From R.J. Matson.

Quote du jour

"I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English." -- AWol, who clearly doesn't believe that this rule (or any other) applies to the pResident. Later he adds "I am a supporter of comprehensive immigration." So come on in, everybody! (I wonder if he told his base about that one.)

And about today's press conference: I wish the White House transcript would identify the reporters asking the questions, because I'd really like to know who these idiots are who are actually trying to goad Bush into going to war with Iran. Some examples (emphasis added):

Q Thank you, sir. The IAEA says that Iran is not in compliance with the Security Council. What sort of sanctions would you like to see and that could bring Russia and Chinese support?

* * * * * * * *

Q Let's come back to Iran, if we can. The Iranians have said they're going to ignore what happens at the U.N. Security Council. Doesn't that mean the diplomatic options are dwindling?

* * * * * * * *

Q You often say Iran is not Iraq.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I do say that.

Q There are many people who fear that this will turn into a military confrontation. Why is Iran not Iraq? There's WMD --

THE PRESIDENT: Iraq went through 16 different Security Council resolutions. There was resolution after resolution after resolution. Iraq had invaded its neighbors. Iraq was shooting at U.S. aircraft. Iraq had actually used weapons of mass destruction on its people before. There's a difference between the two countries.

Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon is dangerous, in my judgment. The diplomatic process is just starting.

Q But when you talk about that, how many resolutions are you going to let go here? How far --

THE PRESIDENT: We haven't had one yet.

Q I know, but how far can you let them go? If you really fear that they're building a nuclear --

* * * * * * * *

Q I just want to follow up one more time on Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted this morning as saying those who want to prevent Iranians from obtaining their right "should know that we do not give a damn," his words, sir, "about such resolutions."

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q When you're talking about diplomacy, sir, a question of tactics, at this point, not goals. If you have, for instance, Russia saying they don't want a Chapter 7 resolution, if you're dealing with a gentleman who uses this kind of rhetoric, what kind of tactics can you possibly come up with?

THE PRESIDENT: I guess the first thing I would do is refer those comments to our partners and get their reaction, to see what they say, see how they react to those kind of comments. And I haven't had a chance to do that yet, since it just happened today. But I will continue to work with our friends and allies.

Listen, key--step one is to have a common goal. I know that sounds simple to you, probably, but it wasn't always that way. The world wasn't always of like mind that the Iranians were, you know, headed for a weapon, and that that would be a dangerous course of action. And now we are of like mind. And so we are in the stage now of formulating a strategy to achieve a diplomatic solution to this problem.

Q But Mr. President, given everything you've been hearing from Mr. Ahmadinejad over the past several weeks and months, in your estimation, is this someone you can work with?

Just in case you were wondering where the term "so-called liberal media" came from. It's hard work to make this warmongering pResident appear cautious and reasonable, but these questioners are sure trying.

I'm sure there was plenty of other scary nonsense in the press conference, but I'm not up to reading it all right now. I'll wait for WIIIAI's take.

At least 67 US troops killed in Iraq in April

Via AP. Of course, the death toll for Iraqis is also apparently around 67--per day. And the criminal who started it all continues to prance around claiming success.

The Ruling (Lack of) Class

AWol met today with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who succeeded his father as president by winning an election of dubious validity in 2003. The intelligence company Stratfor.com said that "Ilham Aliyev lacks his father's charisma, political skills, contacts, experience, stature, intelligence and authority."

Two pea-brains in a pod.

No praise for George H.W. Bush implied or intended. To say that he was a better pResident than W is like saying that the Armenian genocide was "better" than the Holocaust. Or more accurately, that illegal Gulf War I was better than illegal Gulf War II--which certainly wouldn't be true if you were one of the tens of thousands killed in Gulf War I. George H.W. Bush was a very, very bad pResident, one of the worst we've ever had (which is saying a lot). His son is much, much worse.

Another word for nothing left to lose

In the last four years, more than 50 million people have joined the ranks of the free.

-- George W. Bush, January 18, 2005

DATING is a dangerous game in Baghdad. Ali Ilhiam knows that holding hands with his teenage girlfriend could cost him a beating--or worse--from militant extremists.

"Boys can't be seen walking and laughing with their girlfriends any more in the new Baghdad," the 21-year-old university student said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that he was not being watched. Friends of his have been dragged from their cars, imprisoned and threatened with death by self-appointed moral guardians for daring to link arms with their girlfriends in public.
...
Mr. Ilhiam recalled that holding hands with a girl was permissible under the regime of Saddam Hussein, but he expressed concern about the growing puritanism that is being enforced by both Shia and Sunni militias.

"This country has expired," Murwa Majid said, nervously twisting a gold necklace that spelt out her name. "No matter what our new Prime Minister says, my generation is pessimistic. Life will not improve any time soon. This is not living."
...
"Girls don't walk the streets alone any more. We used to shop, go dancing, have parties, until a few months after the downfall of Saddam, and bit by bit, every day, we feel more repressed."

-- The Times (UK)

Gas price nonsense

Of all of the apparently hopeless causes I promote here on the blog, trying to get politicians to behave in the long-term best interest of the country and the world when it comes to gasoline prices is probably the most hopeless. Bush will be impeached, the troops will be back from Iraq, the Bill of Rights will be reinstated, Americans will be monitoring the government rather than vice versa, GMO's will be banned, NAFTA will be repealed, and Dennis Kucinich will be president long before politicians will stop grandstanding over "high" gasoline prices. They know that it's about the only issue many (most?) voters pay any attention to. But that doesn't stop us bloggers from trying.

The Oil Drum tries to explain the facts to the politicians in a lengthy press release, on which Jonathan at Past Peak comments. Greg Saunders at This Modern World calls the Repugs' call for $100 rebate checks to taxpayers "bribery;" I reluctantly informed him that Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) is bidding five times as much for your votes.

Keeping gas prices low is like trying to rescue someone falling out of a building by digging a hole where he's going to land. It's expensive, futile, and will only make the splat bigger when he finally hits bottom. But, if you're Congress, digging holes is what you do.

No gossip here

It would be beneath the dignity of this blog to report the rumors circulating in Harper's, elaborated on at TPM Muckraker, and further expounded upon by Billmon, that there's a prostitution scandal a-brewing involving CIA Director Porter Goss, former Congressscum Duke Cunningham, and probably several other Repugs. And it would violate my blogalistic standards to point out the delicious irony that some of this rumored activity took place at the Watergate Hotel.

So I just won't do it.

Outrage overload--now with more adverbs!

Too many horrible things going down all at once to keep track of. Here's a sample:

• The Pentagon is going ahead with plans to conduct covert military operations in any country any time it decides it wants to, without the approval of the country or even the State Department. Chris Floyd comments eloquently.
• Halliburton has been importing laborers into Iraq from poor countries and then taking away their passports, making them effectively slaves (or Cheney-gangers). Just doing jobs Iraqis won't do, I guess (although they'll stand in lines, which seem to get blown up daily, just to get what has to be one of the worst jobs in the world--a position in the Iraqi security forces). WIIIAI comments vehemently.
• Not only are your dollars buying less gasoline these days; they're buying fewer euros as well. That's right, the dollar has resumed its slide into the abyss after a one-year breather due to the failure of the EU to adopt a constitution. Mike Whitney comments alarmingly.
• "Internet neutrality," which allows all users to benefit from the free exchange of ideas on the web, is under serious attack in Congress. Congressional candidate Charles W. Sanders comments convincingly.
• When the government comes to get you, your Levi's jeans may help them track you down. Katherine Albrecht of Spychips.com comments lucidly. Here's her lead paragraph:

  It may be time to ditch your Dockers and lay off the Levi's, say privacy
  activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. New information confirms
  that Levi Strauss & Co. is violating a call for a moratorium on
  item-level RFID by spychipping its clothing. What's more, the company is
  refusing to disclose the location of its U.S. test.

And as always there's more, more, more.

From Gary Brookins.

From Nick Anderson.

From Drew Sheneman.

From Rob Rogers.

From Mark Cohen.

Racist much?

It's good to see right-wing cartoonists mocking Bush from time to time, but could Mike Lester from Rome, Georgia be any more racist in doing so?


Anyone who wants to tell Mike what he can do with his filthy racism can e-mail him here.

From Tom Toles.

32% = TWO terrorist tapes in a week

The usual bump in polls aWol gets (for who knows why) when a new Osama tape comes out didn't seem to happen last week, so now al Qaeda's media committees at the Pentagon have brought out their first-ever Zarqawi video!

But ignore my snark, the video is real. How do I know? Well, according to the NY Times, always a reliable source about Iraq,

...an American official said Tuesday night that intelligence agencies had completed an analysis of the video and concluded that the speaker was Mr. Zarqawi. The man who appears in the video bears a strong resemblance to various photos the American and Jordanian governments have distributed of him.

Perhaps this unnamed government official is referring to the same intelligence agencies that took the pictures of "Zarqawi" and distributed them. Completely convincing, no?

Well, at least the Times doesn't buy this BS completely, only almost. They say the man in the video "identified himself" as Zarqawi, although they then state as fact that Zarqawi is "the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq," and their headline calls it a "Qaeda video." Over at the WaPo, they've swallowed it hook, line, sinker, pole and fisherman. Their headline: Zarqawi Taunts U.S. in Video. The first paragraph:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, showed his face in a video for the first time yesterday, accusing President Bush of lying to Americans about U.S. military victories in Iraq and vowing to destroy efforts to form a new government there.

They make this unequivocal claim based on thorough independent analysis of multiple sources, right? Hah!

U.S. intelligence officials who evaluated the video, the bulk of which was devoted to his delivery of a lengthy speech in which he claimed that mujaheddin forces now had "the upper hand on the battlefield," said it was genuine.

There you have it. The Washington Post, which just two weeks ago ran the story about how the military "is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq," now presents the latest effort of that propaganda campaign as absolute fact based on the off-the-record assertions of "U.S. intelligence officials."

I swear, if W's ratings get below 25%, we'll hear that Saddam Hussein has escaped, and we'll soon be treated to his videos denouncing the Great Satan. And the Times and Post will be stating as fact that Saddam is off making WMD's again (sic), because unnamed intelligence officials told them so. And if that doesn't work, there's always Emmanuel Goldstein.

Stupid is as stupid does

WIIIAI does it better, but I likes doin' me a photo essay from time to time as well.


Our idiot pResident and his Nikular football.



























The Naval Academy's football coach wonders: "Is there anything in there?"











"Oh my God. THAT's our Commander in Chief???"

Hasn't Iraq suffered enough?

Now they have to put up with a joint visit from Rummy and Condiliar:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, seeking to put past differences behind them, paid a surprise joint visit to Iraq today to mobilize diplomatic and security forces and bolster the new government of Prime Minister Jawad al-Maliki.

"We really want to be ready to hit the ground running with this new government when it's ready to go," Ms. Rice told reporters on her way here from Ankara, Turkey, early in the morning.

Because it is, of course, OUR government, since we vetoed the one actually elected by the constitutional process the Iraqis voted for (sort of).

"The turning point here is that Iraq now has its first permanent government, and that it is a government of national unity, and it gives Iraq a real chance to deal with the real vexing problems that it has faced," she added.

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq from 1979 until 2003; Hammurabi ruled Babyon for some 42 years. If Condi thinks THIS government is going to be more permanent than theirs, she's even crazier than I thought. Al-Maliki will be extremely lucky to outlast Paul Bremer's one year of ruining running Iraq, or even Comical Allawi's eight months. And having two puppetmasters show up and say they want to "hit the ground running with this new government" is sure to convince Iraqis of the legitimacy and independence of this "government of national unity" (which it is because Condi says it is, I guess).

Not to be outdone, Rummy added some knee-slapping inanities of his own:

"This is a sovereign country, and they're making impressive progress," he said, adding that the government that Mr. Maliki is trying to assemble will be composed of "people who are competent, people who understand the importance of running ministries, not as sectarian ministries but as ministries for the whole country."

And if it works, maybe we'll try it back home, he didn't add.

Jane Jacobs died today

I read her most famous book, 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' (1961), decades ago. It discussed the factors that make cities either vibrant and friendly or lifeless and scary. Unfortunately, what AP says in her obit isn't really true:

Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher said.

We would live in a much better country if they had actually transformed urban planning ideas. Instead, we forged ahead with mindless sprawl driven by cheap gasoline and the teamwork of developers and politicians putting their own wealth and re-elections ahead of any sensible use of the land. We are paying for it big time now, and will continue to do so.

They all suck

I tend to focus most of my ire against the Democratic (sic) Party towards Sen. Hillary Clinton, because she and her $20 million (and counting) war chest currently represent the biggest of many obstacles to there being a major improvement in our government in 2009. It's not just that her policies would be much less of a change from the status quo than many seem to think; I also think she is despised enough across the political spectrum that she would have little chance of winning against a semi-coherent Repug and his amazing paperless voting machines. But there are Democrats who are even worse. Well, at least one, Joe Lieberman.

But the real shame is that there are few Democrats who are much better. A few in the House: Lee, Kucinich, Conyers. But not any in the Senate. Russ Feingold (D-WI) is considered the best of a very bad lot, but even he pays lip service to the lies and hype of the administration. Here's what he told a bunch of LA bloggers about Iran the other day:

"We must never take any option off the table, because the danger is real. But we need to make every effort to negotiate, and it doesn't look like that's being done."

Eli has the perfect response:

Really? Never take any option off the table? Even using nuclear weapons, or violating international law by launching an unprovoked war of aggression? How about kidnapping Ayatollah Khamenei and torturing him until President Ahmadinejad agrees to destroy all nuclear facilities in Iran? Could we at least take that option off the table?

With "progressives" like this, hyping the "danger" of Iran and refusing to "take any option off the table," why worry about FOX News and the right wing?

The comments on his post are great as well. Like I said last week, if the threat from Iran is real, then we are completely defenseless. And if you can't take war crimes off the table, you don't deserve a place at the table.

Global warming caused last year's hurricanes

From Reuters:

The record Atlantic hurricane season last year can be attributed to global warming, several top experts, including a leading U.S. government storm researcher, said on Monday.

"The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change and it's no longer something we'll see in the future, it's happening now," said Greg Holland, a division director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Holland told a packed hall at the American Meteorological Society's 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology that the wind and warmer water conditions that fuel storms that form in the Caribbean are "increasingly due to greenhouse gases. There seems to be no other conclusion you can logically draw."

Of course, given the Bushies' track record, Holland will soon be drawing his logical conclusions without the hindrance of having a government job. Also, this just makes all of the posturing about "high" gas prices look even more ridiculous.

And, BTW--I don't think the planet has gotten any cooler since last year.

NAFTA: A death warrant

"Free trade" kills. Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter write in Common Dreams about the disastrous effects that NAFTA has had on Mexico, leading directly to the flood of immigrants streaming into this country. Excerpt:

Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans -- lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras -- are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US.

NAFTA failed to curb illegal immigration precisely because it was never designed as a genuine development program crafted to promote rising living standards, health care, environmental cleanup, and worker rights in Mexico. The wholesale surge of Mexicans across the border dramatically illustrates that NAFTA was no attempt at a broad uplift of living conditions and democracy in Mexico, but a formula for government-sanctioned corporate plunder benefiting elites on both sides of the border.

NAFTA essentially annexed Mexico as a low-wage industrial suburb of the US and opened Mexican markets to heavily-subsidized US agribusiness products, blowing away local producers. Capital could flow freely across the border to low-wage factories and Wal-mart-type retailers, but the same standard of free access would be denied to Mexican workers.

Meanwhile, with the planned Central American Free Trade Agreement with five Central American nations coming up, we can anticipate even greater pressure on our borders as agricultural workers are pushed off the land without positive, alternative employment opportunities. People from Guatemala and Honduras will soon learn that they can't compete for industrial jobs with the most oppressed people in say, China, by agreeing to lowering their wages even more.

A Repug says something intelligent

News in itself. From a panicky Detroit Free Press article on "high" gas prices (hint: you ain't seen nuthin' yet), filled with hairbrained schemes from politicians desperate to keep voters from knowing how bad things really are until after November:

Kevin Spillane, a GOP strategist in Sacramento, Calif., said he suspects that voters understand that the oil market is too complicated to blame on a single party.

But he said both sides need to compromise.

"What Congress really needs to be doing is working on comprehensive energy solutions and not engaging in these gimmicks," he said. "It is politics at its dumbest and most desperate."

It is, of course, coming from both sides (sic) of the aisle. AWol, Frist and Hastert vow to "look into" price gouging. Sen. Stabenow (D-MI), running for re-election, wants to repeal tax breaks for the oil industry and use the savings to bribe voters with a $500 rebate. How repealing the oil industry tax breaks will help lower gas prices isn't clear (nor the $500 rebate for that matter). Senators Levin (D-MI) and Specter (R-PA) are calling for a windfall profits tax, while state Rep. Robert Gosselin "repeated his call to not collect the state sales tax on gas costing more than $2.30 a gallon." Because the state is just swimming in money, I guess, and because lowering pump prices is an efficient way to reduce demand? Spillane is right: "It is politics at its dumbest and most desperate."

Billmon has more on this BS-fest:

If the Republicans want to try out [letting the market do its thing without government intervention] that's fine by me. They could even try telling the truth: That sky-high gas prices are the product of many forces, including the economic rise of China, our national allergic reaction to conservation, the security nightmare of trying to protect a far-flung global energy infrastructure, and, most of all, the inevitable fact that the supply of light sweet crude is finite, and production is probably nearing its peak.

They could explain to the American people that there is no quick fix, no miracle fuels on the horizon, no package of tax incentives or industry subsidies that is going to make the problem go away.

They could warn them that even if there was such a solution, current fossil fuel consumption trends still wouldn't be sustainable, not unless we're willing to turn most of coastal cities into salt water swimming pools.

And they could try to make our pampered upper and middle classes understand that the sooner they adjust their bloated lifestyles to reflect these unpleasant facts, the better off we will all be in the long run.

But it looks like they want to keep their jobs.

Which is, of course, bad news for all of us.

Different election years call for different strategeries

I was one of many who were surprised in 2004 when there were no new terrorist attacks and no new Bush wars started, given the bump in the polls and the 2002 elections aWol got from 9/11 and the Iraq war. Perhaps the March 11, 2004 bombings in Spain suggested to Rove & Co. that another attack or war might finally make them appear incompetent and reckless, rather than resolute and patriotic, to the majority of American voters. But I believe the differences between '02 and '04 have a simpler explanation: One presidential election is easier to steal than 435 Congressional elections, or even 33 Senate elections. Aside from helping John Kerry to make a fool of himself, the Bushies really didn't try very hard to use their policy power to influence the election. They didn't postpone the election, as some feared. They didn't start the brutal assault on Fallujah until after the election. Heck, they didn't even stop pumping oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve even as gas prices were rising.

But this year is more like 2002. Once again, they are ratcheting up the rhetoric for war, terrorist attacks are making a resurgence (in other countries, so far) along with another convenient tape from Osama. And this time they ARE halting the pumping of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

What this says to me is that they knew they could steal the 2004 presidential election. Way too many states were solidly red, and a few untraceable electronic voting machines in key precincts in Florida and Ohio were all that was needed to finish off Kerry (well, along with Kerry himself). But there aren't enough paperless voting machines throughout the country to guarantee that they'll hold onto their House majority simply through fraud, so they are going back to the 2002 method of using the (literal) bully pulpit to corner the Democrats into being whimpering simps (well, more so), and adding whatever tools are at their disposal to bring gas prices down.

They know that their survival may be at stake if they lose the House this fall, and they'll do anything within their enormous power to see that that doesn't happen--the country and the world be damned.

In the News

I'm quoted in today's Detroit News talking about my solar power project. I'll be presenting a talk about the project at the Festival of Sustainable Living at the Oakland Steiner School in Rochester Hills this Saturday from 12 to 1 PM.

Don't confuse me with the facts

The undemocratic "breakthrough" in forming Iraq's puppet government has taken away the Bushies' most recent excuse and scapegoat for their "utter debacle" -- the failure of those ingrate Iraqis to immediately form a government after those wondrous purple-fingered elections. But that won't stop the Bushies from using the excuse one last time. From the WaPo:
Rice Says Progress In Iraq Might Aid Efforts on Turkey

Rice, who is traveling this week to Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, told reporters flying with her that the end of the four-month impasse over Iraq's political leadership -- achieved over the weekend -- would open a new phase in the country's reconstruction.
...
Progress "doesn't come in great flashes, it doesn't come in great outbursts of another election," she said. "This is now going to have to be steady progress toward building the infrastructure of governing, and then governing."

Strangely enough, what happens in Condi's fantasy world has little bearing on the real one, where there seem to be lots of "great flashes" and "outbursts":

Baghdad Rocked By Car Bombs

Seven car bombs exploded in Baghdad in the morning, killing at least 10 people and wounding about 70, according to police officials and news reports. Across the country, bombings, shootings and mortar attacks killed at least 15 others, and the Baghdad police discovered the bodies of 32 recruits for security forces.
...
Violence--both the sectarian kind, between Shiite Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, and insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces--has continued unabated since parliament met on Saturday to choose a new prime minister to lead Iraq for the next four years.

I'm sure the Turks are thrilled that Condi sees this "progress" in Iraq as an opportunity for "progress" in Turkey. Maybe Istanbul will one day look like Baghdad.

Who are the 32%?

From the Chicago Tribune, via Billmon:

In the staunchly Republican community of London, about 25 miles west of Columbus, Melinda Conley still supports President Bush and calls herself a "die-hard Republican."

But Conley, an interior designer and gift shop owner on Main Street, quickly says that she has done a lot of dying lately, a point driven home last week when she spent $100 on gas for her Ford Excursion--and that didn't fill the tank. She has no retirement plan. And business is tough.

"I keep telling myself that these guys know what they're doing, but is it going to get any better? I don't know that it is," Conley said. "Why is it harder and harder and harder just to live?"

She makes a living selling worthless crap (with apologies to the one or two gift-shop owners out there who sell valuable crap). She apparently voted for aWol twice, and tells herself that the Bushies know what they're doing--and then marvels that she can't afford to top off the fuel reservoir on her land yacht. She wouldn't know reality if it ran her over--which it is bound to do in the next year or two.

Frankly, no one who drives an Excursion has any right whatsoever to ask "Why is it harder and harder and harder just to live?"

From Angel Boligan (Mexico).

From Cameron Cardow (Canada).

Shouldn't that be "New, Cular?"

From Monte Wolverton.

Not like it hasn't worked before

From Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland).

They are kind of like a kid who burns down the school because he did poorly on a test. The massive failure of 9/11 distracted attention from the stolen election and general bungling of the early W months. The criminal attack on Afghanistan distracted attention from any serious investigation of 9/11 or placing blame where it properly belonged--on the Bushies. The criminal invasion of Iraq was used to cover up the lethal pointlessness of the Afghan quagmire and failure to capture bin Laden (as if they really wanted to). AWol would prefer to destroy the world rather than admit failure--and he's well on his way.

From R.J. Matson.

32%

AWol's new approval rating.

The DCeiver responds to the "decider"

Here:

By now you all know that President Bush responded to the serious-minded call to justify Donald Rumsfeld's continued employment as the Secretary of Defense by telling the world: "I hear the voices and I read the front page and I hear the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

No real surprise here. Our ersatz Commander in Chief is given the opportunity to provide a deserving nation of adults with his well-founded rationale, and, just like always, he responds as if the American people were a bunch of children. He could have said, "You guys don't get dessert until you've finished your lima beans" and it would have sounded more nuanced.
...
[bunch of funny, bitter paragraphs]
...
I would suggest to you that every time you are seen in public addressing the American people in a manner that reflects your OBVIOUS lack of respect for us, treating the people who pay out of pocket to support this nation and from whom you derive your political power as little more than two-year olds, it doesn't so much give aid and comfort to our enemies as much as it bakes our enemies a cake, tuck our enemies into beddy-bye, reads our enemies Goodnight Moon, and then, after a quick little kiss on their cheeks, leaves our enemies' nightlight on so they aren't afraid.

It would be funny if it weren't true...

Jonathan at Past Peak keeps track of the latest jokes from the late-night comedians. The latest:

Vice President Cheney is still getting a lot of flack for throwing that first pitch into the dirt [at the Washington Nationals home opener]--whereas when President Bush threw out the first pitch in Cincinnati the week before, it was a perfect strike. But then, on the other hand, Cheney can read. -- Jay Leno

Many more!

When pResidents listen to Bakers

NY Times headline: Baker, Bush Family Fixer, Will Advise President on Iraq. Wonderful. James F***ing Baker, who stole the 2000 election, works for the Carlyle Group of terrorist arms merchants, and who once sent some great advice to the president of Iraq back in July 1990:

[US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie:] But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.

Now it has been pointed out that Glaspie didn't specifically tell Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, as he did the following week. But Saddam sure makes it sound like he's planning military action, and that he is accepting Glaspie's words from Baker as a green light.

Saddam Hussein: We want the others to know that our patience is running out regarding their action, which is harming even the milk our children drink, and the pensions of the widow who lost her husband during the war, and the pensions of the orphans who lost their parents.
...
They reached an agreement which did not express what we wanted, but we agreed.

Only two days after the meeting, the Kuwaiti Oil Minister made a statement that contradicted the agreement. We also discussed the issue during the Baghdad summit. I told the Arab Kings and Presidents that some brothers are fighting an economic war against us. And that not all wars use weapons and we regard this kind of war as a military action against us.

Also in that Glaspie/Hussein interview is this priceless bit of irony:

Saddam Hussein: We do not ask people not to be concerned when peace is at issue. This is a noble human feeling which we all feel. It is natural for you as a superpower to be concerned. But what we ask is not to express your concern in a way that would make an aggressor believe that he is getting support for his aggression.

Okay, I'm getting a bit off track here. My point is: If you ever want a bad situation to get a whole lot worse, just throw in a little James Baker.

Bargaining

James Howard Kunstler discusses America's approach to the end of the oil age in terms generally used for grief and dying:

Actually, we are negotiating, or bargaining, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once put it in describing the sequence of emotional reactions of humans facing certain death:

denial > bargaining > depression > acceptance

Events seem to have dragged us kicking and screaming beyond the sheer denial stage, since this is now the second time in six months that oil and gasoline prices have ratcheted wildly up. Something is happening, Mr. Jones, and now we want to talk our way out of it.

The main thread in this bargaining stage is the desperate wish to keep our motoring fiesta going by other means than oil. This fantasy exerts its power across the whole political spectrum, and evinces a fascinating poverty of imagination in the public and its leaders in every field: politics, business, science and the media. The right wing still pretends we can still drill our way out of this, if only the nature freaks would allow them to. The "green" folks thinks that we can devote crops to the production of gasoline substitutes, even though a scarcity of fossil fuel-based fertilizers will sharply cut crop yields for human food. Nobody, it seems, can imagine an American life not centered on cars.

Hu knows what they're up to

The WSWS has an interesting article about The Hu's recent American tour and the multiple snubs the Bushies gave to their loan shark and labor pimp. They then look at the deeper issues and dangers:

The danger of a military conflict between the United States and China, with all its potentially cataclysmic consequences, does not arise out of the personalities of Bush or Hu, but out of deep-going objective contradictions. The same economic forces that have produced an ever-greater integration of the US and Chinese economies--perhaps the highest expression of the overall globalization of the world economy--lead inevitably to conflicts between these two powers over access to natural resources, control of key strategic positions and, ultimately, world power.

From the early 1980s, the major imperialist powers--the US, Japan, the European powers--have poured capital into China, building China up as an offshore manufacturing platform that plays a decisive role in their class strategy, allowing them to put unrelenting pressure on labor costs and generating super-profits. The growth of world capitalism over the past quarter century is largely bound up with the opening up of China.

But this same process has generated a challenge to US domination of the Asia-Pacific region. The growing industrial and financial might of China increases its strategic weight in world affairs and makes possible a more ambitious program of armament, diplomacy and cultivation of economic ties. US imperialism reacts to China's rise as a threat to its hegemony all along the eastern shore of Asia, as well as in the Indian Ocean and even in Africa and South America.

For all the ritualistic invocations of democracy by American politicians, the US-China conflict has nothing to do with any repressive actions on the part of the Stalinist dictatorship in Beijing. On the contrary, maintenance of China as an almost inexhaustible supplier of cheap labor for international capital requires an internal political regime that denies workers any democratic rights and suppresses all opposition to the most brutal sweatshop methods.

Corporate America relies on the Beijing dictatorship to police and suppress the Chinese workers as well as to provide an increasingly important market for the sale of US goods.

It's insane. The world is being run like one of those slick Hollywood triple-cross movies like Intolerable Cruelty, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, or Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In "Confessions," there's a scene near the end where Sam Rockwell and Julia Roberts have a pleasant tea together, each one trying to poison the other. In "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" Brad and Angelina return home for dinner together after having tried to kill each other. They walk around the kitchen, chatting pleasantly in double-entendres ("I missed you." "I missed you too."), while every action is loaded with veiled threat. Pretty tame stuff in a world where the neocons build up Israel in part because a warped interpretation of biblical prophecy suggests that Israel must rule the Middle East before being destroyed at Armageddon, and where the US helps China grow into an economic powerhouse in order to destroy the labor movement, all the while planning to destroy China once it gets too powerful (and labor is fully destroyed)--and with Israel and China fully aware of exactly what our neonuts are up to.

From Ted Rall.

From Drew Sheneman.

From Marshall Ramsey.

From Henry Payne.

Tilting at windmills: greedy "green"

Global corporations want to build 2000 windmills in Oaxaca, Mexico, threatening to take land from the indigenous population and destroy their way of life, and even their ability to survive. Subcomandante Marcos is there to speak on their behalf.

Video

Narco News article. Excerpt:

The next 500 windmills are slated to go up along 1,300 hectares (five square miles) in the town of La Venta and nearby. The next wave--along the beach and Southeast Mexico’s coastal Dead Sea--will mean a certain death sentence for the indigenous fishing communities that speak Huave and Zapotec from San Francisco del Mar to San Mateo del Mar. The land of the historic vanguard of indigenous resistance in Mexico--the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--will then become an "energy park," globalization's showcase boomtowns, to be exploited by the highest bidder while displacing the authentic wealth of a surviving ancient civilization.

But a problem erupted for the Greedy Grabbers on their way to world domination via this anorexic stretch of América: The families that farm more than half that swathe of earth have so far refused to sign away the rights to 700 hectares of their lands. And a fight is brewing between two winds: one from above, the other from below and gusting to the left, both of which understand that the wind that wins this Isthmus will have a strategic advantage in all the battles to come.

$75.10

That was quick. Just four days since going over $70.

$74.20

The WaPo has a graphic explaining the components of the cost of a gallon of gas. My interpreted explanation: Big Oil knew that peak oil was coming, and wisely built only enough refining capacity to handle the world's maximum ever daily oil production. We've been at or near that level for the past year or so. But last year's hurricanes knocked out a lot of refining capacity, and it's not all back online yet. So--higher crude prices, increased demand, lack of refining capacity=Higher gasoline prices. Deal with it.

Arrested for playing soccer

From the WSWS:

In Putnam County, New York, for instance, a suburban area only 50 miles from New York City, the County Sheriff arrested eight immigrants who were playing soccer on a school ball field and held them for immigration authorities. Seven were able to make bail, but the eighth, a 33-year-old father of five, has been in federal prison in Pennsylvania awaiting deportation since last January.

Local officials who already hold strong anti-immigrant views have been emboldened by the bipartisan political rhetoric legitimizing new crackdowns and using the so-called war against terrorism to call for closing US borders. The sheriff in Putnam County, Donald Smith, said, "We have a situation in our country where our borders are not being adequately protected, and that leaves law enforcement people like us in a very difficult situation."

Smith said federal immigration agents were called because the sheriff’s deputies suspected the men were "illegal" and "because we are trying to uphold the law for the citizens of this county." The men were arrested for playing soccer and charged with trespass, a class B misdemeanor. Bail for seven was set at $1,000, but Juan Jimeniz, the worker now held in Pennsylvania, was held on $3,000 bail because he could not provide his home address.

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." and we'll lock 'em up. For playing soccer.

What Eli said

You'd think, just over three years after having been lied into a miserable failure of a war by a group of neocon nutcases, that the politicians, the press and the public would be at least a bit skeptical when the same group of nutcases starts telling similar lies about an adjacent country in order to get us into a war likely to make our current miserable failure look like spectacular success in comparison. But Henry Mencken knew what he was talking about when he said "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Or to paraphrase Churchill: Seldom have so many been so stupid so that so few could get so rich.

Eli at Left I on the News demonstrates how the WaPo manages to grossly mislead without lying with this sentence:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran was pursuing the enrichment of uranium on an industrial scale, which could allow it to accelerate the development of nuclear weapons.

Eli explains:

Ahmadinejad, of course, not only said nothing about "accelerating the development of nuclear weapons," what he said was the exact opposite.

There are, of course, a few differences between the buildups to Iraq and Iran. Iraq was accused of pursuing activities in violation of UN resolutions, which it wasn't. Iran is accused of, indeed proudly proclaims that it is, pursuing activities which are legal according to provisions of an international treaty (the non-proliferation treaty). Eli looked into what Ahmadinejad actually said. Yes, he expresses his hatred for the US and Israel. (Can anyone still question why?) Yes, he says they are developing nuclear technology--for peaceful purposes, according to the terms of the NPT. Of course he may be lying--he is a politician, after all. But it is not legitimate in the least to say that his words are an admission that Iran is developing weapons or otherwise violating international law. (Unlike another pResident who's words almost daily indict him for being in clear violation of international law, the UN charter, US law, and the US constitution.)

Also, we should remember that Iran has a standing FATWA against making nuclear weapons!

Still, it isn't just the Bushies and their idiotlogues who have been drinking the Kool-Aid. As Eli points out, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart presents the lies as fact:

"We've got an America-hating madman who we know is building WMDs in an oil-rich country that starts with the letters I-R-A."

What is WRONG with these people? They just like being lied into wars???

A leading historian assesses aWol, and finds him on top of the list of bad presidents.

Duh.

From Lalo Alcaraz.

From Tom Toles.

Quote du three days ago

I think we just have to accept . . . that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it.

-- Field Marshall von Rumsfeld in his interview with Rush Limbaugh on Monday, via Billmon. Billmon's post quotes repeatedly from the WaPo's article from last week, Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi, which makes what should be an obvious point--those media committees that the terrorists have are a part of Rummy's military. To suit the needs of the "war on terror," if Osama didn't exist, our government would have had to invent him. Which is pretty much what they seem to have done with Zarqawi.

Just read everything Chris Floyd writes

It gets to be tiresome linking to his must-read articles day after day after day. Just bookmark Empire Burlesque and go there every day.

Let's try to understand this Iran nonsense

I don't for a minute believe that Iran is capable of making nuclear weapons any time soon. I suspect that they wish they could, since that has been proven to be the only effective protection against US invasion (consider Pakistan and North Korea, and compare with Afghanistan and Iraq--the lesson is quite clear). But they can't, and won't be able to for years. But let's suppose that Condiliar's worst lies are true--that Iran is minutes away from having a nuke and turning it over to some terrorist organization.

And then consider the country with far and away the most potent nuclear arsenal in the world, which continues to develop weapons (at a rate much faster than Iran can manage, I'm sure), which has multiple delivery options (ICBM's, sub and ship launched missiles, aircraft, artillery, even our own terrorist infiltrators with suitcase bombs), and was the first country to develop nuclear weapons and is still the only one to have used them. Does this country have any moral standing at all to tell other nations not to have nukes? Of course not. But let's pretend we're Bushies and believe that every horrible thing we do or might do is ordained by God, so this is okay too.

So--supposing that Iran really has a bomb, and has ties to terrorists. Does that make it imperative that we attack them right now, or else we're at grave risk? Well, consider that Pakistan has had nuclear bombs for eight years, was basically the incubator for al Qaeda and the Taliban, is still a hotbed for Islamic extremism and quite possibly is harboring Osama bin Laden right now. Pakistan has also participated actively in proliferating nuclear technology, including apparently to Iran. If Iran is a threat, then how much greater a threat is Pakistan? Bush, and Clinton for that matter, have left us exposed to the possible smoking gun/mushroom cloud for eight years!

Now of course I don't think we should attack Pakistan--they and we have more than enough trouble without that. But if anything points out the hypocrisy of W's "policies," it would be identifying Iraq and Iran as threats while ignoring Pakistan.

And if Iran is actually a threat, then we have been in imminent danger of destruction for years or decades. If Iran could give one of it's hypothetical nukes to terrorists, any other nuclear power could just as easily give one or more of its very real nukes to terrorists. Great Britain, France, Israel, Russia (and perhaps other former Soviet Republics), Pakistan, India, China, North Korea--all have reasons, ranging from pure hatred to jealousy to economic advantage to self-defense to justice, to want to see the US brought down a few pegs. And while their current governments may for the most part be sane enough not to try a sneak nuclear attack on the US, there could certainly be factions in those countries willing and possibly able to pull it off. They would of course run it as a false-flag operation. How simple would it be for an agent from France or Israel or China to bring a nuke into this country, leave a few clues lying around written in Farsi, and set the thing off? I would hope it wouldn't be easy, but by suggesting that Iran, with no nukes at all so far, is some sort of threat to us, the Bushies are implicitly saying that we have no protection in place against such an attack--in fact our only plan to prevent such an attack is to serially destroy countries that couldn't pull it off!

Any politician or journalist (and it seems to be most of them) who claims that Iran is a serious threat to the United States is really saying that the trillions of dollars spent on "defense" in recent decades have been entirely wasted. If one country on the other side of the world with a few dozen centrifuges is a grave danger to our nation, then we have no defense.

From Dan Wasserman.

From Steve Breen.

From Rob Rogers.

From David Horsey.

China syndrome

Chris Floyd and Michael Klare suggest that China is the real neocon target.

$72.25--Here come the senators!

A new record for oil futures at NYMEX. ($73.46 in London.) Of course, senators are already grandstanding about rising gas prices, ready to jump right in and hold meaningless hearings like they did last year. They've sat in silence for decades while oil companies merged and merged again, instead of insisting that anti-trust laws be enforced to prevent monstrosities like Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco and BP-Amoco from ever having the opportunity to fix prices. They've let CAFE standards slide, failed to fund alternative energy and especially conservation research, and allowed the worst president in world history to start war after war, threatening to shut off the flow of oil from the part of the world that has most of it.

It sounds like Chuck Schumer's ploy to get a photo-op has backfired. I googled and found several news reports covering this:

The New York Democrat, at a news conference in front of a Hess station in Manhattan, suggested that companies are deliberately under-producing, CNNMoney.com reported.

'The bottom line is they are producing at 85 percent capacity when they should be producing over 90 percent,' Schumer said. 'Are they scaling back production? Only by subpoenaing the companies and looking in their books will we get that answer.'

But none of the articles had a photo attached. Nice try, Chuck.

I don't want those oil execs to get any more billions either. But the problem isn't underproduction. It's overconsumption. Having the oil companies produce full-out only makes global warming worse and delays further the day when Americans finally catch on that we've got a very serious problem.

From Mike Thompson.

Protection Racket

After 60 years, the US military is finally planning on withdrawing some of 50,000 troops who have been occupying Okinawa for 60 years. (I'm sure W needs them to rebuild the levees in New Orleans. What other possible reason could there be? Oh crap.) Since we pulverized Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese have let us write their constitution and quietly built our cars and TV's and bought our debt ever since, posing not even the slightest of military threats to the US. Nevertheless, Okinawa has remained a popular destination on the military vacation circuit, and the nuisance and worse caused by the hard-partying Americans has been a non-stop annoyance to the natives. (See Chalmers Johnson's excellent book, Blowback, for more on Okinawa and other US military colonies around the world.)

Anyway, the US finally decides it is time for the troops to leave, at least partially, and the Japanese will be thrilled to see them go. Except that the US negotiator (why do they need to negotiate?), whose name is appropriately "Lawless," insists that the Japanese pay for most of the cost of bringing the troops home (or send them to Iran or whatever), which the US claims is $10 billion.

Bionic Octopus points out that there is a name for this sort of activity:

Hey, what do they call that thing where you muscle around someone else's property making their life really difficult and maybe roughing them up a bit for emphasis, and then make them pay you to go away? Oh yeah! Protection.

Cue Lee Greenwood:

Yes I'm proud to be an American 'cause I do not have a clue
Any crime that's done is okay by me if it wears red white and blue
And I'll dumbly stand up, cheer her on, as she blows the world away
'Cause there ain't no doubt I'm dumb as nails I am the USA!

$3 a gallon

The Speedway gas station, amazingly enough the only gas station I see on my daily bus commute, was still hanging in at $2.84 a gallon for regular this morning. I'll bet it's over $3 by this afternoon, with this going on:


The futures prices don't reflect distribution and associated costs, so pump prices are substantially higher.

From Rex Babin.