Wednesday Stuff

And by the way, I'll just bet those crazy kids in Mississippi (here) got their sex ed from this video (and to think, I once wore wide lapels and cotton/poly blend print shirts like this doofus)...



...The Editors ("Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors" on BBC2's "Later...With Jools Holland").

The "O" List

I’ve spent some time over the last few days trying to come up with a list of issues to be addressed by incoming President-Elect Barack Obama and his administration, and here they are (incomplete I know, and I’ll admit that there’s a lot of “If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring” stuff – also, if anyone out there is disposed to suggest changes or additions, be my guest). I figured that, if there was ever a time for this sort of thing, it was now before he took the oath of office.

Also, I tried to place these items in order of importance, but I’ll admit that some items should probably be higher up on the list than others, so here goes…

Withdraw the majority of our forces from Iraq within 16 months, leaving behind a combat presence to supplement Iraq security forces as needed within the parameters of the status of forces agreement (noted here – oh, and by the way, rescind the ban of filming or photography of caskets returning to this country from the war, OK?).

Work to stabilize (as much as possible) Afghanistan without further destabilizing Pakistan and making sure neither fortifies itself as a safe haven for terrorists (and no, I don’t have a clue as to how to do that either, to be honest; I thought this was a good recent column on the subject by Bob Herbert of the New York Times…I would only say that we need to maintain a presence of some type in that area of the world to capitalize on any circumstances that would enable us to capture or kill bin Laden).

Appoint a special independent counsel to investigate all members of the Bush Administration as necessary concerning the matter of the commission of war crimes (including the events that led up to September 11th).

Provide as much of an economic stimulus as required to encourage infrastructure investment and enable credit liquidity that would spur job creation; part of this stimulus should provide relief for some mortgage holders trapped by the subprime loan debacle.

Appoint an individual working within the Commerce department (or a team) to determine the status of our infrastructure and the scope of the task at hand to repair it, as well as the cost, coordinating with federal, state and local governments and NGOs; this includes roads, bridges, tunnels, mass transit stations, ports, and public works facilities (this will take awhile).

Achieve health care coverage for all by supporting employer-based insurance (assisted by a small business health tax credit) or offering a National Health Insurance Exchange for those without employer-paid insurance, providing cost incentives for health care providers to participate in the exchange.

As part of the economic stimulus, encourage use of renewable energy sources and development of hybrid vehicles (I would argue for more mass transit funding also as part of the infrastructure stuff above).

Determine the legal status of each detainee held at Guantanamo; if no case can be made, either return them to their country of origin or determine an alternate location, or if a case can be made, do so and incarcerate them pending trial in our civilian courts.

At a minimum, allow the cut to the estate tax to expire, as well as any other tax cuts originating from the Bush Administration, by no later than 2010 (or earlier if possible).

Begin peace talks for real in pursuit of cessation of hostilities and eventual reconciliation between Israel and Palestine, including a two-state solution pending the resolution of the status of Jerusalem, the “right-of-return” question and the end of settlement construction in the Palestinian territories (yeah, I know – good luck with that).

Renew support for the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, and encourage the Senate to ratify UNCLOS once and for all (or attempt to renegotitate it to facilitate passage).

Conduct a thorough review of all Bush Administration “midnight rules” and attempt to remedy them through either new Congressional legislation or implementation of the Congressional Review Act.

Invest in early childhood education and reform (or scrap outright) NCLB so that talented educators are no longer constrained to “teach to the test” only (and conduct open bidding among vendors for all contracts, not just for those affecting NCLB and the Department of Education, but ALL government agencies).

Establish Net Neutrality through an act of Congress as the guiding principle behind all application development concerning personal computers and dependent software, as well as the Internet and other emerging forms of communication.

Encourage and support legislation mandating that all congressional earmarks to legislation are disclosed under penalty of law.

Require Congress to provide periodic status reports concerning the implementation of ALL recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Encourage Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that ensures a path to citizenship for illegal aliens that maintain a job history, pay taxes and avoid convictions for criminal offenses (and halt construction of the border fence pending an environmental review).

Cease development and/or construction of a “space-based missile defense shield” in Europe once and for all (but tell our ol’ buddy Vlad that that’s contingent upon his acceptance of Georgia into NATO and see if he goes for it).

Evaluate any progress in negotiations with North Korea on the matter of plutonium enrichment and nuclear stockpiles and develop a new framework to ensure that all materials are accounted for and production is halted.

Begin low-level discussion with Iran in pursuit of a halt to military-related nuclear activity, including a program of UN verification tied to sanctions.

Sign the “Ottawa Treaty” banning anti-personnel mines.

Sign the UN declaration calling for an international decriminalization of homosexuality (according to this, we were the only Western nation that didn’t sign on).

Remove any “abstinence only” restrictions on funding the fight against AIDS in Africa and throughout the world (including this country) through PEPFAR (actually, get rid of PEPFAR altogether and route all monies through the AIDS Global Fund and end the damn favoritism and redundancy).

Remove any restrictions on funding for embryonic stem cell research (assuming we’re not hopelessly behind on this by now).

Support the restoration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to include all judicial oversight provisions as those that existed when it was originally passed and signed into law in 1978.

Restore the workplace rules governing repetitive strain injuries in the workplace that were trashed by Bushco in 2001 after years of negotiation conducted between businesses and the Clinton Administration.

Rescind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 to ensure transparency within our financial markets, and return regulatory oversight to any trading of future commodities.

Work to pass and eventually sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act.

End the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and appoint a panel of civilian and military personnel to look at the legal and moral issues attendant to the question of allowing LGBT individuals to serve our country (including an examination of the practices of other countries).

Assign an individual from the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a review of events that led up to (and occurred during and subsequent to) the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast in 2005, focusing primarily on the city of New Orleans; it will be the job of this person to define and delineate issues affecting all governmental, business and private entities that were impacted and assign/coordinate follow-up tasks and recommendations (including coordination with the Attorney General to recommend charges against individuals in violation of civil or criminal statutes).

Assign a legal team to work with the National Archive to review ALL records from the Bush Administration (in paper, electronic, or other form) and determine any material that the administration is legally required to provide that is missing (any lawyers working on this task would have the ability to issue subpoenas to any culpable individuals or entities).

If any of these goals are achieved (hopefully more than just a few), I’ll do my best to update this post accordingly.

“Bibi” And His Crackpot History Lesson

Through the looking glass we go to the Murdoch Street Journal, where opinion writer (and likely next Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu tells us from here…

Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions. Now imagine this happens day after day, month after month, year after year.

If you can imagine that, you can begin to understand the terror to which hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected. Three years ago Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. And since that withdrawal, our civilians have been targeted by more than 6,000 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. In the face of this relentless bombardment, Israel has acted with a restraint that other countries, faced with a similar threat, would find hard to fathom. Israel's government has finally decided to respond.

The withdrawal from “every square inch of Gaza” was a commendable first step. However, this presents more information on what followed…

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The sticking point, as has so often been the case, has to do with trying to get the Palestinians to renounce terrorism, which is difficult when an organization like Hamas, for their many faults, appears to be the only apparatus that can provide basic services (sometimes) to a population living under duress that most of us cannot imagine.

Still, I could be somewhat sympathetic to what Netanyahu says here, until he tells us…

The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza? Does it demand an equal number of casualties on both sides? Using that logic, one would conclude that the United States employed disproportionate force against the Germans because 20 times as many Germans as Americans died in World War II.

In that same war, Britain responded to the firing of thousands of rockets on its population with the wholesale bombing of German cities. Israel's measured response to rocket fire on its cities has come in the form of surgical strikes.

I’ll put aside the fact for now that, in this recent round of hostilities, five Israelis have died as opposed to approximately 500 Palestinians, including many, many children, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the wounded (a result of “precision strikes” against Hamas), and I’ll do that because the loss of any life is a tragedy.

Instead, I want to focus on Netanyahu’s highly objectionable comparison between what Israelis have suffered and what Great Britain suffered during World War II; as you can read here…

By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses destroyed or damaged in London alone (the “blitz” of England began on September 7, 140 with the bombing of London which took place over 57 consecutive days).

I have not yet been able to find a reasonably precise count of Israeli casualties over the three years since the Gaza pullout, but somehow I cannot imagine that it comes close to 43,000 ("proportionality" indeed).

And here’s more propaganda for easily digestible wingnut consumption (with Netanyahu framing the conflict as a struggle against “militant Islam”)…

The struggle between militant Islam and modernity -- whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza -- will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.

Spare me, “Bibi”! That hasn't worked for Bushco in years, and it won't work for you either.

These are four entirely separate circumstances, with all but one of them what I would consider to be nationalist conflicts and nothing more; the past, present and future battle for us is in Afghanistan/Pakistan, but because of Dubya’s disastrous war of choice in Iraq, that has greatly hindered our ability to prosecute it as we should.

In closing, I’d like to return to the Guardian Op-Ed for the following…

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

And please keep in mind that these are the words of a man named Avi Shlaim who, as the Guardian tells us, “served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy.”

(And by the way, I also posted over here.)

Tuesday Stuff

I don't know who else besides me noticed the hit piece that Michael Scherer of Time wrote on Minnesota's new Democratic Senator Al Franken today (you mean, Franken did things in his past that he regrets??!! OMIGOD!!!), completely lacking in perspective and without any substance at all on the matter of Franken's political activity to date (even calling Franken an "intellectual terrorist"? Give me a frackin' break!!), but to provide some semblance of balance, I think it's best to provide testimonials from two very important women in Franken's life (see, he isn't some juvenile hippie comedy writer and entertainer, at least not any more - this was somewhat more balanced).

The first is from his wife Franni here...



...and the second is from former New York senator and soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...



...more "Bushed" scandals from K.O. (via YouTube, since MSNBC's videos are hosed because of garbage code): Interior Secretary "Dirty Dirk" Kempthorne adds $235K worth of upgrades to the bathroom of his office, on our dime of course - wonder how happy Ken Salazar will be with that?; more on "Bomb 'Em" Bolton and "Torture Yoo" calling for the Senate to reclaim some prerogative after being emasculated along with the rest of Congress by this ruling cabal; and speaking of which, "Deadeye Dick" claims that "keeping us safe after 9/11" was Bushco's biggest accomplishment - gee, how about keeping us safe ON 9/11, HUH??!!)..



...Pawnshop Roses ("Gets So Hard," recorded at the Grape Street Pub in nearby Manayunk, Pa. - just a tad Dylanesque?).

Ode To A Peanut Farmer

I realize that ridiculing Glenn Beck, regardless of what corporate media outlet he shills for, is not unlike poking a stick at the village idiot, but I must point out the following anyway from Think Progress here…

On his radio show (yesterday), conservative talker Glenn Beck responded to the current violence in Gaza by arguing that former President Jimmy Carter should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize:

BECK: Can someone please retract the Jimmy Carter Nobel Peace Prize? Can someone please say, “You know what Jim, we gotta take that back. I don’t know what we were thinking, but there hasn’t been all that much peace there.” … Eh, I don’t think you get the prize for the peace when the peace didn’t really happen. … Can we take his peace prize back from him?

First, I don’t know how Carter is supposed to be blamed, seeing as how he didn’t call for the Palestinian elections two years ago that installed Hamas and gave them the legitimacy they don’t deserve (as noted here). The responsibility for that one lies with President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History (though Carter, ever with an eye to the future, tried to achieve a reconciliation with this bunch that pretends to govern in that area of the world, as noted here).

Second, though I realize it’s too much to ask for Beck and his fellow nematodes to give Carter the credit he’s due, I think other people with more than a particle or two of brain matter would be interested to know the following from this excellent actual, real-live, non-AP-Ben-Feller-concocted analysis from Walter Rodgers, which tells us the following from here (also timely, I think, given that the incoming Obama Administration will FINALLY take over in about two weeks, and Carter’s credits stand as an example)…

(Carter) kept us out of endless wars. He protected the Alaskan wilderness (Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D) of Wisconsin once told me that "Carter was the greatest environmental president the country ever had.") He promoted a visionary energy policy. He countered the Soviet military threat. And since he left office, he has persistently promoted the cause of peace around the world. The landmark Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty he fashioned remains in force today.

Against the backdrop of an unnecessary trillion-dollar war in Iraq, it is instructive to recall how Carter avoided a similar morass when he negotiated the Panama Canal treaties, for which he was excoriated by Ronald Reagan's Republicans. When he left office, he was able to say with Thomas Jefferson "[D]uring the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single citizen was shed by the sword of war."

In the public mind, Carter continues to be judged as "ineffectual." Yet he started that treaty ratification process with fewer than 40 votes of the 67 needed. Pentagon generals advised him it would require 100,000 troops, rivers of blood, and untold treasure if the US did not return sovereignty of the canal to Panama.

Carter was keenly aware that retaining US control of the canal, as Reagan demanded, might result in another Vietnam-like conflict. Today, looking at America's open-ended wars in Southwest Asia, Carter should be thanked for his wisdom and vision.

It should be noted as well that Carter has the second-longest record of military service of any president who has held the office since 1952 (Eisenhower had the longest), and for the record, I incorrectly attributed the word “malaise” to the actual text of Carter’s energy speech here (corrected by Rodgers), which stands as truly prescient even though he gave it 30 years ago.

All of this actually makes me wish that we had a “blogosphere” (still hate that word, but no other fits) dating back that far also to counter all of the smears about Carter and democrats in general that have become ingrained into our political dialogue over time.

Also, Carter figures prominently in this post from earlier today.

Monday Stuff

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert narrates the carnage in Gaza - here's the link to C&L for more...



...as grotesque as the Israeli war is at this point (any sympathy for them on my end just evaporated), I still want to note the following (hopefully, you'll forgive my change of the subject here); namely, that Dubya is about to award three of his most loyal lap dogs with the Medal of Freedom (as noted here), and given that, I think it's appropriate to pay tribute to one of them again, and that would be Tony Blair, yet another "better man" hoodwinked by George W. Milhous Bush (here's "Gay Bar," by The Electric Six)...



...again, maybe humor is inappropriate given what is going on half a world away, but this year-end review of '08 was forwarded to me by one of my senior correspondents, and I just wanted to share it before the prior year fades into history (we need to laugh when we can, people)...



...and here's Lucinda Williams ("Real Love" on "The Late Show" - I'll let Dave "take us out").

Watch Your Ass In 2019, Dubya!

(I should emphasize that I don’t encourage violence against anyone except bin Laden, not even this loser – I also posted over here.)

This McClatchy story tells us that Dubya, thanks to congressional legislation passed in 1997 (when the Repugs were in charge, trying to figure out how many times Bill Clinton unzipped his fly to the exclusion of practically everything else), will be the first president to receive Secret Service protection for only ten years upon leaving office.

And as for Deadeye Dick, the Dems actually did him a favor (God only knows why) and cosponsored legislation covering his mangy butt for six months after he departs, as noted here.

Of course, if Jeb gets in (as Poppy talked about here - God help us), then he’ll change the law back to protect both his brother and his "boss" for the rest of their lives, right?

Well, as I said here, let’s unearth all of the “dead bodies” that the former FLA governor is responsible for again, shall we? Let’s have that discussion once and for all.

Update 1/6/09: Awww, c'est dommage (here).

Bushco Keeps Trying To Tie Obama's Hands

As it prepares to crawl away from the world stage like the vermin they are, I find it amusing to watch acolytes of our ruling cabal now trying to give back the power to other branches of government that they claimed for themselves before Barack Obama is sworn in as our 44th president.

We have yet another example of that in the New York Times today in an opinion piece written by John (“Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran”) Bolton and former administration lawyer John (Torture) Yoo (of course, the very first problem is that these two were even given a forum by the Times; interesting how Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt will wrestle with other, more subtle issues of coverage than the basic question of why his newspaper provides a soapbox to two such rank liars and propagandists...or this, oddly enough).

Picking through the flotsam of phrases like “binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.” “to subordinate (our) policies, foreign or domestic, to international control,” “the benignly labeled ‘global governance’ movement,” and “quixotic and impractical global governance regimes,” we find such “Oooga Booga!” scare language as the following…

Candidate Obama promised to “re-engage” and “work constructively within” the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Will the new president pass a new Kyoto climate accord through Congress by sidestepping the constitutional requirement to persuade two-thirds of the Senate?

I no more know the answer to that question than these two characters do. However, I just wanted to point out the following about the Kyoto Protocol (from this Time story dated June 2001)…

…the real significance of the revised Kyoto Accord lies less in its impact on the planet's climate than in the fact that it survived Washington's withdrawal. The determination of the nations of the industrialized world to hang in and negotiate a binding treaty even after it had been nixed by the "indispensable nation" suggests that we may have entered a new era in international affairs. And that it will be an era in which the U.S. will no longer be automatically granted the leadership role among Western nations it established during the Cold War.

By the way, I think the fact that we are no longer an “indispensible nation” in world affairs, as noted by the author, is another tragic Bushco legacy (and something else greatly ignored by our corporate media). Because we have chosen to cede any kind of ownership or even participation in a discussion concerning the most critical issues faced by this and other nations, others (notably China) have stepped into that void.

Continuing with the Time story…

The Clinton administration was never happy with the terms of Kyoto, but it kept its negotiators at the table to grind away at the original treaty. President Bush gambled that withdrawing from the negotiations — that is, removing the indispensable polluter — would force the international community back to the drawing board to seek an agreement more favorable to the U.S.'s gas-guzzling economy. But summary withdrawal from a decade-old process and failure at the same time to advance any alternative was read by the Europeans as a lack of seriousness. Indeed, there was spontaneous booing in the conference hall at Bonn when U.S. delegate Paula Dobriansky told the meeting, "The Bush administration takes the issue of climate change very seriously and we will not abdicate our responsibility." On global warming, the "indispensable nation" is looking rather more like a "rogue nation."

Also (back to Bolton/Yoo)…

In 2002, the administration considered submitting the Treaty of Moscow, a nuclear arms reduction agreement, for majority approval of Congress. Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who was then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, privately made clear that he would vigorously oppose such an attempt to evade the Senate’s constitutional prerogatives. The administration agreed to submit the agreement as a treaty, and the Moscow agreement cleared the Senate.

I don’t really have anything to say about that, but it’s funny to read Bolton pretending to defend the “Senate’s constitutional prerogatives” on the matter of approving a nuclear arms reduction agreement, when as noted here, Bolton and the rest of Bushco walked away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that “bans all national missile defense” in pursuit of a “Star Wars” missile shield (the perpetual neocon pipe dream – the story by Michael O’Hanlon, of all people, was dated August 28, 2001; as we know all too well now, any talk of missile defense would disappear for years as a result of the events that transpired about two weeks later). Basically, Bolton/Yoo pretend to care about ratifying only the agreements that suit them and their handlers.

Returning to the Times Op-Ed…

President Bush, like President Clinton, did not sign a global agreement that would ban antipersonnel land mines, on the grounds that they are a key component of the American defense of South Korea. But his administration has pressed for ratification of the treaty on the law of the sea, which would subject disputes over the free passage of American naval vessels to the jurisdiction of an international maritime court — which the Senate has so far refused to ratify.

Bolton/Yoo just pushed one of my many buttons here, in particular on the matter of land mines used for the “defense” of South Korea; this tells us that…

Official U.S Army briefers in Korea have stated that the US has no responsibility for the frontline defense of South Korea.

Of the 1.2 million landmines stockpiled for use in Korea, nearly half are not even in that country, and plans call for turning all but 5% of the remaining half over to the South Koreans.

Seventy-five civilians have died from mine accidents in Korea since 1990, and the number of injuries is much higher.

It is estimated that there have been over 1,000 civilian mine victims since the end of the Korean War.

Many landmines stockpiled for use in Korea are non-self destructing or “dumb” antipersonnel landmines that can remain active for decades.

Basically, there’s no good reason for the continued existence of land mines, unless our government wants to kill, maim or cripple civilians. And though I’ll admit that I have more reading to do on the issue, I wonder why, with our economy in such a calamitous state, we even remain in South Korea at all (if the ROK can’t defend itself after we’ve maintained a presence for about 50 years, will we ever see that day in our lifetimes?).

Also, Bolton/Yoo are correct about the Senate’s failure to ratify UNCLOS, which has created an opportunity for our ol’ buddy Vlad Putin to do a lot more than poke his head over the border of Alaska (here), as Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin put it a few months ago.

It’s amusing, actually, to read Bolton and Yoo’s faux diplomatic musings here given the fact that Bushco is about to exit at long last. I, for one, would like to hear them (particularly Yoo) try to explain why Obama should not be conferred all of the “unitary executive” powers that they believed that Dubya possessed over his failed presidency. After all, aren’t we still “fighting the global war on Terra! Terra! Terra!”?

By the way, Dawn Johnsen, an Obama appointment to head the OLC, had some rather choice words for Yoo and Bushco lawyers in general, as Glenn Greenwald notes here (h/t Atrios).

Sunday Stuff

With that horrible Ben Feller column of "analysis" in mind from yesterday and this excellent opinion piece from Frank Rich in today's New York Times as well, I went looking for some Dubya-haranguing commentary, and I found this from Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks from last July (before TARP, when $700 billion was still only $25 billion - remember those heady days?)...



...Plushgun ("Dancing In A Minefield"; hey, if it has a clip from "The Family Guy," I'm there!).

Some Saturday Dubya Fluffery

Ben Feller of the AP brings us the following from here, what he laughably calls “analysis” of the all-but-over foul, fetid Bushco reign (in particular the following)…

In sessions with policy experts, Bush tends to ask questions that get right to the nub of a sticky issue. His top aides speak regretfully about how the country never got to see that side of him, even after all this time. They describe a man who is deeply inquisitive, not blithely incurious as much of the world thinks.

In response, I have only to say this: on page 247 of “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward, President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History, in a meeting in August 2003, took the lead in asking questions about whether or not we “we have a communications strategy to be able to run with Al Jazeera,” so that we could supposedly encourage the Iraqis to “not allow foreign fighters” to come into their country (making a half-hearted attempt to fight what was then the growing insurgency; Woodward notes that no one alerted Bush to the irony of his request).

And that is the only time throughout the course of a nearly-500-page book, not counting preface material and citations, where George W. Milhous Bush is not being utterly led around by the nose like a puppy courtesy of the likes of “subordinates” Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Paul Bremer and others.

Continuing…

You can tell the issues that really get Bush going, because he talks about them differently, more passionately: education, AIDS relief, freedom. They happen to be ones that can be viewed more clearly through a moral lens. That's how he sees the world.

In response, despite some acknowledged successes of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (or PEPFAR), the following must be noted (from here)…

Rules governing how PEPFAR funds can be used for HIV prevention have been the source of substantial international controversy and criticism. In 2005, the Brazilian government declined to accept $40 million in U.S. HIV assistance because of requirements in American law that U.S. grant recipients formally condemn prostitution. In addition, U.S. government funds may not lawfully be used for needle-exchange programs for injecting drug users.

But the most controversy has surrounded the requirement that 33 percent of PEPFAR prevention money be spent on abstinence-only programs. Because services including HIV testing and prevention of mother-to-child transmission are included in PEPFAR's prevention portfolio, the practical effect of PEPFAR's legislative mandate is that abstinence programs consume roughly two out of three PEPFAR dollars for the prevention of sexual transmission. In 2006, the U.S. General Accounting Office, an independent agency that audits U.S. government programs, reported that legislative earmarks for abstinence programming were impeding the ability of PEPFAR country teams to devise prevention programs that meet national needs.

In other words, how logical is it to tie an abstinence-only program to obtaining PEPFAR-funded medications in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where many men have as little interest in practicing monogamy as they do in even using a condom?

And on the matter of “freedom,” how about if Feller contacts some of the approximately 2 million Iraqi refugees to see how “free” they believe themselves to be.

Continuing again...

The toughest moments for him come when he meets the grieving families of the troops he sent to war. Or when he meets severely wounded troops in recovery. Many of the hurting tell Bush they want to get back out in active duty. He is moved by the sacrifice.

"I do a lot of crying in this job," Bush once acknowledged.

So do the families and friends of the service people killed in Dubya’s war of choice in Iraq, though I can’t imagine how he would know that since he never attended one of their funerals (and banned photography or filming when the flag-draped caskets arrive home).

This steaming heap of refuse by the AP’s Feller is corporate media stenography at its worst. But instead of venting my own outrage over it, I’m just going to put up John Flynn one more time here, who states his own commendable sense of revulsion better than I can (I expect to be coming back to this “analysis” again).

Friday Stuff

And I'm sure Fix Noise will stay classy in '09 too (watch the ticker - h/t HuffPo)...



...and Josh Marshall brings us the 2008 Golden Duke Awards (yes, I noticed the Edwards award - sigh, though he deserved it - but I got a kick out of the line about renaming the awards for Kwame Kilpatrick; also, I included a compilation of the videos a couple of days ago, and the winner is...Liddy Dole for "Godless"!)...



..and hey, free guns for the Afghans, huh? Guess we'll never learn that bombs don't pay the bills or feed starving families or rocket launchers aren't going to create jobs (not in their country, anyway)...



...Marc Broussard ("Yes We Can, Can"; I know it's been a long time coming, but this is still just a reminder of why we supported Obama to begin with and why we still do - by the way, I'm not bothered by the fact that John Edwards is included; despite his fall from grace, he remains the only prominent Democrat on the national stage who gives a damn about poverty, and don't forget that).

A Friday Blago Post

You know, I really had planned to stay out of the latest developments in the whole Rod Blagojevich/Ronald Burris/Bobby Rush mess (though Rush appears to have decided to shut his yap for a moment), but Ruben Navarrette, Jr. decided to use it as an excuse to tell us the following from here (about the response of Obama and the U.S. Senate to Burris)…

The takeaway…was that, after nearly 50 years of dutifully supporting white Democrats, African-Americans are still relegated to the role of supporting actors. And when an African-American dares to vie for center-stage, white Democrats who don't want to cede power will try to tackle him to the ground.

Oh, that’s funny.

First, let’s look at this post from HuffPo’s Paul Jenkins, which tells us that…

John McCain lost by a margin of 90% among African-Americans, and 2 to 1 among other ethnic and racial minority groups, and young people. The future hardly belongs to a party who is falling further and further behind among the fastest-growing demographic groups, and among those who will be voting for decades to come. Republicans' problems go well beyond their dreadful record of the past decade and their wrong-footed policies, although neither helps. As it shrinks, the GOP is becoming ever-whiter, more male, more Southern, more Christian-centric, and increasingly unable to appeal to voters, or potential candidates who do not fit its narrow mold.

(And by the way, though this is a right-leaning site, the author makes a good point about the so-called “Bradley effect” here.)

Second, while you could argue that the Senate Dems have painted themselves into a corner somewhat on the Blago/Burris mess by deciding they won’t have anything to do with them (as Jane Hamsher does here), I believe their actions will be validated when a person is eventually seated who has a lot less baggage than either of these two characters (we’ll see if I’m right, of course, and Obama, for his part, has deniability – if this drags on and on, he can blame the Illinois legislature for refusing to take action and let his former Senate colleagues off the hook).

Have the Democrats taken advantage of some of their constituencies for political purposes? Uh, next question (and do you really want me to answer that for the Repugs and get started on a rant over something so plainly obvious?).

But instead of claiming that “the Democratic Party (is) trapped by (its) own hollow rhetoric about inclusion and opportunity. And it's great fun to watch,” perhaps Navarrette, Jr. could instead point out that the Party has decided that maybe allowing itself to be shaken down by a profanity-spewing and ethically challenged governor isn’t the best course of action for the residents of the state of Illinois, regardless of their skin color.

Update 1/7/09: Silly me for trusting Reid and believing he had some means of preventing Burris from being seated; when am I going to learn that this Congress is better at caving (regardless of whether we're talking about fellow Congressional Repugs, egotistical governors, or delusionally narcissistic presidents) than anything else (here).

Some New Year Philly.com Wingnuttery

As dmac notes here, if it’s Friday, that means it’s time for more Christine Flowers propaganda (but, as always, IOKIYAR), and Rick Santorum told us yesterday that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would mean that union members could visit the home of a non-union worker up to four times to try to lean on them so they would join a union, a la Don Corleone, as Little Ricky put it (I’d reference the exact quote, but the column has been taken down for some mysterious reason; maybe Snarlin’ Arlen objected to the free publicity Former Senator Man-On-Dog gave to prospective Dem challenger Chris Matthews? – still having a hard time with that, by the way.)

Time and the desire to maintain my sanity with the new year already underway do not allow me to give Flowers and the former PA senator from northern Virginia the proper response (I also have no information to counter Santorum’s claim at the moment, though I’ll keep looking), but I would like to call out something particularly offensive and ridiculous that I found elsewhere on the site today.

In their “Lightning Round” set of editorials here (including a tribute to the brave Penn trauma surgeon John S. Pryor killed in Iraq; any loss of life from Dubya’s horrific war of choice in Mesopotamia is terrible, but this is particularly so), I found the following comment in response to an editorial about the increasing risks from violent crime facing young African American men in this country since 2000…

Help control the Deer population by killing them so that they will not starve to death or be run over by cars. This is the Black answer to the long time problem of prison over-population. Put them out of their misery. It will both cut back on unwanted pregnancies and the added expense of incarcerating them. Sort of like a "crime prevention remedy".

I should note that there has been some discussion of how to manage the deer population in Bucks County, Lower Makefield in particular, but that was not mentioned in any of the four “Lightning Round” editorials.

No, this was a commenter plainly and simply comparing a demographic segment of our population to animals that, in the estimation of “Barryboy,” should be herded up and slaughtered.

And this is considered an acceptable comment for the philly.com site.

Just keep telling yourselves, though, that filthy, unkempt liberal blogger types such as your humble narrator are the problem, as opposed to the “news professionals” who have no problem allowing comments stating that “the Black answer” is to round up “Deer” to be indiscriminately shot.

The "1850" Fraud

(Note: The photo shows the flames that still burned in the ruins of the home of senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayan in Gaza, who was killed along with members of his family in an air strike on Thursday - from the BBC.)

The following came from Monday’s press briefing with deputy Bushco flak Gordon Johndroe (here – a little late due to the year-end stuff and the holiday, and I also posted over here)…

Q The President, earlier this year - well, I guess last November during the Annapolis process, had hoped that there would be a peace deal (between the Israelis and the Palestinians) before he left office. Obviously that's not going to happen. So what is his feeling now, given what's occurring right now over there, about the prospects for a peace deal in the future?

MR. JOHNDROE: You know, this is a very similar situation that the President found when he took office in early 2001, with increased violence on the ground. I know that his goal is that this violence come to a, as I've said, sustainable, durable and end with a ceasefire, but a ceasefire that's respected by Hamas, so that then all the parties could come together and work towards the goals in the road map and the goals of the Annapolis Conference. The Annapolis goals are ones that have been widely accepted. We saw a good U.N. Security Council Resolution 1850 within the last couple of weeks.

Well, let's just say that this note about Res 1850 piqued my curiousity, so I did some investigating.

As noted here…

The body of UN Security Council Resolution 1850 avoids any meaningful mention of a two-state solution or the creation of a Palestinian state with the exception of a feeble reference late in the text -- added almost as an afterthought -- to "preparation for statehood". While the preamble does mention Resolution 1514, issued five years ago, and notes that "lasting peace can only be based on an enduring commitment to mutual recognition, freedom from violence, incitement, and terror, and the two-state solution, building upon previous agreements and obligations," and even notes "the importance of the Arab peace initiative of 2002" the seven articles of the resolution, adopted on 16 December, focus on committing all parties to continuing an endless peace process.

And here…

Speaking from Syria today the head of the PLO political department said that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1850 “intentionally neglects important texts of resolutions previously adopted by the Council.”

…

As Palestinian officials state, the Israeli administration must commit to observing previous resolutions. UNSC resolution 465 calls for dismantling settlements (in the Arab territories), while 467 renders invalid actions taken by Israel to change the character of Jerusalem. Qaddumi noted the dozens of General Assembly resolutions along with UNSC 478 and the International Court’s opinion against the Wall.

“As long as Israel continues to behave as if it is above the Wall and is treated as such, there will be no peace as the Palestinian issue is at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East,” Hamdi Shakura of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights told PNN this afternoon.

Am I saying that either the Israelis or the Palestinians are innocent here? Of course not. However, I tend to get more than a little perturbed at our media and politicians for their simplistic analysis of the conflict, particularly when, as Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher notes here, Israel is criticized more vociferously by its own press than ours. And I think blowing off any serious coverage of Resolution 1850 by our co-opted, bought-and-paid-for corporate media is sadly typical of this problem.

Update: Obama can't start soon enough, based on this (17 days to go, people)...

Thursday Stuff

A couple to ring in the New Year: I put up a clip of Delaney Bramlett a couple of days ago that didn't do him justice, I think, but I found this which I think is a much better tribute - "Coming Home," with then-wife Bonnie Bramlett in 1970 with the group that would eventually become Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton, Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, and Bobby Whitlock), part of "Delaney and Bonnie And Friends" along with a fellow named George Harrison...



...and Meredith Brooks ("Bitch" - no particular reason).