Michael Moore, Meet Luis Mandoki

As we know, Bushco is crowing over the electoral defeat of Hugo Chavez yesterday in Venezuela (as Atrios noted, funny how a “dictator” seems so willing to comply with the wishes of the electorate).

In the unlikely chance that any Republican happens to be reading this, I’ll tell you what; I won’t say that the only issue that mattered in John Howard’s defeat in Australia was the Iraq war (because it wasn’t) if YOU don’t say that the razor-thin loss of Chavez in Venezuela is an endorsement of Bushco (because it isn’t). Deal?

That being said, though, I just want to note this New York Times article from yesterday that tells of the release of the film, “Fraud, Mexico 2006” by filmmaker Luis Mandoki, which portrays last year’s Mexican election which was even closer than Venezuela’s yesterday. In it, conservative Felipe Calderón edged left-winger Andrés Manuel López Obrador (pictured) by 243,000 votes out of 41 million cast.

The Times article tells how López Obrador did not receive the full recount his supporters requested, along with the allegations of fraud at the polls combined with a smear campaign run by Calderon and his people, alleging that López Obrador would become a Mexican version of Chavez (sounds like they’ve been paying close attention to our campaigns).

The Times story also tells us that 300,000 people have seen the film in the first two weeks after its release, as well as this reaction…

The film has stirred up deep emotions. Standing ovations and shouting matches were not uncommon in the 230 theaters where it is showing. On Nov. 24, a dispute broke out between employees of a Cinemex theater in Mexico City and the audience when one of the reels broke 20 minutes into the film. The audience accused employees of censoring the film. The employees shouted insults at the audience and chanted, “Calderón! Calderón!”

“I am very surprised and happy,” Mr. Mandoki said in a recent interview. “At a premiere, people often stand at the end, but here, in all the theaters, the people not only applaud but they stay until the credits are over.”

So far, Mr. López Obrador’s supporters have made up the bulk of the people going to the film. For many of them it has only confirmed what they felt in their gut last year.

“I always have thought there was fraud,” said Sandra Quiñones, a 36-year-old city employee, who saw the film in Mexico City. “I would have thought that as a documentary it was boring. But, no, on the contrary, the truth is you come out angry, the great anger of knowing they stole the presidency.”

Others with different political leanings remain in quiet thought long after the film has ended. “I voted for Calderón,” said Araceli Pliego, 23, a student, as she left a Mexico City theater. “At the time, I liked his proposal and I still say he’s not bad as a governor, but after seeing the film, I have a lot of doubts about what happened last year.”

And this should sound familiar also…

Mr. Mandoki said he had seldom had such trouble getting a film distributed. According to Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola, the head of the Warner Brothers subsidiary in Mexico, Juan Manuel Borbolla, agreed in mid-June to distribute the film and said his bosses in Hollywood were enthusiastically on board.

But Warner Brothers pulled out in late August, and Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola say the decision was political. They say Mr. Borbolla told them that he had been warned he would make enemies at Televisa, the dominant Mexican television network, if he distributed the film. Televisa owns Videocine-Distribucion, the company with which Warner Brothers has a distribution partnership in Mexico.

Televisa officials denied that they exerted pressure on Warner Brothers to drop the film, other than to warn that the documentary would not make a profit. (It has grossed about $1 million at the box office, the producers say.)

Mr. Borbolla has insisted politics played no role in the decision. “I decided not to distribute the film because it was not good business, because in Mexico, documentaries don’t sell,” he said at a news conference in September. A spokeswoman for Warner Brothers Entertainment in California, Andrea Marozas, said in a telephone interview that officials at the company’s headquarters had determined that the film would simply not be profitable.

In the end, none of the major distributors in Mexico would handle the film, the producers said. Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola turned to a small company, Decine S.A. de C.V., which agreed to help the producers distribute the film for a fee, as long as the payments from the four main Mexican movie chains went directly to the producers instead of the distributor.

It sounds like Mexico has found a way to consolidate its ruling political influence through questionable means as well as we have, but I wonder if one element is missing: could there possibly be a Mexican language translation for “dittohead”?

Sub-Prime Time

I happened to watch some of the testimony of Paul Gallagher and Richard Freeman of the Executive Intelligence Review over the weekend when they appeared before a PA State House subcommittee chaired by outgoing Rep. Dave Steil. They spoke on the subprime loan crisis, and the numbers they communicated were pretty ugly (I’m trying to obtain a transcript, and if I do, I’ll share more information.

I know this has been covered by Atrios and Paul Krugman, among others, but I'll try to add more details here.

Now before I say too much more, I should point out that Gallagher and Freeman are associated with Lyndon LaRouche, and the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act that Gallagher and Freeman publicized was announced by LaRouche last August. And like many of you, I’m conditioned to avoid anything from a man who once claimed that Queen Elizabeth II of England ran an international drug cartel. But Gallagher and Freeman spoke with authority and conviction, and there are some good ideas in the Act.

Gallagher also said that federally chartered depository institutions (federal reserve banks, commercial banks, savings institutions, credit unions, etc.) should be protected first in this crisis to preserve their liquidity, but he alleges that that isn’t happening, with billions of federal dollars injected into Countrywide Financial, a financial marketing and service holding company, instead.

This article by Gallagher and Freeman tells of how credit derivatives (such as futures contracts and other speculative investments) have been built upon sub-prime mortgages, with these derivatives included substantially into hedge funds (I’m not a financial expert, I should add, but I’m trying to summarize this information as carefully as I can). And any discussion of hedge funds could not be complete without mentioning Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), about which the eternal Molly Ivins, among others, reported here.

As noted in the Gallagher and Freeman article (with the current crisis referred to as “The Great Unwind”)…

The ominous "Great Unwind" report was written by Stefan-Michael Stalman and Susanne Knips at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein bank for Dresdner Kleinwort's private banking clients; leaked sections of the report were covered in Barron's on Feb. 12. The report's assessment is stark: that the highly leveraged $1.3 trillion-in-assets hedge-fund sector, and its bank creditors, by following the practices of the deceased Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund, are headed toward a swift unwinding of its leveraged positions, which will result in a financial crash.

The report says that while the hedge funds control only 1-2% of all global assets under their management, they have contracted two-thirds of all worldwide margin debt (borrowing of funds for stock investment).

The authors warn that while it is made to appear "that hedge fund strategies across the industry [are] diversified, there is actually a high degree of correlation," that is, most hedge funds are betting using the same strategy. Further, during periods of high market volatility, the hedge funds had exploited the volatility to make quick, big speculative killings. Various forces have greatly lowered the volatility. Instead, "a clear majority of hedge funds ... employ long-short strategies—removing market risk with what are essentially spread or arbitrage bets with a relatively low return." This means that these hedge funds will realize a low return for each bet; therefore, in order to compensate, they bet large amounts of money—most of it borrowed (leveraged); i.e., if the yield on a bet is less than 0.5%, but one bets hundreds of millions of dollars on it, one can earn a million dollars.

Many of the bets, which thousands of hedge funds are synchronously following, is to bet on the spread (the difference in interest rates) between a high-yield instrument, such as a junk bond, and a low-yield instrument, such as a normal corporate bond or U.S. Treasury bond. The hedge funds often employ mathematical models that determine what the historical spread between these particular instruments are. In an insane, linear fashion, the hedge funds bet that the spread will return to the historical norm—they exclude those real world crises that diverge from and disrupt the norm.

This is exactly what LTCM did in 1998: It blew up. However, this time, the hedge funds have and are investing nearly 1,000 times the assets/money that LTCM had.

…

The emerging trigger for this "Great Unwind" is the horrific crisis in the market of credit derivatives, which have been built upon sub-prime mortgages. This is not a big market, but its failure has the power to bring down not only hedge funds, but the financial system.

And this Denver Post story tells us…

…the crisis is deepening. More than 400,000 subprime mortgages are expected to reset each quarter to higher interest rates through the end of next year, representing $362 billion in debt.

The prospects are so grim that a coalition of lenders, with government backing, is discussing whether to freeze adjustable rates on some subprime mortgages.

Among the economic forces that set the stage for the surge in subprime lending were historically low interest rates, rising housing prices and trillions in investment dollars fleeing the stock market after the technology bubble burst.

But the superheated mortgage market froze up last summer after investors panicked as home-loan defaults spiraled upward, interest rates adjusted higher and a sudden housing surplus collapsed prices in many markets. As many as 2 million homeowners are expected to face foreclosures by the end of next year. In Colorado, as many as 15,000 subprime borrowers could lose their homes in the next several years.

And just for the record, what did President George W. Milhous Bush and his minions (including HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who as nearly as I can tell has been absolutely silent on this) tell us last August?

(Bush) is also expected to support legislation that would provide tax breaks to homeowners whose mortgage debt is forgiven, in whole or in part, by lenders. The federal government currently collects taxes on the amount of a loan that is forgiven.

Democratic presidential candidates and Congressional leaders have hammered the administration in recent weeks, charging Mr. Bush with indifference to the plight of an estimated two million homeowners whose mortgage costs are expected to go up in the next year and a half.

These two million mortgages, all held by homeowners with credit problems and with homes that are declining in value, are valued at $500 billion to $600 billion, administration officials said. The total value of American mortgages is about $10 trillion.

The administration is offering his plan, which will include what one official called jawboning of lenders to persuade them not to foreclose on some borrowers, at a time of growing attacks on Mr. Bush from Democrats who say he has remained on the sidelines amid increasing anxiety over whether millions of Americans could end up losing their homes. Other elements of the plan would need legislative action, requiring Mr. Bush to win over the Democratic leadership in Congress.

He called for Congress to act quickly.

But of course he did, so he could proceed to either sit on or veto anything the “Democrat” congress does and blame them instead (including legislation compelling lenders not to foreclose on those caught in this crisis such as the Gilpatricks in the Denver Post story).

Sadly, though, there is a “wheel of karma” aspect to this, as the laissez-faire, “government is bad” mentality led to capitalistic connivance run amok, which is currently resulting in a collapse of our financial markets to a point that cannot be determined at the moment, as Krugman noted from today above.

And you can just add this to the pile of failure on this administration’s watch that includes neglect of the climate crisis, the stagnation of our economy, and the Iraq War – one more epochal misery on top of another.

Re-Legitimizing A Fraud

I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’ve just about had it up to my eyes with James Carville.

Yes, I know, in another time, he ran a winning campaign for Bill Clinton in legendary fashion. That’s pretty much been immortalized at this point.

But this tells us that he will be (probably “has been” by now) one of the guests on the Don Imus radio show, which returns today with (thankfully) a much smaller profile.

I don’t really care what John McCain does (I mean, is he pretty much anything besides a foil for Ron Paul at this point?), but for Carville, this is in keeping with his “both sides of the fence” strategy of trying to replace Howard Dean as head of the Democratic National Committee with Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford here (Ford eventually became head of the Democratic Losers Leadership Council), as well as Carville’s recent appearance on CNN as a debate analyst without the disclaimer that he was working for Hillary Clinton (who, by the way, at least has the good sense to avoid the Imus program).

Imus has fallen from his pedestal due to self-inflicted wounds. Instead of giving him an assist, he deserves nothing but another gun so he can shoot himself in the foot all over again.

Update 1 12/03/07: OK, so I guess I was hoodwinked here since Carville wasn’t on after all, but in a way, I wish he had been (and Carville will probably end up appearing anyway); as great as Chris Dodd has been standing up for our Constitution, it absolutely blows my mind to see how tone deaf he can be to actually say “welcome home” to this cretin.

Update 2 12/04/07: Wow, and a shot at Babs too? Class move, Chris. Have fun losing the nomination.

A Monday Thought (Or Two)

(Hat tip to Prof. Marcus for this...)

I didn't say much about last November 22nd, which of course was the 44th anniversary of JFK's assassination, partly because it fell on Thanksgiving, but I just came across this speech that President Kennedy gave concerning secret societies and our news media on April 27, 1961 (I don't agree with every single image juxtaposition here, but with most of them). While listening to it, I found it hard to determine the difference between us and our enemies at this point in time.


John F. Kennedy Speech On Secret Societies -

Rudy's Legend Continues

Hat tip to Atrios...



Update: At least one of these almost made me sick, but it's still funny.

Taking It To The Next Level

I know that, for the longest time, anyone who has visited this site (and as always, thank you for doing so) would immediately see the big orange graphic in the header with this guy’s face on it telling everyone reading it to boycott the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers sports teams, as well as any Comcast-Spectacor events, with the stated reason being that Ed Snider supports Freedom’s Watch, which wants war without end in Iraq and also, according to this article by Bill Berkowitz, is now targeting Iran.

I got rid of it for now partly to feature the Out of Iraq Caucus blogroll to the right (of which I am honored to be a member), and also because I thought most people reading it generally got the point, and though I never got feedback on it, it probably was a nuisance at times for people to scroll down from it every time they wanted to read my brilliant content (snark).

But just because the graphic is gone for now, don’t think I’ve abandoned this cause (starting with this post). Far from it, actually.

With the help of my senior field correspondent (again, a bushel of thanks there), we’ve managed to track down some of the companies who choose to advertise at Comcast-Spectacor events. I believe the folks I’ll mention in a minute ran their ads on the “dashers,” or white side boards, of Flyers games, as well as the overhead scoreboard.

I wonder how they’ll feel knowing that, by paying Ed Snider to advertise themselves, they’re lining a warmonger’s pocket and contributing to the needless waste of American and Iraqi lives and the destruction of our hard-earned reputation for justice and fairness throughout the world.

I don’t know, but if you want to contact them and ask them, you can do so by clicking on the links below:

Comcast (of course)

Verizon

Geico

Modell’s Sporting Goods

This is their corporate address:

Modell's Sporting Goods
498 Seventh Avenue, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Exelon Energy (PECO)

PepsiCo (Mountain Dew)

State Farm Insurance (link is flaky - sorry...)

Toyota

Dodge

Anheuser-Busch (Bud Light)

Independence Blue Cross

Sharp Consumer Electronics

Novacare

Lukoil

(Gosh, I remember a time when Ed absolutely refused to entertain the notion of Soviet players on the Flyers, but I guess their money is at least as good as ours now.)

McDonald’s

Southwest Airlines

After this, what I really should do is compose a form letter and contact these people directly about this, and I will do that in the coming days.

And in the spirit of all of this, here’s a video that presents something that Snider and his pals at Freedom’s Watch apparently want to see duplicated for generation upon generation (“Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” - "Dad" being military slang for Baghdad - by Richard Thompson).

Friday Videos

Avenged Sevenfold ("Almost Easy")...



...Happy Birthday to Des'ree ("You Gotta Be"; always liked this song)...



...Happy Birthday also to Billy Idol (here's his interview by David Letterman on the old NBC show in 1984; Dave's reaction to Idol's answer about the drug dealers just slayed me)...



...and to commemorate what would have been the 92nd birthday of jazz legend Billy Strayhorn yesterday, here's Slide Piano Seth (??) performing "Take The 'A' Train," which Strayhorn co-wrote with Duke Ellington, of course (and don't worry, Seth, it definitely didn't suck).

Friday Political Videos

Something to keep in mind as we all "fill 'er up" this weekend...



...and what a pal Rudy is here, people; I mean, gosh, just so happy and all that (before Judy, I believe)...



...so happy that he had to "share the love" on the dime of NYC taxpayers, of course (pucker up, Repugs).

Amazingly, Joe Only Makes A Little Dough

By comparison, I should hasten to add…and I haven’t ventured into the world of sports for a little while now, but I’ll do so here (and I may do so again a little later – we’ll see).

After I read here that legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno makes $512,000 a year, I thought I would hurl all over the pigskin, as it were. That is until I read this USA Today article from about a year ago that listed salaries for coaches at top-tier schools (the story mentions the at-that-time pending lawsuit over Paterno having to divulge his salary, which he should have had to do anyway as far as I’m concerned, given the fact that Penn State takes public money).

The USA Today article tells us that the actual salary of these coaches comprises about 25 percent of their compensation, with endorsements and other income sources making up the remaining amount. And subsequent to that story, this post tells us that…

Gary R. Roberts, deputy dean of Tulane University’s law school and director of its sports law program, said that only at some medical schools would you find the kind of seven-figure salaries that Brand mentions in the letter (i.e., NCAA president Myles Brand wrote a letter to Congress to defend the salaries and tax-exempt status of college sports at about the time this story broke). But even that, he said, is misleading, because the surgeons on the clinical faculty aren’t “real classroom faculty,” he said.

“It is not accurate ... to say that the overall compensation earned by major football and men’s basketball coaches today are within the order of magnitude of the highest paid classroom teaching faculty,” Roberts said in an e-mail.

And to further point this out, I’d like to find out how much money came out of the budgets of other departments of Oklahoma University to help pay for the $3.45 million yearly salary of football coach Bob Stoops (noted here). Sure, he’s a winner, but couldn’t that dough have been used to graduate more students majoring in molecular biology, for example (just a hypothetical...yes, I know - "what the market will bear").

So given all of this, it seems that Joe Pa actually deserves a pat on the back for taking what is comparatively meager compensation for what he does, given his low-endorsement profile and the high graduation rate of his student football players.

All the same, this can’t help but bum me out; it further illustrates the point that I’m in the wrong job.

Score One For Hil

CNN tells us here that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton…

…announced a global strategy to combat AIDS and said as president she will strike one of the most controversial provisions of George W. Bush's global AIDS program — a requirement that one-third of disease prevention funds go to abstinence-before-marriage programs.

This story is timely because World AIDS Day will be recognized tomorrow.

And the centerpiece of Bushco’s AIDS effort is PEPFAR, standing for “The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” (gotta love it the way this administration draws on its marketing background in the most annoying way possible).

However (and you knew there was a catch, as noted here)..

PEPFAR has been criticized by public health advocates outside the administration for its stipulation, mandated by Congress, that at least one-third of the money spent by the United States on disease prevention abroad should go to abstinence education programs.

Bush administration officials have defended abstinence education as part of a multi-faceted approach to fighting AIDS, a strategy that also includes "being faithful" and using condoms.

But as we know…

By touting abstinence-until-marriage programs, the U.S. government is misrepresenting an overwhelming body of available scientific evidence. Evidence from the United States and elsewhere shows that such programs have not worked to prevent either sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. In fact, several studies show that while teens who participate in virginity pledges, a common component of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, may delay sexual debut, they are far less likely to use condoms or contraceptives when they do have intercourse, exposing them to increased risk of unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV.

These programs also mistakenly assume that marriage is a protective factor against HIV.8 In the focus countries, married monogamous women are, in fact, among the most vulnerable for HIV infection. Evidence increasingly demonstrates that because women often have few rights within marriage, marriage itself may be a key risk factor for HIV.

I think we can pretty much assume that any one of the Democratic candidates who emerges as the nominee would follow Clinton’s lead here, but give her credit for being the first to "blaze the trail" (and let’s also offer thanks that, according to this CNN report, the campaign workers held hostage at Clinton’s headquarters in New Hampshire are apparently all right; hopefully, this will all be resolved without anyone else getting hurt).

Not A Happy Anniversary For Some

I failed to note that yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the decision by the United Nations to partition Palestine into both Arab and Jewish homelands (here), something I would consider to be a mistake with repercussions extending into infinity.

Anyway, this timely and highly controversial opinion column was published in the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday written by Susan Abulhawa who, according to her bio, is a freelance writer, a member of Al-Adwa (Palestinian right of return), a writer for Palestine Media Watch and Dissident Voice, and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine (no online link is available for this column).

(By the way, I think the timing of the publication was accidental, knowing what I know about how the paper operates with its opinion columns. Also, I’m sure I’m wading into a mess with this post, but I thought much of what Abulhawa said was too important to ignore.)

In 1988, we gave up 78 percent of our homeland to try and pick up the pieces of our lives on the remaining 22 percent of Palestine. This was, and remains, the only true (brave or otherwise) concession ever made in the so-called “Middle East Conflict.”

Next came Camp David, then Madrid, then Oslo, then another Camp David, Taba, Wye, (deep breath) Sharm el Sheikh, The Disengagement, The Road Map. Through it all, Israel continued to divide, carve out, confiscate and settle that 22 percent. They scattered us into a diaspora, shut down our schools, bombed damn near every inch of the West Bank and Gaza, herded us into ghettos, set up check points all around us and employee every tool of imperialism, times 10, to get rid of our subjugate us as a cheap labor force.

Now we arrive at yet another surreal meeting in the clouds; Annapolis. Everyone is invited except the PLO – the sole and only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people – and the democratically elected members of the Palestinian Authority (that would be Hamas).

At this meeting, Israel will throw us a few bones, like releasing some prisoners (who will most likely get rounded up again when the hype dies down) while it is intentionally starving 1.4 million human beings in Gaza. Annapolis will serve only to move Israel a little closer to stamping out the “refugee problem,” those Palestinians and their descendants whose homes, farms, property and history Israel stole.

Palestinians are the natives of the land that was called Palestine for the last several thousand years until 1948 when Jewish foreigners changed its name to Israel. We are the natives in every sense of the word: historically, legally, culturally, ethnically, and even genetically!

True, there were Jewish tribes in that land some 3,000 years ago. There were also Canaanites, Babylonians, Sumerians, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, and Brits. Palestinians are the natural descendants of all of these peoples who passed through that land, intermarried and converted between religions. When you understand this, it becomes clear why Palestine has always been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious society. In other words, the idea of “tolerance” and co-existence that the West fought to attain and claims to cherish and hold dear was already a reality in Palestine.

Israel has taken that ideal, turned it on its head, and beat it to a pulp so every Jew in the world can have a place where he or she can go and see none but fellow Jews. Remarkably, the world sees nothing wrong or out of the ordinary with this and would like us to simply live with it, negotiate with a juggernaut military power that has made no secret of its desire and intent to take all of Palestine and get rid of as many of us Gentiles as it possibly can.

Never in history has the world so cruelly called on an oppressed, robbed, and battered native people to sit down with their oppressors to “negotiate” for their freedom. Even worse, what we are expected to negotiate away are our basic human rights, in order to have a few check points removed so we can call those ghettos – surrounded by a 20-foot concrete wall with guard towers – a “state.”

We are being asked to give up our natural right to return to the homes from which we were forcibly removed because, and only because, we are not Jewish. We are asked, as native Muslims and Christians, to give up our natural right to live and thrive in Jerusalem as we have for all of time. We are told that we should not expect to have the right to control our own water, economy, airspace, or borders.

Why?

Why should we accept such an inferior status and inferior fate? We are not children of a lesser god that we should be expected to relinquish God-given, self-evident rights accorded and upheld for the rest of humanity. We are not animals to be disposed of so that every Jew in the world can have dual citizenship, a sort of summer country in the Hamptons.

Would anyone have thought to support the desire of white South Africans to live as separate and superior humans and expect black South Africans to “negotiate” with the apartheid government for their basic human rights? Of course not! Anyone with a mind and conscience took for granted that blacks have equal rights as whites. That is self-evident and non-negotiable. So is our right as non-Jews in Palestine to be accorded the same rights and privileges as Jews in our ancestral homeland. Human dignity and equality simply should not be topics of negotiation in the 21st century.

Even more vulgar is Israel’s insistence that we recognize its right to be a state of the Jewish people. This country that stole everything from us – our homes, our holy places, our trees and farms, our institutions, our history and heritage, the cemeteries where our grandparents and forefathers are buried – because we are not the right kind of human in their eyes. They want us not only to attest that such an affront to humanity is legitimate and appropriate, but that it is somehow a right!

Let me, as one disposed and disinherited Palestinian, say with all the force of my love and anguish for my country, my family, and my countrymen, that I do NOT recognize such right. A right is something inherently and unquestionably just. Jewish exclusivity and entitlement at the expense of non-Jews is not a right, for God’s sake, it is racism!

Right off the bat, I should say that I think Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is “self-evident and non-negotiable,” to quote Abulhawa. I can only imagine the suffering she has endured as a result of the partioning of her homeland, and I’m sorry about that, but it’s not fair to carry out reprisals against innocent Israelis because of this dunderheaded act that took place a little over 60 years ago, and such reprisals would surely ensue if the Jews were somehow made to relocate from Israel.

And by the way, speaking of what is euphemistically called “the fence,” I’ve noticed that the incidents of bombings of innocent Israelis has greatly decreased since it was constructed. Yes, it is a blight and an affront, but so is blowing up school buses and shopping plazas and thus killing innocent people (as well as bulldozing homes).

Also, the total non-apologia for Israeli blood on Palestinian hands was unsettling to read, as far as I’m concerned. And I should note that Abulhawa has written to the Courier Times before and generated some venomously hostile letters in response (which takes a measure of courage, you must admit), and I’m sure that will be the case again over this.

Despite my reservations, what Abulhawa wrote is important and should be added to the dialogue that should take place between responsible leaders of nations (including, God willing, a Democratic president after 1/20/09).

And finally, Abulhawa notes the unresolved issue of the “right of return” for Palestinians. How ridiculous is it, then, for us to criticize the Iraqi "government" over not having resolved that issue when we haven’t found a way to address it with the Palestinians either (and as always with Bushco, anything passes from it right to our Middle East “ally” as far as I’m concerned).

Update 12/18/07: Fair is fair.

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

The New York Times reports that John Edwards gave a speech at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council last night, in which he stated the following…

Then, from the crowd, a question about Russia. “What Putin has done,” Mr. Edwards began, then interrupted himself.

“And I know Bush has looked into his eyes and saw his soul,” he said sarcastically. “That gave me great comfort. I wonder if he saw in his soul that he was going to completely take over the government.”

And by the way, I thought the first comment to this Times post was interesting; regardless of how everyone not belonging to the investor class is “taking it in the neck,” the weapons industry will never have a thing to worry about with the guy taking up space in the Oval Office.

Well, as it turns out, our fears about Putin have been well-founded, since our ol’ buddy Vlad has now decided not to abide by the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, as noted here…

The 1990 arms control treaty set limits on the deployment of heavy conventional weapons by NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, to ease tensions along the border between the old Eastern bloc and Western Europe. The treaty was revised in 1999 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia ratified the updated treaty in 2004, but the United States and other NATO members have refused to follow suit, saying Moscow first must fulfill obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova's separatist region of Trans-Dniester.

Hmmm, 1990 was when the original treaty was signed? That fell during the administration of Dubya’s dad, as I recall (revised under Clinton in ’99, of course). And is it naïve of me to wonder why we tried to use the Conventional Forces treaty as leverage in pursuing the issue of Russian troop withdrawal, which appears to be an entirely other matter?

Even though “no one could have foreseen this,” Putin’s actions should come as no surprise given our ridiculous pursuit of a missile defense shield in Europe over his objections, as well as Vlad’s own disposition to act as a potentate anyway.

And just for good measure, we also have a disagreement with Russia now involving the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, since Vlad and his pals believe that we’ve managed to hurt the election-monitoring mission of the OSCE and thus interfere with monitoring State Duma elections Sunday (I have to admit that I’m not inclined to believe Bushco on much of anything, but Vlad’s protestations sound weak here - I'll update this if I learn anything further).

Oh, and did I mention that China is also mad at us because we honored the Dalai Lama and recently sold arms to Taiwan (here)?

Actually, is there a country out there that likes us at this point?

And gee, ya’ think the Iraq war has something to do with it also (and the fine folks at Think Progress have more on that here).

And by the way (on another matter), though I support Edwards of course, he did not distinguish himself on bankruptcy legislation while serving in the Senate (Chris Dodd, though, is substantially better, as noted here). However, I believe Edwards has come around on this because there is no way he could do otherwise given his campaign rhetoric; call me what you want and believe what you will, but that’s where I stand (and by the way, as important as legitimate bankruptcy "reform" is, made necesssary by that horrible law, health coverage is more important, and Edwards has another good idea here).

Thursday Videos

Sick Puppies ("My World")...



...Happy Birthday to Ringo Garza of Los Lonely Boys ("Heaven")...



...I came across this item yesterday from Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher noting that the man who quite probably was the influence behind "Ballad Of A Thin Man" by Bob Dylan recently passed away (here), so this is Dylan performing the song in the mid-'60s (while everyone still fawned over him and his lyrics, of course)...



...and Happy Belated Birthday to Randy Newman ("Just A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country"; usually I can tell when he's being tongue in cheek, but not here - probably dead serious).

More News/Political Stuff

An instructive video on immigration that should be viewed by all of us, particularly the Repugs...



...and since they're already showing "A Charlie Brown Christmas," I guess it's safe to start getting into the holiday spirit once more (God, here we go again) with "12 Days Of The War On Christmas, Fox Style" (from Brave New Films).

Another "Penumbra Of Angst," I See

God, Willard Mitt, you truly are clueless (here - audio is a bit shaky, but loud enough, and the post title refers to this).

More On Patrick And The AMT

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times this morning...

As a professional tax preparer and an IRS enrolled agent, I was pleased to see Congressman Patrick Murphy's vote to relieve a large number of taxpayers from the Alternative Minimum Tax.

This tax was imposed in 1969 and revised in 1986 in order to prevent high-income taxpayers from sheltering huge parts of their passive investment income from tax. But the calculations were never indexed for the increase in the cost of living.

In 1986, $125,000 to $150,000 was a very big income; in 2006, it was the yearly income for many two-wage-earner households. These folks are ordinary working people. The calculations for the tax are affected by high mortgage interest, real estate taxes, employee business expenses and number of dependents, as well as the high passive income it was designed to tax.

In my practice, for many years no one paid the AMT. Then about eight years ago it started popping up in a few families with two working parents. Many of the men were in the building trades, working outside in freezing weather to support their families. Each year the number of people paying this tax doubled. Now, about 20 percent of my clients pay this tax.

Very few of these taxpayers have the investment and other passive income that this tax was designed to catch; they are just working hard and living from paycheck to paycheck. It has gotten so bad that we have posters in the preparer offices explaining the AMT and asking our clients to contact their congressman and senators and ask for relief.

Murphy's vote to prevent over 96,000 taxpayers in the 8th Congressional District and over 25 million taxpayers in the country from paying this unfair tax, as well as to extend the child tax credit and property tax deductions shows his commitment to fair and reasonable taxation on the neglected middle class.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I have served as Congressman Murphy's campaign treasurer since the beginning, and I am very proud to be associated with such a fine man and exceptional congressman.

Vanya Tyrrell
Bristol Township, PA

As always, to help Patrick, click here (also, here is some more nonsense from Dubya on this issue).

And by the way, we’re still wondering what this guy is up to (tick tock, Mikey - a related post appears here).

Mike Chertoff’s European “Welcome”

Gosh, I’m all red faced at the moment because I forgot to acknowledge DHS Secretary Mike Chertoff’s birthday yesterday.

Fortunately for me, though, he’s in the news again today, this time in Dublin, Ireland to pitch his plan to develop “a global system of anti-terrorist screening” at U.S. and European airports.

This is a good thing in theory, actually, but true to the Bushco “go-it-alone” ethos, he’s pitching this unilaterally throughout Europe instead of addressing his concerns at the United Nations, where agreements can be negotiated and brokered (you know, the whole “give and take” thing that Bushco does so well – snark).

As this story tells us…

When asked whether the United States considered a homegrown attack likely – the prevailing pattern in Britain, where British-born or legal residents have plotted or committed a string of attacks since 2005 – Chertoff said America needs to make the screening of international travelers a priority.

“We have less of a problem with homegrown terrorism than in Europe. That's not to say we don't have a problem,” he said, noting the May arrests of six foreign-born U.S. residents on suspicion of plotting to attack the Fort Dix army base.

“So I don't mean to suggest that the exclusive remedy is preventing bad people from getting into the United States ... but that is the point of their greatest vulnerability,” he said.

I’m not sure how Chertoff can quantify what we face in this country versus the homegrown terrorism faced abroad; just because nothing has happened lately (crossing my fingers here) doesn’t mean it’s any less of a threat than what we face from outside our borders, as described in this extensive USA Today article.

And to elaborate further, here is Chertoff interviewed by Der Spiegel in which he describes what he has in mind in detail also, conjuring up fearful scenarios every way possible as well as this astonishing quote…

I think in this country, people who have been admitted as immigrants tend to assimilate better than Muslim communities in general. They seem to be more prosperous and better educated than even the average American.

With all due respect to some of our immigrants, I don’t think Chertoff knows anything about “average American(s).”

And this story from August tells us of the resistance Chertoff encountered over “Secure Flight,” the Transportation Security Agency’s new screening program…

As part of Secure Flight, foreign nationals also would be subject to a security program called the Automated Targeting System. Intended to identify potential security threats, the ATS database uses information from credit card companies and other commercial data, and compares it to airline records. It was rejected for domestic travel due to privacy concerns, but will be used for international travelers, Chertoff said. The information will be retained for 15 years in a federal database.

Jerome Drevon-Barreaux, global travel manager for Paris-based systems integration and consulting provider Capgemini, said the new security regulations have raised concerns in Europe.

"This new measure, on top of all the other ones already in place, is really disturbing. Asking business travelers to plan their trip at least 72 hours in advance is unrealistic," said Drevon-Barreaux, who also serves as European regional chair for the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. "A lot of travelers would actually--and unfortunately--book their air tickets at the last minute."

Beyond the inconvenience of planning trips further in advance, the new rules seem unnecessary and unwelcome, said Drevon-Barreaux. He suggested that they may be more about politics than preventing terrorism on international flights. "This could be perceived as a protectionist measure, making non-U.S. based firms less competitive and unable to react quickly to clients' demands in a short timeframe," he said. "Asking for extra time would not help in protecting from terrorism but just penalize [international trade] and the whole economy between the U.S. and the rest of the world."

I’ll admit Chertoff has a tough job here, but he signed up for this deal on his own. And again, this is what happens when you act like you can dictate to the whole world, a lesson this administration apparently will never learn.

Two Important Updates

First, we now know the person who dictated Joke Line’s horrifically bad column to him on the Dems’ RESTORE Act co-written by Rush Holt, and that would be Repug (of course) Rep Pete Hoekstra (pictured). And Christy Hardin Smith thoroughly dissects Hoekstra and his mendacity here.

Update (to an update? I guess): On this and other matters, Hunter at The Daily Kos has some thoughts (gosh, I wish he'd tell us how he really feels).

Second, it turns out that another reason why Mark Everson resigned as the head of the Red Cross was because the “female subordinate” he was carrying on with was a married woman who is now also pregnant (buried in the story – wonder what would have happened if we were talking about someone appointed by a Dem?).

Stephanie Strom’s story in today’s New York Times also makes an important point about how the Red Cross board took 18 months to hire Everson and then chose to fire him for this; you could argue that a sanction would have been severe enough given all the time and money spent on this guy along with some reports that he was doing a good job. As much as I’d like to see Everson pilloried, I wouldn’t encourage that if it compromised the organization’s effectiveness.

So now the board is trying to find someone familiar with non-profit and humanitarian efforts, to the point where the name of former General and Bushco sycophant Colin Powell has been floated (sorry, but he looked the other way on Iraq, and even though he’s a different species from Dubya’s “inner circle,” he’ll be tarred the same way from now on – and does he have that kind of experience anyway?).

Why not ask this guy just above on the right instead?

I Thought You Were Already There, Mike

It looks like the “aw, shucks” Repug presidential candidate is at it again, based on this other excerpt from the presidential debate last night.

Sure, the notion of “sending Hillary Clinton to Mars” was a clever line to work wingnuttia all into a froth, and then of course, Huckabee got all serious…

"Whether it's the medical technologies that saved many of our lives and the lives of our families, it's the direct result from the space program," he said. "We need to put more money into space and technology exploration."

Um…OK, Governor “Razor Blades” (Huckabee does at least offer a smiling face to his lockstep right-wing orthodoxy, though, as Hendrik Hertzberg notes here in this week’s issue of The New Yorker).

The problem, Mike, is that the head of your party refuses to properly fund the agency (as noted here), with Dem Senator Barbara Mikulski and Repug Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Richard Shelby trying to secure supplemental funding.

As the story tells us…

"Based on current projections, we will not be able to meet the 2014 milestone originally called for when President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration," (NASA Administrator Mike) Griffin said during the first of three hearings held last week on NASA's 2008 budget request.

The White House is seeking $17.3 billion for NASA for 2008, or a 6.5-percent increase over the agency's current budget, which is the same amount it was in 2006. When compared to what NASA was expecting to get for 2007 before Congress decided to keep most non-defense programs funded at their 2006 levels rather than tackle a pile of unfinished spending bills, NASA's 2008 request represents a 3.1 percent increase.

Regardless of how NASA's budget request is framed, congressional Democrats, and even a few Republicans, said last week that it is too small to cover all that NASA needs to get done.

"NASA has too many responsibilities and not enough resources to accomplish them all," said Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W. Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee. "Although the administration gave you a reasonably high budget request compared to many other domestic discretionary programs, it really is not sufficient."

House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said during his committee's NASA hearing March 15 that the U.S. space program is "headed for a train wreck" without additional money. "I will not kid you that it's going to be easy to get the funding you are asking for in this year's request, especially if the White House remains disengaged," he said.

…

While Griffin did not point out that the White House also has failed to increase NASA's budget at the pace it promised back in 2004 forcing the agency to make unpopular cuts to its aeronautics and science programs, several lawmakers did.

"I think it's clear we have a budgetary situation that bears little resemblance to the rosy projections offered by the administration when the president announced his Vision for Space Exploration three years ago," Gordon said.

Oh, and regarding Dubya’s “Vision For Space Exploration,” more information is available here (reflecting his usual lazy “commitment” to just about anything including the recent farce in Annapolis, pretending to be engaged just long enough to generate a photo op or two; his problem and ours, though, is that we saw through this long ago).

Update: Paul Krugman posted this on Huckabee earlier and weighs in on the Repug debate here (Actually looking for common sense? My God, man, whatever would "the base" say about that?).

Today's Boneheaded Fred Thompson Moment

From here…

The candidates were asked by YouTube user Leroy Brooks from Houston, Texas if "this flag right here (the Confederate rag flag) represents the symbol of racism, a symbol of political ideology, a symbol of Southern heritage — or, is it something completely different?"

"I know that everybody who hangs the flag up in their room like that is not racist," said Thompson, who has played up his southern roots while campaigning in South Carolina. "I also know that for a great many Americans it's a symbol of racism."

Thompson added that, "as far as a public place is concerned, I am glad that people have made the decision not to display it as a prominent flag, symbolic of something, at a state capitol."

But the Confederate flag in South Carolina's state capital is in a very public place — located on the Statehouse grounds along Gervais Street in Columbia, next to the Confederate Soldier Monument.

Some posts just write themselves.