Medicare and the Health Care Debate

We’re in the heat of battle, so to speak, on health care reform, and the rhetoric is flying. Lots of untruths are flying too, many intentional (see “propaganda”). Here are some facts, with links, to help clarify this critical care issue.

Specifics of the cost / benefit comparison. The data is from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a Congressional research service set up under GW Bush as a part of Medicare modernization. This data below is from their March and June 2008 reports to Congress, available (pdf) from MedPAC

Medicare pays doctors 19% less than private insurers, yet 97% of doctors (and nearly all hospitals, which are paid 25% less) accept new Medicare patients, virtually the same percent (no statistically significant difference) that accept private PPO patients. That is solid, numerical proof of concept.

Thus it is possible for a big payer to negotiate lower prices, which has to be a part of  “cost containment” in health care, and our government has done better than any other (domestic) source. Plus, they have succeeded with the highest risk patient population in the business, the elderly. A common response from public health care opponents is that providers shift costs to private payers, but no one has offered proof. As disproof, my Medicare-accepting doctor is not allowed to charge private insurers any more than my Medicare-denying doctor friend. If private insurers are picking up the tab for Medicare patients, that’s their problem. They’re unable to negotiate a price that meets what our government can.

Another common talking point is that if we don’t pay too much, we’ll strangle “innovation” in health care. With respect to insurance, insurance company “innovation” such as “new products” does nothing to improve health care. With respect to big pharma, they have not felt the heat nearly enough to lower costs. They lie constantly about how they need big profits to drive innovation, but the truths are: first, they need government to drive innovation, and second, they are no more innovative than their European and Asian rivals, who now dominate the pharma market (4 of the top 5). On the first point, look at taxol, one of our newest chemotherapy agents. Discovered by government grants to an academic researcher, the development was funded by NIH, yet Bristol Meyers Squibb got the patent and then wants top dollar from the very people, “we the people” who gave them the drug in the first place.

Then opponents veer off into the Friedmanite mantra “privatize, deregulate” saying if we just give insurers more slack (less regulation) they’ll compete by lowering prices and becoming more efficient. The “free market” argument is propaganda.

Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated,” according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that’s led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.  LINK

For those who think government can’t run an insurance program, take a look at the national flood insurance program. Insuring people in flood plains is just too risky for private insurance, so the government has to do it, and does it well. Same thing with Medicare. The expensive risk pool of over 65 Americans is too risky for private insurance, yet the government runs the program at MUCH lower cost than private insurance manages with the easier risk pool. Plus, private insurers take advantage of and use the work of millions of staff hours of federal work (like their diagnosis system) and still private insurers and their adherents pretend that the free market is so efficient and the government so inept.

Malpractice is another boogey man of the right. If only patients harmed by negligence, corruption or incompetence couldn’t sue, the cost of health care would plummet, they contend. So tort reform over the objections of “trial lawyers” (another boogeyman to the right) would save the day.

Reality chack: Malpractice is actually a tiny part of health care cost, around 2%, and doctors who are crooked or incompetent deserve judgments against them. Malpractice *insurance* is costly, but that’s the same insurance industry that is responsible for other out of control costs. A Dartmouth College study destroyed the idea that insurers raised malpractice rates to cover lawsuit costs. In fact, they were covering losses due to their bad investments.

Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college…

Meanwhile, malpractice insurance premiums for internists, general surgeons, and obstetricians have skyrocketed since 2000, jumping 20 to 25 percent in 2002 alone…

It has been proven repeatedly that “caps” and other “tort reforms” do not work. States that have enacted so-called “tort reform” have only seen their insurance rates continue to shoot up after passing severe liability limits. ” In all states with severe caps “insurers have continued to increase insurance rates.”

Another common talking point is that a government run program will be a horror story because “big government” is so bad and evil, run by “heartless bureaucrats” and will be worse than private. That’s a scare tactic. Government already covers almost half of health care in the US, so it’s not a speculative exercise of how bad they could do. There is fully as much data on government paid health care as there is for privately paid health care. Medicare wins hands down. Not sure? Name a single other insurance policy, outside of a government one, that has these features:

no eligibility requirements or physical
no exclusion of pre-existing conditions
no cancellation for excess use of services
no penalty for moving or changing jobs
no re-applying for coverage if moving or changing jobs
a stable, mature program known to both physicians and patients
no marketing cost
no sales cost
no commissions
no bloated executive salaries
no palatial executive suites
no corporate jets or limos

Climate Change Case

Temperature and CO2 have always correlated closely, for at least 400,000 years. Here’s a graph of that correlation:
Most climate scientists believe the reason is the “greenhouse effect,” that is, heat is retained more by air with higher levels of greenhouse gasses. CO2 can be absorbed both by land (plants, mostly) and oceans (direct air to water transfer). However, though the oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the carbon we put in the air, “
There is no hope that this process will take place fast enough to help control the build-up of CO2.” says Michael McElroy, Harvard’s Butler professor of environmental science.

There is no doubt that we have increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The carbon in Oil and coal deep underground are permanently sequestered. They only enter the atmosphere if we bring them up and burn them. All combustion of carbon-based fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere. This is indisputable. Every carbon atom burned (oxidized) creates a molecule of CO2. (Burning wood also releases CO2, so clearing of forests also contributes.)

Here’s how atmospheric CO2 levels have increased. Note the rapid rise since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

“Today, CO₂ levels are higher than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years because of increased fossil fuel burning.” Thomas Marchitto, University of Colorado

. Here’s a view of the last 1,000 years:

Here’s a chart of the rising CO2 since 1958:

How do we know we’re responsible for that rise, other than the correlation with our use of fossil fuels? That’s explained HERE. 1) Historical records and calculation of carbon released by our burning of fuel.

The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO₂ we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO₂ faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.

Independent of that analysis, we can tell how much we have contributed by measuring isotopes. Since carbon isotopes decay very slowly(that’s how carbon dating works), we can determine how much CO2 in the atmosphere was from plants (last year’s CO2) and how much from dead dinosaurs (millions of years of decay). All the calculations are available at the LINK.

Here’s the rising methane level, an even more potent greenhouse gas:

Great Americans Speak Out on Corporatism

Presidents and Others Comment on Corporations
And their involvement in politics

fas-cism (fâsh’iz’em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism. [Ital. fascio, group.] -fas’cist n. -fas-cis’tic (fa-shis’tik) adj.
– The American Heritage Dictionary ©1983 Houghton Mifflin Company

“There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.”
— James Madison

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army.
Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.”
— Andrew Jackson

“I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion – the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government – would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities.”
— Martin Van Buren

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country’s altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.

“As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
— Grover Cleveland

“The first thing to understand is the difference between the natural person and the fictitious person called a corporation. They differ in the purpose for which they are created, in the strength which they possess, and in the restraints under which they act.

“Man is the handiwork of God and was placed upon earth to carry out a Divine purpose; the corporation is the handiwork of man and created to carry out a money-making policy.

“There is comparatively little difference in the strength of men; a corporation may be one hundred, one thousand, or even one million times stronger than the average man. Man acts under the restraints of conscience, and is influenced also by a belief in a future life. A corporation has no soul and cares nothing about the hereafter. …

“A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.”
— Secretary of State and 3-time Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan

“I again recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party.… Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign – that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole – some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
–Theodore Roosevelt, 19-Apr-06

“We are a business people. The tillers of the soil, the wage workers, the business men – these are the three big and vitally important divisions of our population. The welfare of each. division is vitally necessary to the welfare of the people as a whole.

“The great mass of business is of course done by men whose business is either small or of moderate size. The middle sized business men form an element of strength which is of literally incalculable value to the nation. Taken as a class, they are among our best citizens. They have not been seekers after enormous fortunes; they have been moderately and justly prosperous, by reason of dealing fairly with their customers, competitors, and employees. They are satisfied with a legitimate profit that will pay their expenses of living and lay by something for those who come after, and the additional amount necessary for the betterment and improvement of their plant. The average business man of this type is, as a rule, a leading citizen of his community, foremost in everything that tells for its betterment, a man whom his neighbors look up to and respect; he is in no sense dangerous to his community, just because he is an integral part of his community, bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. His life fibers are intertwined with the life fibers of his fellow citizens…

“So much for the small business man and the middle-sized business man. Now for big business. …

“It is imperative to exercise over big business a control and supervision which is unnecessary as regards small business. All business must be conducted under the law, and all business men, big or little, must act justly. But a wicked big interest is necessarily more dangerous to the community than a wicked little interest. ‘Big business’ in the past has been responsible for much of the special privilege which must be unsparingly cut out of our national life.

“I do not believe in making mere size of and by itself criminal. The mere fact of size, however, does unquestionably carry the potentiality of such grave wrongdoing that there should be by law provision made for the strict supervision and regulation of these great industrial concerns doing an interstate business, much as we now regulate the transportation agencies which are engaged in interstate business. The antitrust law does good in so far as it can be invoked against combinations which really are monopolies or which restrict production or which artificially raise prices. …

“The important thing is this: that, under such government recognition as we may give to that which is beneficent and wholesome in large business organizations, we shall be most vigilant never to allow them to crystallize into a condition which shall make private initiative difficult. It is of the utmost importance that in the future we shall keep the broad path of opportunity just as open and easy for our children as it was for our fathers during the period which has been the glory of America’s industrial history — that it shall be not only possible but easy for an ambitious men, whose character has so impressed itself upon his neighbors that they are willing to give him capital and credit, to start in business for himself, and, if his superior efficiency deserves it, to triumph over the biggest organization that may happen to exist in his particular field. Whatever practices upon the part of large combinations may threaten to discourage such a man, or deny to him that which in the judgment of the community is a square deal, should be specifically defined by the statutes as crimes. And in every case the individual corporation officer responsible for such unfair dealing should be punished. …

“We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. We have only praise for the business man whose business success comes as an incident to doing good work for his fellows. But we should so shape conditions that a fortune shall be obtained only in honorable fashion, in such fashion that its gaining represents benefit to the community. …

“We stand for the rights of property, but we stand even more for the rights of man. … We will protect the rights of the wealthy man, but we maintain that he holds his wealth subject to the general right of the community to regulate its business use as the public welfare requires.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy – from the eighteenth-century royalists who held special privileges from the crown. It was to perpetuate their privilege that they governed without the consent of the governed; that they denied the right of free assembly and free speech; that they restricted the worship of God; that they put the average man’s property and the average man’s life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power; that they regimented the people.

“And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

“Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution – all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

“For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital – all undreamed of by the Fathers – the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

“The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor – these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age – other people’s money – these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

“Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

“Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

“An old English judge once said: ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

“For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

“Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people’s mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

“The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

“Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

“The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

“But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

“For more than three years we have fought for them. This convention, in every word and deed, has pledged that the fight will go on.

“The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our government and of ourselves. Never since the early days of the New England town meeting have the affairs of government been so widely discussed and so clearly appreciated. It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.

“We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization.

“Faith – in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.

“Hope – renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.

“Charity – in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.

“We seek not merely to make government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity.

“We are poor indeed if this nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

“In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.

“It is a sobering thing, my friends, to be a servant of this great cause. We try in our daily work to remember that the cause belongs not to us, but to the people. The standard is not in the hands of you and me alone. It is carried by America. We seek daily to profit from experience, to learn to do better as our task proceeds.

“Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

“Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

“In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

“I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.

“I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of his abilities. Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.”
–Harry Truman

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Green Jobs for a Healthier America

President Obama has made a green economy a priority. His green building czar talks about “green collar jobs”.

The administration has made money available to the states, which offer rebates on energy upgrades. He has implemented tax credits for further help with these upgrades. That, my friend, is effective stimulus. I needed a new roof. By going to energy star shingles and increasing attic insulation, caulking windows and installing solar, I get help meeting five national objectives.

Employment: local installers all over the country retain employees and add new ones. There are 120 million homes that need to be retrofitted. Green building is booming, while other building has tanked. Effective green collar jobs creation. Check.

Manufacturing: National manufacturers make the green products that local installers put in my house. Retained manufacturing jobs, and new ones. Check.

Environment: Fewer new coal plants will be needed, so cleaner air. Reduces emissions, which the courts say must be regulated as harmful to the public health. Those are greenhouse gasses as well as toxins, so a doubly good thing.

Energy: We need to move toward energy independence, and clean sustainable energy for the future. Conservation is now the runaway cheapest form of “new” energy.

Security: Ultimately, we will be more secure when we are not tied to the fortunes of the Middle East. We’re funding hostile regimes and elements.

Economy: We want to stop “the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world; from the West to the Middle East.” (TB Pickens).

This is a small step, but it’s fast, sensible and effective action toward major priorities. I think we’ll see lots more of this kind of systems thinking, and yes, we can move this country in the right direction. Those who claim Obama and the Democrats (sounds like a band) have not made any progress, I say not so. And I’ve got the more energy efficient home to prove it.

REFLECTING LIGHT FOR ENERGY

Here’s another amazing new technology story from green energy news

The world’s largest solar power purchase to date has been announced by Southern California Edison and BrightSource Energy. Within the next few years BrightSource will be building solar power plants that employ mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight on a single receiver. Temperatures at the receiver end will get rather high, as you can imagine, enough so that water will be boiled to make steam that will drive turbines to generate electricity.

The power plants that BrightSource plans to build in the California desert, will rely on hundreds of heliostats to keep light focused on the receiver throughout the day as the sun arcs across the sky. With the wonders of tracking devices made of computer controls and electric gear motors, the mirrored heliostats can be kept in perfect alignment with the receiver from dawn to dusk.

McCain’s Baffling Record on the Economy

Well, what does he believe? What are John McCain’s credentials and views on the economy, the meltdown and the bailout, and what is he likely to do going forward. Here’s McCain on the subject:

The Sad State of Politics Today

All over the media and alternative media, the debate rages about whether Pelosi is to blame for her outspoken comments yesterday. How ironic is that? We’re speaking out, having a fierce debate about whether Pelosi was “too partisan” in her comments.

I’m not buying into the idea that debate in the House (and presumably the Senate) should not be forceful or honest, because that would be “partisan” and “alienate Republicans”. What a wimpy excuse for a republic this has become.

The history of democracy is filled with dynamic, dramatic and passionate debate. Take a look back at the powerful speeches and writings of past legislatures, of the founding fathers, of England and Rome and Greece. This is important stuff and our legislators are there to represent us. You, all of you here, are here because you love a forceful debate. Stop being babies. It’s healthy to disagree and do so with all the power and persuasion you can. We all do that here.

But in Congress, everyone is supposed to be nice and bite their tongues to keep from offending the pitiful egos of lawmakers on the other side? To hell with that! History is being written, in the House and Senate records. The speeches and writing of both sides will become part and parcel of how future generations view this momentous time. It is the official record of the government of the United States.

As one who has read the records of lots of such debates, I am dumbfounded that partisan sparring mates in the blogosphere and news media think these powerful, connected and mostly wealthy leaders need to be coddled. Come on ! Most of them are lawyers. They do this in court. They present and are presented with the most forceful points that can be made. They wouldn’t abandon their clients because opposing counsel wasn’t nice enough and tried to make points against them. How preposterous.

I do not believe that they were so hurt that they changed their votes because someone offended them by speaking frankly. Get a grip.

“There is none so dumb as he who will not speak.”

The Common Good, Andrew J. Bacevich

Many others can say it better than I, so I will make extensive use of video, audio and the written words of others to describe our plight and the choices before us. Let’s start with Andrew Bacevich, war hero, author and clear thinker who, sadly, lost a son in Iraq. He pegs the moment the American train jumped the track and set us on our current trajectory.

Bacevich highlights

McCain’s Health

McCain does not look well

With super-novice Sarah Palin positioning to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, we have legitimate cause to be concerned about McCain’s health. He does not look good. The above picture is from a video on Fox news yesterday, Sept. 24, 2009. I am not reassured…

Palin’s (un)Popularity

This election isn’t about self-confessed lipstick-wearing hockey mom pitbull. But it really seems like a cynical and frankly, stupid pick on McCain’s part. Maybe he believed the bull that he fed the American people about her. He picked a “narrative” rather than a person, and it worked. Briefly.

Palin’s net popularity equals favorable minus unfavorable opinion.   Research 2000 tracking poll data

Is McCain Losing It?

I’m really trying to avoid “ageism” here. Certainly I know people who are capable and sharp at McCain’s age. In fact, some WAY sharper than he appears lately. Unfortunately, I have also watched in slow motion as my own parents slipped mentally, and well? How often have I joked about having CRS myself? (can’t remember shit)

Watch THIS and THIS

Wall Street Meltdown and Bailout

Do we really know what the risks are and the best course of action ? According to Treasury Secretary Paulsen and Fed chair Bernanke, it’s a crisis and we have to move with utmost haste.

Mr Paulson told the Senate Banking Committee that the personal savings of US citizens are at risk if the rescue plan is not implemented.

The Treasury wants unlimited authority to buy back the bad debt that is clogging the financial markets.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has backed him by saying urgent action is needed.

Not so fast. I know it’s not just me, because there is lots of unease about the Paulsen plan, and some aspects are a clear nonstarter.

Let’s look for another opinion over on Talking Points Memo. Interesting post there linking to David Cay Johnson.

The Administration has scared the markets and some key legislative leaders, but it has not laid out a coherent, specific and compelling need for this enormous proposal, which is the equivalent of a one-time 55 percent income tax surcharge. (Instead the money will be borrowed, so ask from whom and how this much can be raised so quickly if the credit markets are nearly seized up with fear.)

If the problem is toxic mortgages then how come they are still being offered all over the Internet? On the main page AOL generates for me there is an ad for a 1.9% loan (which means you pay that interest rate and the rest of the interest is added to your balance due.) Why oh why or why would taxpayers be bailing out banks that are continuing to sell these toxic loans?

The Corporate Media Take on the Election

Humorous but maddening article over at HuffPo about how the presidential race has gone for the last two weeks. It seems Tim Downing took a self-imposed media vacation and needed to catch up. His summary is HERE. Ouch. Definitely read the whole thing.

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you’re a not-to-be trusted pointy-headed intellectual and don’t have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, you’re the “real” leader and qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

Conservatives Innoculated Against Facts

I always suspected it, but it’s now a proven fact (for those who care about reality-based news). Conservatives are not convinced by facts. In fact, they cling to their lies even harder when confronted by facts. Wow. That does explain a lot.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

Amazing. HuffPo covers the study HERE. The WaPo article HERE.

Unqualified is Unqualified. Period.

Call it an “Emperor has no clothes” moment.   In his new editorial in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen pleads guilty to having been in the tank for McCain, then explains his reasons, before finally saying:

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir — the person in whose hands he would leave the country — is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

There seems to be a growing tide of conservative columnists, coming to this epiphany.  David Brooks writes similarly in the New York Times.  Maybe Bush isn’t the only one looking to his legacy.

Welcome City Club Power Bloggers

At the writer’s table luncheon today, we discussed “Power Blogging” and several in the group are interested in learning to blog, which I would be delighted to teach.

For starters, those on the PC platform would do well to start using Firefox if you don’t already, then install ScribeFire. This makes posting really easy.

Scrubbing Your Wikipedia Entry

Yep, someone pseudo-named “Young Trigg” cleaned up Sarah Palin’s biography before the annoucement that she would be McCain’s VP pick. “Young Trigg” confesses (s)he is a volunteer for McCain.

Links HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE

How’s That Hot Gov Thing Workin Out for you McCain?

OK, sure, she’s hot looking, patriotic looking in her stars and stripes bikini and a NRA member. Woohoo. But how is this choice playing in Peoria? BTW, much as I like the photo, it’s not the GOV. Here’s the original, which someone photoshopped rather nicely I think.

On Palin, Biden and Obama Comparisons

Like it or not, both Biden and Obama have the gravitas that Palin lacks. Full stop.

And
yes, Obama has much more experience on the national stage and his state
legislative experience way more substantive than her mayordom or
governordom. As a reminder to those who still buy the “Obama experience
is thin” meme, here’s his entire legislative history. It’s actually quite impressive. Summary:

Nationally:

Number of bills sponsored: 272
Number of bills co-sponsored: 834
Number of bills sponsored or co-sponsored that became law: 16

Of the 570 bills Senator Obama introduced into the Senate during the 109th and 110th Congress

25 addressed Energy Efficiency and Climate Change
21 addressed Health Care
20 addressed Public Health
14 address Consumer Protection/Labor
13 addressed the Needs of Veterans and the Armed Forces
12 addressed Congressional Ethics and Accountability
10 addressed Foreign Policy
9 address Voting/Elections
11 addressed Education
6 addressed Hurricane Katrina
5 addressed the Environment
4 addressed Discrimination
4 addressed Homeland Security

In the State Legislature, Obama was “pragmatic and shrewd” (NY Times)

Obama
introduced in Illinois: health care 233 bills, poverty 125, crime and
corrections 112, economy business and finance 97, education 62, civil
and human rights 60, infrastructure and public works 35, ethics 21,
administration 21, environment 20, gun control 15, symbolic resolutions
15, military and veterans affairs 6, immigration 1.

Obama has been extremely active for his relatively short time in office, and does have the qualities I want in a president.

To Drill or Not to Drill

In a discussion on another blog, we were debating how swimmingly McCain’s Pro drilling campaign might or might not play in Florida. I opined that Florida, with its critically important tourism sector, might not be anxious to see oil rigs offshore. Several attacked my position, saying that even in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, there were no “major” spills, although around 150 or so oil platforms were totally destroyed, with some washed away. And there were some spills. Here are my thoughts on the issue of whether offshore drilling or nuclear energy are the salvation that the Republican Party suggests they are.

Offshore Drilling

I’ll grant that there were no “major spills” from the lost platforms. We were lucky. But you have to admit, that’s a lot of expensive equipment lost, cleanup cost (to salvage and re-establish the platforms, if in fact they do) and lost production. There is nothing comparable with land-based pumping. Even huge storms and floods cannot cause this kind of disruption of land based oil production. Furthermore, when there are major spills, the oil industry has shown callous disregard for their responsibility to clean up their messes. The damage is greater, and spread more widely when it is released into the ocean than on land. Oilfields simply are not subject to the same risks (especially of hurricanes) as offshore rigs are. So I see no compelling reason why specifically off-shore drilling is in our interest.

Proponents claim that offshore drilling can be done in an environmentally responsible fashion. In fact, the oil industry as exemplified by Exxon Mobil has a consistent record of fighting against cleaning up their messes.

“We keep the profits, the public pays the cost of our screw ups” is not acceptable. How about some responsibility for a change?

If the industry believes its development can be environmentally sound, then let them pledge to pay the full cost of cleaning up oil spilled from their pipelines, from their drilling activities, from their tankers.

Next, what assurances do we have that the oil companies actually intend to drill offshore in the near future? Oil companies already have both offshore and onshore leases that are not being developed. Can someone direct me to a statement by the oil companies that they are seeking additional offshore leases for immediate development? Has the industry explained why it is not developing its current leases? Are new offshore leases easier to develop than current land-based leases? If we give out new leases, do they pledge to develop them promptly? And cover the cost of insurance?

Some commenters are asserting that a failure to approve offshore drilling will drive up the cost of gasoline. It was even characterized as “heartless” not to drill immediately. That’s nonsense. It does not appear that increased drilling of existing or new oil leases will significantly affect the cost of gasoline in the near term, or perhaps even long-term. It’s a drop in the global bucket.

Then there’s the suggestion that speculators will flee the market as soon as we announce the new leases, thus reducing prices at the pump. Come on, please. Don’t insult your own intelligence, or ours. No investor abandons an investment because an event 6-12 years out may change the market dynamics. How absurd.

I believe our nation’s conditions for granting any new leases should be at a minimum that (1) the industry agrees to develop all existing leases immediately, or relinquish those leases and (2) the industry agrees to prompt payment of all costs associated with oil spills or leaks. They can start by dropping all of their current court actions to avoid the payment of these costs.

The Nuclear Option

Nuclear energy is extremely problematic at every stage, from the mining of uranium to its shipment and processing to the building of nuclear power plants to the disposal of nuclear waste and to the decommissioning of obsolete plants. Uranium prices are skyrocketing, so even from a purely economic standpoint, nuclear is a weak choice. Consider ALL the costs, economic and environmental and it’s a total loser. There is no reason the public should pay, nor should the environment, for the total true costs of the development and utilization of nuclear energy.

There is also no reason for the taxpayer to insure the nuclear industry, as it currently does (Price Anderson Act). We currently assume the risks of nuclear accidents for one simple reason. The “risk experts” in the insurance industry do not believe that nuclear reactors are safe enough to insure, even the “new generation” of plants. Think it’s safe enough? Then convince an insurer! Any further development of nuclear energy should start with a repeal of Price Anderson. Nuclear proponents need to prove to us that they stand behind their technology and will take responsibility for their own insurance.

If utilities cannot secure private insurance for all costs of an accident, they don’t have a viable business in nuclear energy.  Again, “we get the profit, you take the risk” is not acceptable.

Finally, the threat of nuclear materials falling into criminal hands, even the poorly guarded low grade waste, is too great to be as careless as we already are. Even a single contaminated glove stolen and used in acts of terrorism could be extremely costly (such a glove could close a post office for months, for example). That’s how tough the security has to be. Not one radioactive scrap can get out. Anyone think we need armed guards at the wind energy farm?

No one on any blog has yet presented a rational case for offshore drilling nor for nuclear energy, in my opinion.

By far, our best options are conservation, wind, solar and new technologies like hydrogen from starch.

Presidential Results by GDP

Dave Adams, over at TPM

I took the BEA annual data and categorized it by President, then took the average of year-over-year growth (in the annual column) during the term of that President.

Here are the results:
GDP Growth by President
-9.35% Hoover (1930-1932 only)
6.25% Roosevelt (1933-1940)
15.04% Roosevelt (1941-1944)
1.38% Truman (1945-1952)
2.95% Eisenhower
4.25% Kennedy
5.22% Johnson
2.86% Nixon
2.57% Ford
3.28% Carter
3.42% Reagan
2.14% Bush 41
3.71% Clinton
2.37% Bush 43 (2001-2007 only)

Machiavellian Economics – the Anti-democracy

So-called “free market” economics has been a disaster for most of the majority populations in countries that have “embraced” them. We’re experiencing the same disaster.

From an economic standpoint, neoconservatives, who actually favor “economic liberalization” (also called globalization, Reaganomics, laissez-faire, etc) are the followers–or perhaps supplicants is more appropriate–of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics . This, the dominant economic theory for the last three or four decades is summarized by adherents as “free markets, free people.”

Neoconservatism is based on three pillars: privatization (turning over public resources to private control), deregulation of business (unfettered corporate capitalism), and deep cuts in social programs. The end result, universally, is an increasing wealth gap, a transfer of public wealth to private wealth, and a transfer of private debt to public debt. This is the record in every country in which “neoconservative” economic policies have been tried (usually implemented by force): Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Iran, South Africa, China, Russia, Poland and others.

Bob Barr?

Well, right on. Not a Barr fan, but he’s right about the so-called Patriot Act.

Of course, in most other ways, Bobby Barr is just the same old self-righteous hypocrite who spearheaded the Clinton impeachment circus til his own sleazy behavior made him step down. And his platform, and presumably theirs, is just even more unfettered corporate greed. Yeah, that’s worked so well…

How to sell Obama to your Republican friends/family

Great post by a reader at TPM. I just had to repost it here.

By gettex – July 1, 2008, 9:36AM

If you think Obama needs help in selling himself to conservatives here are some tips I received in an email today:

How to Market Obama to Your Republican Friends
by Press to Digitate
Sun May 18, 2008 at 08:12:19 AM PDT

As a [now formerly] lifelong Republican, a [Goldwater] Conservative, and a former GOP activist, operative and professional campaign manager, now ardently supporting Sen. Barack Obama, I feel that I have the proper perspective from which to advise this audience on how to “sell” Obama to your Republican friends, relatives, and business associates.

There is a large reservoir of discontent among Republicans who are dissatisfied with John McCain as the GOP nominee. As the recent 25% votes against him in the now uncontested primaries indicate, this dissension is far deeper and more persistent than it will be among Clinton Democrats, when the dust settles in August. These votes, and those of other Republicans now disenchanted are ripe for the picking this fall – IF you know how to make the case to these people.

Van Hollen Blitzes Blitzer

Crossposted at Talking Points Memo

DCCC Chairman and Congressman Chris Van Hollen showed this Sunday how futile is the GOP talking point that equates drilling for oil in Alaska with gasoline price reduction. The transcript is HERE, and I’m impressed with how nimble Van Hollen was in deflecting Wolf Blitzer’s apparent determination to get Van Hollen with GOP talking points.

New Technologies for Our Energy Future

It’s clear that we need to change our energy policy in this country. And unfortunately, it’s clear that the Republicans, beholden as they are to big oil, will not make the changes needed. We need a “Manhattan Project” for energy, as Obama has suggested, to concentrate efforts on researching and developing sustainable and renewable energy sources. We make a serious error when we consider only current technologies for our energy future.

In the next two posts, I highlight some of the exciting advances in both research and application that have occurred recently, even in the absence of serious research funding directed toward securing a better energy future for America. American scientists and entrepreneurs are resourceful and I’m optimistic that with more direction from the top and some R&D incentives, we can innovate our way out of our current dilemma, produce sustainable long-term solutions, reduce our dependence on expensive foreign oil from unstable parts of the world, and stop giving our resources to authoritarian regimes that sponsor terrorism against us.

Our most pressing need is probably in the transportation area, and high gas prices make this a political winner too. So with what can we power our cars, trucks, trains , planes and buses? Read on…

Biofuels Technology Update

Here are some recent advances in biofuel technology. I’ve long held that if we apply ourselves to innovating in the area of alternative energy, we can and will succeed. Jazz, over at TMV highlighted a new technology involving bioengineered bacteria that produce petroleum oil. It is yet another example of how American ingenuity can free us from dependence on foreign oil if we really set our minds to it. More importantly, if we really allocate our resources to innovation rather than continuing to pour them down the same big oil rat hole that we are currently feeding.

While this new bioengineered bacteria is interesting, we are much closer to application with biodiesel from microalgae. This does not have to be done in big fermentation tanks, and uses current technology such as that used to grow spirulina. It will yield more than 30 times the oil per acre than corn or soy and does not require clean freshwater (in fact, salt water will do, something we have plenty of). Take a look at the first facility, which will produce 4.4 million gallons of oil and 110 million lbs of biomass a year. Better still, such algae production facilities could be placed at the mouths of big polluted rivers like the Mississippi, and could convert nutrients from agricultural runoff into fuel. Currently these nutrients create an enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, the algae can be used to consume CO2 from power plants. Cleans up the river, sequesters carbon from polluting industries and turns it all into fuel. Oh, and the exhausted algae can be used as fertilizer after extracting the oil.

Another exciting technology in this area is a starch to hydrogen technology developed by Virginia Tech, that can convert a safe, non-toxic and nonflammable starch and water slurry into hydrogen to drive a vehicle. These are only the tip of the iceberg. We can lead in green energy and clean tech if we commit to doing so instead of bowing down to petroleum and coal interests.

We limit ourselves when we think that every problem has to be solved with current technology. This is a great failing of our current energy policies. We have shortchanged research budgets into alternatives and still, our tenacious scientists come up with new leads all the time. Meanwhile, the GOP and some of their supporters wail that the sky will fall if we don’t start drilling in Alaska today. That’s not the solution. Let’s turn the page on that old thinking.

More on Biofuels Technology

For those concerned about the land needed to create biofuels feedstock, check out THIS analysis of how it can be done. We could replace all vehicle fuel at current levels on 9.5 million acres of desert land ! For comparison, we use 450 million acres of prime agricultural land to produce food (most of it food for livestock) and another 500 million acres for grazing livestock. Since the algae can grow anywhere, we’re not talking about diverting a single plot of prime farmland to fuel production.

(BTW, the stock in Petrosun is about $0.15 a share, but I’m not buying any of it yet). Here’s a good rundown on alternative energy stocks.

Here’s an aerial view of the Texas facility on Google maps. Another technology, using fresh water but enclosing the ponds to avoid evaporation, would reduce water usage to the equivalent of 3 inches of rain a year. Farmers know how little will grow with that low water usage. Most of the country has more than that, so all the needed water could be from rain catchment.

A pictorial recipe for envy and strife

I almost lost this picture. It has disappeared from the AdBusters archives and I had to retrieve it from the Internet Wayback Machine. Now I’ve downloaded it.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this one is a poignant reminder of the different lives lived by Israeli Israelis and Palestinian Israelis. Just like S. Africa and many other trouble spots, you cannot reduce part of your population to poverty while others prosper lavishly.

I’m certainly not ignoring how much the Palestinians are themselves responsible for failing to rein in their own criminal elements that hamper the peace process, but utilizing just a bit of the wealth we squander on war and walls to better the lives of our poorest citizens can defuse class envy and struggle immensely.

McCain’s YouTube Problem

The political world has changed, and it’s the new media, Web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, that is changing it. The media continues to give a pass to McCain on his many conflicting statements and outright flip-flops on key issues. But the MSM has not stopped almost 2 million people from watching the details HERE on YouTube. Bloggers regularly break stories, scooping multimillion dollar network news teams. Watch the video. As he continues to blunder through the campaign, pretending that he can just deny he said this, endlessly clarify (obfuscate) his statements and no one will notice. Earth to grandpa. You can’t just bald-faced lie. I know it’s what your buddy Bush has done, but really, you’re gonna be called on it. It’s all available now, immediately, because of “the internets”. Damn.

On Negotiating with Enemies

Please, how about a little real-world perspective that’s been missing in the flap about Obama’s willingness to talk to “our enemies”. In case you’ve missed the whole controversy, right wingers and Hillary Clintonites claimed that it would be naïve of Obama to talk with leaders of such regimes as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela; that it would “legitimize” those leaders and it’s “appeasement.” Time for a reality check.

The police negotiate with criminals in very intense crisis situations in which there is a high possibility of injury or death on both sides. No one accuses them of “appeasement” or of “legitimizing” the criminals. There are no preconditions, as none are possible. There are no “low level talks” because there isn’t time (and besides, what sense does it make to give your second string a shot at it first?)

Negotiation has become a highly evolved strategy with a rich and diverse toolkit. It works an amazing amount of the time. The alternative, from a law enforcement standpoint, is to say “we’ve got you surrounded, you’re outgunned, and we’re going to kill you. So do your worst.”

Negotiation is a serious tool for resolving conflict, and not some sissy soft liberal “appeasement” strategy. Remember, real world tough guys with guns, actual law enforcement heroes do this every day: they negotiate with the most sociopathic and dangerous people imaginable. And they win. They’re not “naive” or stupid or inexperienced or exercising bad judgment. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of them standing up for Obama and throwing this misrepresentation of the art of diplomacy right back in the GOP’s faces.

The approach of threatening, of not engaging, and of attacking is a much riskier strategy, both in law enforcement and in international relations.

I hope the Obama campaign can get across to voting Americans that negotiation is not a gift to our enemies. Negotiation concedes nothing! Is a perfectly valid, legitimate and proven method of resolving conflict.

For those who have taken a very inflexible position about negotiation, what is your solution? Bomb Iran? Is that really what you’re suggesting? Unleashing missiles against a sovereign nation, possibly even nuclear weapons, threatening our own soldiers downwind in Afghanistan with radiation poisoning? Inciting the righteous wrath of the entire Islamic world, of all of our enemies and most of our friends? Or do you have some third option that you haven’t stated. Please. Share it with us.

The Age Factor

It’s my opinion that unlike gender and race, age is a legitimate issue in choosing a leader. Sure, like most people, I know older men in great health. But considering age isn’t an unsupportable prejudice like racism or sexism. No matter how exceptional (in the sense of exception-to-the-rule) one thinks McCain is, no one is at his prime at 70–he just isn’t. And his health risks are a critical issue. This may be the toughest job on earth. Look at before/after pictures of any president, consider the travel, the hours, the import of decisions. And look at the evidence. It’s not hard to find. Google age, risk, stroke. Age, risk, heart attack. Age, risk, cancer. Age, risk, dementia. And look at the underlying cause of many of these, the relationship between age and antioxidant capacity. Cerebral blood flow.
You don’t even have to read. Check it on Google images for LOTS of graphic depictions backed by serious scientific study. For that matter, ask an actuarial. Now try to find anything science-based that supports racism or sexism. Let’s not equate these things. We decline with age. It’s a fact.

Now, to McCain specifically. He didn’t have that tumor on his face at age 46. Reporters who covered him in 2000 and now in 2008 admit, some reluctantly, that he is not as energetic, his speech not as sharp and the “senior moments” (Sunni/Shia, forgetting his own record, etc.) were not present 8 years ago.

I’m sorry. I think all Americans, older ones included, deserve every opportunity they can handle. But I’m choosing a CEO here and being past retirement age at the start of a tough job for which he has no executive branch experience is a deal-breaker. No sale, sorry, but maybe we can use him in some less demanding capacity. How about aging senator?

The Clinton Record on FL and MI

Here’s some detail of how this whole FL and MI fiasco happened. It’s from Daily Kos and I haven’t done independent review of the details. Maybe I will later.

On Aug. 25, when the DNC’s rules panel declared Florida’s primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules.

Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida’s defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. Of the committee’s 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them—most notably strategist Harold Ickes—voted for Florida’s full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)

THEREFORE, I (Hillary Clinton), Democratic Candidate for President, pledge I shall not campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as “campaigning” is defined by rules and regulations of the DNC.

From Clinton campaign manager Terry McAuliffe

“I’m going outside the primary window,” [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.

“If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,” I [McAuliffe] said. “We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.”

He kept insisting that they were going to move up Michigan on their own, even though if they did that, they would lose half their delegates. By that point Carl and I were leaning toward each other over a table in the middle of the room, shouting and dropping the occasional expletive.

“You won’t deny us seats at the convention,” he said.

“Carl, take it to the bank,” I said. “They will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.”

We glared at each other some more, but there was nothing much left to say. I was holding all the cards and Levin knew it. [Source: McAuliffe, Terry. What A Party!, p. 325.]

So now Hillary is claiming the DNC decision, which her team voted unanimous unanimously to support, is now so wrong that it’s like an election in Zimbabwe. Pathetic.

A Time For Change

If one theme can define an election season, 2008 is about change. Of
course, change is always a big theme, but this a remarkable year.
Record primary turnout, profound dissatisfaction with the
administration, the war, the economy, the Bush. The change we need is
profound too. A sea change, we hope, toward what we believe good
government is about.

Good government manages public resources for the public good, not for private gain.

We want honesty, accountability and transparency in our federal
government, a return to the values of average Americans, a repudiation
of torture and spying and black ops and “preemptive” war, of
corruption, lying by public officials and selling out the public good
to campaign donors.

Does Barack Obama represent a true hope of meaningful change? He has
done something truly extraordinary. He has financed his campaign
through over 1.5 million small donations from “ordinary” Americans who
yearn to have our government work for us for a change. He doesn’t owe
big favors to big donors.

Since the beginning of the Reagan era, we have pursued a policy of
coddling the rich at the expense of the other 90% of us, handing over
the reins of power to corporate donors. We have ignored our
responsibility to our children and grandchildren; To maintain and build
the infrastructure of America, to protect the environment, communities
and workers. To care for the health of our children, our veterans, our
elders, our planet. To invest in the public good, in education, in
critical infrastructure.

I will be charitable and say that most Republicans truly believe that
by cutting taxes we have been “letting people keep their own money.”
But the truth is, we are borrowing a half trillion dollars a year and
giving that money away as “tax cuts,” as reckless spending, for a
senseless war, with no intention of paying it back but rather, handing
in on with interest to our children and grandchildren. We
borrow $1 billion a day from China alone, and we give most of it back
buying Chinese products. We have made China our banker and our
manufacturing sector, and failed to run our country in a businesslike
way. So much for America’s “first MBA president.”

In what I believe was a cynical attempt to create a permanent American
aristocracy, the Republicans demonized the estate tax as a “death tax”,
while creating a “birth tax” (the national debt) that is now over
$30,000 for every infant born in America. That infant owes over $325 a
month in interest alone. That’s the Bush tax increase. $1,500 a month for a family of four.

Think about it: the “credit card Republicans” while talking about
cutting taxes, have added $325 a month to your tax burden, every one of
you, every one of us, every month, forever, because that doesn’t pay
down a dime of the debt. It’s just the interest.

We are headed down a path of passing on to future generations, to our own children, a terrible legacy:

A mountain of debt and a degraded planet.

But imagine this country changing to a model of responsible and
innovative action toward a sustainable future, a beacon of democracy
and freedom. A voice of reason and decency and a model of capable
leadership and ethical governance.

Let’s use our resources to rebuild the American infrastructure, not the
Iraqi infrastructure, and for our resources to free ourselves from
dependence on foreign oil, rather than fighting wars in the Middle East
at immense cost in blood and treasure in an attempt to control a
resource that we should be moving away from for many good reasons.

Sure, let’s try some of that change. And let’s be vigilant every day
and do our part to keep our representatives on the right track, on the
track of working for us, for America.

Obama and Clinton Legislative Histories

I’m so tired of the GOP/Clinton/MSM meme that Sen. Obama is thin on specifics (which he isn’t) and has a thin legislative history (which he doesn’t). So, what has he done? And what has Sen. Clinton?

First, admission of bias. I am an Obama supporter and don’t want another Clinton “co-presidency”.

However, I believe, based not on opinion but on research, that both candidates “walk their talk” in terms of their legislative activities, and either would make fine presidents.

First a tally from Politifact:

The legislative accomplishments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama reveal different interests and styles. Obama shows a consistent interest in making government more open and efficient, while Clinton has a focus on health care efforts she started as first lady, though in a more incremental way. Here’s a look at each senator’s noteworthy legislative accomplishments:

Bush: Shame on the NY Times. Oh, I said the same thing? Oops

I’ll bet we’ll be seeing this clip again. Oh, wait. We’re seeing it again right now. On this blog. Post it everywhere.

A Personal Indictment of the Democrats and our Screwed up Political and Media Systems

My friend Paddy Ryan has a few choice words about the sorry state of our political system. Read it all HERE

I think George Bush and Dick Cheney must have videotape of every Democratic Senator and Congressman (or woman) having sex with animals. I cannot think of anything else that would explain their total cowardice in the face of the slightest threat from the White House.Do you remember the Republicans threatening to use the “nuclear option” to stop the filibuster in the Senate or the Democrats not filibustering the appointment of Roberts as the Supreme Court Chief Justice because they wanted to save that option for when it was really important? What about the Democrats approving the appointment of Mukasey as the new Attorney General even though he wouldn’t give them an opinion about the legality of waterboarding?

Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to filibuster the Military Commissions Act, a piece of slime legislation that forever diminished our standing in the world and did away with habeas corpus.And now Harry Reid is falling over himself to give the telecom companies immunity for spying on us. Why? Supposedly because the telecoms did their patriotic duty, but probably because they are big political donors.

The war on terror (sic) and the threat posed by Al Qaeda or any other number of terrorist groups is trivial compared to our response (but this isn’t meant to trivialize the tragic deaths of anyone killed by terrorist acts). Nothing at all justifies the removal of our civil liberties or the war crimes of Fallejuah. The terror plots heralded in our media are so puerile and pathetic that a bunch of fourth graders could do more damage.

Are these the results of an enemy to be feared to the extent that it provides political cover for everything this administration and its enabling Democrats do? Every year, over 30,000 people die from gun deaths. Where is the war on illegal gun sales and gun shows (where many perpetrators of gun violence obtain their weapons)? Since 1975, more Americans have died from being struck by lightning than terrorist attacks. Where’s the war on lightning?

There’s plenty more and all pretty much right on. Paddy’s from New Zealand, but a real fan of American democracy, or perhaps a former fan of our former rights and freedoms. I join him in lamenting what has happened to us, and urge all of us to do everything we can this year to reverse course and get this great country back on track.

Lest We Forget

“The responsibility” of government “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is, in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”
Winston Churchill

Hero or Traitor? The Reagan Legacy

The Reagan myth and attendant history revision is again in the news. After Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seemed to praise Reagan

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America… because the country was ready for it… people were already feeling… we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

During the debate, Obama clarified his statement, noting that “Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda – an agenda that I objected to.”

The debate about Reagan’s “greatness” was further rekindled by NY Times editorialist Paul Krugman, here, and bloggers here and here.

Amazing. We seem to have forgotten some rather glaring aspects of the man. Ronald Reagan sold weapons to our sworn enemy, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had already declared us “the great Satan” and had kidnapped our embassy staff.

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. Ronald Reagan March 4, 1987

The Constitution of the United States, Art. III, defines treason against the United States as “levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort.” This offense is punishable by death.

Then, Reagan used the Ayatollah’s money to illegally support an insurgency against the elected government of Nicaragua. Congress had passed a law specifically forbidding that funding. Remember?

Ronald Reagan is, plain and simple, a confessed traitor to the United States. Well? Am I wrong? He directly and knowingly gave aid to the enemy. And, after signing the Boland amendment (forbidding funding of the Contras), he knowingly and willfully violated it. He seemed to consider the President, as Bush does, to be above the law. Bush has asserted in dozens of “signing statements” that he is not bound by the law he is signing.

As for his reputation for “minimizing government, tax cutting and strong defense,” Reagan proved to the GOP that Americans will mortgage their kids’ future to artificially and briefly pump up the economy, and will open up their wallets for “security” out of fear of a perceived threat (from the Soviets). He also showed how you can massively increase government spending and still appear to be for “small government.” This appears now to be the Republican way. Since 1950 every president has reduced the national debt as a percentage of GDP. Except Reagan, Bush Sr. and Junior (according to the White House ’s own figures). HERE

We all love heroes. But are we so desperate that we have to make pretend heroes out of a merely uncommon criminal like Reagan?

Iran US Hormuz gunboat song

If you watch the Pentagon release HERE, you will hear the conversation as filmed on the bridge of the American ship. Watch the Iranian video an you’ll hear the same thing. In fact, in both the American and Iranian versions the “sailor’s videocamera” does indeed record the audio, since it was spoken aloud right next to the camera.

The Iranian video is HERE. The exchange in question takes place about 4 minutes in. It’s hard not to make a rude comment about your research-free quick-draw comment. This is a serious issue in which the American media were fed bogus information to disinform them and us, which is becoming all too familiar.

If your employees fabricate evidence to deceive you and influence you to make bad decisions based on misinformation, you would fire them. Accurate reporting by our government is essential to our ability to make sound decisions. Instead we’re being tricked by propaganda of the very type we lambasted the Soviets’ Pravda about for 50 years.

Who Represents Mainstream American Values ?

To win in 2008 and beyond, the Dems need to represent mainstream American values. For example:

Is it the responsibility of government to care for those who can’t take care of themselves? In 1994, the year conservative Republicans captured Congress, 57 percent of those polled thought so. Now, says Pew, it’s 69 percent. (Even 58 percent of Republicans agree. (Pew Research Center)

Americans who believe government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep is 69 percent

Even 69 percent of self-identified Republicans — and 75 percent of small-business owners! — favor raising the minimum wage by more than $2

54 percent, think “government should help the needy even if it means greater debt”

54% of Americans making more than $75,000 a year believe “labor unions are necessary to protect the working person.”

“a majority say they generally side with labor in disputes and only 34 percent with companies

53 percent think unions help the economy and only 36 percent think they hurt.

More than twice as many Americans want “government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending

A 2005 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 53 percent of Americans thought the Bush tax cuts were “not worth it because they have increased the deficit and caused cuts in government programs.”

CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that only 25 percent want to see Roe v. Wade overturned

NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard found the public rejecting government-funded abstinence-only sex education in favor of “more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives” by 67 percent to 30 percent.

Public Agenda/Foreign Affairs discovered that 67 percent of Americans favor “diplomatic and economic efforts over military efforts in fighting terrorism.”

The public is in love with rehabilitation over incarceration for youth offenders. Zogby/National council on Crime and Delinquency found that 89 percent think it reduces crime and 80 percent that it saves money over the long run.

“Amnesty”? Sixty-two percent told CBS/New York Times surveyors that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to “keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status.”

NBC News/Wall Street Journal found 58 percent favoring “tougher gun control laws,” and Annenberg found that only 10 percent want laws controlling firearms to be less strict, a finding reproduced by the NES survey in 2004 and Gallup in 2006.

Nearly two-thirds think corporate profits are too high (30 percent, Pew notes, “completely agree with this statement … the highest percentage expressing complete agreement with this statement in 20 years”).

Almost three-quarters think “it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer,” eight points more than thought so in 2002.

Which party is more in step with these “mainstream values?”

When you compare Americans who either identify themselves as Democrats or say they lean toward the Democrats, Dems win by fifteen points, 50 percent to 35, the most by far in twenty years. As recently as 2002 it was a tie, 43 to 43.

Using Ice to Chill Buildings

NEW YORK (AP) - July 14, 2007

As the summer swelters on, skyscrapers and apartments around the city will be cranking up the air conditioning and pushing the city’s power grid to the limit.

An ice-cooling system in the Credit Suisse offices at the historic Metropolitan Life tower in Manhattan is as good for the environment as taking 223 cars off the streets or planting 1.9 million acres of trees to absorb the carbon dioxide caused by electrical usage for one year.

Such a reduction in pollution is valuable in a city where the majority of emissions come from the operation of buildings. State officials say there are at least 3,000 ice-cooling systems worldwide.

Once we get serious about saving energy, we’ll find all kinds of ways to be more efficient. In this case, cheaper electricity is used at night to make ice to cool the building during the day. Here’s another

According to Nature, a European-funded project has be launched to store gigawatts of electricity created from wind into the refrigerated warehouses normally used to store food. As the production of wind energy is variable every day, it cannot be easily accommodated on the electricity grid. So the “Night Wind” project wants to store wind energy produced at night in refrigerated warehouses and to release this energy during daytime peak hours. The first tests will be done in the Netherlands this year. And as the cold stores exist already, practically no extra cost should be needed to store as much as 50,000 megawatt-hours of energy.

Groundbreaking Study Probes Global Opinion on Key International Issues

Link TV (if it’s not already one of your news sources, check it out. highly recommended) points to the new report by World Public Opinion as proof that the ‘debate’ on global warming is over, at least in the public’s mind.

The study of worldwide opinion covered many issues, including climate change:
WorldPublicOpinion.org and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs have
released an in-depth study of world-wide opinion on key international
issues, including climate change, globalization, the future of the
United Nations, US leadership and the rise of China.

Based on a survey conducted in 18 countries, the 95-page report seeks
to understand how the perspectives of people around the globe differ or
converge on issues of global importance. The publics polled represent
about 56 percent of the world’s population.

Participating research centers interviewed nearly 22,000 people in
China, India, the United States, Russia, Indonesia, France, Thailand,
Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia,
Argentina, Peru, Armenia and Israel, plus the Palestinian territories.

The entire report is very interesting and a must-read for those interested in how people around the world view current events. Link TV’s story, HERE, highlights the shift in reporting and opinion on climate change.

For the first time, scientists concurred that global warming is indisputable. Major US news outlets now present the story of global warning without equivocation.

This is very good news, as timely action is essential. Apparently the public agrees.

In the US, only 17% believe global warming is “not a problem,” compared to 22% in Russia and 24% in India. In China, surprisingly, only 8% think it isn’t a problem. 83% of Chinese and 80% of Americans think “it should be fixed now or soon.”

A Glimmer of Hope for the News Media

Thanks to Joe Gandelman at TMV for noting this item from the NYT

AS domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda. Bush mentioned the terrorist group 27 times in a recent speech on Iraq.

The NYT piece is by their new “Public Editor” Clark Hoyt.

The Times in recent weeks… has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the
accuracy of his statements.

Hydrogen from Starch

Now this is interesting! The shift to biofuels, based not on diesel but hydrogen fuel cells just became a whole lot easier.

May 23, 2007
Researchers at Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the University of Georgia propose using polysaccharides, or sugary carbohydrates, from biomass to directly produce low-cost hydrogen for the new hydrogen economy.

Scientists Warn of Gulf Stream Slowing

Maybe not many scientists are pressing the panic button yet, but there is some distressing news about ocean currents.

Research at UK’s National Oceanography Centre found significant slowing of the gulf stream in the last 35 years.

From the amount of water in the subtropical gyre and the flow southwards at depth, they calculate that the quantity of warm water flowing north had fallen by around 30%. “We don’t want to say the circulation will shut down,” he told New Scientist. “But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise.”

And research at Woods Hole (pay-per-view article) found that a 10% slowing was the possible cause of the mini ice age in Europe

“The Gulf Stream carrying warm water to the North Atlantic slowed about 10 per cent in the Little Ice Age from 1200 to 1850, said a US study published on Wednesday that may give clues to the effects of modern global warming.”

Creation or Evolution

The debate rages on, with creationists, er “Intelligent Design” proponents, wanting their religious belief taught in science class, as a viable alternative to the theory of evolution. It’s adherents blast those who insist religion has no place in  the science class, believing that evolution is against God.

It is not the goal of science to prove or disprove the existence of a “higher power”. The scientific method is a rigorous and reliable way to evaluate the validity of a hypothesis. The “theory of evolution” is an attempt to explain how species developed over time and the influences that impacted that development. One cannot reasonably ask of nature “why?” but only “how”. The theory currently has so much evidence supporting it that it is accepted by most scientists, like the theory of gravity. The evidence is clear. The development of the opposable thumb in pandas for example is a matter of survival. Pandas eat bamboo in large amounts, and the opposable thumb makes it far easier to strip the bamboo leaves from the stems thereby enhancing the survival of those pandas that exhibited this mutation. Clearly the development of a big brain assisted greatly in our survival, just as the existence of camouflage improved survivability of chameleons. Nothing in the theory of evolution refutes or supports the possible existence of a magical, omnipotent Supreme Being.

Happy Birthday to Justice

Today is the 792nd birthday of the Magna Carta and of thus of the writ of habeus corpus. That’s the right of a prisoner to a judicial review of whether (s)he is lawfully imprisoned. It’s a central pillar of justice that prevents arbitrary imprisonment, and permits all other of our rights.

It is unbearably sad that habeus corpus, is now considered a partisan issue because we, America, now violates that precious core of freedom, every day.

Happy 792nd. We will reclaim the right course ultimately because we must. Under all the grime of recent years, we are still America, and this is not an issue of right or left–it’s right or wrong.

Contempt of Constitution

The deplorable contempt with which this administration holds our most deeply cherished values speaks for itself.

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.
It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

 

President George W. Bush

 

“Constitution is an outdated document.”
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Is this really OK with Republicans? Apparently so. I’m shocked at how that party has abandoned its principles. I think of past Republicans from Abe Lincoln to Truman. None would condone this contempt, yet here’s the whole of their fallen party lamely going along with their arrogant, incompetent and dangerous emperor Bush.

Iraq: Apocalypse Not

Why in the world would we believe them now? Remember those people who warned us about WMD and mobile weapons labs, said Iraq would be a cakewalk, we would be greeted as liberators, flowers at our feet? Those same people are telling us that leaving now would result in a blood bath. Why in the world would we believe them again?

Robert Dreyfuss writing in the Washington Monthly, February 19, 2007 isn’t buying it, and tells us why.

If it was foolish to accept the best-case assumptions that led us to invade Iraq, it’s also foolish not to question the worst-case assumptions that undergird arguments for staying.

Dreyfus then goes on to disassemble each of the myths that fuels the current “stay the course” nonsense.

The al-Qaeda myth
The idea that al-Qaeda might take over Iraq is nonsensical. Numerous estimates show that the group called Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its foreign fighters comprise only 5 to 10 percent of the Sunni insurgents’ forces… Even if AQI came to dominate the Sunni resistance, it would be utterly incapable of seizing Baghdad against the combined muscle of the Kurds and the Shiites, who make up four fifths of the country… Nor is it likely that AQI would ever be allowed to use the Sunni areas of Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks on foreign targets… In Iraq, the secular Baathists and former Iraqi military officers who lead the main force of the resistance despise AQI, and many of the Sunni tribes in western Iraq are closely tied to Saudi Arabia’s royal family, which is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda…Were U.S. troops to leave Iraq today, the Baathists, the military, and the tribal leaders would likely join forces to exterminate AQI in short order.

It’s also worth questioning whether the forces that call themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq have any real ties to whatever remains of Osama bin Laden’s weakened, Pakistan-based leadership.

The Sunni-Shiite civil war
First, the United States is doing little, if anything, to restrain ethnic cleansing, either in Baghdad neighborhoods or Sunni and Shiite enclaves surrounding the capital… It is facile to assert that U.S. troops are restraining the death squads and religiously inspired killers on both sides. And it would be impossible for us to do so even with a much greater increase in American troops than the president has called for…

Second, although battle lines are hardening and militias on both sides are becoming self-sustaining, the civil war is limited by physical constraints. Neither the Sunnis nor the Shiites have much in the way of armor or heavy weapons — tanks, major artillery, helicopters, and the like. Without heavy weaponry, neither side can take the war deep into the other’s territory… Shiites may have numbers on their side. But because the Sunnis have most of Iraq’s former army officers, and their resistance militia boasts thousands of highly trained soldiers, they’re unlikely to be overrun by the Shiite majority. Equally, the minority Sunnis won’t be able to seize Shiite parts of Baghdad or major Shiite cities in the south. Presuming neither side gets its hands on heavy weapons, once you take U.S. forces out of the equation the Sunnis and Shiites would ultimately reach an impasse.

Even if post-occupation efforts to create a new political compact among Iraqis fail, the most likely outcome is, again, a bloody Sunni-Shiite stalemate, accompanied by continued ethnic cleansing in mixed areas. But that, of course, is no worse than the path Iraq is already on under U.S. occupation.

On the question of neighboring states moving in and creating a regional war:

neither Shiite Iran nor the Sunni Arab countries would likely risk a regional conflagration by providing their Iraqi proxies with the heavy weapons that would enable them to wage offensive operations in each other’s heartland… The only power that could qualitatively worsen Iraq’s sectarian civil war is the United States. Washington continues to arm and train the Shiites, although so far it has resisted Maliki’s pleas to provide Iraq’s Shiite-led army and police with heavy weapons, armor, and an air force.

A Kurdish power grab?
It’s hard to exaggerate the dangers inherent in a Kurdish grab for Kirkuk. Such a move would inflame Iraq’s Arab population (both Sunnis and Shiites), impinge on other minorities (including Turkmen and Christians), and provoke an outburst of ethnic cleansing in the city. Iraq’s two-sided civil war would become a three-sided affair.

But although this scenario sounds alarming, the reality is that, in the event of an American withdrawal, the Kurds would find it exceedingly difficult either to take Kirkuk or to declare independence. An independent Kurdistan would be landlocked, surrounded by hostile nations, and would possess a weak paramilitary army incapable of matching Iran, Arab Iraq, or Turkey. If Kurdistan were to secede without gaining Kirkuk’s oil, it would not be an economically viable nation. Even with the oil, the Kurds would have to depend on pipelines through Iraq and Turkey to export any significant amount. Nor would Turkey, with its large Kurdish minority, stand for a breakaway Kurdish state, and the Kurds know that the Turkish armed forces would overwhelm them.

It is clear that there are many features of Iraq’s current landscape that lend themselves to the eventual creation of a stable, postwar nation — although rebuilding the country will take generations. It is, at this point, the best we can hope for. Like all best-case scenarios, it might or might not happen. But the very same can be said of the worst-case scenario — a scenario that war hawks portray as a certainty and wave, like a bloody shirt, to scare decision-makers and members of Congress into supporting a failed strategy.

There’s much more, and I highly recommend reading it all. Finally, we’re starting to look beyond and behind the blind assumptions and nationalistic rhetoric that has been used to drag us into a disastrous war and inevitable defeat, as long as we define victory as we have in the past. The solution for achieving unconditional success is to act in accord with our values. Whatever the outcome, we will have remained true to what we stand for. It is in this, sadly, that I feel we have self-administered the greatest defeat. We can still change that, and it’s my fervent hope that new leadership in Washington will return America to acting, well, American.

Can George W. Bush Be Purged?

posted by Anita Fieldman

Can George W. Bush Be Purged?
Mayan priests purified their sacred land after Shrub scurried off. Can we do the same?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, March 16, 2007

Sage is always good. Or maybe lavender. Pine is nice, too. Dried, bundled, tied with string, burned with hot, divine intent. Would it work? Do we have enough to go around? This is the question.

I speak, of course, of ritual. Purging and cleansing and purifying and, truly, burning a nicely dried, blessed smudge stick can be a terrific slice of personal magic, to rid a space (or perhaps even your own body) of negative juju or vicious spirits or just to make way for the new and the moist and the good. You can smudge a room. You can create a divine smoldering cloud and then move through the smoke, invoke change, purge the negative, invite hot licks of yes. It is a thing to do.

But here’s the thing: Can you smudge an entire nation? Do we have enough lavender for 300 million? It is, all things considered, a big goddamn country. Windy. Rocky, in places. Could be tricky. Not to mention, you know, hazy. From all the smoke. Think of the potential traffic accidents. Coughing.

Important considerations, really, because it is becoming increasingly evident that a great national purifying ritual is just about exactly what we need. We are, after all, almost at that point.

Carbon Trading / Climate Change – Updated

Alternet, one of my top political news commentary sources, set off a bonfire of controversy on the Alternet site with an article panning carbon trading.  I think Author David Morris (co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance and director of its New Rules project) is misguided. Carbon emissions trading can be a valuable incentive to drive us in the right direction of reducing emissions by rewarding good environmental behavior. Morris notes the excitement over the “green” Oscars, then the controversy about Al Gore’s Nashville house that “consumed 20 times more energy than a typical house.” (A Gore spokesman responded that they buy offsets to render it neutral in carbon emissions.)

Of All the Unmitigated Gall

by PenFighter

I’m finally completely disgusted. Today (President’s Day), we were ‘treated’ to the idiocy of George W. Bush comparing himself to George Washington. Here are a few quotes from his speech at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home and final resting place.

“I feel right at home here. After all, this is the home of the first George W.”

That should be enough to set thinking Americans’ teeth on edge even if he hadn’t continued:

“On the field of battle, Washington’s forces were facing a mighty empire, and the odds against them were overwhelming. The ragged Continental Army lost more battles than it won, suffered waves of desertions, and stood on the brink of disaster many times. Yet George Washington’s calm hand and determination kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive.”

“In the end, General Washington understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills, and his will was unbreakable.”

“Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life.”

Yes, because the Iraq situation is just SO similar, right? I’m beginning to think “delusional” is too good a term for a President (and I use the term loosely) who can drag the US down into the depths, and have the GALL to compare himself to both Winston Churchill (repeatedly) and George Washington while he does it.

This, though, is the capper:

“Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first president.”

Earth to George: here’s a quote from George Washington, circa 1775:

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.“

Scott Horton has an excellent take on this comparison in his column in the Huffington Post.

Slime on Parade Continues

by PenFighter

OK, when the hell is the preponderance of corruption stories like this piece in the Washington Post going to make it past the Teflon Condoms™ the TV “news” outlets give these dicks to wear while they… um… how to put this delicately… abuse us without the benefit of vaseline.

A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, former assistant attorney general in charge of environment and natural resources, bought a $980,000 home on Kiawah Island, S.C., last March with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Don R. Duncan. A third owner of the house is J. Steven Griles, a former deputy interior secretary, who has been informed he is a target in the federal investigation of Jack Abramoff’s lobbying activities.

At least it would seem that the Washington Post has realized that the NYT has made so many missteps lately that the title “Paper of Record” is actually up for grabs. Not that WaPo has been any bastion of populist truth for the past six years, but at least they seem to have the business sense to notice that this administration is toast, and buttering them up just might be a bad idea.

The NIE: An Expert Interpretation

by PenFighter

In a new commentary in the Washington Post entitled Victory Is Not an Option, William E. Odom uses his expertise in the field to walk us through the recently released NIE, and our government’s ongoing failure to act upon it.

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush’s illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications — hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact — put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

This article should be required reading, coming as it does from an author who knows how to read these things. In case the name William E. Odom rings a bell, but the association doesn’t, Mr. Odom is a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom currently teaches at Yale.

Wait… Just Who Are the Pirates Here?

by PenFighter

Let’s take a break for a moment from Big Business Politics (or maybe not) and look at a fascinating Salon article from Courtney Love about the reality of this “we’re only standing up for the artists” stance of the R.I.A.A. Now, before you write Courtney off, be assured that whatever her substance abuse problems, no one has ever said Courtney Love has no business sense.

The article is exhaustively long and not new (2000), but since the last, do-nothing Republican Congress ignored the issue, it’s still valid. By the way, thanks to Uncle Dave at Dvorak Uncensored for pointing out this gem. Courtney begins:

Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.

What follows in the article is a detailed walk through just how an album that makes $6.6 million for the record company leaves the band that recorded the album with a whopping $0.00 dollars in revenues (if they’re lucky), and then, through an unbelievable legislative slap in the face, leaves the band with no rights to their OWN music.

Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a “technical amendment” to a bill that defined recorded music as “works for hire” under the 1978 Copyright Act. He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president’s signature.

That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years — billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A “work for hire” is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.

Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded “Everybody Hurts,” you at least got it back as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, “Everybody Hurts” never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Just remember this little piece of news next time you hear the R.I.A.A whining about how downloaders are “ripping off the artists”.

A while back I heard someone say that if downloaders would just mail a nickel to the artists they download, it would be more than most artists get out of that song till it’s out of copyright. Thanks to this “corrupt little pisher,” it could be more than they will ever get out of it.

Saudis seek Palestinian dialogue

While the US continues its saber rattling, the Saudis–not that I’m a huge fan–appear to see what Bush cannot: the need for diplomacy instead of militarism.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has invited rival
Palestinian leaders to a meeting in Mecca aimed at ending a recent wave
of factional fighting.

Three days of clashes between the governing Hamas faction and its rival, Fatah, have left at least 24 dead.

In an open letter, the king described the violence as a
“disgrace” and urged leaders to make “dialogue prevail over the
language of arms”.

Hamas and Fatah accepted the invitation but no date was set for the meeting.

GOP: The Global Opinion Pounders

Yes, the devastating fiasco that is the GOP neocon agenda is destroying world opinion of the US:

The Bush policies of war, occupation, torture and rendition are having a cumulative effect on global opinion. A recent BBC poll of more than 26,000 people found that 75 percent oppose the U.S. role in Iraq, two-thirds oppose the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo, and 52 percent feel that the U.S. has an overall negative effect on the planet.

Robert Sheer puts it poignantly:

President Bush has accomplished what Osama bin Laden only dreamed of by disgracing the model of American democracy in the eyes of the world.

According to an exhaustive BBC poll, nearly three-quarters of those polled in 25 countries oppose the Bush policy on Iraq, and more than two-thirds believe the U.S. presence in the Middle East destabilizes the region. In other words, the almost universal support the United States enjoyed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been completely squandered, as a majority of the world’s people now believe that our role in the entire world is negative.

The Disaster of the GWOT

It started out so well, considering the tragic loss of 9/11. The whole world was on our side and largely supported our going after Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. Great article by Richard Parry at Alternet, who details how the so-called war on terror is more like a war on our Republic.

From the beginning of the “war on terror,” George W. Bush has lied to the American people about the goals, motivation and even the identity of the enemy — a propaganda exercise that continued through his 2007 State of the Union Address and that is sounding the death knell for the Republic. Since 2001, rather than focusing on the al Qaeda Sunni fundamentalist terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, Bush has expanded the conflict exponentially — tossing in unrelated enemies such as Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein, Shiite-led Iran, Syria and Islamic militants opposed to Israel, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Blog Break

No posts for the last few days. I have been very busy and neglecting my blog, but alas. Some things just won’t wait…

Sums It Up Nicely

Click cartoon to view full size

Why Should We Negotiate?

Reader Mikef at TMV addressed this so well that I will just quote him:

asked the question the other day: for those who believe that we should “go to Tehran”, what gains do you think could be made?

1. We have a mutual interest in a stable Iraq. Iran and it’s neighbors are reasonably concerned that a complete collapse of the Iraqi government would lead to regional war.

Cheney Rejected Negotiating with Iran

AP reports

An Iranian offer to help the United States stabilize Iraq and end its military support for Hezbollah and Hamas was rejected by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003, a former top State Department official told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The U.S. State Department was open to the offer, which came in an unsigned letter sent shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told BBC’s Newsnight in a program broadcast Wednesday night. But, Wilkerson said, Cheney vetoed the deal.

The Moderate Voice delves into the debate about negotiating with Iran, with several commenters taking the view that it is hopeless.

HR 508 would bring the troops home in six months

posted by Anita Fieldman

Washington, DC – Joined by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA), and Maxine Waters (CA), Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (Petaluma) today introduced the Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act of 2007, sweeping legislation, which would establish a 6-month timeframe for withdrawal for all US military forces from Iraq, provide a framework for bringing stability back to Iraq, and fully fund the VA health care system. The proposal is a direct response to President Bush’s challenge over the weekend for those who oppose his planed escalation to put forth a plan of their own. Woolsey introduced the bill during a press conference held this afternoon in the Capitol. Below are her remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Letter From a Military Mom

these are toy soldiers, Mr. Bush. play with them

My friend Claudine asked me to post this letter from a military mom:

Four years ago, I was watching TV, buying stuff and getting ready for Andy’s high school graduation. Then he joined the Marines and turned our world up side down. He’s now dealing with hearing loss, anger issues and PTSD, and even though he has less than seven months to go, he said he’s not leaving base for fear of doing something that might extend his contract. During these past years, there have been days I could barely speak, nights I couldn’t sleep and times I was paralyzed with fear for his safety. And now his Commander in Chief wants to subject 21,000 more troops to a war that began with a lie.

The Texas Strategy

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 15, 2007
The New York Times

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

Full article –>

Same Old Cheney

Cheney is at it again with the “you’re with us or with the terrorists” line

Appearing on Fox News this morning, VicePresident Dick Cheney said that attempts to stem President Bush’s new Iraq plan, announced this week, were undercutting U.S. troops in Iraq. Cheney brought Osama bin Laden in to the argument, saying that attempts to reverse U.S. policy on Iraq was exactly “what he wants.” Cheney also defended the domestic spying program, involving the CIA and the Pentagon, revealed this weekend by The New York Times.

I think Americans are sick of this divisive hate speech from the Bush administration. He’s undercutting the electorate. And how stupid are these guys anyway? They’re now insulting 70% of the voters, accusing them of “undercutting the troops.”

Bush’s War on Democracy in the Middle East

by PenFighter

What happens when your entire historical narrative is at odds with the narrative of a region you’re trying to “convert”? Look no further than Bush’s War in the Middle East for an answer, according to an excellent post by Gabriel Rotello on HuffPo.

The western ‘freedom’ narrative goes something like this. In the bad old days, our ancestors suffered under tyrants like George III and Louis XVI. Then came a series of great revolutions that ushered in freedom and liberty. Our task today is to preserve our hard-won liberties and guard against any return to tyranny.

Bush appears to believe that this narrative is universally embraced. But the Arab narrative could hardly be more different.

In the Arab version of the ‘bad old days,’ their ancestors suffered not from tyranny but from ‘fawda,’ usually translated as anarchy or chaos. The strong preyed upon the weak, women could not walk the streets in safety, violence and anarchy made life miserable. Then came Mohammed, who established the divine authority of Islam. Society became ordered, stable and safe. Fawda was banished.

Arab children are taught that one of the worst sins on earth is to challenge stability and order, since this invites a return to the horrors of fawda. Hence the famous Arab saying: ‘Better a century of tyranny than one day of chaos.’

In other words, every action of the Bush War could hardly have been better designed to play into the Arab population’s primal fear of chaos. Now that they’ve seen how well democracy works in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, they’ll just be lining up to try it.

Do these guys ever bother to consult with anyone who knows WTF they’re talking about before they try to change the world???

Bush’s Credibility Gap

by Greendreams

Keith Olbermann again nails “The Decider” with a succinct history of his ever-changing always wrong proclamations of the last six years.

California Dreaming

by GreenDreams

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing an overhaul of the broken health-care system in that state.

Amazing sight in the South Pacific

by GreenDreams

In August, 2006 the crew of the yacht Maiken witnessed the birth of a new volcanic island in Tonga. The text and pictures are from their blog, HERE. The pictures, HERE. Read on for the whole story…

Quotes About War

by GreenDreams

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
—General Douglas MacArthur

Is the Greenwash Over?

by penfighter

This may be the first real chink (and a huge one) in Big Oil’s scandalous disinformation campaign on global warming.

A report from the Union of Concerned Scientists says that Exxon/Mobil, the world’s largest corporation, funded studies that cast doubts on the link between fossil fuels and climate change. While this is not news to any of us who have watched the issue, what’s remarkable is Exxon/Mobil’s response(s) to the study. Read Newsweek’s about it story here.

ExxonMobil—after promulgating, and then withdrawing 20 minutes later, a statement that called the report an “attempt to smear our name and confuse the discussion”—wants you to know that it now accepts some responsibility for global warming. Specifically, and in boldface, it admitted that “It is clear today that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change, and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions.”

The boldface is not my emphasis. They used it in their response. Can we now finally lay to rest that preposterous “the jury is still out” defense the Bush Administration uses to justify their criminally irresponsible environmental procrastination?

So Funny It Hurts

“The one thing we can say about George Bush and his economic policy is: ‘We are forever in your debt,’ “
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.)

Right On, Democrats !

by GreenDreams

Great speech by Nancy Pelosi, echoing what I want for our country, and finally, going beyond the selfishness of the “cut my taxes and damn the future” crowd.

Senate Democrats’ First Ten Bills of the 110th Congress

by GreenDreams

A Newer World details this great list of top priorities of the Democrats for the new Congressis like it: a new start, to address some of the many real and serious needs for reforming American politics and our direction as a nation. Here’s the list:

1. Ethics reform, to clean up Congress so the government can get back to serving the American people.
2. Raising the minimum wage, to give millions of American families an opportunity to achieve the American Dream.
3. Medicare Prescription Drug program reform, to save seniors, the disabled, and American taxpayers money.
4. Acting on the 9/11 Commission Recommendations, to fully secure our ports and borders and ensure that our first responders have the resources they need to keep America safe.
5. Funding stem cell research, to open the promise of life-saving cures and treatments.
6. Energy reform, to address global warming and put America on a path to energy independence.
7. Easing the financial burden of college tuition, to increase accessibility for hardworking students and their families.
8. Strengthening and rebuilding America’s military, to ensure the American people get the real security they deserve.
9. Comprehensive immigration reform, to fix America’s broken immigration system.
10. Pay-as-you-go legislation, so that Congress has to cover its costs just like American families do.

Way to go, Democrats. We are filled with optimism that Americans really want, and Democrats plan to deliver, real reform of our broken system to deliver what Nancy Pelosi and I agree is the proper future of our government: Managing public resources for the public good.

Global Climate Change

by GreenDreams

The correlation between atmospheric carbon and average global temperature is solid and based on data covering millions of years, recorded in ice and elucidated by drilling and studying core samples. There is no conflicting data; that is, there is no time at which carbon level and temperature failed to confirm this correlation.

Why is it so important for some to deny the very strong evidence and common logic of this theory? It’s not a complicated theory.

• Burning carbon increases atmospheric carbon.
• Atmospheric carbon levels are, without fail, associated with higher global average temperatures.
• The current carbon level in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever been.
• Putting less carbon in the atmosphere and taking steps to re-sequester existing atmospheric carbon will reduce that level.
• Returning to a normal carbon level is better for the planet and temperatures will decline along with carbon level.
• These two always track and it does not make sense to posit that increasing carbon is the result of increased temperature (which would extend the growing season and increase the uptake of carbon by plants.)

The War on War

by GreenDreams

Marc Schulman, one of the bloggers at TMV posted an editorial from right after Pearl Harbor. The implication is that we need to think of our current “war” in the same way, and follow 1941 rules for dealing with it. Schulman is an “11 percenter,” one of the vanishing few who still think we need to go all out to defeat Iraq the Sunnis the Shi’ites the terrorists the insurgents bad guys.

Baghdad Burning

by GreenDreams

For a chillingly sad view from the ground in Iraq, and a dose of the reality for Iraqis, read this.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted… What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I’m certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam… Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school-it’s just not safe… 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That’s the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue… Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he’s wanted to marry for the last six years? I don’t think so.

Losing the Trust of the Iraqis

by GreenDreams

Watching America
Chilling dose of reality for those who think the Bush administration and it’s buddies are well-intentioned.

Does the U.S. really want the Iraqi army to become competent? asked Baghdad’s Basaer News in an editorial. President Bush keeps saying that U.S. troops will “stand down” when Iraqi troops “stand up.” Yet the American contractors who won bids to supply the Iraqi army are giving us only “antiquated weapons produced in Eastern Europe.” The contractors get this Soviet-era garbage at rock-bottom prices, as Eastern European countries that just joined the European Union scramble to modernize their armies. “This allows them to pocket what’s left over from the massive appropriations set aside to modernize the Iraqi army.” Our troops, then, wield “scrap metal” for weapons, while the resistance, the militias, and the jihadists are better armed even than coalition troops.

Not a word of this in the mainstream media. Want to help them “stand up”? Give Iraqi forces our modern weapons (if you think they’re truly on our side), and get out.

No wonder ordinary Iraqis are taking the side of the resistance, said Baghdad’s Azzaman. American policy seems designed to humiliate us. “American soldiers are viewed as thieves, gangsters, and thugs who have come to rape and molest women and girls, abuse prisoners, and destroy cities.” Iraqis now cheer the victories of the resistance rather than those of the would-be liberators.

The Case for Immediate Withdrawl of Troops from Iraq

by Anita Fieldman

Diane Rehm, a personal media hero, has explored three Iraq strategies over the past three days (December 19-21) – - a surge in troops, gradual drawdown of troops, and immediate withdrawal. If you need a good, rational argument for immediate withdrawal, listen to the December 21 show. The link is below.

The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU-FM (NPR affiliate, Washington, DC)

http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/12/21.php#12429

U.S. strategy in Iraq: immediate withdrawal Although President Bush may not be considering pulling out of Iraq altogether, many believe this is, in fact, exactly what we should do. We’ll hear the case for an immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.

Blogistic Synergy

by PenFighter

One of the things I truly appreciate about the blogosphere is its ability to subject a situation to multi-faceted analysis and present a multi-faceted viewpoint — I’m reminded of the well-known parable of the blind men describing an elephant. Appropriately, given the timing of the rise of the blogosphere, that approach has done an admirable job of painting a truer picture of the Republican Elephant than the mainstream press has done (“The elephant must look like a sword… it’s long, hard and pointy.”)

While scanning the usual blogs, the random order in which I opened Firefox tabs yielded up two articles and a link to a third that, between them, go a long way toward explaining the mechanisms behind the disaster facing our country.

What’s a Centrist?

I like the graphic, though I’m not sure it helps define what a ‘centrist’ believes in.

It’s tough to define centrist, and I suspect we (if in fact I qualify) are too diverse to define. I’d love to find a list of issues and positions that ‘centrists’ agree on, to see if I’m one. I’m probably left of most centrists, but I think I’m a pragmatist, somewhat alarmist member of the ‘reality based community’.

Our nation and world face overwhelming problems and our partisan positions aren’t solving them. Take the debt (please). According to the chart above, “more financial freedom” is a centrist ideal. But does this mean, in the GOP sense, any tax cut even if it’s just foisting our debt on future generations? Privatizing Social Security so we can invest (and maybe lose) our retirement and abandon our parents, to whom we promised security in old age, and who faithfully paid into the program their entire careers? Does it mean “market solutions” when the market is willing to sacrifice the earth and it’s people for the next quarterly report? Do centrists agree on a position on military might vs. diplomacy and development assistance? The ‘centrist’ blogosphere regularly has debates in which one side condones torture and rendition, with others supporting the Geneva Conventions. I doubt we ‘centrists’ even agree on whether the PATRIOT Act is an acceptable compromise or outrageous assault on personal freedom and privacy. Or whether the Military Commissions Act is a dangerous abandonment of the rule of law or a necessary and sensible set of rules to deal with a “new” enemy.

My favorite quote on fiscal responsibility and ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

Teeg Says:

We can learn to make bread or we can learn to steal it, the result we get, is bread.

With the same idea it is a normal thing for our parents and teachers to say one thing, like they tell us to make bread, but what they show us, what they actually teach us, is how to steal it.

Looking at Dennis Kucinich

by Anita Fieldman
One of the most glaring holes in U.S. foreign policy is the lack of experts in international conflict resolution having a voice that can be articulated to the American people to change public opinion into a mind-set of peace.

Dennis Kucinich has announced his candidacy for President. He has long advocated a Department of Peace. His wife Elizabeth is an expert in international conflict resolution.

The campaign is attempting to correct a major misconception that impeded Kucinich’s progress in the 2004 primary. Opponents cited that, as mayor of Cleveland (the youngest mayor of any major city, by the way), Kucinich ran the city into bankruptcy. I fell for it, too, without checking further and I was wrong.

In a letter to his mailing list on December 16, Elizabeth Kucinich wrote:

Today marks the 28th Anniversary of Cleveland’s default and finally the truth is out about Muny Light.

Joshua Scheer at Truthdig has posted an interview, newspaper articles and TV news stories which show the great courage it took for the then 32 year old Mayor, Dennis Kucinich, to save Cleveland’s public power system.

The city went into default, because the banks would only accept the public utility as payment on the city’s debt. Nothing else would do.

The story exposes the very real issues of corporate greed, media manipulation and corruption all of which were overcome when the people were supported by the very courageous Mayor, Dennis Kucinich.

Full story, HERE.

Scheer’s interview has been described by some as being the most important populist manifesto in the last 50 years.

Check it out. Whether or not Dennis will win the Democratic primary, or perhaps end up as the first Secretary of the Department of Peace in a new Democratic Administration, he injects into the Democratic platform a vision of progress and peace.

Elephant Dreams (Nightmares?)

by PenFighter
It would be tempting to give in to a bit of long-awaited glee watching the Republican House of Cards come tumbling down if there weren’t so many innocent people still to be hurt or killed before the dust finally settles. Brent Budowsky carries the hopefully-ongoing requiem for the New Republican Century to an inevitable conclusion on HuffPo:

If the Time Magazine Person of the Year should name the greatest influence on our country and our world, it is the Republican President, the Republican Vice President, the Republican White House political office, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Senate, the Republican House, the Republican donors, the Republican oil companies, the Republican profiteers in Iraq, the Republican White House counsels who said the wrongs were right, the Republican Attorney Generals who failed to stand up for faithfully executing the laws and for preserving, protecting and defending our Constitution.

What is so extraordinary, with results that are so catastrophic as witnessed every night on our evening news, is this: it was one political party that controlled every branch of our government, and sought permanent one party domination of our democracy, that abused one law and practice after another, that made the assassination of character an art form, and the demeaning of our democracy their mission, and they did it, in unison, together. Who should be Time’s Person of the Year?

The party that impeached Bill Clinton for nothing, and gave us this.

It would be difficult to put it much more concisely.

Learning Curve?

by GreenDreams
Norman Horowitz writing on HuffPo echoes my consternation exactly about this President acting like he just moved into the White House.

 

Our President has been in office for almost six years. He is the commander and chief. Four years ago that he led our nation into a war in Iraq, and he has remained the commander and chief in the intervening years. The job of “war time President” is not a new for him.

Now he says he needs until early next year to tell us what he plans to do about the mess in Iraq

He has dismissed calls for fast action on delivering a new strategy. He said that he had hoped to announce his plans next week but pushed back his speech until early next year. He’s been consulting widely and said he wants his new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, to participate in the policy review. “I will be delivering my plans after a long deliberation, after steady deliberation …I’m not going to be rushed into a difficult decision.”

APPROPRIARTE TIME? STEADY DELIBERATION? LONG DELIBERATION? “WE’RE GOING TO GIVE YOU THE TOOLS NECESSARY TO SUCCEED… AND A STRATEGY TO HELP YOU SUCCEED, I’VE HEARD INTERESTING IDEAS, RUSHED INTO A DIFFICULT DECISION”

WHAT IN HEAVENS NAME HAS HE BEEN DOING AS HE HAS WATCHED THE SITUATION FALLING APART AND OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS GETTING KILLED AND WOUNDED, AND THEY CONTINUE TO BE IN HARMS WAY AS HE DECIDES?

Are we nuts? He is and has been the President all along. It is as though he has just come in as a “substitute President,” and he needs time to familiarize himself with the present situation.

Judge upholds detainee rights terror law

by GreenDreams:
In my opinion, this is terrible news for civil rights:

A federal judge upheld the Bush administration’s new torture terrorism law Wednesday, agreeing that Guantanamo Bay detainees do not have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.

“This is the first time in the history of this country that a court has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no law applies,” said Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has handled many detainee cases.

It’s also lousy for our military and diplomatic corps, who may receive similar treatment from other regimes, or for that matter perhaps just an American traveling abroad with a camera. We have defined the Rule of Law, and now we are in no position to dispute other countries holding Americans “in a place where no law applies” if their leader declares them to be enemy combatants. Indeed, presumably we would agree that all countries have that right. Right? Scary. The terrorists have won.

What’s Good for the Goose

by PenFighter:
What a difference a few years makes. Remember back to the repugnant frothfest that went on in the days of Cigargate? Well, just in case you don’t, Joseph Palermo reminds us in a blogging on Huffington Post:

What Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairs Said About the Importance of Impeaching President Clinton

The Republican Representative from Wisconsin, James Sensenbrenner, Jr., who most recently chaired the House Judiciary Committee in the Republican-dominated Congress, and will now be its ranking member, said of the necessity of impeaching President Clinton: “What’s at stake here is the rule of law. Even the president of the United States has no right to break the law. If the House votes down this inquiry . . . nothing will happen. The result will be a return to the imperial presidency of the Nixon era, where the White House felt the laws did not apply to them, since they never would be punished. That would be a national tragedy of immense consequences.”

I hope he’s reminded of those words repeatedly over the next few months.

Replace the Iron Fist With a Helping Hand

by GreenDreams
The Washington Post reports the Pentagon is (finally) proposing to create jobs in Iraq. The “goal is to employ tens of thousands of Iraqis in coming months, part of a plan to reduce soaring unemployment and lessen the violence that has crippled progress”. Thanks to Michael Stickings’ post over at The Moderate Voice.

This is a point I have made repeatedly during the course of this war. To date, our military expense is equal to around $70,000 per Iraqi family, in a country whose median income has slipped to $144 per year. For what we have spent trying to batter Iraq into submission, we could probably have bought all the weapons, employed the entire population at twice their median income, fixed the infrastructure and quite possibly won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. I firmly believe that most of the population wants just what we want: peace and prosperity, family and friends, a secure home, a toaster, refrigerator, microwave; in short, a decent life free of the strife of war.

We are always more willing to pay for war rather than peace. Our military budget is 28.5% of the total federal budget, while our foreign aid budget is 0.55%. Poverty, hunger and fear feeds all kinds of hostility, crime, despair and desperation. A helping hand is far more helpful and far less expensive than the iron fist.

Reader Kim Ritter comments

I agree totally. The military has been saying for some time now that they alone, could not provide security for Iraq-that there had to be economic and political progress as well. These days the army and police force provide the only stable part of the work force, and many of the insurgents might have chosen a different path if there were jobs available. We’d be rioting too in this country if unemployment was at 60%, and almost four years after the invasion there wasn’t enough clean water or electricity. This solution is only common sense, but as the author claims, is three years too late.

Maybe it is too late. But what a change there would be if the Democrats step in, send a Congressional delegation of negotiators with enough aid money to truly turn around the economic and social decline and say, “the new team is in power now, and we want to fix what our misguided and discredited former leaders broke, and get you all back to some semblance of the life and work you deserve.”

I’m no Pollyanna. I know there are deep sectarian hatreds in the region, but here’s a way to change our “destroy and leave” perception to one of “we’re rebuilding, not occupying”.

Green is the New Red White and Blue

by GreenDreams
This is a powerful video in which Thomas Friedman explains to Tim Russert, why “green is the most geopolitical, geoeconomic, capitalistic, patriotic thing you can be today.” Please watch it. send it to your friends.

CIA Acknowledges Bush Authorized Interrogations

I missed this news but was alerted to it by disappearednews.com which I heartily recommend.

An article in the International Herald Tribune with a New York Times byline has not, for some reason, appeared in the New York Times itself. At least, not on their website or where Google could find it. And this is an article that should be widely available to Americans.

The CIA has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President George W. Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.

The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is “a directive signed by President Bush granting the CIA the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees.”

Read the whole article here, before it disappears from the Internet.

News You Can Trust?

by GreenDreams
I’m always looking for good sources of accurate media. I used to think BBC was very close, being nonprofit and less manipulative than our corporate media.

According to the Global Free Press rankings for this year, the USA is 22nd in the world. At the top is Finland and Iceland (tied for first place) followed by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and New Zealand. More here.

What’s the problem with our media?

* Corporate Ownership
* Advertiser Influence
* Official Agendas
* Telecommunications Policy
* The PR Industry
* Pressure Groups
* The Narrow Range of Debate
* Censorship
* Sensationalism

Students Cry Out for Freedom in Iran

Dr. Thomas Barnett makes a point with which I wholeheartedly agree. To influence positive change in the world, we do best when we inspire by example.

Going on the offensive in the Long War ain’t always about going kinetic, but it’s always about shaking things up and putting the other guy on his heels.

TSA’s New Electronic Strip Search

Are you kidding me? The new “backscatter X-Ray” system (currently only in Phoenix) allows TSA to see everything you’ve got, as if you had no clothes on. Supposedly, the private parts are masked somehow (pixelated? fuzzy? denippled?). I’m outraged that we’re putting up with this. Even if they can’t see nipples or penises, lots of people are shy about more than their private parts, like their bellies, thighs or butt, or that colostomy bag. I also don’t care to expose myself to unnecessary radiation no matter how little they tell me the risk is.

How will everyone feel when they start looking at your kids “naked?” Well, why wouldn’t they? These days, many of the “jihadists” are quite young, American youth sometimes shoot up schools and if federal agents don’t check out your kid’s naked bodies, the terrorists could just use their kids to smuggle stuff, right?

This just isn’t right! Oh, a reminder, because by now I’m sure we have forgotten: The 9/11 hijackers did not sneak anything through airport security. Catering or janitorial staff put the box cutters on the plane.

Big Brother is Listening

The second item on the big brother scope lately: The FBI eavesdropping using your cell phone as a remote listening device.

CNET reports it is now possible, and legal according to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. The technique is called a “roving bug,” in which your cell phone is programmed remotely (using ‘maintenance mode’) to call the FBI and transmit any conversations around the phone. There’s some disagreement, but it appears the phone could even transmit when turned off (or apparently so).

The U.S. Commerce Department’s security office warns that “a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone.” An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can “remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner’s knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call.”

Is the United States Bankrupt?

Laurence J. Kotlikoff, writing in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, discusses the complex issues of national endebtedness, the promises made to current and future generations and the fiscal policies of the day, which he characterizes as irresponsible, as he points out that “the government has cut taxes well below the bone” and “that countries holding U.S. bonds can sell them in a nanosecond.” He says “the U.S. government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds.”

The Federal Reserve bank is hardly an alarmist liberal source (like, say, this blog). And the article is so chock full of equations and citations that you are welcome to attempt to find any misconceptions there.

The Republicans Lost Iraq

Exactly right. The Republican spin machine is already gearing up its ridiculous claim that if the Democrats force us to leave Iraq before “the job is complete” they will have been responsible for losing the war. We absolutely cannot let them get away with this absurd notion. Today the Huffington Post puts this in crystal clarity:

First, Iraq is irreversibly lost – so there will be no salvaging it. Victory is a long lost goal. There were two consecutive days in Baghdad recently where we protected the Mahdi Army one day and fought them the next. We are alternately protecting and fighting the Shiites and the Sunnis. We are clearly caught in the middle of a chaotic civil war. It is impossible to “win” in this situation.

The Worst President Ever

Eric Foner, writing in the Washington Post comments on the historical ranking of presidents from “great” to “failure”

Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt always figure in the “great” category. Most presidents are ranked “average” or, to put it less charitably, mediocre. Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them. A look at history, as well as Bush’s policies, explains why.At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush’s presidency certainly brings theirs to mind.

Chinese Military Redux

A post at Donklephant, discusses the Chinese military.

China, obviously, will be our strongest long-term competitor in the world, both economically and militarily. But the form that competition will take isn’t always clear.

A lot of alarmists like to point to China’s growing military muscle. They’re modernizing their army and air force, expanding their navy and improving their missile technology.

But while the numbers can be impressive, most people overestimate China’s military strength because they underestimate the effects of technology and the more prosaic arts of transport and logistics, both of which fall under the heading of “force projection.”

We continue to think in military terms, but China, from whom we borrow $1 billion a DAY could turn off the tap tomorrow and defeat us by the collapse of our economy. (not that they would, but neither would they use their military against us).

Our prosperity in the recent years is fully debt-based. With massive consumer credit debt, second and third mortgages and no savings, the US has made China both our banker and our manufacturing sector. The Chinese have a 40% savings rate while ours hovers around 2%. Most Americans have less savings than debt. We have borrowed nearly $9 trillion from our children with no intention of paying it back. This amounts to a “birth tax” of $30,000 for that new baby, who owes $4,400 in interest this year and more each year from now on.

Warren Buffet on Class Warfare

Whenever someone tried to raise the issue (of the rich paying far less in taxes as a percent of income), he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but
it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and
we’re winning.”

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