Estate Tax

PSoTD has a series of posts on the Estate (Not A Death) Tax. Check em out.

September in Congress
They Get Letters
Quit Bringing Up The Family Farmers
Estate Tax: Arguments Progressives Should Remember
So-Called Sensible Estate Tax Reform

Lots of facts and arguments you need to know.

Mining Micronesia for Canon Fodder

With news like this...
Five GIs Killed by Roadside Bombs in Iraq

Five U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in two separate incidents in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday.

In the first attack Saturday around 1:40 p.m., a patrol hit a roadside bomb in the southern Dora neighborhood, killing a soldier from Task Force Baghdad, a statement said. Two others were wounded in that incident.

Later that evening, around 11 p.m., four Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in southwestern Baghdad.

....is it any wonder we hear this?
On Farthest U.S. Shores, Iraq Is a Way to a Dream

From Pago Pago in American Samoa to Yap in Micronesia, 4,000 miles to the west, Army recruiters are scouring the Pacific, looking for high school graduates to enlist at a time when the Iraq war is turning off many candidates in the States.

The Army has found fertile ground in the poverty pockets of the Pacific. The per capita income is $8,000 in American Samoa, $12,500 in the Northern Marianas and $21,000 in Guam, all United States territories. In the Marshalls and Micronesia, former trust territories, per capita incomes are about $2,000.

The Army minimum signing bonus is $5,000. Starting pay for a private first class is $17,472. Education benefits can be as much as $70,000.

"You can't beat recruiting here in the Marianas, in Micronesia," said First Sgt. Olympio Magofna, who grew up on Saipan and oversees Pacific recruiting for the Army from his base in Guam. "In the states, they are really hurting," he said. "But over here, I can afford go play golf every other day."

The ghettos of the big cities and the impoverished rural areas of the south can no longer produce the troops needed so the military has moved on to areas where conditions are even worse to find new victims for roadside bombs.

Blog Pick of the Week

This weeks blog of the week is Brilliant at Breakfast.
Jill is a daily read for me although on a few issues she may be a bit left of my views. Her posts are always well written and worth a read which is why she has had so much success in her first year.
As usual you will be able to find Jill by clicking on under QUICK LINKS over on the sidebar for the rest of the week and find her in my blogroll after that.

Previous Picks
CommonSenseDesk
PSoTD
Peak Energy(Australia)
sine.qua.non...
Balloon Juice

Oregon may have Karen Minnis....

...but at least we don't have Jean Schmidt.

We have been discussing Oregon's very own Republican wingnut, Karen Minnis but we should feel fortunate we don't have Ohio's Jean Schmidt. This woman is not only a wingnut but a pathological liar and a complete nut case. You can find the details at the following links.

• Jean Schmidt Is A Liar


• Jean Schmidt: Queen of the Talking Point


• Debate: Jean Schmidt vs Paul Hackett


• OH-02: Come Clean Jean!

If Ohio voters elect her over Democrat Paul Hackett on Tuesday it's time to just write them off.

Sunday Snark

OK, it was written on Friday.

From Badtux the Snarky Penguin, G-FATSO

Okay, so you already know that the Global War on Terror is over. And the terror won, of course. The Orwell Administration couldn't function without terror, after all.
So now they've re-named it to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. But sooner or later, someone is going to notice that "violent extremism" is an accurate description of Mad King George's regime (I mean, Mad King George has "only" killed some 100,000 or so innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians with his violent extremism).

It is clear that we need a better term, one that is accurate without being embarrasingly so. So this penguin, fortified with mind-boggling quantities of herring and alcohol, has endeavored to produce one, and come up with:

Global Fight Against Those Sitting on our Oil (G-FATSO).

I gotta add this penquin to my blogroll.

Hat tip to Rooks Rant

Oil, the Iraq Constitution and Civil War

Juan Cole explains this morning that Sunni Arab members of the constitution drafting committee are still rejecting language that would make Iraq a "federal" republic.

In practice, this language would formally acknowledge Kurdistan and perhaps Shiite federations of provinces in the south as having a good deal of autonomy and a claim on petroleum revenues from Kirkuk (the Kurds) and Rumaila (the Shiites). The Sunni Arabs do not have a developed petroleum or natural gas field and so would suffer from a federal arrangement that left some of the petroleum income in the provinces rather than having the central government take it all and redistribute it. It increasingly looks as though the only way the committee can meet its August 1 deadline for informing parliament that it will be done by August 15 would be to simply over-rule the minority Sunnis with an up and down vote. The bitterness this step would leave in Sunni mouths might make it inadvisable.

The Kurds have always been the wild card in Iraq. We first discussed the situation here back in June of 2004 and Jazz had a good post at Running Scared last November. The Kurds will accept nothing but autonomy and the Sunnis' will find that unacceptable.

al-Hayat: Sunni parliamentarian Mishaan Jiburi, on a visit to Damascus, warned that for the Shiites and Kurds to run roughshod over the Sunni Arabs and their concerns would result in civil war. He said they would be driven in even greater numbers into opposition to the government and the foreign occupation. Among the points they most cared about, he said, were that Iranians must not be mentioned as a recognized Iraqi minority in the constitution. He said it was also important to distance the government from religion.

His concerns were echoed by five clan leaders from the Fallujah area meeting with US officers. They said a federal Iraq in which the Kurds got the oil of Kirkuk and the Shiites the oil of Rumaila in the south, would leave the Sunni Arabs with "the desert sands of Anbar."

Deputy speaker of the house and member of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, Hussein Shahristani, told al-Hayat on Saturday that some combination of southern, largely Shiite provinces may form a confederation within the framework of a federal Iraq. He said as many as ten provinces or as few as two could join this confederation (which would be analogous to the "Kurdistan" formed from northern provinces by the Kurds). He said most leading politicians had already agreed to this step, with the exception of a few who thought it might prove too much of a complication in Iraqi politics at the moment.

Shahristani also said that it was absolutely unacceptable for the Peshmerga paramilitary of the Kurdish parties to remain an armed force in Kurdistan. He said that defense would be the prerogative of the central government in Baghdad.

Adding fuel to the fire is the Iraqi governments new "Friendship" with Iran, not something that will please the Sunnis.

Two nations to sign security pact

TEHERAN: Calling a connection with Iran an ``inseparable part of Iraq's foreign relations,'' Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met Iranian officials here on Saturday in the first visit by an Iraqi Premier to this Shia Muslim-dominated nation since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in 2003.

It should be clear that if the Iraqis have a constitution by the August, 15 deadline it will be without Sunni support or participation. That spells civil war making it a place we want US troops even less.

Happy first blogiversary

A happy first blogiversary to the ever brilliant Jill's Brillaint at Breakfast. Head over there and say hello and get a little smarter.

Acting like they're earning their pay

The week past was notable primarily in that Congress left to go on vacation. (An argument could, I suppose, be made that this is when they are at their best - at least they can't do any damage.) Before shutting off the lights, however, our elected representatives appeared to realize that we pay them to pass legislation and perhaps they should do some of that before going home. The wapo described the activity as a "flurry of GOP victories" since many of the bills were items that Bush and the Republicans have been pushing for. A closer look would seem to indicate that there isn't much for either party to cheer about.

After years of partisan impasses and legislative failures, Congress in a matter of hours yesterday passed or advanced three far-reaching bills that will allocate billions of dollars and set new policies for guns, roads and energy.

The measures sent to President Bush for his signature will grant $14.5 billion in tax breaks for energy-related matters and devote $286 billion to transportation programs, including 6,000 local projects, often called "pork barrel" spending. The Senate also passed a bill to protect firearms manufacturers and dealers from various lawsuits. The House is poised to pass it this fall.

So the three major pieces of "work" accomplished dealt with the following:

• The long awaited energy bill
• The highways and transportation bill
• Protection of gun manufacturers from certain liabilities

We can knock the last one off the list quickly. I commented on that previously, and I support this mostly bipartisan effort. Roughly half of the Democrats voted against it, but I think that there will always be some Democrats who can't get past the mindset of "Guns are bad, mmmkay?" so that will never change.

The energy bill was, in some respects, a "victory" for Bush, Cheney and their cronies. This was Cheney's baby from the outset, and the bill does deliver 14.5 billion dollars in tax cuts, primarily to those poor, financially strapped Big Oil companies. However, in order to get it passed, they had to drop the ANWR drilling proposal and include at least some lip service (though not much cash) for alternative energy sources. I think Trent Lott summed up the GOP's lack of enthusiasm for this watered down bill the best.

"Finally, by pure exhaustion, we're going to stagger across the finish line, emaciated and without much to brag about," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said in an interview. "The only way we got the energy bill was to pick a lot of the meat out of it. This is not a particularly impressive bill."

The last piece was the highway bill. Nobody in Congress ever wants to oppose these bills because they are seen as "bringing money home" by our elected representatives. This one was no different, with more than 6,000 local cash Care packages spread out across the various states. Most people refer to this as "pork" but I find myself less outraged about highway spending in the pork arena than many other, far more notable excesses. Keeping up the infrastructure is important. It facilitates transportation (and thereby all other industry), creates jobs on a local level, and at least gives us the security blanket feeling that the government is actually doing something.

All in all, Congress rushed to pass a lot of paper before going on their summer break. Sadly, all of this "work" looks to be, as usual, mostly hat and not much in the way of cattle.

Innovation and Creativity

This is all about what you can do if you only try and don't listen to people who tell you something can't be done. This is about my nephew Gabe. Now Gabe is interested if spiders and insects. Gabe is also interested in photography so it is only logical who would like to photograph spiders and insects. Gabe is also on a limited budget which didn't allow for a digital SLR and expensive close up lenses.
Gabe does have a decent 6 megapixel fixed lens digital camera. Gabe also had the optics from some old video and still cameras. Even though he has no formal education beyond high school Gabe designed and constructed add on lenses for his fixed lens camera using those old optical component's, film cans, cardboard tubes, rubber bands and tape. The results speak for themselves and the pictures are technically as good as I have seen.

His love of the subject matter shows as well as I would also consider many of them art. To see more of Gabe's work head over to spiders, insects and other pics.
The United States and the world have a lot of problems. With a liitle innovation and creativity they all have a solution. Gabe should be an example to all of us. Don't listen to anyone who tells you there are no solutions but most of all don't listen to the polticians that tell you there are no problems.

Cross posted at Just Pictures

Quote of the Day

The Quote of the day comes from Republican John Cole.

Somehow, the argument that I should vote Republican because ‘the Democrats are worse’ is becoming less palatable by the minute.

He's talking about how much CAFTA is going to cost the US Treasury. Go read the entire thing.

Some thoughts on the SCOTUS

I don't often agree with anything Joe Gandelman's guest poster, Greg Piper, writes but in his post this morning, John Roberts to Supreme Court: Die or Leave, he does say some things that I can't really disagree with.

I know the notion of an eternally-independent judiciary is an attractive concept to most people, who have little love for our eternally squabbling and risible politicians. Reason even ran a libertarian ode to judicial activism in its July issue. But about the only remaining divide between the High Court and Congress now is the justices never face the voters. They squabble just as much, create bizarre "tests" to determine constitutionality just as suspect as anything Congress has done, and sometimes explicitly reject Congress' own explanation of what its laws mean. This shouldn't be a conservative/liberal dispute, since the Rehnquist court has often stretched policy issues like crime and due process beyond congressional authorization.

We progressive had no objection to these judicial activities when they were going in our favor. Those days are over and the "activist" judges are wingnuts from the right like Scalia. One suggestion by none other than Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was a fixed term.

"Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence," Mr. Roberts wrote. "It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges."

He went on to argue that lifetime tenure was more defensible when judges limited themselves to strict application of the Constitution. When judges strayed into social policy-making, he said, they made a case for limited terms. "The federal judiciary today benefits from an insulation from political pressure even as it usurps the roles of the political branches," he said.

The US Constitution is not a sacred document. Not only have realities changed but the meaning of words has changed over 200 plus years making re-interpretation necessary. The decisions of the Supreme Court are inevitably based on politics and public opinion. With lifetime appointments the politics and opinions of the country change much faster than the Supreme Court. Perhaps a limit is something to consider and it should be a non-partisan decision.

Iraq and Selective Amnesia

I have often been at odds with Michael Kinsley of late but he has a good commentary in The Washington Post today, An Essential in Iraq: The Ability to Forget.

The United States marched into Baghdad two years ago terribly excited to start a process known as "de-Baathification," which sounds like a 10-year-old boy's fantasy but which meant purging representatives of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the government and other seats of power. But as the country sank into chaos, the occupiers came to realize that it's hard to run a country without all the people who ran it last week. So forget about that. Baathists, except for those at the very top, are welcome to resume where they left off.

There is one person who is still demanding that the Baathists all be purged.

And who is this anti-American troublemaker? It's Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi spent decades in exile, meddling a bit from afar but devoting most of his energies to financial chicanery. For a few months in 2003 we forgot Chalabi's little foibles and promoted him as the Nelson Mandela of Iraq. Why? Because the Bush administration liked what he was saying about how the weapons of mass destruction covered the streets of Baghdad like manna from heaven. That turned into an embarrassment, and it's been "Ahmed Who?" ever since.

So the guy who is as much responsible for the debacle in Iraq as anyone is still causing trouble.

He then goes on to point out the hypocrisy of the Bush administrations outrage over the charges against Saddam.

The charges against Hussein that Juhi is hearing concern the slaughter of 150 men and boys in a town called Dujail. This is supposed to be a warm-up for the prosecution of Hussein and others for the notorious Anfal campaign against the Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s, where poison gas was used and the usual number given for deaths is 150,000.

I say "notorious" because Anfal -- and especially the use of poison gas against civilians in a town called Halabja in 1988 -- became crucial parts of the Bush administration's defense of the war after the initial justifications (such as all those weapons of mass destruction) collapsed. But the notoriety is recent.

Two decades ago, we knew all about these events, yet we did nothing and said almost nothing. In 1983, as Iraq was starting to use mustard gas against Iranian soldiers, Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad for President Ronald Reagan and apparently made one veiled reference to this amidst a lot of suck-uppery sending the larger message that we were tilting in Iraq's favor in the Iran-Iraq war. After Halabja, the State Department worked actively to convince the world that Saddam Hussein was not responsible.

Mullah Frist in 2008.....NOT

John Cole thinks Bill Frist's change of heart on stem cell research may be the result of polling data indicating there isn't one chance in hell that he will be the nominee in 2008. Frist may be a political hack but he's not stupid and may see that the influence of the religious right wingnuts is a falling star.
UpdateJoe Gandelman has a good run down on the reactions to Frist's move.

Plame, Rice and Saturday Night Massacres

Roger Morris explains how Condoleezza Rice is right in the middle of the Plame outing in the long article, Condoleezza In the Middle. I suggest you go read it in it's entirety for the details but I'll give you this.

For those who know the invariably central role of the NSC Advisor in sensitive political subjects in foreign policy and in White House leaks to the media as well as tending of policy, especially in George W. Bush's rigidly disciplined, relentlessly political regime, Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame's identity. None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity. Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting.

And just as Judge Fitzgerald's investigation getting very close to the heart of the Bush administration Steve Soto reports that it's looking more and more like a Nixonian like Saturday Night Massacre is in the works.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey has announced that he is leaving the Bush Administration. Why is that a big deal? Because Comey is the man who installed Patrick Fitzgerald as the special counsel investigating the Valerie Plame outing, and has acted as a buffer between Fitzgerald and the political hacks at the top of the Department of Justice and the White House.

While Nixon didn't get away with his Saturday Night Massacre there is every reason to believe that Bush could. At the time of Watergate the House and Senate were not loaded with Nixon cultists. Today's House and Senate are stacked with win at any cost, the country be damned Bush cultists. We dodged a constitutional crisis during Watergate, we may not be so lucky this time.

Since I still don't have a cat..July 29nd edition

It's Friday Giant Owl Blogging and peaches


Godzilla in the Peach Orchard. We picked 30 pounds peaches this morning and they are wonderful.

Plame leak update

One more thing you might want to check out is David Corn's piece this morning on the Fitzgerald investigation.

Which means that when Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told at least two reporters (Novak and Time's Matt Cooper) that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA they were disclosing classified information. Case closed. The Moskowitz letter also suggests that if a crime had been committed in this case it might not necessarily be a violation of the hard-to-violate Intelligence Identities Protection Act. There are other laws concerning the unauthorized release of classified information. Perhaps Fitzgerald is working those angles as well.

Picking Peaches while Rome Burns

I'm going to go pick peaches today so don't expect much. Here are a few things you might want to check out.

Over at AmericaBlog John Aravosis has the latest on Dubya's fickle finger here, here and here.

David Ignatius admits that things are pretty screwed up in Iraq but he's not quite ready to give up yet.

Mullah Frist does a flip flop on stem cells.

And Pluto has a big brother.

Happy Birthday.......

....to Carla at Preemptive Karma

Carla also weighs in on the DLC

Lewis and Clark

I'm a bit bored with current events and politics so here is a diversion.
For this really cool diversion a Middle Earth Journal hat tip to the Cactus Blog.

While exploring the North American Continent Lewis and Clark discovered a lot of new plants. The wonderful picture on the left is one of many that can be seen at The Lewis and Clark Herbarium.

The CAFTA sellouts

1. Melissa Bean (IL)


2. Jim Cooper (TN)


3. Henry Cuellar (TX)


4. Norm Dicks (WA)


5. Ruben Hinojosa (TX)


6. William Jefferson (LA)


7. Jim Matheson (UT)


8. Greg Meeks (NY)


9. Dennis Moore (KS)


10. Jim Moran (VA)


11. Solomon Ortiz (TX)


12. Ike Skelton (MO)


13. Vic Snyder (AR)


14. John Tanner (TN)


15. Ed Towns (NY)

More nonsense from the DLC

Over at The Left Coaster Marie has another example of how out of touch the Democratic Leadership Council is with the Democratic Party Base. Earth to Hillary, forget 2008.

Hunter at Dkos doesn't think much of the DLC either. He gives us three reasons why the DLC is detested by "real" Democrats.

• The more corporate-tailored elements of the DLC agenda are frequently at odds with Democratic "heartland" interests.


• The DLC "framing" of candidates and issues is so forcefully homogenized as to render those candidates and issues politically and morally translucent.


• The DLC has a remarkable track record of losing.

It's pretty amazing that an orginzation with "a remarkable track record of losing" is trying to tell Democrats what they need to do to win.

And Digby chimes in:

What this points up is the fact that the DLC badly misunderstands the reasons why the grassroots reject their leadership. It's only partially to do with policy and has almost nothing to do with ideology. It's about tactics and strategy. We see their split-the-difference "third way" approach -- particularly their rhetoric --- as a form of appeasement that may have made sense in a time of shared power but that is now self-defeating and dangerous.This is particularly so in light of the demonstrable ruthlessness of the opposition and their willingness to go far beyond any normal political limits.

Related Posts

More on the Democratic Leadership Council
There must be joy in Republican Land

Cable Tabloids discover Latoyia

After a week of activity by bloggers like my buddy Jazz at Running Scared and the All Spin Zone, the cable tabloid networks having finally discovered a the non white missing woman, Latoyia Figueroa. It was all over MSNBC and FOX this morning. I noticed that hits for my one post on Natalee Halloway are way down. I guess after two months that story has gotten a bit old and there were no new missing white women available.

When it's not right to blame the industry

If you happen to be one of the more liberal readers of Middle Earth Journal, be prepared to dislike me. (I used to be a Republican, as you may recall, and obviously we aren't going to agree on everything.) The New York Times has an editorial this morning criticizing a bill being shepherded through Congress by Senator Doctor Mullah Bill Frist. Now, I'm no fan of Frist's, but the bill in question deserves, in my opinion, a fair examination rather than simply dismissing it because of its sponsors. It deals with providing certain immunities to gun manufacturers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun violence. The Gray Lady launches a rather typical attack.

No Immunity for the Gun Industry

At a time when Congress is grappling with critical measures, including military and energy issues, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has seen fit to catapult a special interest bill for the gun lobby to the head of the legislative queue. The bill would grant gun manufacturers, distributors and sellers an unreasonable degree of immunity from civil suits by families or communities harmed by gun violence. It would even require that lawsuits already filed be dismissed.

Although the firearms industry argues that it should not be held liable for the criminal acts of those who buy or steal guns, all too often the dealers, distributors or manufacturers contribute to the problem by failing to safeguard their inventories or police their own sales responsibly. The victims of their negligence deserve the right to sue.

In their opening volley, the Times is pulling a bait and switch here. Even they seem to admit that it's wrong to hold the manufacturer liable for the actions of those who buy or steal the weapons. However, they then go on to lump three different groups of people into one big mess. "Negligent dealers, distributors or manufacturers." Take a good look at the editorial's next paragraph and see if you can spot how this bait and switch is being used with a "tug at the heartstrings" example.

Most Americans would surely applaud the legal settlement made in the Washington-area sniper case. The dealer that "lost" the sniper's assault rifle, and some 200 other guns as well, and the rifle's manufacturer paid $2.5 million to two surviving victims and the families of six victims who died. Yet the pending bill, according to legal experts, is so restrictive that if it had been in effect, this lawsuit would have been barred.

Lovely. "Most Americans" as I'm sure you'll agree, feel a lot of sympathy for the victims of the sniper. "Most Americans" are probably pretty angry at a shady, profit motivated gun dealer who let dangerous firearms escape the system for some cold hard cash. But if they stopped and thought about it, I think that these "Most Americans" would agree that the culprits in this suit are the sniper and the shady dealer. Sadly, the shady dealer didn't have "deep pockets" so the lawyers went after the manufacturer.

What is the responsibility of the firearms manufacturer? They have to produce weapons (for which there is a great demand) which are:

• Functional
• Safe to operate
• In compliance with all applicable legal limits on size, power, clip size, etc.
• Able to be fitted with safety features such as trigger locks.

Once the manufacturer has accomplished all of those tasks, there really isn't much more that can be done. Guns are dangerous, but they are not illegal (for most "ordinary" weapons) and there is a demand for them. When some person down the line gets one of these guns in their hands, they have the ability to injure or kill another human being. No matter how safely and perfectly the gun was designed, a person of only moderate intelligence can figure out how to operate it and injure somebody.

If we still have manufacturers out there who are producing unsafe weapons that tend to blow up in your hand when you are using them, or which can not be fitted with safety guards to keep children, etc. from hurting themselves, then by all means they need to be brought into compliance, by a lawsuit if need be. But if they are producing weapons that meet all of the above criteria, (and from the reports I've read, all the major manufacturers are) then it's time to stop blaming the manufacturers and going after them because that's where the deep pockets are.

Go after the criminals. Go after these dealers and gun show salesmen who are arming people without the proper background checks and documentation. Stop persecuting the manufacturers for creating something which is perfectly legal and in demand. I have a kitchen knife at my house, designed for slicing bread, which has a seven inch blade. If my wife suddenly decides that I've failed to take out the trash once to often and plunges it into my chest, it's a fairly good bet that I'll be dead. Should my family sue the knife manufacturer? No. Knives are legal. Stabbing somebody with one is not.

Go read Lance

Here

Minnis can redeem herself

Over at Preemptive Karma Carla explains how The Wicked Witch of East County has a chance to redeem herself. My guess is her wingnutery will prevail over even political expediency and she won't.

War, Iraq and Terrorism

Avedon Carol has a post on the Iraq conflict today that is worth a read. She begins with this:

Something I don't think right-wingers can possibly understand is that focusing on the politics rather than the reality of the war is a form of pain-relief.

I think that there may be some truth in this but I think often, especially in this administration, they simply don't give a rat's ass, after all it not them or their families that are being maimed and killed and there is the potential to make lots of money and control even more. It is probably more accurate in describing the ordinary citizens who go along with wars rather than the right wing hawks who push aggresion.

She perfectly sums up my feelings about the Iraq war.

I was always against the invasion for a number of reasons, but one was the knowledge that to make this project at all worthwhile, there were many things that needed to be done that this administration would not do. Yet even I had no idea just how badly they would screw the whole thing up. It didn't have to be this way.

Indeed, I never in my wildest dreams nightmares imagined how badly they would screw it up.

She continues with a discussion of Robert Pape's thoughts on terrorism which we covered a couple of weeks ago here. Go check out the entire post, it's worth a read.

Paper Bags "Greener" than Plastic

Are you really being green when you say "Paper Please"? According to this post from The Oil Drum, maybe not.

.... Franklin and Associates examine the amount of energy needed to produce the bag, and the pollutants resulting from the bag throughout its lifespan. Also, a single plastic bag carries about 2x the amount of goods that go into a paper bag. However, stores typically use improper bagging techniques with plastic bags (update: I take this to mean that they double-bag and possibly don't put as many items in the bag as they could), so to be as realistic as possible, all of the evaluations below compare 2 plastic bags to 1 paper bag. You'll see that even using the 2-to-1 plastic-to-paper ratio, plastic comes out as less energy intensive.

• According to the EPA in 2002, Americans currently recycle 0.6% of plastic bags and 19.4% of paper bags.


• A single paper bag uses the energy equivalent of 550 kJ of wood as feedstock. It also uses 500 kJ of petroleum and 350 kJ of coal for process energy. The total amount of energy used by a single paper bag is 1,680 kJ.


• Two plastic bags use 990 kJ of natural gas, 240 kJ of petroleum, and 160 kJ of coal. The energy used for two plastic bags is 1,470 kJ. Two plastic bags use 87% the amount of energy used by one paper.


• All of these calculations take into account current recycling rates, and paper bags need a recycling rate of at least 50% to be more energy efficient than twice the number of plastics.


• Plastic bags, having less mass than paper, produce less solid waste. At current recycling rates two plastic bags produces 14 g of solid waste while one paper creates 50 g.


• Atmospheric waste and waterborne pollutants are also higher for paper bags.

Well it doesn't look to good for paper does it? The above does leave out a couple of pesky details.

1. Paper bags are biodegradable


and

2. Trees are a renewable resource

We probably need to take a look at Franklin and Associates, Ltd when we judge the above data.

Nothing up their sleeves... Presto!

If you ask the government for a bunch of documents, and they hand over 80% of them, it's a safe bet that there's nothing of interest in any one of them. The only good bits will be found in the ones they don't want to fork over. As the vettting process of John Roberts continues, the Bush administration has announced that they won't be handing over several sets of documents. What sort, you ask? Probably some top secret, homeland security stuff, right?

Nope. They're going to keep Roberts' tax returns secret.

The Bush administration will not give Senate investigators access to the federal tax returns of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., White House and congressional officials said yesterday, a break with precedent that could exacerbate a growing conflict over document disclosure in the confirmation process.

Although nominees to the high court in recent decades were required to provide their three most recent annual tax forms, the administration will neither collect such documents from Roberts nor share them with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the officials said. Instead, the Internal Revenue Service will produce a one-page summary.

Now, I suppose this must be "legal" somehow, or they wouldn't have even tried it. But who gets elected or appointed to anything these days without handing over their tax returns. People want to see what you earned, who was paying you, and that you paid at least a modicum of the taxes you owed.

Hrmmm, Precious. We wonders what the tricksy, nasty hobbit could be hiding in his dusty old tax returns.

He never would have made it this far if he hadn't been paying his taxes. And there's no real secret about who he's been working for, unless he was doing some moonlighting work for some seriously hardassed neocon interests and not mentioning it.

I'm betting it's more along the lines of donations that he made, and then took a tax credit off for cheritable contributions. But rest assured, it's something, or they would have just given them up.

Good Grief

Personally, I would pack up an move, because I would not want to live in a city where NOT ONE PERSON THOUGHT THIS WAS A BAD IDEA DURING THE PLANNING STAGES. I don’t think it takes a PhD. in cultural sensitivity to recognize that this might, just possibly, be perceived as offensive.

Head over to Balloon Juice for the details.

Iraq Cut and Run?

May of us have thought that the US will begin pulling out of Iraq in the next few months. There are two reasons why the Bush administration would do this. The first is political; the war is already unpopular, becoming more so daily and there are mid term elections in a little over a year. The second is logistical; within the next year the US is simply going to run out of bodies.

We read in The Washington Post today that:

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and the top U.S. commander in Iraq Wednesday and discussed specific steps to speed preparations for the withdrawal of some of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq beginning as early as next spring.

The tone of statements by Rumsfeld and Jafari, as well as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, suggested a heightened urgency to planning for the U.S. troop reduction, despite the continuation of lethal daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq.

Jim Lobe tells us:

Growing pessimism about averting civil war in Iraq, as well as mounting concerns that the U.S. military presence there may itself be fueling the insurgency and Islamist extremism worldwide, has spurred a spate of new calls for the United States to withdraw its 140,000 troops sooner rather than later.

Although resolutions to establish at least a timeline for withdrawal have so far gained the support of only about a quarter of the members of Congress, the absence of tangible progress in turning back the insurgency is adding to fears on Capitol Hill that the administration's hopes of stabilizing the situation, let alone giving birth to a pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Arab world, are delusory.

Many are now saying that remaining in Iraq is not the best option.

Thus, on July 15, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch published a column in the Times calling for a "prompt withdrawal plan," with the initial drawdown set to coincide with the Iraqi elections scheduled for Dec. 15, that would include a timetable for reducing the scope of military operations, while maintaining a "regional quick-reaction force" in reserve, as well as ongoing intelligence and training programs.

At the same time, the U.S. would urge the Iraqi government and its neighbors to recognize their common interest in Baghdad's peaceful evolution without external intervention and commit itself to an economic assistance program to Iraq "so long as it stays on a peaceful path" and to the wider region that will encourage cooperation.

More on the Democratic Leadership Council

While Hillary Clinton was calling for:

a cease-fire among warring factions of the Democratic Party, arguing that a united front is needed to reverse the party's recent electoral defeats and halt the advance of conservative Republican ideology.

The DLC's Will Marshall and Peter Ross Range were busy firing shots at the "liberal" Democrats. The Republicans are beside themselves.

Will Marshall basically said that liberals are unpatriotic and Peter Ross Range said the following:

All these freedoms are clearly bad stuff in the jihadists' playbook, so they used their own freedom to try to take away that of others.

Nobody said it better than London Mayor Ken ("Red Ken") Livingstone, a leading leftist. Though openly critical of Tony Blair for his support of the war in Iraq, Livingstone was eloquent and unequivocal about the terrorists. Pointing out that London had been chosen for the 2012 Olympic Games partly because 300 languages are spoken in his city, Livingstone said the jihadists' "cowardly attack" was aimed not "against the mighty or the powerful, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners. Black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindus and Jews, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, class, religion whatever."

If only we could hear such moral clarity from our own party's left! Instead, we heard from Daily Kos, the ur-liberal ur-blogger, whose blog included a cheer for, among others, outcast Labourite George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Blair's Iraq policy -- and was roundly denounced by virtually all British politicians. "See, Democrats? That's how it's done," lectured the blogger ignorantly. Likewise, Matt Yglesias, an articulate liberal voice at The American Prospect, who belittled Marshall Wittmann's call for moral clarity as a phrase never used "unironically" anymore. No wonder Democrats are perceived to have a values problem.

This is something I would expect to hear from the Republicans and Bush cultists.

It's time to let the DLC know that they don't represent Democrats. That goes for you too Hillary.

Update
Atrios has more atrocities. The DLC is saying the Democtats must turn into Republicans to beat them.

I have some additional ranting over at Running Scared.

Why the neocon's "Democracy" will fail in the Middle East

The dreams of the neocons to bring western style democracy to the Islamic middle east will fail. To understand why all we have to do is look at the Evangelical Christians in the United States. In a recent post Carla over at Preemptive Karma told us abut her sister.

My sister and I have very different views on raising children.

She: Evangelical Christian homeschooling children. Exposing them on a regular basis only to children who inhabit their church. There are no outside sports or extracurricular activities. All of their literature and video viewing is carefully screened to make certain it doesn't contradict with the belief system. They are not to socialize or associate with "unbelievers", except us. And only because they have to sometimes as we're family.

While there may be some secular Muslims in the middle east the majority feel just as strongly about their faith as Carla's sister feels about hers. These devout followers of Islam do not want their children exposed to what the western world has to offer.

Worse than Watergate and far more dangerous

As it turns out when John Dean's book, Worse than Watergate was published over a year ago we weren't even aware of the worst yet. John Dean spoke primarily about the secrecy surrounding everything that goes on in the Bush administration and the collection of lies and deception that led to the debacle in Iraq. A year later we have a conspiracy not to cover up a botched political dirty trick but a conspiracy to cover up the outing of not only CIA agent Valerie Plame but an entire CIA operation. Nixon didn't get away with his attempted conspiracy because the Republicans in the House and Senate put the good of the country before partisan politics. It's different in the House and the Senate now and that's what makes it more dangerous than Watergate. Both the House and the Senate are loaded with wingnut Bush cultists like Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas. As I reported below his reaction to the Plame investigation is to investigate the investigator, Judge Fitzgerald. To lawmakers like Pat Roberts protection of the Bush administration is much more important than the safety and well being of the Nation or it's people. In this toxic atmosphere there is a dangerous possibility that Bush will succeed where Nixon couldn't and escape the consequences of his vicious and evil actions.

Why does Senator Pat Roberts Hate America?

Now that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is about to nail some high ranking members fo the Bush administration for crimes related to the outing of Valerie Plame and you are a Bush cultist is the Senate what do you do? If you are a cultist who is also the head of the Senate inteligence commitee like Senator Pat Roberts you investigate the Special Prosecutor.

The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could hold hearings on the use of espionage cover soon after the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess, said Roberts spokeswoman Sarah Little.

Little said the Senate committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.

This should come as no surprise, this is obviously a partisan witch hunt by Fitzgerald, a conservative Republican appointed by Bush himself.

Why do they hate us?

Maybe it's because we're pretty busy hating them.

Two thirds of Muslims consider leaving UK

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have thought about leaving Britain after the London bombings, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.

The figure illustrates how widespread fears are of an anti-Muslim backlash following the July 7 bombings which were carried out by British born suicide bombers.

The poll also shows that tens of thousands of Muslims have suffered from increased Islamophobia, with one in five saying they or a family member have faced abuse or hostility since the attacks.

So, if two thirds of a major segment of your population was at the point they were considering leaving your country, you might find this cause for concern, no? Maybe a bit of introspection? There's hope that it might happen in the UK, but not if the majority of leaders are thinking along the same lines as the "open minded" Betsy Newmark. Her take on the poll?

I'm sure that the rest of Britain isn't heartsick about the thought of over half their Muslim population leaving.

I'm sick of hearing about the terrible time that Muslims are having as people regard them with suspicion these days.

So... just keep on asking questions like, "Why do they hate us?" every time there is a terrorist attack. The Bushies can keep chanting about how they hate our "freedom" and they "hate democracy" all they like. That's so far from reality that it's not even funny.

It's about Israel. It's about Iraq. It's about Afghanistan. And it's about "freedom loving" citizens of "free nations" looking down their nose at any funny looking, darker skinned people who wear turbans. And it's not getting better.

The Bush Administration Hates Free Market Environmentalism

I don't normally even bother to read John Tierney but title of today's column caught my eye, The Sagebrush Solution. Much to my amazement it's a good column. It seems an environmental group and some ranchers in Utah have reached an agreement that both are very happy with. The only problem is the Bush administration isn't happy.

Even though Mr. LeFevre and other ranchers along the Escalante willingly sold their grazing permits, local and state politicians are fighting to put cows back on those lands. They say their communities and the ranching way of life will be destroyed if grazing lands are allowed to revert to nature, and they've found sympathetic ears in the Bush administration.

The Interior Department has decided that environmentalists can no longer simply buy grazing permits and retire them. Under its reading of the law - not wholly shared by predecessors in the Clinton administration - land currently being used by ranchers has already been determined to be "chiefly valuable for grazing" and can be opened to herds at any time if the B.L.M.'s "land use planning process" deems it necessary.

But why should a federal bureaucrat decide what's "chiefly valuable" about a piece of land? Mr. Hedden and Mr. LeFevre have discovered a "land use planning process" of their own: see who will pay the most for it. If an environmentalist offers enough to induce a rancher to sell, that's the best indication the land is more valuable for hiking than for grazing.

You'd expect Republicans to welcome this use of the market to resolve an environmental dispute, with a voluntary, mutually beneficial transaction instead of a political or legal fight leaving winners and losers. It's a classic case of the free-market environmentalism that Gale Norton espoused before becoming interior secretary and overseer of the B.L.M. lands.

The new policy may make short-term political sense for the Bush administration by pleasing its Republican allies in Utah and lobbyists for the ranching industry. But it's not good for individual ranchers, and it ensures more bitter range wars in the future. If environmentalists can't spend their money on land, they'll just spend it on lawyers.

What can I say? Even a wingnut like Tierney thinks they are wrong.

Fuck the Democratic Leadership Council.......

....and the Clinton they rode in on.

So, the DLC is having a convention; a Google News search comes up with one article and that's mostly about Hillary. The Republican Lites are once again saying that the Democrats have been loosing because we have not been listening to them and have drifted too far from the center. It seems to me the Democrats have been loosing because the DLC types have been in charge. Marshall Whitmann (Bull Moose) posted today on how wonderful the Democratic Party will be when he and the DLC manage to turn it into the Republican Party that used to be. Will Marshall has attacked the real Democrats for not being patriotic. Digby handles that one pretty well so head over there to see Will cut to ribbons.

The reality is the Democrats have been loosing because of the DLC types. Don't forget that Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we have ever had and it appears Hillary is ready to follow in his foot steps. OK Moose, I'm sorry you lost your party to a bunch of wingnuts but you can't have the Democratic Party. Take your party back. If the the DC Democrats had done more to resist the war, which as near as I can tell most of the DLC still supports, we might not have George W. Bush in the White House now. The Democrats must give Americans an alternative to win. Republican Lite won't do it.

Up or down vote for Bolton

Richard Cranium urges the Democrats to give Bolton an up or down vote.

Talk about a little "free publicity" to drive Plame...but most importantly, the public needs to hear the Democratic Leadership say these things in an open forum. With a recess appointment, they won't get the chance.

Release the parliamentary blocks on Bolton's nomination, and get his name to the Senate floor ASAP.

I agree....let's do it.

George and Tony's "Little" War spells Big Trouble

In spite of all the spin from the Bush White House it is becoming obvious to everyone but the hard core Bush cultists that the Iraq war has made the United States and the world less safe not more. The Iraq war has not only become a recruiting aide for jihadists but a veritable graduate school for perfecting and teaching terrorist techniques. The recent bombings in London and Egypt are examples of two separate jihadist goals. The London bombing was designed to produce terror in a western nation while the Egyptian bombing was designed to upset the economy of an "enemy" Islamic regime. As we discussed here another target of the jihadists is the tyrannical House of Saud and there are indications that Saudi Arabia is a target for economic disruption. We are one successful attack on the Saudi oil infrastructure away from rationed six dollar a gallon gasoline. Think about that next time you see an SUV with a George Bush bumper sticker.
Reporter Patrick Cockburn explains that the Iraq debacle is not without historical precedent: This is now an unwinnable conflict

The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.

The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war, which started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower, has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of Iraq.

But Iraq is different in this respect.

The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying to destroy those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq over the last year.

It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The Iraq war has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most of the bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and intelligence is home-grown.

He goes on to give a description of the deteriorating conditions in Iraq which indicate that the war is lost and concludes with this shot of stark reality.

For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars escalating into big ones. Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in 2003 that Saddam ruled a powerful state capable of menacing his neighbours. Secretly they believed this was untrue and expected an easy victory.

Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq more truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an un-winnable conflict.

So George and Tony's little war to save us from the threats of Saddam has created a "real threat". George and Tony's little war to secure oil is threatening the supply.

Hat tip to LewRockwell.com

Support the Troops.......

.....but don't go out of your way.

The Bush administration has tried to make sure that most Americans don't have to make any sacrifices for the war on terror or the Iraq war. The political reasons are obvious, support for the war is already faltering and if people had been required to make sacrifices support would now be non existent. While many show their support with yellow magnets on their cars few are now willing to send their sons and daughters off to join the effort. This is having a serious impact on the moral of the soldiers and their families who are required to make sacrifices, all too often the ultimate sacrifice. This is the topic of an article in The New York Times and a commentary in The Portland Oregonian.

All Quiet on the Home Front, and Some Soldiers Are Asking Why

WASHINGTON, July 23 - The Bush administration's rallying call that America is a nation at war is increasingly ringing hollow to men and women in uniform, who argue in frustration that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war.

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military's war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

There are not even concerted efforts like the savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country behind its fighting forces in wars past.

"Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us," said one officer just back from a yearlong tour in Iraq, voicing a frustration now drawing the attention of academic specialists in military sociology.

[....]

In the speech, at Fort Bragg, N.C., on June 28, Mr. Bush mentioned a Defense Department Web site, Americasupportsyou.mil, where people can learn about private-sector efforts to bolster the morale of the troops. He also urged those considering a career in the military to enlist because "there is no higher calling than service in our armed forces."

While officers and enlisted personnel say they enjoy symbolic signs of support, and the high ratings the military now enjoys in public opinion polls, "that's just not enough," said a one-star officer who served in Iraq. "There has to be more," he added, saying that the absence of a call for broader national sacrifice in a time of war has become a near constant topic of discussion among officers and enlisted personnel.

"For most Americans," said an officer with a year's experience in Iraq, "their role in the war on terror is limited to the slight inconvenience of arriving at the airport a few hours early."

And on the other coast of the United States David Sarasohn of the Oregonian tells us about his conversation with an Oregon Air National Guardsman who has recently returned from Iraq.

From Iraq, things look different here

What Evans does is air-battle management, and for a year, ending this summer, he did it as a mission crew commander with the Oregon Air National Guard at Balad Air Force Base, 45 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Air-battle management is a particular kind of skill, and Evans practiced it for four earlier months in Iraq in 2003, in South America as part of antidrug campaigns, in Italy to support efforts in the Balkans and in a place he describes as just "Southwest Asia." In between, he's been mayor of Monmouth and an adjunct professor at Western Oregon University and Oregon State. Now, he's back to part-time service in the Guard, giving some speeches and trying to publish a vampire novel he wrote during down time in Iraq.

And talking about a war that he believes in, and a fight that he thinks looks very different there and here.

"The bottom line, in my opinion, is that a whole lot of people are sacrificing everything -- marriages, careers, lives," Evans says. But "Americans may not fully understand the level of support that may be needed."

[....]

Evans is concerned about an administration trying to achieve a transformation of Iraq on the cheap. But he also thinks the responsibility extends to the nation that supported the administration.

"Elections matter," he argues. "In 2002 and 2004, the country voted for a Congress and a president that support the activity."

To him, those elections also created a direct political responsibility to provide the resources and manpower to reach the goal that voters backed.

"If that means (Bush) needs to visit every college around the country, or help his daughters enlist, that's up to him," Evans says. "If recruiting is down, he needs to deal with that. If money is the issue, he and Congress need to deal with that."

And Evans concludes his comments with"

"When you go to war to fight for your country," Evans says, "the relationship between you and your country becomes very personal."

One way or another, those who go are entitled to ask other Americans to take Iraq personally.

During the Vietnam war the administrations involved tried to keep sacrifices to a minimum realizing that support would quickly fade if too much were asked of the citizens at home. But during the Vietnam conflict everybody knew someone who had been drafted or was eligible for the draft so that war was closer to home.

Ooops. Making it up as we go along.

A tale of two Iraqis. Or is it only one?

Following a car bombing in Iraq on Sunday, the military spoke to an "unidentified Iraqi" who said the following:

"'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."

Oddly enough, back on July 13th, following a different insurgent attack, another "unidentified Iraqi" was reported like this:

The July 13 news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. 'They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.'"

I'm sure there's a logical explanation. Maybe it's the same guy and he just gets around a lot? Well, ok... that doesn't seem very likely. Maybe it's just a common phrase that they teach in English classes in Iraq? Hmmm... that doesn't sound very plausible either. Let's ask the military for their take on it.

Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an "administrative error." He said the military was looking into the matter.

An "administrative error" you say? Is that this week's buzzword for complete and total bullshit? Yes, I'm sure things are just going swimmingly in Iraq. Just ask the military. Hat tip to Demagogue and Americablog.

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him.
George W. Bush
October, 2002

July 24, 2005
Juan Cole asks "Is Bin Laden Ordering the Bombings around the World?"

The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock quotes counter-terrorism experts who are beginning to wonder of Usama Bin Laden is ordering the terrorist attacks in places like Baghdad, London and Egypt.

The consensus last spring was that al-Qaeda's command and control structure had been extensively disrupted by the war on terror. The feeling was that al-Qaeda leaders in hiding could still incite and provide models, but could not just get up in the morning and order a hit.

Evidence coming out of the London bombings in particular suggests some al-Qaeda comand-and-control is still in place. Al-Qaeda worked through its Pakistani affiliate, Jaish-i Muhammad, to recruit the British Muslims in Leeds. But in November of 2004, Muhammad Sidique (Sadique, Siddique, Siddiq) and Shehzad Tanweer were brought to Karachi. The two were put up in a very nice hotel for a week. Who were they meeting there? (Although Jaish-i Muhammad has cells there, that group is centered nowadays more in the Punjab).

Well George, maybe you should have spent more time thinking about Osama and less time thinking about Saddam and all that oil in Iraq.

Blog Pick of the Week

This weeks blog of the week is Balloon Juice. Although I am a bit left of center, as are most of the readers of this online pamphlet, I try to get some input from those on the right. John Cole is an excellent choice. I don't always agree with him but we are concerned about many of the same things. John may be a conservative but he's not a cultist and he is rational and thoughful.
As usual you will be able to find John Cole by clicking on under QUICK LINKS over on the sidebar for the rest of the week and find him in my blogroll after that.

Previous Picks
CommonSenseDesk
PSoTD
Peak Energy(Australia)
sine.qua.non...

Now this is really cool!!

Relatively useless but really really cool.

Google Moon

Hat tip to The Corpus Callosum

Lance Armstrong

It's not about the bike
Scott the Poet gives us a view of Lance Armstrong's victory from the eyes of another cancer survivor.

Alberto Gonzales and the Plame Affair

Why he was not the Supreme Court Nominee.

Tricky Dick

No... this isn't a retrospective on Nixon. It's Tricky Dick "Darth" Cheney who's back in the news. As you may already know, there's a bipartisan effort underway in Congress to pass a bill which would "regulate the detention, treatment and trials of detainees held by the American military." Given all of our problems stemming from American treatment of detainees in the "war on terror," you'd think this is a pretty smart move, no? Well, Dick Cheney disagrees and apparently is personally working to undermine such activity in his own party.

In an unusual, 30-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night, Mr. Cheney warned three senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee that their legislation would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks.

The legislation, which is still being drafted, includes provisions to bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual.

Well, heavens to mergatroid. We certainly wouldn't want rules like those in place, now would we? Bush is threatening to veto any such measure, even if his own party supports it. To counter this threat, Congress is considering tying the proposal in as an amendment to the upcoming vote on the more than $400B budget which will be coming up for a vote shortly.

Normally I don't approve of tying tricky amendments to other bills just to get them passed, and would rather see each piece of legislation face a vote on its own merits. In this case, however, I think the subject is related to the military budget closely enough to make it worthwhile.

Some more thoughts on this from MyDD:

So in a nutshell, the White House is fighting their own party in the Senate to reserve the right to torture prisoners. Insane, and yet thoroughly unsurprising.

And the usual sensible take from TalkLeft.

Related
Alberto Gonzales and the Plame outing.

Hiro Moriyasu

I like to take a break from politics but I hate to do it with obituaries. I have discussed the passing of exceptional scientists and engineers here before but Hiro Moriyasu is different. I knew and worked with him at Tektronix.

Portland inventor Hiro Moriyasu dies

Hiro Moriyasu, the inventor of the digital oscilloscope and a patent holder for many other technologies, including one of the first personal computers, died in his Southwest Portland home Sunday.

Moriyasu, 70, worked as an engineer at a company he founded up until his death. His 1971 invention, which he developed while working for Beaverton-based Tektronix, improved upon the old analog oscilloscope by allowing the visible image of moving electrons to be saved and documented in digitized form.

"The magnitude of his work was such that everybody else followed to do what Tektronix did," said Leon Orchard, chairman of the board of Ortech Industries who supervised Moriyasu at Tektronix. "He was a brilliant engineer with a gift for understanding what was fundamental and what was not."

In 1974, Moriyasu created one of the first personal computers, the 4051, an invention that caused IBM to take its earlier model off the market, said Luis Navarro, an engineer at Precision Interconnect, a division of Tyco International Ltd. who worked with Moriyasu at Tektronix and at two later startup companies. He added that Tektronix wasn't interested in supplying the consumer market, so it missed the potentially fruitful opportunity to further develop Moriyasu's design.

I worked at Tektronix as a manufacturing engineer in the CRT division. At the time Moriyasu developed the digital oscilloscope and the 4051 computer the best microprocessors were 8 bit which meant only 64K of memory could be addressed. As a result there was little or no memory for video. The solution was the Tektronix direct view storage CRT. The CRT itself was a storage device. Early computer graphics was built around the DVST (direct view storage tube).


The Tektronix 4051 was the first desk top computer, although it was best if you had two desks since the 4051 filled one of them. Programming was in TEK Basic and programs were stored on a tape drive. The cost in 1975 was $6,000 with 8K of memory.
If Tektronix had chosen to further develop the 4051 it might have been the IBM of today. I believe that one reason they didn't was IBM was our largest customer for the DVST graphic displays.

We call them birds

No, it's not Friday Giant Owl Blogging but I thought taking Godzilla back to the Jurassic was a good way to remember the life of John H. Ostrom. You see John H. Ostrom was the Yale paleontologist who first suggested that dinosaurs were alive and well but that we now called them birds.

He was known for his discovery of Deinonychus, a two-legged dinosaur, in Montana and for his theory that it may have been a warm-blooded dinosaur. The theory, which was published in 1969, contradicts an earlier theory that dinosaur species were cold-blooded.

Ostrom also was known for reintroducing an idea first advanced a century ago that birds are the most logical descendants of dinosaurs.

In 1999, a symposium was held in Ostrom's honor called "New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds."

"When I first suggested there was a connection between birds and dinosaurs, they said, 'There goes John again.' Now it's up to them to show why dinosaurs are not related to birds," Ostrom said at the time.

He died on July 16, 2005 of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

Hat tip to Majikthise.

I guess you don't want to be..........

........a brown skinned man in London either.

British police admit shooting wrong man in hunt

LONDON (Reuters) - Police admitted on Saturday they had shot dead the wrong man as they hunted for four men wanted for failed bomb attacks on London's transport system. Plainclothes police chased the man into an underground train station on Friday after he ignored warnings to stop. As the man boarded a train, police shot him five times at point-blank range fearing he was about to set off a bomb.

"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005," police said on Saturday. "For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."

Well that should make a few hundred new terrorists.

Attack in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oil

Blasts in Egypt Kill at Least 83 at Resort in Sinai Peninsula

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt (AP) -- A rapid series of car bombs and another blast ripped through a luxury hotel and a coffeeshop in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik early Saturday, killing at least 83, a hospital official said. Terrified European and Arab tourists fled into the night, and rescue workers said the death toll could still rise.

This attack is different than the attacks in London. For starters is was very well organized and resembles some of the attacks in Iraq. One has to wonder of the perpetrators did their training in Iraq. Perhaps more significant is it's purpose. The purpose of the London blasts was terror, the purpose of the Egyptian blasts was to damage the economy. As Juan Cole explains:

The al-Jihad al-Islami organization of Ayman al-Zawahir has for over two decades targeted Egypt's tourism industry with violent attacks. For al-Jihad al-Islami, this tactic has several benefits. Tourism is associated in the minds of many ordinary Egyptians with a libertine lifestyle offensive to the puritanism of Muslim piety. Then, Egypt depends heavily on tourism for foreign exchange, and it is an important part of the economy (worth nearly $3 billion a year in good years). Egypt's economy grew 5.3 percent in 2004, the best it has done in a long while (September 11 badly hurt Egypt's economy-- Ayman al-Zawahiri's little revenge on the homeland that exiled him). Egypt depends more heavily than ever on services and remittances. Its petroleum exports are slipping. It only earned $1.5 billion in oil revenues last year despite the big bump in prices (it was over $3 bn. in the mid-1990s).

To see how this may be significant we have to look at Saudi Arabia, another middle eastern country with an unpopular government and an economy dependent of western currency. In April we reported that Saudi jihadis have been returning to Saudi Arabia from Iraq where they have been learning how to sabotage the oil production infrastructure. The attacks on the Egyptian tourist industry would seem to indicate that bringing down western friendly governments in the middle east by undermining the economy is part of the plan. Can the Saudi oil fields be far behind? A successful attack of the Saudi oil infrastructure at this time would result in immediate world wide shortages and a large spike in oil prices. The impact on the world economy could be devastating. We may be entering a new and more disruptive phase in the war on terror, one that will impact us all.

More on Joe Barton's (Tex.) witch hunt

We discussed Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton's witch hunt investigation of three scientists who have charted Earth's rapid warming in recent decades here. The Washington Post has an editorial on Barton's outrageous actions this morning, Hunting Witches. The title is appropriate since it is very similar to the intimidation of Galileo by the Catholic Church when his sound science didn't fit the views of the church. This time the powerful organization isn't a church but the number one energy company Exxon.

"THIS IS HIGHLY usual," declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.

[.....]

Mr. Barton's attempt to dismiss all this as turf-battling on the part of Mr. Boehlert, like his spokesman's claim that such demands for data are normal, is disingenuous. While the Energy and Commerce Committee does sometimes ask for raw data when it looks at regulatory decisions or particular government technology purchases, there is no precedent for congressional intervention in a scientific debate. As Mr. Bradley pointed out in his response to Mr. Barton, scientific progress is incremental: "We publish a paper, and others may point out why its conclusions or methods might be wrong. We publish the results of additional studies . . . as time goes on robust results generally become accepted." Science moves forward following these "well-established procedures," and not through the intervention of a congressional committee that is partial to one side of the argument.

Mr Barton is obviously representing his real constituency, the Board Room of Exxon-Mobile, the very same Board Room that is now coming under attack from other world energy giants for ignoring the science of global warming.

Update
MEJ's Bill in DC points out this editorial in The New York Times indicating that the Senate seems to have a more reality based view on global warming.

Mr. Barton's antics make one all the more grateful for the more responsible attitude displayed in the Senate, particularly by Pete Domenici, a conservative senator from New Mexico. A longtime global warming skeptic, Mr. Domenici has been open to new information, read the literature on the subject and accepted the need for mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions. On Thursday, Mr. Domenici took time out from the energy bill negotiations to hold the first in a series of hearings intended to lead to meaningful and politically acceptable emissions controls.

Cyrus Kar: Not such a happy American anymore?

Frankly, when I read this BBC report from earlier this month, I was reminded of just how twisted this whole story was.

Who is Cyrus Kar, you ask?

Some time back, you may recall a story about five Americans who were arrested in Iraq on suspicion of working with the insurgents. One of them was 44 year old Mr. Kar. He's an Iranian born American who was picked up in a taxi with a bag of washing machine timers. (The timers can be used to make improvised bombs.) Open and shut case, huh? Not so fast, Sparky.

Kar hardly fits the profile of the typical "Islamo-fascists" which the right wingnuts love to get up in arms about. He was brought to the United States at a very early age and grew up in a fashion that doesn't tend to breed radical Islamic dissidents.

Mr Kar is described as a patriotic American who believed in spreading democracy around the world.

A former Navy Seal raised in the western US, he had gone to Iraq to film part of a documentary about an enlightened ancient Persian king.

Indeed, everything that is known of Mr Kar's past seems to suggest he would be the last person to support Iraq's insurgency.

He was brought to the US from Iran as a child, and became thoroughly immersed in American culture.

He served in the Navy for several years, and also studied business, marketing and computing. He worked for a decade at California's Silicon Valley.

Fellow film-maker Philippe Diaz described him as more right-wing than many of his colleagues, saying he "believed in everything which is American."

To top it off, it was reported nearly immediately that it appeared that the timers belonged to the cab driver, not Mr. Kar. In fact, his family had been contacted on that matter by officials.

But the conduct of the case has left Mr Kar's relatives confused. Weeks ago, they said, an FBI agent told them he had passed a polygraph test and was cleared of any charges.

And yet, he was held without anything resembling due process from May 17 until July 10th, when he was finally released after an outcry in the global press. Had it not been for international media attention, he would likely still be sitting there today, with no hope of being given a normal trial. Are our war administrators in Iraq so afraid of ever admitting they made a mistake that they were willing to simply shovel this guy in with the rest of the Gitmo detainees to keep things quiet?

This is another case which should remind us of why we need to carefully examine things like the Patriot act. It is far too easy for an overzealous government agency to get completely out of control. Civil liberties, once surrendered, are not quickly regained. Cyrus Kar might not be feeling like such a patriotic American these days. And who could blame him?

Angry White Women

We know that Oregon's Karen Minnis and George W. Bush's Karen Hughes are both angry white women. But are they from the same gene pool?Hmmm! What do you think?

More Karen Minnis and SB1000

I was on the road most of the day so I'm a bit out of touch. I don't know if that makes me a better person but it certainly make me a happier one.

Carla at preemptive karma and Also Also have posts on the latest outrageous behavior of the wicked witch of east county, Karen Minnis. This woman has to be burnt at the stake go.

Almost

skippy is really close to hit one million. Go pay him a visit.

Update
OK, he made it. Go over and congratulate him.

Where in the World is John Bolton

We have been suggesting that perhaps it was not a coincidence that just as the Plame affair blew up in the administrations face John Bolton disappeared from the face of the earth. We have also suggested that Judith Miller is sitting in prison not because she is protecting a source but protecting herself because she was involved in Plame's outing herself. Now from Steve Clemons at The Washington Note we have this:

TWN has just learned from a highly placed source -- and in the right place to know -- that John Bolton was a regular source for Judith Miller's New York Times WMD and national security reports.

The source did not have any knowledge on whether Bolton was one of Miller's sources on the Valerie Plame story she was preparing, but argues that he was a regular source otherwise.

The first clue was the documents the White House refused to give the Senate. Could there have been something there about Plame? Then as the Plame issue heated up Bolton disappeared, after the White House made a complete ass of Bill Frist of course. Judith Miller has been nothing but the Bush administration's propaganda machine representative at the New York Times leading many of us to believe she was a participant in the attempts to discredit Joe Wilson. Now it appears that John Bolton was one of Miller's primary contacts/sources for her propaganda pieces in the Times. As I suggested here Karl Rove may not be the really big fish here.

This is the modern Republican Party

This is the Republican Party: Noe stole millions

COLUMBUS — Tom Noe stole millions of dollars from the state and used a “Ponzi” scheme to fabricate profits within the state’s $50 million rare-coin investment, Ohio’s attorney general said yesterday.

“There was an absolute theft of funds going on,” Attorney General Jim Petro said.

Mr. Petro said there is evidence that Mr. Noe pocketed nearly $4 million in money invested with the coin fund through the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation since 1998.

Mr. Petro asked a judge to further restrict the former Toledo-area coin dealer from selling personal assets because he believes they may have been purchased with state money.

Noe was not only pocketing Ohio Stae money he was diverting it to GOP political campaigns.

When asked if he believed the state’s money had been used for campaign contributions, Mr. Petro said: "I don’t see that. I mean, clearly, Tom Noe personally contributed to campaigns and the source of his funds could very well be public money."

This is the modern Republican party, Ohio is just one example.