Why we need a Department of Homeland Security

Tip of the hat to my buddy Rod for this one.

Molasses disaster? Can molasses kill people?Yes, a molasses tank in Boston exploded with great force and flooded the streets with a huge wave of molasses. It killed 21 people, crumpled the steel support of an elevated train, and knocked over a fire station.


Molasses disaster scene

John Mason gives us the details of The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919

Smerage had just told his assistant to finish loading the last car when a low, deep rumble shook the freight yard. Then the earth heaved under their feet and they heard a sound of ripping and tearing—snipping of steel bolts (like a machine gun)—followed by a booming roar as the bottom of the giant molasses tank split wide open and a geyser of yellowish-brown fluid spouted into the sky, followed by a tidal wave of molasses.

With a horrible, hissing, sucking sound, it splashed in a curving arc straight across the street, crushing everything and everybody in its path.

Less time than it takes to tell it, molasses had filled the five-foot loading pit, and was creeping over the threshold of the warehouse door. The four loaded freight cars were washed like chips down the track. The half-loaded car was caught on the foaming crest of the eight-foot wave and, with unbelievable force, hurled through the corrugated iron walls of the terminal.

The freight house shook and shivered as the molasses outside, now five feet deep, pushed against the building. Then the doors and windows caved in, and a rushing-roaring river of molasses rolled like molten lava into the freight shed, knocking over the booths where freight clerks were checking their lists.

Like madmen they fought the on-rushing tide, trying to swim in the sticky stuff that sucked them down. Tons of freight—shoes, potatoes—barrels and boxes—tumbled and splashed on the frothy-foaming mass, now so heavy the floors gave way, letting tons of the stuff into the cellar. Down there the workers died like rats in a trap. Some tried to dash up the stairs but they slipped and fell—and disappeared.

As the fifty-eight-foot-high tank split wide open, more molasses poured out under a pressure of two tons per square foot. Men, women, children and animals were caught, hurled into the air, or dashed against freight cars only to fall back and sink from sight in the slowly moving mass.

High above the scene of disaster, an elevated train crowded with passengers whizzed by the crumbling tank just as the molasses broke loose, tearing off the whole front of the Clougherty house and snapping off the steel supports of the "L" structure. That train had barely gone by when the trestle snapped and the tracks sagged almost to street level.

The roaring wall of death moved on. It struck the fire station, knocked it over on its side and pushed it toward the ocean until it fetched up on some pilings. One of the firemen was hurled through a partition. George Leahy, engineer of Fire Boat 31, was crushed to death under a billiard table.

In the Public Works Department, five men eating their noonday meal were smothered by the bubbling, boiling sludge that poured in upon them.

Up at fire headquarters, the first alarm came in at 12:40 p.m. As soon as Chief Peter McDonough learned the extent of the tragedy, he sounded a third alarm to get workers and rescue squads.

Ladders were placed over the wreckage and the firemen crawled out on them to pull the dead and dying from the molasses-drenched debris.

Amidst a mass of bedding and broken furniture, they found the body of Mrs. Clougherty—killed when her house collapsed. Nearby lay the body of "Peter."

Capt. Krake of Engine 7 was leading his men cautiously along the slippery wreckage under the elevated when he saw a mass of yellow hair floating on a dark brown pool of molasses. He took off his coat and plunged his arms to the elbows in the sweet sticky stream. It was Maria Di Stasio, the little girl who had been gathering firewood.

Over by the Public Works Building, more than a dozen horses lay floundering in the molasses. Under an overturned express wagon was the body of the driver.

Fifteen dead were found before the sun went down that night and six other bodies were recovered later. As for the injured, they were taken by cars and wagons and ambulances to the Haymarket Relief and other hospitals.

Now then, don't you hope they find a suitable replacement for Tom Ridge soon.

Our Brave Comander in Chief

Patrick Nielsen Hayden reports that Bush will not address the Parliament in Canada because he's afraid of being heckled. As Patrick says:

We have a President who’s afraid of being heckled. By Canadians.
This is part of showing the world how strong we are, right?

A Quagmire in the sand

The US death toll in November has at least tied the monthly record at 135 and the US admits that the Iraqi Security Forces aren't cutting it. So how do you spell sandy quagmire? Iraq seems to work. Some 20 months after the invasion the death toll is still increasing, sounds a lot like Vietnam to me. The Iraqi army and security forces are not effective and there is no indication they will be anytime soon. Sounds a lot like Vietimization to me. I guess the only question remaining is how many more American soldiers and Iraqi civilians have to die before we just pull out like we did in Vietnam. I'm sorry that the 1200 plus Americans have died for nothing but it's time to get the hell out now before 100s or 1000s more are added to that total.

Jazz has more with some predictable reactions from the delusional right.

Digital Thinking in an Analog World

Juan Cole has a post today on the divide between "liberals" and "conservatives" on the Iraq insurgency and the storming of Falluja. As he correctly observes the difference is whether one sees the world in terms of shades of gray or black and white. We all know too well that George W. Bush is a good V evil digital kind of guy as are the people he surrounds himself with. Digital thinking is what we see in the "new conservative" movement with George W. Bush as their messianic leader. One old time conservative who has fallen from grace, Paul Craig Roberts has gone as far as to compare the new conservatives with the Hitler brownshirts and suggests that their is nothing "conservative" about them.

....To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."

What the new conservatives and Hitler's brown shirts have in common in delusional digital thinking. As both Dr. Cole and Mr Roberts observe this delusional digital thinking is responsible for the complete mess we are in Iraq. Paul Craig Roberts says:

It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion? Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?

Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.

And Dr Cole explains the reality:

The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of "bad guys," who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them. In fact, as Mao noted, guerrillas swim in a sea of supportive civilians. The US military slides suggest that now that the bad guys have been taken care of, the civilians can be won over. That this outcome is highly unlikely does not seem to occur to them.

The Bush administration has shown it is unable to admit it was wrong anymore than religious leaders can admit that their dogma might be flawed. Digital thinking by it's nature becomes religious and the religious are not easily un-converted. I fear it will take many more deaths before the tragedy in Iraq will end but end it will like the Vietnam war over 30 years ago.

The Red Cross Don't Know Squat

...or so sayeth the Bush administration. Hat tip to The Agonist, who points out:

A Pentagon spokesman said Monday that Red Cross officials have ``made their view known'' that the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounts to torture.

Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said, ``It's their point of view,'' but it is not shared by the Bush administration.

Taken from the AP.

Additional information in these items.

NYT's - Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo and Military Panel Orders 17 More Detainees to Remain Held

Taking them at their word, it would seem that the second edition of Bush will not only not swerve towards a more open, moderate foreign policy, but will, in fact, tell unpatriotic, evil organizations like the Red Cross to go screw themselves.

Quote of the day

The quote of the day, yes I know I only have a quote of the day once or twice a week, is from Atrios guest poster Hecate

".....And now that our election is over, even Pakistan has announced that it's no longer looking for bin Laden. Will he become the new Loch Ness monster? Will future generations wonder whether or not he even existed?...."

Osama bin Forgotten, wasn't he the guy that actually was responsible for 911?

Not so alien life forms

Fungus among us

It has been a cool damp fall here in the Pacific Northwest so lots of mushrooms and other fungi. This alien looking life form is about the size of a silver dollar. I took the picture in the forest near Portland.

Where have all the conservatives gone?

Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest has a post on Paul Craig Roberts commentary, Whatever Happened to Conservatives? in CounterPunch.

[. . .] Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it.

[. . .] Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy.

[. . .] Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak this way."

I had a post here a couple of weeks ago on another Paul Craig Roberts commentary.

The Real Cost of the Iraq War

We have had over 1200 American Soldiers die in the Iraq quagmire. While that seems to be a small number to those of us who have not directly suffered how does it really compare to past wars? Brian Gifford at the WP gives us an idea in The Costs of Staying the Course and points out that the numbers are misleading.

But focusing on how few military deaths we've suffered conceals the difficulty of the mission and the determination of the forces arrayed against the American presence in Iraq. A closer look at these deaths -- 1,232 as I write -- reveals a real rate of manpower attrition that raises questions about our ability to sustain our presence there in the long run.
To better understand the difficulty of the fighting in Iraq, consider not just the current body count but the combat intensity of previous wars. During World War II, the United States lost an average of 300 military personnel per day. The daily figure in Vietnam was about 15. Compared with two per day so far in Iraq, the daily grinds of those earlier conflicts were worse than what our forces are currently experiencing.

On the other hand, improved body armor, field medical procedures and medevac capabilities are allowing wounded soldiers to survive injuries that would have killed them in earlier wars. In World War II there were 1.7 wounded for every fatality, and 2.6 in Vietnam; in Iraq the ratio of wounded to killed is 7.6. This means that if our wounded today had the same chances of survival as their fathers did in Vietnam, we would probably now have more than 3,500 deaths in the Iraq war.

Moreover, we fought those wars with much larger militaries than we currently field. The United States had 12 million active-duty personnel at the end of World War II and 3.5 million at the height of the Vietnam War, compared with just 1.4 million today. Adjusted for the size of the armed forces, the average daily number of killed and wounded was 4.8 times as many in World War II than in Iraq, but it was only 0.25 times greater in Vietnam -- or one-fourth more.

Lets look at those numbers, nearly 8 wounded for every fatality and in many if not most cases these are permanent maiming injuries. The victims may still be alive but will spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair. If the ratio of wounded to killed was the same as Vietnam would there be even less support for the war? Would the American people put up with three times the fatalities?

Clipping the poodle

Jazz has a good post on Tony Blair over at Running Scared you should check out. Will his position as Bush's lap dog cost him his job? It should.

Note
If posting is light today it's because Blogger seems to have a bug and posting is real slow.

US Fingerprints on Ukrainian Unrest

We can't topple an unsavoury regime at home but the US is pretty good at doing it elsewhere. US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev.

But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Can you imagine what an outcry such foreign involvement in the US election process would cause?
It's slick and one of the few bi-partisan activities around these days.

The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.

US pollsters and professional consultants are hired to organise focus groups and use psephological data to plot strategy.

Well, I guess it beats pre-emptive military strikes.

Research Grant

This guy may have the right idea.

Research

Get off yer arse

Good advice to anyone who complains about a problem but then doesn't actually do anything to help resolve it. Today I'd like to draw your attention to somebody in Iraq who is doing exactly that. There have been continual reports of a total lack of medical supplies for doctors and hospitals in Fallujah to treat the wounded since the U.S. assault. Raed in the Middle, an excellent Iraqi blogger, has been collecting contributions and has now purchased over $2,000 US in antibiotics, saline, and general surgical supplies and is shipping them to the general hospital in Fallujah.

These include:

(Saline Solutions)
Normal Saline...................25
Glucose Saline..................25
Dextrose Salina.................25
Ringer Solution.................12
Mannitol........................60

(Antibiotics, Post-surgery injections, and Burn Ointments)
Roxef injection.................5
Infla-Ban.......................2
Gentamed........................1
Flagyl infusion.................120
Claforan injection..............135
Flamzine........................20

(Miscellaneous)
Cotton..........................50
Syringes........................1000
Gloves..........................1000
Surgical Gloves.................100
Alcohol.........................120

Unfortunately, as we see in this follow-up post, his transport volunteers have been unable to reach the city with the supplies so far because we have the roads blocked. They are still trying, however.

Way to go, Raed.

The Ownership Society

From The Corpus Callosum

Ownership Society: noun, 1. A society in which, if you do not own anything, you are not a part of the society; 2. A form of social organization patterned after the popular board game, Monopoly ®, as promoted by members of the faith-based community.

This is from an excellent post, The History and Philosophy of the Ownership Society. You really should go read the entire thing but here a a couple of snips to wet your appetite.

....Any form of government that has too much power, is dangerous. That seems pretty obvious. What may be less obvious is the fact that this depends upon a resolute separation between church and state. It also depends upon a system for the distribution of wealth.

From time to time, the leaders of the United States of America seem to forget the principles of its foundation. Allowing Religion to govern politics carries with it a grave danger. Note that I make a distinction here between Religion, on the one hand, and religious principles, on the other. There is nothing wrong with borrowing religious principles to enrich one's political views. But to allow organized Religion to influence politics is to promote too great of a concentration of power. The same idea applies to economics. Having a strong middle class, an accountable upper class, and an upwardly-mobile lower class is necessary for the prevention of an unfettered concentration of power.

Now, we have an Administration that embraces the influence of Religion, effectively escape accountability, and seeks to widen further the gap between rich and poor.........

One means of increasing the wealth gap, and thus increasing the concentration of power, is to have what some have called the Ownership Society (O.S.S).

"Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security and dignity and independence."
--George W. Bush, November 3, 2004

Yes, ownership can bring those benefits, but is the Ownership Society the way to do it, and does it do it without unacceptable risks? I've stated before that politicians should not be allowed to make claims that they cannot prove. This is a good example. The Ownership Society is an idea whose time has come -- and gone, back in the sixteenth century.

This is a very long post but a must read for anyone who thinks feudalism is a bad idea and isn't too excited about the end of civilization or the world itself in the not too distant future. Take the time and give it a read.

The real threat to the US

In a Crisis towers over the dollar W Joseph Stroupe paints a not very rosy picture of the future of the dollar and hence the United States. He begins with an interesting analogy comparing the dollar to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I'm not going to repeat that here but it's worth the read. He then goes on to explain the threat to the dominance of the dollar.

Is international support for the dollar and for US policies eroding? Yes, it most certainly is. A powerful case can be made that it has been US policies and actions since September 11 that have resulted in a powerful upswing in terrorism worldwide along with an equally powerful elevation in Middle East instability resulting in sustained crude oil price hike and a resulting dollar decline, both of which are threatening to render serious damage to the big Asian economies. Firm international support for the dollar is certainly flagging. The largest Asian central banks have gone on record that they are curbing their purchases of US debt. And they are also diversifying their huge reserves, steadily moving away from the dollar. The risks have simply become too many and too serious.

International fears of a disorderly, or possibly even a catastrophic, decline in the dollar have been pointedly heightened. Asian central banks are being forced by the varied and serious risks to hedge their bets, not wanting to be ill-prepared in the event of a disorderly decline in the dollar. Russia is also steadily decreasing the percentage of its reserves denominated in dollars, moving toward a level of 50:50 split between dollars and euros. Russia is the key player here, the one the entire world is intently watching. It alone can play the key role in either restoring the flagging international support for the dollar, or completely undermine its remaining support, precipitating a vertical collapse.

Did you catch that," Russia is the key player here"; Russia has the potential ability to bring the US to it's knees like the old Soviet Union never could.

President Vladimir Putin has stated both publicly and privately that invoicing Russia's crude-oil and gas exports to the European Union in euros instead of in dollars makes very good sense for both Russia and the EU. Putin is known to have very close relations with "old Europe", primarily Germany and France. His statements and those of German and French leaders have even on occasion drawn attention to the fact that US global dominance fundamentally rests on the fact that the dollar is the international currency, and that if an exit from the dollar were to occur in the sphere of global petro-transactions, the effect would be seriously to undermine that global dominance. Furthermore, a number of oil-exporting countries have already gone on public record as to their preference to make an exit from petro-dollars in favor of petro-euros. They have indicated that if Russia begins such a move to petro-euros, they will rapidly follow Russia's lead. The net effect would be a rapid international abandonment of the dollar as the international currency, which would in turn "bring down the towers" of the heavily debt-ridden US economy.

The real threat to the US is not al Qaeda or Saddam's mythical WMD but the US government itself.

Federal Reserve Board and government policies over the past 20 years or so have been extremely shortsighted, leveraging the economy's future stability and strength by means of large and perpetual deficit spending.
....[snip].......
Fed and administrative policies have caused a pointed and massive ballooning of very risky forms of public and private debt, all built upon the structural framework we call the dollar. One such form of debt is the massive selling of treasury notes to foreign central banks - most notably to the big Asian economies. Another is the Fed policy of "prolonged monetary accommodation", meaning keeping interest rates at artificially low levels, printing new money at the rate of nearly $1.5 trillion per year and the massive creation of easy credit.

In the past three to four years, debt encouraged by such policies has mushroomed almost beyond imagination. So, in effect, there now exists a mountainous load of debt concentrated within the upper sections of the US economy, where it cannot easily be neutralized to the ground level in an orderly fashion. How much of such massive weight can the framework, the dollar, carry and support before the structure caves in?

Update
Steve Soto has an interesting twist on this.

Take a little trip without going anywhere

It's a sunny day up at Mt St Helens. Click on the above picture to see an updated image of the volcano. It's still growing, one dump truck load of new material every minute. Earthquake activity has increased the last 2 days but they are not sure what that means.

British asking questions

The British are asking questions about the wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq, Relatives fear for forgotten war wounded. They are forgotten, much as the wounded US soldiers are forgoten in an attempt to hide the true cost of the war in Iraq.

Nearly 3,000 British soldiers have been evacuated from Iraq to Britain for medical reasons since the beginning of hostilities there last year, The Observer can reveal.
The news will raise concern that the true cost of the British involvement in the war is being hidden. British forces have so far suffered 74 fatalities, details of which are released by the Ministry of Defence. But, in contrast with the Americans, the number of British soldiers wounded on the battlefield is not made public. Modern medical techniques and the widespread use of body armour mean around six men are wounded for every one killed.

The British government, like the Bush administration, realizes that if the true cost of the war was known the already sagging support of the citizens would dry up. How about them "moral values" you red staters?

Some wisdom from the delusional haze

Thomas Friedman remains in a delusional haze still believing that the War in Iraq can still be won, but out of that haze comes some wisdom.

The Bush team early on compared the fall of Saddam's statue in that Baghdad square with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wrong. The Berlin Wall was a completely artificial barrier that had no organic connection to the society it was repressing. Once that wall was removed, the free-market, civil society and democratic traditions that were already there in places like East Germany, Poland and Hungary could resurface. All we had to do was get out of the way.

In Iraq, and in Palestine, when Saddam and Yasir Arafat toppled over like walls, their disappearances did not leave behind civil societies yearning to be free, united and democratic. Saddam and Arafat were products of their societies more than we want to admit - not artificial impositions.

In the long run their departures are huge opportunities. But in the short run they have left behind two pots that are boiling over - two highly tribalized societies, full of pent-up problems, with few civil society institutions or consensus leaders. They left behind two huge rebuilding challenges. The Bush team helped remove the lids off both these pots. But the first rule of cooking and warfare is: Never take the lid off a boiling pot unless you also have a strategy for turning down the heat. President Bush had a lid-removing strategy only. He's been improvising on the heat part ever since.

Did you get that, "Saddam and Arafat were products of their societies more than we want to admit - not artificial impositions." He is absolutely right. The problem in the middle east since the 1920's has been a complete ignorance of the society and the culture by those in the US and Europe who are in power. In addition, the western power brokers have had no interest in learning about the culture only in changing it. Unfortunately, the majority of the people in the middle east don't want to change. The arrogant ignorance of the Bush administration is not new only more obvious. Colin Powell told Bush about the Pottery Barn rule, maybe he should have told him about the boiling pot rule as well.

The delusional haze in Friedman's world seems to be getting a bit thinner. Even he thinks it's becoming increasingly unlikely that Bush will find the heat controls. I for one never had any doubt that the pot would boil over. Now it's time to get out of the way so we won't get burned anymore by splashing boiling water.

Red State "Moral Values"

We all know about hypocrites like the thrice divorced, drug addict Rush Limbaugh talking about "moral values", but what about the Red States themselves? Well David Markham over at Markham's Behavioral Health helps us out there.

• Red states have much higher alcohol fatality rates than blue states

  Montana tops the list with 1.22 deaths followed by South Carolina with 1.17.
  
  The safest states to drive in as far as alcohol related fatalities are concerned are New York with a rate over three times better than Montana at .36, Maine with .35, Utah with .30, and Vermont with .28.
  
  The top 24 most dangerous states to drive in are all Red states
  
  Seven of the least dangerous 10 states are Blue States.
  
  Over 2/3rds of the the alcohol related fatalities in the United States occur in Red states.



• Red states have much higher teen birth rates than blue states

  Another indicator we might take a look at is teen pregnancy rates, and I predicted that teen pregnancy rates would be higher in red states than they are in blue states and I found this to be overwhelmingly true. So, it makes one wonder whether these folks "walk" the "talk". It doesn't appear that they do. And while they rail against the northeastern and west coast "liberals", it appears when you look at the data that these "liberals" do walk the talk.
  
  So, I found in my analysis that the first 16 states with the highest teen birth rates are red states with Mississippi leading the way with 64.7 teen births per 1,000 followed by Texas with 64.4 births per 1,000.
  
  Nine out of ten the states with the lowest teen birth rates were blue states led by New Hampshire with a rate of 20.0 per 1,000 more than 2/3rds less than Mississippi and Massachusetts with a rate of 23.3 per 1,000. Clearly the "liberal states do much better on this indicator and other indicators of "family values" such as divorce rates than red states.

  In addition the Red States have a much higher divorce rate.

  ....divorce rates are higher in red states than blue states even though they passed resolutions banning gay marriage because they supposedly want to protect marriage which they don't practice.



• Red states perform 96% of excecutions in the US since 1976

  Evangelical Christians are given a lot of credit for swinging the election for George Bush and they claim to be pro-life and yet when we look at the data regarding capital punishment we find some very interesting things which contradict that claim.
  
  True pro life Christians espouse what is called a "consistent life ethic" meaning that they are opposed to all forms of violence against human beings including abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and militarism.
  
  So, a naive observer might think that Red states would be consistent in their pro life moral values and hypothesize that executions would be lower in Red states than blue states since they are pro life. The data tells quite a different story.
  
  In the United States capital punishment is a state issue and 38 states provide for capital punishment although six of those 38 states have not used it since 1976. Of the 32 states that have executed people since 1976 25 are Red states and 7 are Blue states so over 3 times as many Red states have executed people than Blue states.

It would appear that like their spokesman, Rush Limbaugh, the Red States are a lot better a talking the talk then they are walking the walk. I have thought all along that the anti-gay stand was about phobia and prejudice rather than "moral values".

New Focus

First, I'd like to apologize for the lack of meaty posts here on MEJ this week. What with the holiday and other things, (my best friend was just diagnosed with MS. I'm not looking for sympathy, but we have been busy with their family) I've been a bit swamped. However, I have also realized that I will probably not be abandoning my blog to nothing but trading recipies and pet pictures with Ron. Iraq is still raging, against all rationality, and it is a danger to everyone. That, and some local 2006 elections, are already building as issues of the day, and I think that we still have a lot of things that are worth working for to improve this country and expand the arena of public discourse. (Not that I won't toss in the occasional recipe.)

Tonight I put in a post on Running Scared about one of Ron's old posts that I think merits attention. The Kurds are going to turn into a huge factor in the Iraq mess, assuming we don't get smart and leave. And they will do so quickly. Stay on top of this people, and let your representatives know where you stand.

Surfer Beware

Spyware floods PCs from a single web page.

Visiting the wrong website can lead to an infestation of unwanted web advertising and monitoring programs, a new study reveals. And these intruders may make their way on to a hard drive by harnessing techniques used by hackers.

Ben Edelman, a researcher at Harvard University in Massachusetts, US, visited a website known to install “spyware” - monitoring programs which covertly install themselves onto a computer. He used a PC with a fresh installation of the Windows XP operating system and no software updates.

He discovered that 16 different programs quickly installed onto his PC without his consent. "My test PC was brought to a virtual stand-still,” Edelman writes in his report, published on 24 November. And the unwelcome programs all used the same software bug to worm their way onto the computer.

This is an illicit approach more commonly employed by computer hackers and virus writers to gain unauthorised access to a computer. The practice of using a software bug to access a machine is also illegal under US and European law.

"I was not shown licences or other installation prompts for any of these programs, and I certainly didn't consent to their installation on my PC," he says.

They are like fisherman trying to lure you in.

The website Edelman visited was one known to carry spyware. To get people to visit, the site’s authors normally post bogus links offering enticing content, such as free MP3 files. But a recent approach has involved using a web browser flaw to automatically load the content of the page via other types of site - like web discussion boards.

Edelman told New Scientist that several different types of spyware were installed. These include programs that generated advertising browser popup windows and redirected a browser to different sites and search engines.

Others added new icons to the PC's desktop, including links to pornographic sites and one program attempted to make the PC dial a premium-rate phone number.

The Yahoo Tool Bar now comes with an anti spyware feature that seems to work. It will scan your PC and alert you to any spyware and then remove it on request. The tool bar also gives you quick access to Yahoo Search which I use as much as I use Google now.

Iraq Now

Juan Cole has another of his always excellent pieces on the happenings in Iraq this morning. He has a recent poll of Iraqis' that says it all:

Iraqi Public Opinion
** Only 33 percent of Iraqis think they're better off now than before the war, as a Gallup poll discovered.
** Just 36 percent believe the interim government shares their values.
** 94 percent say Baghdad is more dangerous than it was before the war.
** 66.6 believe the US occupation could start a civil war.
** 80 percent want the US to leave directly after the January elections.

So much for improving the life of the Iraqi people and nation building. Jazz has a couple of good posts over at Running Scared this morning on the situation in Iraq.

• The first is on the Charles Krauthammer editorial, Writing Off the Sunni where he discusses the probability of civil war in Iraq.


• The second is about the Kurds, Meet the Kurds, a group that is ignored most of the time but should not be. I discussed the Kurds here back in June and suggested it was a mistake to ignore them.

Riding out this dark age

Red States, Blue States, Fascism and the Bush administraion, check out my post over at Running Scared

Quote of the day

"Excuse me, but if my sink is broken, I'll call a plumber. Not somebody who was married to a plumber."

This is from Jazz's post on Hillary Clinton, Hillary, Bright and Dark. This is a post that should be read by all progressives. You may not agree with all of it but may agree with enough to realize that Hillary should not be the Democrats nominee in 2008. I really don't think she will be but my track record hasn't been that good the last few years.

Are You Ready?

Are you ready for this..........................



According to Wired News...............

This is what happens when your regime has a bunch of unnecessary wars and loses them, as the administration's cronies loot the treasury, in an orgy of self-righteous media propaganda.

Sound familiar?

Iraqi Elections????

Leading Politicians Call for Iraq Elections Delay

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Leading Iraqi political parties, including the two main Kurdish groups closely allied to the United States, called on Friday for elections scheduled for Jan. 30 to be delayed because of Iraq's widening violence.

Following a meeting at the Baghdad home of Adnan Pachachi, an influential, moderate Sunni leader and former presidential candidate, 15 political parties and groups signed a petition calling for the election to be put off for up to six months.

"The participants call for elections to be delayed and to be held within six months, allowing for changes in the security situation and completion of necessary arrangements in terms of organization and administration," the petition read.

Three interim government ministers attended the meeting and representatives from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) signed the petition.

I suspect it is likely that the Kurds and the Sunnis see that either the Shi'ites will be the winners or that Allawi will steal the election. I further think that the elections will go forward as planned. It will look like an election but will not be seen a legitimate by many or most of the Iraqis. If Allawi should manage to hold on to power, the hope of the Bush administration I'm sure, expect to see a general increase in violence. Should the Shi'ites win expect an all out civil war with the Kurds getting involved for the first time in addition to the Sunnis.

Health Care, The US V Spain

Atrios has an interesting anecdote on health care with some interesting statistics.

Spain spends about 7.5% of its GDP on health care. We spend about 13.9%. About 4% of our GDP is spent on a subset of health care called... "health care administration."

So, Spain spends 7.5% of it's GDP on state administered universal health care and the US spends 13.9% of it's GDP on a private health care system that covers fewer people all of the time including 4% of it's GDP on "administrative costs". So what does that do to the argument that a government administered health care system would be too inefficient?

Back to Reality

The holiday has passed, and sadly it's hard not to turn our attention back to some of the cold, hard facts of life. Fallujah in Pictures has been updated. I'll warn you ahead of time, don't click on this link right around the time you are eating your leftovers.

Photos from Thanksgiving day.

"25 days ago these men were alive."

The host strikes back at his detractors.

My position on our situation in Iraq is unchanged by the Holiday Spirit. We need to get the fuck out and we need to do it now.

We've even outsourced Radical Christian Wingnuts

From Majikthise, Christian death cults plague rural China

Amazing article: Violence Taints Religion's Solace for China's Poor [NYT]

HUAIDE, China - Kuang Yuexia and her husband, Cai Defu, considered themselves good Christians. They read the Bible every night before bed. When their children misbehaved, they dealt with them calmly. They did not curse or tell lies.

They did order a religiously-motivated hit on a fellow Christian...

The grisly details can be found here.Majikthise continues:

The NYT reports that dozens of underground Christian sects are vying for dominance in the Chinese countryside. Three Grades of Servants and Eastern Lightening are the two most influential cults, each claiming membership in the millions. Eastern Lighting is unusual in that it worships a female Jesus (nee Deng). These two cults are locked in mortal combat with each other, brutal Communist enforcers, and several smaller sects (e.g. the Shouters, the Spirit Church, the Disciples Association, White Sun, the Holistic Church, and the Crying Faction). Conversion tactics include kidnapping, torture, murder and mutilation. Players believe the apocalypse is imminent, except maybe the Communist Party. The one thing they all agree on is hating Falun Gong.

Note
Unknown to most, Christianity has a very ancient history in China dating back over 1000 years. The details can be found in a fascinating book by Martin Palmer, The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity.

Bush is not Hitler

Found this great quote from comedian Margaret Cho over at pdxleft

"Bush is not Hitler... He would be if he applied himself, but he's just lazy."

Farm Aid, Afghan Style, 2nd edition

About a week ago we discussed the opium based economy of Afghanistan in Farm Aid, Afghan Style. Now Robert Scheer has picked up the story in the LA Times and it's worth a read.

Why am I such a party pooper? Trust me, I desperately want to be like those happy-go-lucky folks in the red states who apparently think things are hurtling along just fine. Unfortunately, the facts keep bridling my optimism.

Take the United States' alleged great achievements in Afghanistan. Remember during the campaign how President Bush repeatedly celebrated the divinely inspired success of his administration toward turning Afghanistan into a stable democracy? "In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty," he said in the third presidential debate. "And I can't tell you how encouraged I am to see freedom on the march." As compared with Iraq, which Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" has aptly titled "Mess-O-Potamia," Afghanistan has claimed fewer American lives and taxpayer dollars, while managing to hold a presidential election since U.S. and warlord irregulars deposed the brutal Taliban regime three years ago.
........[snip]........
Well, truth is, freedom in Afghanistan continues to be on more of a stoned-out stumble than a brisk march. The Taliban has been driven from Kabul, but it still exists in the countryside, and the bulk of the country is still run, de facto, by competing warlords dependent on the opium trade --- which now accounts for 60% of the Afghan economy.

So we have a Democracy by war lords with an economy that is 60% illegal drug trade. No problem, sounds like Chicago during prohibition. So what about the Bush administration? Scheer sums it up pretty well:

Indeed, this administration came into office preoccupied by the war on drugs and indifferent to the war on terror. Before 9/11, even though Afghanistan was harboring the world's No. 1 terror suspect and his organization, the White House was so happy with the Taliban regime's drug-trade crackdown that Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in May 2001 May that the U.S. was extending $43 million in humanitarian aid to Kabul, under U.N. auspices, as a reward.

Now that it has the war on terror as a perfect excuse for such wildly risky fantasies as the wholesale remaking of the Middle East at gunpoint, winning the drug war in Afghanistan is no longer even on the White House's radar. Never mind that the drug trade is booming in Afghanistan and those who harbored Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are regrouping.

In the opium haze that threatens to swallow up Afghanistan's vaunted rebirth, it is only the illusion of progress -----not progress itself ---- that is being sold. Because the president has presented all this as a wonderful dream instead of a nightmare that Afghanistan has had before, it raises the question: Just what is he smoking?

What is Bush smoking indeed, and where can I get some? Oh, that's right, Afghanistan.

In Honor of the Holiday

I bring to you this completely random, turkey related link, Big Fat Turkey.

There's a big fat turkey on my gran'pa's farm,
and he thinks he's very gay.
He spreads his tail into a great big fan,
And he struts around all day.

You should hear him gobble at the girls and boys;
He thinks he's singing when he makes that noise.
He'll sing his song another way,
Upon Thanksgiving Day.

Have a good and safe holiday, everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving. I will be on the road and enjoying my family most of the day so no more posts until this evening.

Thankful for simple things

When I think that I have little to be thankful for I turn to Henry David Thoreau who reminds me of the simple things that are reasons to rejoice.


So here are some words from Henry:

"I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.
They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.
All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp. where a single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there".

Thank you once again Henry David Thoreau.

Update
After posting the above I went for a walk down at a park near here on the Tualatin River. During my 30 minute walk I saw 2 great egrets, a green heron and the most magnificent great blue heron I have ever seen. No owls, but I rejoiced and was thankful.

Is this a fucking joke or what?

Powell: 'Fraud and abuse' in Ukraine vote

"We have been following developments very closely and are deeply disturbed by the extensive and credible reports of fraud in the election," he added. "We call for a full review of the conduct of the election and the tallying of election results."

Powell said it is "still not too late" for the Ukrainian government to remedy the situation. He warned that the world is watching and urged it to "seize the moment."

Sorry, I'm speechless!!!!!

Dead-Checking

Soccerdad over at The Left Coaster has a good post on Dead-Checking, something the Marines are trained to do when they enter a building under hostile conditions. Go read it.
I will neither be critical of Mr Sites for taking and publishing the pictures or of the Marine who was only doing what he was trained to do to protect his own life and the lives of his fellows. This is what happens in war, it's not pleasant and the American people need to know that. The more you know about war the less likely you are to support it.

Hypocrisy thy name is Republican

I don't know why, but I have been so taken back by the unabashed hypocrisy of the Republicans making all sorts of racket about election irregularities in the Ukraine I have been unable to post. Well Jill, at Brilliant at Breakfast, has said it for me. Go check it out.

Making a buck on the nuttiest of the wingnuts

The "Left Behind" series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching."

Gosh, what an uplifting scene!

In Apocalypse (Almost) Now Nicholas Kristoff takes on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the "Left Behind" series. He makes several excellent points, the first of which is:

If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.

The second point he makes is that Apocalypse prediction is not a science:

For starters, it's worth pointing out that those predicting an apocalypse have a long and lousy record. In America, tens of thousands of followers of William Miller waited eagerly for Jesus to reappear on Oct. 22, 1844. Some of these Millerites had given away all their belongings, and the no-show was called the Great Disappointment.

In more recent times, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970's was Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth," selling 18 million copies worldwide with its predictions of a Second Coming. Then, one of the hottest best sellers in 1988 was a booklet called "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988." Oops.

Although Apocalypse prediction has a poor track record it can be lucrative:

Now we have the hugely profitable "Left Behind" financial empire, whose Web site flatly says that the authors "think this generation will witness the end of history." The site sells every "Left Behind" spinoff imaginable, including screen savers, regular prophecies sent to your mobile phone, children's versions of the books, audiobooks, graphic novels, videos, calendars, music and a $6.50-a-month prophesy club. This isn't religion, this is brand management.

So what happened to "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Mr. Jenkins told me that he gives 20 to 40 percent of his income to charity, and that's commendable. But there are millions more where that came from. Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins might spend less time puzzling over obscure passages in the Book of Revelation and more time with the straightforward language of Matthew 6:19, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth." Or Matthew 19:21, where Jesus advises a rich man: "Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. . . . It will be hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

I for one doubt that Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins believe that what they write is anything but their personal gravy train. I might be wrong, but I don't think so.

A lot said in a few words

James Wolcott has a short post that says a great deal about the American media and the American people.

Juan Cole, who kindly mentions me today, had a post yesterday rounding up the international protests against the U.S.'s Fallujah campaign. Clicking through the cable news channels, I've seen nothing about this, though they seem to have endless clock to replay the "basketbrawl," explore the ramifications of Dan Rather's retirement announcement, and flash the eBay auction listing for grilled-cheese Virgin Mother. So once again Americans are kept blinkered to how more and more of the world is rallying against us in condemnation. Anything, anything, to preserve our "innocence." Until the next time we lose it.

Digital Archeology

I am currently working on a project involving Tin Types I have several old and damaged examples that I am tasked to coax an image from. It is like looking back in time which makes it exciting. These examples probably date back to the late 19th century.



I start by doing a high resolution scan of the original and then adjust the contrast and brightness to create a viewable image. The next step is to digitally repair areas of damage which can take hours depending on the condition of the original. The final process consists of contrast and brightness fine tuning, image sharpening and tinting. The results are truly a window in time, a piece of history.

Things I Like About Bush

Do me a favor and don't just skip over this post because of the title. In an effort to be truly moderate and try to find some good in all sides of the equation, I have decided to spend part of my day, appropriately just prior to Thanksgiving, in thinking of some things I like about our recently elected president. Yes, I know, I could (and have) go on for days about failures in foreign policy, the environment, handling big business, civil rights and individual liberty, but there are two sides to every coin. I shall, here and now, name some things I like which Bush has done or is planning to do.

1. Redeployment of troops. Bush was, in fact, the first president to wrench himself out of a cold war mentality and propose a long term, drastic realignment of our forces. That's been needed for a long time. It's going to hurt some local economies in both Europe and Asia, but I'm a firm believer in putting America first. Centralizing a quick, mobile military in a smaller number of areas, and keeping more troops at home, (assuming we ever get our asses out of Iraq) can only be a good thing. Well done.

2. Restructure the tax code: This is pending, of course, but it desperately needs to be done. He may muff it, or he may come up with a functional plan that will result in corporations actually paying their fair share of taxes and making a reasonably equitable distribution of taxes among working Americans. If he does the latter, then he will have left something good behind when we are finally rid of him.

3. Fix Social Security: This has long been the "third rail of politics" and I give Bush credit for at least trying. The system is in shambles and will eventually collapse if corrective changes are not made. I don't think his current plan is viable, nor advisable, but it at least gets the discussion going, and more intelligent heads in Congress may hammer out a way to actually save the system. Good for him for at least trying.

4. ...

Ok... it was a short list. And most of it hasn't actually happened. But I tried.

It's time to take religion back from the haters, killers and temple money-changers

It's easy for pagans like me to put all Christians in the radical wingnut category. One of my favorite op-ed guys, John F. Sugg, who does the Fishwrapper column in Atlanta's Creative Loafing, is a Christian who is not a wingnut. His commentary this week, I am a Christian, too is a must read for all real Christians.

There's a bit of schoolin' that God-fearing folks in Cobb County and the rest of the nation should pay heed to as they cheer the creationist team in a federal lawsuit heard last week.

The legal spat, over a warning plastered in Cobb schools' biology texts that evolution is merely a "theory" and not a "fact," has the world press in a tizzy now that evangelicals are perceived as political 900-pound gorillas (probably not a great metaphor when talking about evolution).
[........]
Still, there is a "gol darn, I didn't know that!" lesson hidden in the Cobb evolution brouhaha, one that should be important to every Christian. It's a gem from the earlier "monkey" trial, the 1925 drama that starred teacher John Scopes, who challenged Tennessee's anti-evolution statute. The advocate for the religious side was William Jennings Bryan, one of the great men of principle in American history.
But, oh, heavens, Bryan was a died-in-the-wool liberal. He generally was described as a "populist," but in the parlance of the late 19th century, that meant liberal. Bryan volunteered in the Spanish-American War; that experience turned him into a fervent pacifist bitterly opposed to the nascent American imperialism. As Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state, he jawboned the 30 leading world powers to agree to a one-year cooling-off period before going to war -- no pre-emptive slaughter for Bryan.

Dubbed "the Great Commoner," he castigated the capitalists as enemies of common folk. Among his most ardent allies in a 1896 presidential bid was American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs.

In short, Bryan was a man who would have earned the scorn of Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Trent Lott. If he was reincarnated and ran today for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, Saxby Chambliss would air commercials putting Bryan's mug alongside Saddam's and Osama's -- just as he did to Max Cleland.

But hold on a minute. Bryan also was a fundamentalist Christian. At the Scopes trial, he thundered, "I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there." He was born again, he was an evangelical.
[.....]
Let's wind forward 79 years. Bob Jones III is president of the racist Bob Jones University in Greenville, a favorite haunt of George Bush. Jones, a storm trooper of the religious reich-wing vanguard that claims ownership of Bush, sternly admonished the president after the election, "You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." Ah, I get it. Bush & Co. own Christ.

The letter also underscores the message hammered home so successfully by the GOP during the recent campaign: Liberals despise Christ.That's a lie.

The example of William Jennings Bryan -- and millions of others -- makes clear that ultra-conservatives don't have an exclusive claim on Christ. It's time for Christians to start giving witness to that fact.
[.....]
I testify that I am a Christian........

[.....]
I don't pay heed to the false prophets such as Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye of the Left Behind books because Christ said to beware of charlatans claiming to know when He is coming again.

The "rapture" isn't in the Bible, so it's not in my theology. I find it hard to conceive of Jesus returning to save a few smug Pharisees such as Jerry Falwell while brutally slaying billions of my brothers and sisters. The heaven I believe in has ample room for all men and women of all faiths who seek God and try to live good lives.

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus said, "Not everyone who saith 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father ... ." He told us his Father's will was to be meek; to be peacemakers; to take care of the weak, the poor, the afflicted; to sheathe the sword.

I believe there is truth in every word of the Bible, but as Bryan said during the Scopes trial, "Some of the Bible is given illustratively." I also believe there is truth in other faiths' scriptures, and I study them, too....

[.....]
War is not a Christian value. I'm a Methodist, and our literature clearly states, "We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ."

In short, George Bush hasn't earned the photographic halo that our local gutless daily newspaper bestowed upon him on Nov. 5's front page.

The neutron bomb in the values debate -- the device that allegedly sunk John Kerry -- was gay marriage. I don't have the answers to questions about gays. Jesus didn't say a word about homosexuality, but he did say love your neighbor. That's enough for me.

What I do know is that gays don't threaten my marriage. The divorce rates are much higher in anti-gay Southern states than in gay-friendly Massachusetts and New York. Among Christians, the born-again variety has the highest incidence of divorce, according to a poll by Christian researcher George Barna. There are some lessons in those numbers.

The gay issue has been used solely to create fear and division, and as Jesus said, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation." Thank you, GOP legislators.

The reason, most agree, that divorce is higher here is because of the impoverishment of the South, much of it the result of Bush's enrich-the-already-rich economics. For a final personal belief, I think Jesus was on the money when he said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Pretty simple language.

So all you Radical Right Christian zealots, see what someone who has actually read the Bible and the words of Christ has to say. Maybe there is something there for you to learn, like the true meaning of Christ' message. Although I am not a Christian I have studied the actual words of Christ and found them to be a wonderful guide on how to live my life, that's why I'm a Liberal.
Cross posted at Running Scared

Time to get out of Dodge, Iraq that is! Part 2

Jazz has a post at The Left Right Debate this morning advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. As I discussed below this is the conclusion of a large number of pro war hawks as well. It is becoming fairly obvious that Vice President Dick Cheney should have listened to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney who said after the first Gulf War that trying to take out Saddam would have been a bad idea.
I don't know what the real motives for the invasion of Iraq were, I suspect they were many and conflicting but were certainly none of the reasons given. I suspect from the Cheney wing of the administration it was all about economic imperialism in general and specifically control of the oil. Rove thought it would be a great political move. All or most of the economic ends are no longer achievable and the invasion turned out to be a political bullet Bush had to dodge.
The United States is now The Problem in Iraq. Things will only get worse for the people of Iraq as long as we are there. It's time to say "Saddam is gone so we won" and get out as quickly as possible.

Time to get out of Dodge, Iraq that is!

The call for massive troop reductions in Iraq is not coming from the left but from the Hawks that supported the invasion of Iraq.

A growing number of national security specialists who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are moving to a position unthinkable even a few months ago: that the large US military presence is impeding stability as much as contributing to it and that the United States should begin major reductions in troops beginning early next year.

Their assessments, expressed in reports, think tank meetings, and interviews, run counter to the Bush administration's insistence that the troops will remain indefinitely to establish security. But some contend that the growing support for an earlier pullout could alter the administration's thinking.

Those arguing for immediate troop reductions include key Pentagon advisers, prominent neoconservatives, and some of the fiercest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Washington's policy elite.

Boy, do ya think? Maybe these guys have started reading some of the blogs from Iraq instead of watching Faux news. I don't know what pulling out will do for Cheney's imperialist ambitions but since they are either going to have to leave or send a lot more troops, which they simply don't have, I guess Cheney will have to lower his expectations. God I hate it when I'm right, this is exactly what I predicted would happen after the election several months ago. They will leave an Iraq in civil war and chaos but at least it will be the Iraqi's chaos and it really can't get any worse for most of the Iraqi people.

Spreading Democracy

From Bill in DC

I guess Karl Rove and the Bush/Cheney wing of the Republican Party have been teaching the Ukraine everything they know about "democratic" elections.
Winner Is Declared in Ukraine, and Opposition Declares Fraud

KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 22 - Ukraine approached a political stalemate today, as preliminary vote counts of the presidential runoff election indicated that Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich had won the race but international observers described widespread voting abuses and the opposition candidate forcefully refused to accept official results.

MORE

Letter to President Bush from California and the Blue States

I received the following via email, source uncertain.

Dear President Bush:

Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving you. California will now be its own country. And we're taking all the Blue States with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, all of the North East States, and the urban half of Ohio.

We spoke to God, and she agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, she's going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday. Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then. God is going to give us the Pacific Ocean and Hollywood. In addition, we're getting San Diego. (Sorry, that's just how it goes.) But God is letting you have the KKK and country music (except the Dixie Chicks).

Just so we're clear, the country of California will be pro-choice and anti-war. Speaking of war, we're going to need all Blue States citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight in Fallujah, just ask your evangelical voters. They have tons of kids they're willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.

So, you get Texas and all the former slave states, and we get the Governator and stem cell research. (We would love you to take Britney Spears off our hands, though. She IS from the south, right?)

Since we get New York, you'll have to come up with your own late night TV shows because we get MTV, Letterman, the Daily Show, and Conan O'Brien. You get... well, why don't you ask your people at Fox News to come up with something entertaining? (Maybe you should just watch Crossfire. That's a really funny show.)

We wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction. Seriously. Soon.

Sincerely,
California et al

Shooting the Messenger

See my post over at Running Scared on Kevin Sites, the photo journalist who filmed the marine shooting an unarmed man in a Falluja mosque.

Note
Be sure and check our Jazz's comment.

Update
Running Scared has an update from Kevin Sites own blog.

Brighten up your day

Take a moment to indulge in Tbogg, who reminds us:

Never have more kids than you can handle...or bury in the backyard without the neighbors getting suspicious

2008 Already

Jazz has a post over at Running Scared this morning, New York State of Mind, where he talks about a Rudy Giuliani and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton race in 2008. I don't see that as a possibility.

• Rudy Giuliani: Unless the Radical Christian Right finally discovers they are not going to get anything other than lip service from the Republicans and form their own "Flat Earth Party" no "pro choice" candidate could win the Republican nomination. Of course if that happens no Republican could win the Presidential election.


• Hillary Clinton: She does not have the support among the active Democratic base to win the nomination. There will be no one who will be enthusiastic enough to go out and knock on doors and give those $25.00 contributions that are so important to the Democrats.

In addition I not sure that someone from New York from either party could win.

Jazz mentions Olympia Snowe and John McCain all possibilities for the Republican Nomination. John McCain maybe although his pro Iraq war stance may be a negative for him by 2008 and he is pro life so he would have to make it clear how far he would push that issue. As for Sen Snowe, I don't see a woman from the NE in the top Republican slot for a long time. The corrupt Bush/Cheney wing are not going to give up the party without one hell of a fight.

On the democratic side Jazz mentions Al Gore. I have to admit big Al is looking better all the time. If he hits the fund raising and speech circuit early he might have a chance. We must not forget that the Democrats have their own "radicals", the Dean people and they are going to be insisting on a say.

What's Wrong with the Right post of the week

This post from The Left Right Debate debate gets the not so coveted MEJ What's Wrong with the Right award.

This week’s biggest wiener has to be NBC news reporter Kevin Sites who single-handedly managed to ruin the life of a young Marine, interfere with the combat strength of US forces and hand Al Jazeera another bit of propaganda.

Of course, Kevin shares the bun with the producers and other NBC pin-heads who decided to air his video of a Marine shooting an insurgent in the head.

As mentioned in a previous post, this is what happens when a “reporter” stops being an American and starts believing his own hype about serving the “public good.”

There is no bigger “public good” than the success of our military in war, you moron.

Look Kev, maybe if you spent less time worrying about your hair and more time understanding the role of a war correspondent in a combat zone, you wouldn’t be such a wiener.
Loveable Curmudgeon

I don't hear a lot from the Right about those who are being maimed and killed in Iraq for what is going to turn out to be nothing. Not reporting everything that goes on in a war is what governments like the old Soviet Union did. In a Democracy it is rarely in the "public good" to with hold information and this is no exception. As I have said before, I have a great deal of sympathy for this young man because I know that good people do bad things when their government wrongly places them in a bad situation. The fact is, he still has all of his limbs and he still has his life unlike the thousands who join the veterans of the Vietnam war who sacrificed for nothing. That's What's Wrong with the Right.

More on Evolution V Creationism

I had a post yesterday on the belief by 45% of Americans that the God created man 10,000 years ago as is and Jazz discusses it at The Left Right Debate. There are some good comments at Matt Yglesias' post on the subject. Check it out.

Note
a commentor on the post below corrected me, it was not 10,000 years ago but 6008 years ago, the exact date of creation being October 23, 4004BC according to Bishop James Ussher

Freedom To Starve

From Bill in DC
"Freedom" in Iraq apparently has a price, especially for the children, Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos

Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion
Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

It was supposed to get better:

The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country convulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents have grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services take lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to improve under American stewardship.

Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

The economy is a major factor:

"Things have been worse for me since the war," said Kasim Said, a day laborer who was at Baghdad's main children's hospital to visit his ailing year-old son, Abdullah. The child, lying on a pillow with a Winnie the Pooh washcloth to keep the flies off his head, weighs just 11 pounds.

"During the previous regime, I used to work on the government projects. Now there are no projects," his father said.

When he finds work, he added, he can bring home $10 to $14 a day. If his wife is fortunate enough to find a can of Isomil, the nutritional supplement that doctors recommend, she pays $7 for it.

As is usually the case in war it is the children who suffer. How about that for "Christian Values" you miserable hypocrites who have obviously never read the words of Christ.

Defining the Bad Guys

Along with some really shocking postcards from hell, Aunt Najma, author of A Star from Mosul, has posted a provocative discussion on her Iraqi blog today. She and her father had a conversation trying to determine who these people are who are attacking American and Iraqi forces, blowing things up, and raising all this mayhem. They concluded that there are four different groups responsible for all of the carnage and destruction; Jihadis, criminals, Ba'athis, and vandals.

Interestingly, and this is something I've wondered about since all of this began, her family views the "Jihadis" as earnest Iraqis who are simply trying to expel the invaders from their country. They view them as noble, "Robin Hood" sort of figures who give fair warning to civilians before attacking, not using mosques for military purposes, etc. If this viewpoint is really prevalent around Iraq, we have already lost the battle for the moral high ground.

While they divide them into two groups, they see the criminals and the Ba'athis in a similar light. They are either the prisoners that Saddam released early to throw the area into chaos, or the former members of Saddam's guard and government who are seeking to regain power. The striking part of this, to me at least, is how totally they separate the first category from the last. This is in direct contradiction to our country's publicly state position.

Last, they look at the vandals. This seems to be, in their view, people who are thieves, stealing what they can take, and others simply bent on random destruction and keeping the state of chaos going. Most interestingly in that section is who they list as examples of the "vandals."

The vandals who work for foreign countries (eg. America, Israel, Iran, Kuwait.. Or any other neighboring country): Their only aim is to make a status of horror and untrust, to threat the university teachers, doctors and the other valuable citizens of Iraq to make them go out of Iraq, they might even kill some of them. And to destroy the main power sources of Iraq, like oil pipelines, electricity stations and government's buildings. For example, the assassination of Margaret Hassan, if it's true!!

These are the people we are trying to "liberate" in this mess. The fact that they don't differentiate us from everyone else burning down their nation is a rather chilling message of the real fight we face in Iraq - and it's not just a handful of imported terrorists with RPG's. We've broken a lot more in this country than just their buildings.

Too ignorant for the 21st Century?

Almost half of Americans believe God created humans 10,000 years ago
This is according to a recent Gallup poll. (disclaimer: the head of Gallup is a no holds bared Christian Wingnut so this poll should probably be taken with a grain of salt) That's right, 45% of Americans think that God created humans 10,000 years ago while only 35% think that there is evidence to show that Darwin's theory of evolution is correct. It's no surprise that George Bush won since nearly 50% of the American people are still comfortably living in the 16th century and only one third seem to believe in science.

So tell us how you really feel Steve

Steve Soto tells us what he thinks of Tom Delay.

Shut up you fascist, thuggish little prick. DeLay is such a candy-ass whiner. Pelosi and the Democrats have gone easy on you.

I couldn't agree more Steve.

What Happened to my Sister?

Rose, who writes "Diary from Baghdad", has a recent update. She's losing track of people in her family, and their movements are becoming increasingly restricted in the city.

Today she called and said there was a tank in their street and they let them leave the house. She went with her 3 children to her husband’s uncle house which is the nearest to their house and they couldn’t go further. Her husband returned to their house to stay with his parents and his grand mother since she is a very old woman and have something similar to comma and can’t be moved. My mother called him to check if they are still OK, He said two rockets fell near them, the first one only two houses away and the second one fell on the house opposite to theirs.

Her blog is updated fairly regularly, and is well worth a look. Good luck, Rose. You'll be in our thoughts.

DeLay's power begins to ebb

It would appear that Tom Delay has lost David Brooks.

Tom DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it.

This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them.

Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.

Although I think Brooks assessment of the Republicans in Congress and Mr Delay himself is a bit too kind I think he is right about Delay's base of support rapidly eroding. The Republicans see DeLay as a scandal waiting to erupt. So why don't they do something now?

Why didn't more members get up and say something against DeLay?

There are several reasons. The most obvious is self-interest. DeLay and the leadership can take away your hopes of getting a chairmanship or a vote on your bill.
...............[snip].......
Finally, House Republicans did not rise up to denounce DeLay because while they know he represents some of the political tendencies they came to Washington to reform, none of them is pure enough to cast the first stone. They've all voted for the big deficits they vowed to combat. They've all watched the walls between the public servants and the private lobbyists get washed away.

But the Republicans do know that DeLay is just the guy who could bring the Republicans down and that he wants to be an old time political boss. As Brooks sees it a shift against DeLay has begun.

You could begin to hear a slight shift in Republican voices yesterday. Several were looking around and noticing that they have a very good and effective leadership team even without DeLay. Hastert has gone from being obscure to being beloved. Roy Blunt is efficient and smooth. Eric Cantor of Virginia is a rising star.

When people start gossiping about what the world would be like if you were gone - as Republicans are now starting to do with DeLay - you are in the first stages of political decline. It means that members start regarding you with a little less awe, and they start regarding your potential successors with a little more.

He doesn't face an immediate threat. But the next time a scandal licks up against him, DeLay will find his support is not as strong as he thought it would be. He'll turn around and find that his caucus has remembered its core values.

Of course the one thing Brooks didn't mention was that many of the Republicans in Congress are recipients of DeLay's dirty money but not even that may be enough to save the "Bug Man".

Virtuous Violence

Note The following is from Lew Rockwell.Com. For those of you who have not heard of it before it is a libertarian group and probably about the only thing we agree on is that the Iraq War is wrong and stupid and the administration of George W. Bush is wrong, dangerous and anything but virtuous.


Virtuous Violence Is Upon Us by Paul Craig Roberts

The United States is in dire straits. Its government is in the hands of people who connect to events neither rationally nor morally.

If President Bush's neoconservative administration were rational, the US would never have invaded Iraq. If Bush's government were moral, it would be ashamed of the carnage and horror it has unleashed in Iraq.

The Bush administration has no doubts. It knows that it is right and virtuous. Bush and the neocons dismiss factual criticisms as evidence that the critics are "against us."

People who know that they are right cannot avoid sinking deeper into mistakes. The Bush administration led the US into a war on the basis of claims that are now known to be untrue. Yet, President Bush and Vice President Cheney consistently refuse to admit that any mistake has been made. The chances are high, therefore, that the second Bush administration will be more disastrous than the first.

" The chances are high, therefore, that the second Bush administration will be more disastrous than the first." With the purges occurring in the CIA and at the State Department it is becoming obvious that Mr Roberts is probably correct. We discussed Bob Herbert's commentary this morning where he points out that there will be no one left to suggest the Bush/Cheney policy might be flawed. We will never know how much of a moderating influence Colin Powell had but there will be no disagreements now.

Mr Roberts concludes his piece with a look at those who support Bush and his Mid East policies. It is not a pretty picture.

Many Bush partisans send me e-mails fiercely advocating "virtuous violence." They do not flinch at the use of nuclear weapons against Muslims who refuse to do as we tell them. These partisans do not doubt for a second that Bush has the right to dictate to Muslims and everyone else (especially the French). Many also express their conviction that all of Bush's critics should be rounded up and sent to the Middle East in time for the first nuke.

These attitudes represent a sharp break from American values and foreign policy. The new conservatives have more in common with the Brownshirt movement that silenced German opposition to Hitler than with America's Founding Fathers.

Bush's reelection, if won fair and square, was won because 20 million Christian evangelicals voted against abortion and homosexuals. However, Bush's neoconservative masters will use his reelection as a mandate for further violence in the Middle East. They intend to set the US on a course of long and debilitating war.

There is no one left in the Bush administration, the CIA, or the military

Winning the Hearts and Minds

Another busy day so posting is slow. Head over to Jazz's place to find out how not to win hearts and minds in Iraq but how the right wingers think it is a good idea.

In an effort to bring everyone together for a unified, democratic Iraq, today we apparently raided a Sunni Mosque on their holy day as people were leaving services. Several were dead and another 40 detained. No weapons or explosives or other dangerous items were recovered, but our troops did manage to recover "a computer and books, including a Quran." This prompted some predictable responses in the blogosphere.

Go check it out.

Iraq Blogroll

Jazz has put together a blogroll of blogs from Iraq over at Running Scared. I'm not going to duplicate it here because I'm too cheap to get a paid version of Blogroll and too lazy to do it in HTML so head over there and check it out. You can get some great first hand accounts you won't see in the MSM.

Double Hit

Oil Jumps on fears of low reserves as the dollar dives on gloomy words from Greenspan. I guess we need another tax cut and another war.

Painful Prognostication

Following up on a post by Ron at Running Scared concerning the future of our endeavors in Iraq, it's worth taking a look at the always eloquent James Wolcott. Today he brings us an analysis of a long, but chillingly vital piece by professor Martin Van Creveld of the Hewbrew University in Jerusalem. Based on far too much experience in desperate war sitatutions, the professor's long essay provides a diagnostic look at how we have handled the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and where, based on his experience, he sees it going from here.

"...[He] who fights against the weak--and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed--and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force however rich, however powerful, however advanced, and however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat; if U.S. troops in Iraq have not yet started fragging their officers, the suicide rate among them is already exceptionally high. That is why the present adventure will almost certainly end as the previous one did. Namely, with the last U.S. troops fleeing the country while hanging on to their helicopters' skids."

Wolcott is forced to agree with him, and goes on to pontificate in his classic style.

So thick is the euphoria and triumphalism post November 2nd that I wonder if most of our media, never mind the bovine American public, have any inkling of how ghastily Iraq is going down the drain, and taking the American military with it. We've been so bombarded with "Failure is not an option" that few are willing to assert, as van Creveld and Lind do, that failure may not be an option but it damn well may be the outcome, and quicker than anyone contemplates.

Indeed. This is a lot of good reading to deliver to you, so I won't take up any more of your time with my blathering. Go give it a look.