately self-governing Iraq that can impose order and provide for a stable civil society. Iraq needs a Leviathan, but one that is both liberal and democratic. The American sweep in Baghdad may be saving lives, but it isn't anything more than a stop-gap measure that makes things look better than they really are.
This isn't good news. It's just temporary (and relative) not bad news. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise.
Over at Think Progress, one of our favourite blogs, Amanda provides a helpful, link-filled post on "the real state of New Orleans" one year after Katrina. Despite Bush's initial promises to get things done, it's pretty dismal, with garbage yet to be picked up, houses still without electricity, little public transportation, hospitals still closed, rents soaring, and suicides at an alarming rate.
Check out the post and click on the links.
And also check out John Edwards's piece on "Remembering Katrina's Victims" at the One America Committee (where I'm honoured to be a featured blogger). Here's how he describes the New Orleans of today:
Despite all the official promises about "doing what it takes" to get New Orleans back on its feet, much of the city still looks as if the hurricane hit yesterday. Thousands upon thousands of homes remain deserted, windowless and covered with flood grime in desolate neighborhoods. The water and sewer systems are still in terrible shape. Fewer than half of the city’s hospitals have reopened, and there are not nearly enough health clinics to adequately serve all the low-income families who need care. Vast areas are still littered with mangled cars and piles of debris.
Promises have been broken and a city, once a glorious city, still lies in ruins, much of it left to rot. That's the reality of New Orleans one year after Katrina.
Mr. Bush delivered his [Katrina] remarks at an intersection in a working-class Biloxi neighborhood against a carefully orchestrated backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. Just a few feet out of camera range stood gutted houses with wires dangling from interior ceilings. A tattered piece of crime scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet seat lay on its side in the grass.
Crime scene tape and a toilet seat. That about sums up Bush's entire presidency.
Back in early June, the media was watching closely the results of the special election in San Diego to replace Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham after he plead guilty to bribery. The buzz was, if Francine Busby won, it would be a clear indication that the voters were tired of Republican corruption and were ready to hand Congress over to the Democrats. Opinion polls before Election Day had Busby ahead of her opponent Brian Bilbray, but in the end, Bilbray pulled it out and traditional media was all over the story. Well, they were all over part of the story, the part that cast a rosy glow over the GOP and their chances of holding onto control of Congress in the midterms, but the bigger story was the fact that the election was contested. That story never got off the ground though. As we know, traditional media doesn’t challenge, let alone investigate fishy elections. That’s not newsworthy in this day and age.
The election in San Diego was conducted on Diebold machines that were kept in the homes of poll workers for days before the election, this breach of protocol effectively decertified the machines, but they were used anyway and when the machines spit out a win for Republican Bilbray, he was quickly sworn in back in Washington D.C., even though there were votes still being counted and the results hadn’t been certified. I guess if the GOP can’t get their hand picked SoS to certify fraudulent results ala Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell, they can just bypass the SoS and swear in whomever they choose, I mean really, who’s going to challenge them, The Washington Post, CNN, Chris Matthews, Bob Woodward? Please.
The election was contested in late July after the California Registrar refused to conduct a hand recount (sound familiar?), and a brief was filed last week by the defendants in the case claiming that the California courts don’t have jurisdiction to decide the case and that the House of Representatives has the full authority to determine its members. In other words, the voters are merely giving a suggestion when they vote for their Congressperson, in the end, Congress can determine for itself who to swear in and accept as members. I guess we should all keep that in mind as we head to the polls in November. We’re not really deciding on representation, we’re only voicing our opinion, an opinion that can be ignored if we make the “wrong” choice. Good to know.
I still run into Democrats that are active in Party politics who refuse to acknowledge the ugly reality of how broken our election systems are. We watched as Al Gore tried to eek out enough votes to best George Bush instead of demanding that every vote in Florida be counted, we watched as John Kerry folded and refused to fight, we have watched Democrats in the House and Senate run as fast as they can away from any discussion involving fraudulent elections, manipulated results and hackable voting machines. There are a great many people diligently working through legal channels to secure free and fair elections (and BradBlog is doing an excellent job of covering these efforts), but the opposition has more money, more lawyers and more access.
Where are our Democratic leaders on this issue? How can they continue to provide cover for the GOP and even worse, a false sense of security to rank and file Democrats who honestly believe that if there was a real problem, surely prominent Democrats would be making more noise? For whatever reason (they’re feeding at the corporate trough?), that isn’t going to happen and voters need to recognize that we are on our own. If our election system is to be fixed, we must first acknowledge just how bad things are and then we must stop helping the enemy by demeaning the efforts of those working so hard to save our democracy. It’s time we worried less about their tin foil hats and more about our own steel blinders.
A few posts down I made reference to the "optimistic president" and his "optimistic carpet." Both of these statements were based on a Washington Post puff piece from March where the president talked about his oval office rug and the optimism it instilled. The word optimism was used roughly six times to describe the man and his carpet. Ridiculous, to say the least. So today when I awoke to find this op-ed in the NY Times, I couldn't help but laugh. The irony is striking.
Part of Mr. Bush’s legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism — a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was deeply challenged. The next generation of leaders will have to resell discouraged Americans on the very idea of optimism, and convince them again that their goal should not be to live with their ailments, but to cure them.
Sad, but true. The strained pessimistic psyche of America is only one small causality of the presidency that is forty-three.
Or does he already? Robert Kuttner argued in the Globe on Saturday -- and it's an argument that many of us have made, but it deserves repeating -- that Cheney is "the man running the country," that "[t]he [Bush] administration's grand strategy and its implementation are the work of Cheney -- sometimes Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, sometimes Cheney and political director Karl Rove" -- but always Cheney. Indeed, "for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England".
One hopes that future historians will do more than our present journalists and get the story right. The truth of the Bush presidency needs to be revealed, and learned from, so that its myriad blunders, failures, and injustices may never be repeated.
You've heard most of it before, but read the whole piece.
I'm back from a wonderful vacation. I'll be back to my regular posting schedule soon -- I didn't blog while I was away, but I'm ready to pick up right where I left off and I'm eager to get going again -- but allow me to thank Creature for standing in for me this past week. He kept this blog alive and lively during my absence. He is, as many of you already know, a great blogger, and I'm honoured to have him here as one of our regular co-bloggers, as well as to have him as a friend. I'm sure he'll continue to provide us with regular doses of his wit and wisdom, but be sure to check out his home blog, too. As I've said before, I think The Reaction and State of the Day make a great pair. I hope you all keep reading us -- as well as our other contributors, all of whom do some truly excellent stuff at their own home blogs.
Make sure you hang on until the end for a surprise.
[Have a great weekend everyone. My full-time blog-time here at The Reaction has come to an end. Michael will be back soon to clean up the mess I have made of the place. And please stop by State of the Day anytime to get your fix of half-assed, yet whole-hearted, blogging fun. ]
Anyone who still believes that the Bush White House doesn’t play politics with fear should watch a report by Keith Olbermann, anchor of the MSNBC news show Countdown, in which he succinctly lays out 10 cases where the Republican administration used terror alerts--bogus or bona fide, it’s hard to know anymore--to shift public and press attention away from scandals, congressional criticism, or other news that was deemed to be damaging to the White House. “Ten separate incidents,” remarks TruthOut contributor Larry Johnson, “where the Bush administration issued public warnings of imminent attacks that subsequently turned out to be non-existent or misleading. George Bush is the boy who cried Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf ... and no end is in sight.”
You can watch the full 12.5-minute TV segment here.
The optimistic president better take another magic ride on his optimistic carpet because the mood in the White House is starting to seem anything but optimistic. Read on, it's about Iraq, and it's about the president's last ditch rhetorical effort to keep the people of the United States on the GOP side of the not so optimistic fence.
Of all the words that President Bush used at his news conference this week to defend his policies in Iraq, the one that did not pass his lips was "progress." [...]
The shifting rhetoric reflected a broader pessimism that has reached into even some of the most optimistic corners of the administration -- a sense that the Iraq venture has taken a dark turn and will not be resolved anytime soon. Bush advisers once believed that if they met certain benchmarks, such as building a constitutional democracy and training a new Iraqi army, the war would be won. Now they believe they have more or less met those goals, yet the war rages on.
Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States. [...]
The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.
These angry voices are no doubt led by the vice president and his neo-con henchmen. With the drumbeat having already begun, soon it will be time for their patented cherrypicking and fixing of intelligence around a set of predetermined conclusions.
The NYT has more, and remember every time "some" official is cited insert the name Cheney and things become clear.
More Rep. Peter King fodder in aid of Fixer's quest to take this man's seat away. King makes it too easy. Here he is commenting on a article regarding the lack of diversity on Capital Hill:
King said race and ethnicity aren't a factor in his hiring decisions, but that, as a conservative Republican, diversifying his staff "would probably make me look good to show that I have someone on staff that doesn't fit the stereotype."
Mr. King, it's not about what looks good it's about doing good. The image over substance, over competence, GOP, strikes again.
Now go, stop by Fixer's place, and make a difference.
Maybe Bush would we prefer we poll them over there so he doesn't have to read poll numbers like this over here:
Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The finding that 51 percent of those surveyed see no link between the war in Iraq and the broader antiterror effort was a jump of 10 percentage points since June. It came despite the regular insistence of Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans that the two are intertwined and should be seen as complementary elements of an overall strategy to prevent domestic terror attacks.
The Bushies have been unable to blame the violence in Iraq on al Qaeda as convincingly as they had before the killing of al-Zarqawi. They killed their bogeyman. They killed their creation. They killed their central go-to terror guy. I'm sure someone in the White House is kicking themselves for not using the Osama theory on Zarqawi. That is, keep you terror figurehead alive so a finger can be pointed and their actions justified.
That being said, it's amazing that that number is still only 51 percent.
U.S. News, and every blog on the face of the earth, is reporting that the president of the United States "can't get enough of fart jokes" and "he's also known to cut a few for laughs. " So in my quest to outblog the best of the bloggers, I Googled "farting," and lo and behold, I found this:
These guys are either brilliant, or really, really fast out of the gate. Go see for yourself and have fun with the flatulence.
You know, I once had a boss who thought it was the height of hilarity to fart in front of his employees. We didn't regard him as "funny" or "earthy," but as "a total asshole."
Bush has put out a quiet feeler to replace Rumsfeld in recent weeks. He was politely turned down by at least one candidate he personally called. Unknown: is this one of many candidates Bush has sounded out? Is there a Bernacke-style search going on quietly in the background?
This sounds very plausible to me. If the October surprise turns out to be Rumsfeld's head it will be spun as accountability, but, of course, we know it's all about the politics. The GOP needs some political cover heading into November and Bush needs to, at a minimum, appear to be listening to his critics. This is a win-win for for Bush and the GOP. For Cheney, however, not so much. If you see Rumsfeld go then we know the balance-of-power has finally shifted out of the vice presidents office and into the White House.
For decades, many scientists have theorized that the universe is made up of nearly undetectable mysterious substances called dark matter and dark energy. But until yesterday there was no proof that the subatomic matter actually exists.
After studying data from a long-ago collision of two giant clusters of galaxies, researchers now say they are certain dark matter does exist and plays a central role in creating and defining gravity throughout the universe.
More ridiculousness and absurdity from the administration that has set a new standard for ridiculousness and absurdity. This latest silliness is brought to us by the Washington Post:
The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. [...]
"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. [...]
"Is that now going to be reclassified?" asked Norris [senior research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council]. "I would say that the horse is out of the barn and they are only making themselves look ridiculous. At someone's direction, declassification reviewers have gotten carried away and are applying the rather vague and open-ended guidelines to the point of absurdity."
So much for a free and open society.
Read more, because in a few weeks the Bush administration may classify the article from which this came.
"We will defeat the terrorists and expand freedom across the world, we'll protect the American homeland and work tirelessly to prevent attacks on our country," he said. "The terrorists remain determined to destroy innocent life on a massive scale, and we must be equally determined to stop them."
I could have sworn I have heard this rhetoric before. Bill, Ted, fire up the phone booth because we're going on a most excellent, if not depressing, rhetorical adventure.
The president speaks to Congress soon after that horrible, horrible day. Sept. 20, 2001:
Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us.
Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.
A year later the president continues his tireless, freedom-loving ways. Jan 29, 2002:
Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
One more year forward and we find the mission accomplished, yet somehow the war rages on. May 1, 2003:
The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland and we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike.
The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide.
It's not over yet, but that's okay, our will is strong. Jan. 20, 2004:
As democracy takes hold in Iraq, the enemies of freedom will do all in their power to spread violence and fear. They are trying to shake the will of our country and our friends, but the United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins.
Almost done, one year forward. You would figure after four years freedom's march would be done already, no? March 8, 2005:
This objective will not be achieved easily, or all at once, or primarily by force of arms. We know that freedom, by definition, must be chosen, and that the democratic institutions of other nations will not look like our own. Yet we also know that our security increasingly depends on the hope and progress of other nations now simmering in despair and resentment. And that hope and progress is found only in the advance of freedom.
Freedom, freedom, freedom. It will not be achieved easily. We will not be intimidated. They will not shake us. Freedom's enemies are not idle. We are steadfast. We will press on. We will not tire.
I'll give the president this much: five years on, he certainly is consistent. Wrong, but consistent. We have tired. We have tired of the broken-record-rhetoric.
THE results are in for the White House’s latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans’ fearing fear itself is over. [...]
It’s not as if the White House didn’t pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in “24.” But Mr. Bush’s Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of “Top Gun.” By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on “The Daily Show.” June’s scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a “full ground war” and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots. [...]
As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It’s hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who’ve presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.
Frank Rich also throws out this interesting little number: "[O]nly 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism." 9%, talk about dead-enders.
The NYT has more if you're a paying customer. For the rest of you True Blue Liberal comes to the rescue.
For all you wonderful Reaction readers, Truth in Comics is a regular Sunday feature over at my home base, State of the Day. It's what a like to call blogfiller. It's my way of keeping you amused without any actual thought, effort, or originality on my part. It is Sunday after all and even Creatures must rest. Enjoy!
Oh, and, if you all are kinda sick of seeing just me up here, Michael is taking a few days of R & R and will be popping in once in a while to make sure you guys are behaving. So you better not act up while I'm subbing or I'll have to call the Stickings to keep you in line.
Now, I want to know how my simple one-line Sunday post got so damn long. You know, maybe it's time to shake this place up a bit more. I'm thinking this:
Who's with me?
Jeez, I hope Michael doesn't see all this...
(Sort of cross-posted at State of the Day, just not with all this other stuff.)
Yes, this post requires math, but since logic plays no role in this equation, the problem may be unsolvable. Jon Stewart is your professor. Use Think Progress for your text. And our case study involves a cold murder case springing back to life.
The point that I think goes unmentioned too often is that the president's (and the Republican Congress') record on national security issues is really bad. I know, it's a well-kept secret, but it's true.
We're talking about an administration that largely ignored Clinton's advice about dealing al Qaeda; didn't take the "bin Laden determined to strike inside U.S." memo seriously; invaded Afghanistan but failed to follow through on our commitments; can't catch bin Laden; launched a devastating war in Iraq that has increased the terrorist threat; watched the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran get considerably worse; leaked classified information for partisan gain; and launched an illegal surveillance program that produced a flood of useless tips. Closer to home, they've rejected Democratic efforts to boost homeland security.
Why not make this the signature campaign issue for 2006?
WaPo: "A federal judge ruled [on Thursday] that tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws, concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product and ordering the companies to make landmark changes in the way cigarettes are marketed."
Well done, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler.
Unfortunately, Kessler "could not impose billions of dollars in penalties that had been sought by the Justice Department in its civil racketeering suit against the eight defendant tobacco companies," but this is still a major step towards finally holding Big Tobacco fully responsible for what it's done to the American people -- and indeed to people all around the world. Surely this is a crime against humanity. Accountability ought to come at a massive cost to the perpetrators of this deception.
Kessler: "In short, defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted."
Big Tobacco is a huge racketeering ring. More than that, it's a killer.
We know the truth. Now it's time for retribution.
**********
For more, see Michael Mann's great film The Insider, with Al Pacino as 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman and Russell Crowe as tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand. It's one of my favourite films of all time and certainly one of the best American films of the past 25 years. It's truly exceptional.
John Bolton won't talk to Taylor Marsh (one of our favourite bloggers here at The Reaction). And I doubt he ever will. Like so many on the right, he evidently much prefers the sycophantic company of his own ideological kind. This is why conservatives flock to Fox News. It's a safe place to be.
Marsh, a legitimate journalist, is too unsafe for someone like Bolton. She might ask some tough questions, she might back him into a corner, she might embarrass him.
More evidence of who was really behind the conflict in Lebanon, from USA Today:
The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane's flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say.
After initially supporting Israel in its "war" with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and while still defending Israel's right to defend itself, I came quickly to acknowledge the need for a diplomatic resolution to a conflict that had seemingly escalated out of control with no clear end in sight. But a diplomatic resolution also meant an international peacekeeping force, and that peacekeeping force is already, and predictably, running into problems.
For example:
It is a problem that two countries that do not even recognize Israel as a sovereign state, have pledged troops to the U.N. peacekeeping force.
It is a problem that France, which cozied up to Iran but which offered to lead the peacekeeping force, has thus far pledged only 200 troops. By comparison, Bangladesh has pledged up to 2,000 troops. Italy could send 3,000 troops.
And it is a problem that "the offers [of support] do not necessarily provide the right mix of troops and capabilities needed for the deployment" and that "[a] number of countries are calling for clearer guidance on the exact nature of the mission".
Is it a problem that Israel's two main supporters, the U.S. and the U.K., will only provide logistical support? Perhaps not, given the baggage of Iraq, but a stronger, more visible commitment to peace from these allies would surely lend credibility to the peacekeeping effort.
So many problems, perhaps insurmountable ones. Peace does not come easily.
WaPo: "A federal judge in Detroit ruled yesterday that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional, delivering the first decision that the Bush administration's effort to monitor communications without court oversight runs afoul of the Bill of Rights and federal law."
Well done, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor.
There's a lot of commentary on this story in the blogosphere. You can find all the latest at Memeorandum, but make sure to check out, above all, Glenn Greenwald, who in a must-read post with multiple updates declares that this is "extraordinary news -- extraordinarily good news -- on every level".
A new Quinnipiac poll gives Joe Lieberman a 12-point lead over Ned Lamont -- 53 to 41 -- in Connecticut's Senate race. The Republican candidate, the distinctly lame Alan Schlesinger, lags way behind at four percent.
There's still a long way to go until the election, but Lieberman's strong showing among Republicans could put him over the top unless Lamont is able to eat significantly into his Democratic support. That may yet happen as the election draws near, but the recent Democratic primary showed that Lieberman still has a good deal of support from his own party in his home state. Lamont only won that contest by four points. As well, I suspect that Lieberman will benefit so long as terrorism, an issue that plays to his hawkish bona fides, remains in the news. A key determinant will likely be how much influence external factors -- including terrorism, the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict, Iraq, Bush's approval ratings, and the relative popularity of the two parties -- have on the heavily nationalized race in Connecticut.
For now, it seems Joe still has some momentum left in the tank.
Yes, yes, I know. There's something quite juvenile about calling prominent public figures dangerous idiots -- indeed, about name-calling in general. Yesterday it was George Allen, whose buffoonery borders on dangerous idiocy, whose intentional bigotry is dangerous idiocy. And today it's Allen's Senate colleague Orrin Hatch, whose flagrant partisanship with respect to the politics of fear also qualifies as dangerous idiocy.
What did Hatch do to qualify? Consider: According to The Salt Lake Tribune, he said recently that terrorists are "waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again". In other words, Bush and the Republicans stand between America and another 9/11. Elect Democrats at your own peril.
How stupid, no? How idiotic, no?
Yet it's hardly the first time Hatch played the terrorism card to attack Democrats as weak and terrorism-friendly. Back in 2004, a couple of months before the presidential election, he said that terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry". In other words, Osama supported Kerry. The only way to stop Osama and his ilk was to re-elect Bush. Democrats, if elected, will (indirectly) kill Americans. Elect them, to repeat, at your own peril.
Utter nonsense, of course, but such divisive rhetoric works. Republicans have successfully spun the narrative that Democrats are weak on national security and cowardly in the war on terror -- unreliable at best, abettors of terrorism at worst. The narrative has stuck.
Dangerous idiots like Orrin Hatch need to be held accountable for what they say and how they say it. It may indeed be rather unbecoming of me to call the Allens and Hatches of the world buffoons and idiots, but I'll continue to call them as I see them.
ABC News is reporting that "North Korea may be preparing for an underground test of a nuclear bomb". The evidence obtained by U.S. intelligence is circumstantial -- "the unloading of large reels of cable outside P'unggye-yok, an underground facility in northeast North Korea, cables that could "be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test site to outside observation equipment" -- but there is hardly a doubt that North Korea aspires to be a nuclear power.
But what can be done? Should the U.S. bomb North Korea (as I asked back in June)? Would stronger U.N. sanctions work? Would further six-party talks lead to some sort of diplomatic resolution, perhaps aid in exchange for nuclear disengagement? Should the U.S. sit down and talk to, and negotiate with, North Korea on its own?
This post was going to be about last throes and how the insurgency in Iraq is stronger than ever. I was going to use my exceptional cutting and pasting skills to quote an anonymous Defense Department official saying: “The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high level.” However, the real story, the real scoop, in this article about things that go boom has been buried way at the end. And it goes something like this:
Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.
“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.” [the bold is all me]
So much for spreading democracy.
So what would be their alternative to democracy? Will the Bushies put Saddam back in power and call their whole Iraqi adventure a wash? I wouldn't put it past them. At a minimum they'll slap a colorful name on their "alternative to democracy" and pray we don't notice. Operation Bring Bremer Back has a nice ring. Or perhaps we will see Exile in Action: Chalabi Takes Control. No matter the name, if were a betting man, I'd lay a bundle down that the administration is holding on for dear life until November. And after November, all bets are off. This ugly picture, is not going to get any prettier anytime soon.
The NYT has more, but remember the real story doesn't begin until you get to the end.
I thought about including Allen in our "dangerous idiot" series, where he would find suitable companionship alongside Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, James Dobson, John Boehner, James Inhofe, and Sam Brownback (type "dangerous idiot" in the box above and click "Search This Blog" for more), but he seems to be more of a buffoon than anything else.
He may claim that his "macaca" slur was innocuous, as CNN reports here, but there's a pattern of bigotry that seems to run through his life. Whatever his intention here, whatever he meant to say about S.R. Sidarth, a volunteer working for Democrat Jim Webb, Allen's challenger in this year's Virginia Senate race, this incident seems to fit in with that pattern. Macaca, after all, is a genus of monkey (18 macaca species are found in East Asia, one in North Africa). How, given his history, his long history, are we not to assume that Allen was calling Sidarth, a South Asian, a monkey? Unless, of course, Allen was using "macaca" as a slur for North Africans and applying it ignorantly to a South Asian. Or unless he's just stupid.
So is he a buffoon? Yes, it would seem so.
But he's also an idiot (just as the explanation (excuse) being offeredin his defence is idiotic.) And his position as a U.S. senator makes him dangerous. As do his aspirations to the Oval Office.
