1/31/2008

Just Kidding!

"To build a future of energy security, we must trust in the creative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs and empower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology... Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions."

President Bush in his State of the Union speech on January 28

"Several lawmakers from Illinois said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made it clear in a meeting in Washington on Tuesday that he was poised to pull the plug on a showcase clean coal energy project slated for Downstate Illinois."

The Chicago Tribune, reporting how the Bush Administration dropped support for a clean-energy facility just one day later

Maybe a Cigar Really Is More Than a Cigar...

As a rule, I don't hold much stock in the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement." This motley bunch claims that there was a deliberate government conspiracy to pull off the 9/11 attacks, either by standing back and letting it happen or by staging it themselves. Generally, the bigger an event is, the more conspiracies tend to crop up around it - for example, just look at the number of people who even today are convinced that the moon landings were faked.

I tend to take the 9/11 conspiracy theories with a very large grain of salt for several reasons, including:
  • The Bush crowd has proven themselves to be so inept at everything they touch that there's no way in the world they could have put together something like this. The job would have been farmed out to Halliburton, been overcharged by 500% on a cost-plus contract, and the wings would have fallen off the planes long before reaching their targets.
  • The circle of people who would have to have been involved in such a scheme is so large, encompassing the Pentagon, the FAA, NORAD, the National Transportation Safety Board, etc, etc, that someone would have talked by now. A secret this big and involving so many people simply cannot stay hidden for a long time.
Of course, the Bush Administration didn't help matters; they gave rise to much of this speculation all by themselves. After all, they fought both the Congressional and 9/11 Commission investigations tooth and nail until they were publicly shamed into complying by the victims' families, then stonewalled them any way they could. Almost thirty pages, redacted from the Congressional 9/11 report, were almost instantly described as concerning al Qaeda connections to the Saudi royal family. And they rushed to take political advantage of the attacks with truly obscene haste, turning 9/11 into just another weapon with which to bludgeon their electoral opponents.

But once in a while, something happens to make me wonder. After all, the Pentagon and the FAA both deceived and refused to hand over documents to the 9/11 Commission, covering up their actions on that day.

And now, ABC is reporting that according to a new book by Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow was in secret cahoots with the White House:

9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush's National Security Council in early 2001 – and that he was "instrumental" in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar who was fixated on the threat from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, according to Holland's version of Shenon's tome.

Not only that, Zelikow routinely talked with Karl Rove - despite a strict ban on such contacts - and ordered his assistant not to log such conversations. Was he working behind the scenes with the Administration to sabotage the Commission's work? Maybe he was "just" trying to protect his boss Condoleezza Rice, who was National Security Adviser at the time, from being exposed as a staggeringly incompetent political hack. We'll see what develops.

1/30/2008

I'll Tell You What I Want, But It's Gonna Cost You

"It's Mickey Mouse. Bush has never submitted a balanced budget to Congress in his entire presidency, and he's playing Mickey Mouse with Congress."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on the Bush Administration's plans to make everyone - including members of Congress and federal agencies - shell out $200 per printed copy of the Administration's proposed budget

Oh, Grow Up Already

Everyone knows that when it comes to such delicate matters as diplomacy, the Bush Administration resembles not a group of thinking, reasoning adults but rather a room full of spoiled brats. We now have further evidence of that. It seems that when Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Form, he committed the faux pas of sitting next to Manouchehr Mottaki.

Mottaki is the Iranian foreign minister. The panel discussion was about Iranian foreign policy. You can see the pattern here.

The White House had a collective fit and "expressed anger" at Khalilzad for his traitorous defiance of political orthodoxy and his thoughtless act of diplomacy. You could almost hear the thuds coming from Pennsylvania Avenue as White House ideologues got the vapors and fainted dead away en masse.

Of course, it's not like Khalilzad or Mottaki talked or anything. They didn't even shake hands, they just sat next to each other. Doesn't matter to the neoconservatives who still hold sway in the Oval Office; they still insist that Iran is the linchpin of the Axis of Evil™ and any contact between Us and Them is a Very Bad Thing.

Oh, please. This is truly pathetic. This is like something out of grade school, where kids pout and hold grudges for the stupidest of reasons. The White House should grow up and act like adults.

1/29/2008

More Signing-Statement Shenanigans

President Bush yesterday signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. Of course, being Bush, he couldn't resist slipping in one of his noxious "signing statements" eviscerating some of the new law's provisions. Evidently, he hoped no one would notice amid the State of the Union hoopla.

The language he used is pretty dry: "Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President."

But once you actually look at the text, this becomes a big deal:
  • Section 841 establishes a "Commission on Wartime Contracting" to investigate fraud and profiteering in war contracts
  • Section 846 protects whistleblowers employed by contractors from reprisal for exposing fraud, waste or other criminal wrongdoing
  • Section 1079 requires the White House to either hand over any documentation to the House or Senate Armed Services Committee or give a good reason why not within 45 days after it is requested
  • Section 1222 bars permanent American military bases in Iraq or American control of Iraqi oil resources
In other words, Bush is - once again - declaring himself to be above the law. If he feels like letting his Halliburton or Blackwater buddies run wild, or let them lock up gang-rape victims to prevent them from telling anyone, or if he just feels like telling Congress to go fly a kite, then gosh darn, he's the Commander Guy, and he can do whatever he feels like.

Can't we impeach the guy already?

Back on Message, You Unpatriotic Cur

"Seven years ago, right before September 11th, I think that people would say that the country certainly felt better off. There's been - once we were confronted with terrorists who would fly jumbo jets into buildings and kill thousands of our citizens in an instant, it created a sense of fear and nervousness about our security. And that's why the President decided to take on the terrorists head on and go on the offense."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, on being asked whether "the country [is] better off now than seven years ago"

Lessons Learned: None

"The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists - evil men who despise freedom, despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule."

President Bush in his last State of the Union speech, showing that he still sees his War on Terror™ as a one-dimensional, good-versus-evil propaganda poster

1/28/2008

But Wait, There's More!

"There's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

Senator John "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain, promising voters that he will launch even more failed wars should he be elected

Hitlery Redux?

With Hillary Clinton in the running for president this year, many progressives have been watching the primary season with some trepidation. Those of us who lived during the 1990s remember the poisonous political atmosphere of the time, the limitless smears and attacks, the unremitting accusations and endless investigations, all boiling down to a doomed impeachment effort based on sex.

The Republican lineup this year is so uninspiring that the "None of the Above" candidate routinely wins opinion polls. The candidates spend half their time running as far away from George W. Bush as they can and the other half embracing his War on Terror™ while promising more of the same. GOP voters are likewise unimpressed by their choices this year, and the party's fear-and-smear tactics aren't working. Primary turnout is down this year, and the way it's going, many GOP voters may refuse to vote in November.

That may all change if Hillary gets the nomination. In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman says that Hillary is not unique and that any Democrat elected this year will face the same relentless attacks that Bill Clinton did when he became president. He's right, of course. The current crop of Republicans is so politically and morally bankrupt that destruction is all they know how to do.

But that doesn't mean we have to make it easy for them.

During the 1990s, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was attacked as "Hitlery," a Lady Macbeth-type who had her political opponents bumped off. Unfortunately, many Republicans believed the smears and still believe them today - which is why GOP bigwigs are probably praying for a Clinton nomination. That way, they can drag out all the old smears and use the specter of "President Hillary" to scare voters into supporting the eventual Republican nominee - whoever it turns out to be - for the simple reason that he is Not Hillary.

The old bugaboo of "electability" has been used to oppose progressive candidates for years. Voters are told that they have to support someone they don't really agree with just because the person they really support is guaranteed to spark ferocious opposition.

But this time, this concern may really be valid.

1/24/2008

Hey, It Worked Before

"If Congress does not act quickly, our national security professionals will not be able to count on critical tools they need to protect our Nation, and our ability to respond quickly to new threats and circumstances will be weakened. That means it will become harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to recruit terrorists and infiltrate them into our country."

President Bush, demanding that Congress approve a permanent FISA "modernization" bill handing him unlimited power to spy on anyone he chooses with no accountability, thus betting that he can once again scare the Democrats into doing his bidding

1/22/2008

Fear Me, For I Am Rudy

The fact that Rudy Giuliani's presidential hopes have performed a crash-and-burn of almost biblical proportions is no accident. After all, his campaign is focused almost entirely on terrorism while his tactics are, well, terrorist: threatening the public with horrible consequences unless they vote for him. His endless repetitions of the 9/11 mantra - and virtually nothing else - made no impression on a public already numbed by six constant years of fear-based politics. And his less-than-total fealty to the evangelical agenda, combined with his rather messy personal life, doomed him with the Christian right.

But this latest item can't possibly help. Looking back on his tumultuous eight years as mayor, the New York Times examined Giuliani's legendary habit of punishing anyone who disagrees with him. Not simply snubbing them at social events - no, that was too ordinary for him. Nope, Das Rudy actually had his critics arrested:

In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani's radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to the [New York] Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: "GOTCHA!"

That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci's doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.

They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci's decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for the Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.

Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.

"Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower," the mayor told reporters at the time. "Maybe he's dishonest enough to lie about police officers."

Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. "It really damaged me," said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. "I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me."

The thought of such a man possessing the powers of the presidency evidently unnerved Republican voters already heartily sick of seven years of Bush-Cheney lawlessness. After all, who wants to have a president who feels he can send someone to Guantanamo Bay simply to satisfy a personal or political grudge? No one, apparently.

Maybe there's hope for the GOP yet.

1/17/2008

Obama, I'm Scared of a Guy Named Obama...

With Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and giving Hillary Clinton a pretty decent run for her money in other states, the wingnuts are letting loose with all sorts of ludicrous attacks against the junior senator from Illinois. He's a secret Muslim! He's a black supremacist Christian! He's both!

They all come together in a remarkably ugly Investor's Business Daily editorial titled "Obama's Church." In just under a thousand words steeped in racism and bigotry, they mostly attack not Obama himself but the people around him.

For example, the paper accuses the Trinity United Church of Christ of encouraging "blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders." (The church's website naturally says nothing of the sort, instead saying only that members should "pledge to allocate regularly a portion of personal resources for strengthening and supporting black institutions.") And "its dashiki-wearing preacher" Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his children, is "militantly Afrocentric."

After bashing Wright around for a little while, the paper turns to Obama's background. Sneering that the candidate is "spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis," they never quite get around to mentioning that his father was from Kenya and he has quite a few family members who still live there.

The paper accuses Obama of backing the wrong person in Kenya's election crisis: "Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga... Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country." (Of course, they provide no evidence for such wild notions.) For good measure, they attack Obama's brother as "a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.'"

And - again - they mutter darkly about the candidate's imaginary "Muslim past," a full year after this nonsense was definitively debunked. In a masterful display of chutzpah, they then dismiss their own smears as "not the signal issue before the electorate" right after airing them.

Harking back to the anti-Catholic bigotry that was used against John Kennedy in the 1960 election campaign, the paper asks rhetorically, "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?" Their answer is, of course, yes.

The whole article is so slimy one needs to take a shower after reading it. It's nothing more than a laundry list of sleazy guilt-by-association assaults peppered with mindless anti-Muslim prejudice. The editors, who apparently hope that people will see the buzzwords and start fearing Obama right off the bat, should be ashamed of themselves for printing such hateful tripe.

1/16/2008

Yup, We're Proud of That, All Right

"I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We're the working-est state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs."

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), actually bragging that her constituents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet

Gee, I Wonder Why

"I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker."

President Bush, plaintively insisting that despite all the evidence he is not actually a reckless, trigger-happy cowboy

1/15/2008

Onward Christian Soldiers, and to Hell with Everyone Else

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, on how he wants to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy

1/14/2008

Big Brother Is Watching You

Want some scary reading to keep you up at night? Forget anything by Stephen King or Dean Koontz. All you have to do is open the 1/21/08 issue of The New Yorker and take a gander at Lawrence Wright's "The Spymaster." The story is a profile of Mike McConnell, the new Director of National Intelligence.

Do you use the Internet at all? Chew on this:
In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
That's right - it doesn't matter what you do on a computer, Uncle Sam is demanding the power to look over your shoulder permanently in the name of security. "Americans will have to trust the government not to abuse the authority it must have in order to protect our networks," Wright notes somewhat dryly, "and yet, historically, the government has not proved worthy of that trust."

To McConnell's (very small) credit, he knows that getting a permanent government tap on the Internet will not be easy. "This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill," he admits. "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens."

Think about that for a moment. McConnell is actually looking forward to another 9/11-style attack. Once that happens, he apparently hopes the American public will be terrorized into accepting the perversion of our nation from a bastion of free expression into a repressive surveillance state. In this new Oceania, everything you say will be monitored and God help you if you say the "wrong" thing.

Do we feel safer yet?

Recycling at the White House

Who knew President Bush's speechwriters were members of the Writers Guild of America? They're all walking the picket lines with their fellow scribes - that must be why the White House is in reruns, recycling the very same rhetoric that scared us into invading Iraq. Only this time, the target is Iran.

During his great Middle East Tour of 2008, Bush has visited country after country to drum up support for attacking Iran. Frankly, even Bubble Boy must know this is a lost cause, as the Arab people think he's crusading pond scum. In fact, his only fans in the region are the oil sheiks who happily buy another gold-plated toilet whenever the price of crude noses still higher in response to Bush making threatening noises.

But noises he does make, and he's using the same lines as he did five years ago:
Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world - while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home. It undermines Lebanese hopes for peace by arming and aiding the terrorist group Hezbollah. It subverts the hopes for peace in other parts of the region by funding terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad. It sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Shia militants in Iraq. It seeks to intimidate its neighbors with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric. And finally, it defies the United Nations and destabilizes the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programs and ambitions. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf - and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.
Sound familiar? It should; it's the same accusations Bush threw at Iraq prior to his unprovoked attack. All you have to do is change one letter and it fits perfectly.

Will Congress and the American people be scared into yet another pointless war? It remains to be seen whether the Democrats have the stones to stand up to Bush.


1/11/2008

Bombs Away!

In the alternate universe inhabited by the Republican Party and Fox News, the incident in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week proves that Iran is out to destroy America and should immediately be pounded into the sand with all the bombs we can drop on them.

The Fox debate in South Carolina last night was like something out of a grade-B action movie. "Fair and balanced" moderator Brit Hume introduced the correct ideological stance right off the bat when he asked whether "the American commander in the Strait of Hormuz the other day [made] the right decision by responding passively when approached aggressively by Iranian fast boats believed to be from the Revolutionary Guards."

That got all the candidates competing to see who could deliver the toughest sound bite.
  • Fred Thompson: "I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing."
  • Mike Huckabee: "Be prepared that the next things you see will be the gates of Hell, because that is exactly what you will see after that."
  • Rudy Giuliani: "This incident should wake a lot of people up."
  • John McCain: "Don't think that this wasn't a serious situation of the utmost seriousness."
And so on. Ron Paul, who is right about the Iraq War but wrong about absolutely everything else, tried to serve as the sole voice of reason. He pointed out that the American warship "could take care of those speedboats in about five seconds" and that "this incident should not be thrown out of proportion to the point where we're getting ready to attack Iran."

In response, Mitt Romney sneered that "Paul should not be reading as many of Ahmadinejad's press releases." A cheap shot, to be sure - especially considering that Paul wasn't saying anything the Pentagon hadn't already said.

You see, back in the real world, the official narrative is already falling apart.

The Navy admitted to ABC News that they can't actually prove that the Iranians radioed to the American ships that "you will explode after a few minutes." This came after various bloggers and Iranian-Americans loudly poked holes in the story, mentioning that the language was not Farsi and that the voice was too clear, with too little background noise, to be coming from a roaring, bouncing speedboat. Nor is there any sign of those threatening white boxes the Iranians supposedly dumped overboard. It's not on the released video, nor the accompanying audio.

In other words, it now looks like this was just a few idiots in speedboats proving their manhood by playing chicken with an American destroyer. Dumb by any definition, but aggressive and warlike? Doesn't sound like it. But the incident was nevertheless puffed up into a jingoistic they-can't-screw-with-us story. Doesn't matter that it's already leaking water; it's already embraced by the GOP for purely political purposes.

Sounds par for the course to me.

1/10/2008

The Man Who Reached the Top

Like many armchair adventurers, I enjoy reading about mountain climbing, particularly climbs of Mount Everest. The tallest mountain in the world, Everest reaches more than five miles into the sky, topping out at 29,028 feet. Whether it's the blizzard-wracked disaster of Into Thin Air or the mystery of George Mallory in Ghosts of Everest, the mountain has always fascinated me.

Not enough to climb, of course. I leave that for those fitter and wealthier than myself.

But I could not resist a pang of sadness upon learning that Sir Edmund Hillary died this afternoon. Along with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, Hillary became the first person to ascend the summit of Everest, literally standing atop the world. When he did so half a century ago, he became a hero not only to his native New Zealand, but around the world.

In his later years, Hillary was a tireless advocate of the Sherpa people of the Himalayas, campaigning to build schools and hospitals to improve their standard of living. Controversially, he also decried the increasing commercialization of Everest, disdaining the many for-profit expeditions that promised summiting the mountain for a price. It ain't cheap - various commercial groups charge about $60,000.

On behalf of everyone who has ever looked up a steep hill and wondered what was at the top, farewell, Sir Edmund. You will be missed.

1/09/2008

Gulf of Tonkin, 2008 Edition

With the GOP in electoral disarray and the various candidates loath to mention President Bush on the campaign trail, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton duking it out for the Democratic nomination, the time is ripe for some good old-fashioned emotional manipulation.

Such was my reaction upon hearing of the supposed confrontation between American warships and Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz. We all know that Darth Cheney and his neocon cabal in the Bush Administration have been hot for war with Iran for years, right up there with attacking Iraq. The collapse of their "Iran is building nukes" line with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate last month simply made them change direction.

And so now we have a highly suspicious incident in a highly volatile section of the world, one that is crucial to the shipment of Middle Eastern oil. Sounds like the Gulf of Tonkin incident all over again.

For those who have forgotten, there was a loudly-decried confrontation in 1964 between an American destroyer and several North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson seized on the incident and used it to launch the full-scale Vietnam War. Decades later, it was determined that the supposed attack never occurred at all, and the destroyer crew was shooting at nothing. But at the time, Johnson announced that "the United States is united in its determination to bring about the end of Communist subversion and aggression in the area."

We all know the result.

This latest "incident" between the US and Iran sounds awfully familiar. At a time when Tehran is seeking to defuse tensions with Washington, why in the world would they take action to raise them? And it cannot be a coincidence that the Administration, which loudly blamed Iran's Revolutionary Guard for supposedly getting involved in the Iraqi civil war (even though no real evidence was ever presented) now loudly blames the same people for this alleged confrontation. The supposed incident took place right before the key New Hampshire primary election as well as on the eve of Bush's trip to the Middle East, in which he is expected to rally regional support against Iran. What better way to do that than to "prove" Iranian aggression?

This whole thing stinks to high heaven of duplicity and manipulation. Will Congress and the American people fall for a second Tonkin-style fake?

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Bush turned up the rhetoric in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, calling Iran "a threat to world peace" and warning of "serious consequences." It's the same saber-rattling that preceded the invasion of Iraq. I have a sinking "here we go again" feeling...

1/04/2008

He Hadn't Mentioned 9/11 For At Least Two Minutes

"None of this worries me - September 11, there were times I was worried."

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, commenting on his sixth-place finish in the GOP Iowa caucus

The (New) Hundred Years' War

"Make it a hundred."

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), suggesting that American troops stay in Iraq for another century, regardless of how the American or Iraqi people may feel about it

1/03/2008

All Terror, All the Time

With the Iowa caucuses finally taking place this evening after about 42 years of pre-caucus debates, polls and handicapping, there's time for one last stab at fear-mongering by (who else?) Rudy "9/11, L'est Moi" Giuliani.



Will his ad scare the socks off enough Iowans to revive his dead-in-the-water campaign? We'll find out tonight.