Texas Oilman Commits Treason

This is really disgusting. If this man had been a liberal, he'd have been strung up for what he did. More on the flip:

Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt is trying to ensure that a jury doesn't see an Iraqi document suggesting he discussed American troop levels and possible dates for an attack with a member of Saddam Hussein's regime prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Wyatt, 83, is slated to stand trial Sept. 5 on charges that he and others funneled millions of dollars in illegal payments to Saddam's government in order to win lucrative oil export contracts.

His attorneys are asking a federal judge in New York to prohibit prosecutors from presenting as evidence handwritten notes purportedly made by an Iraqi oil official, which suggest Wyatt conveyed information about when the United States might begin bombing, when ground forces would be sent in and how many soldiers would be deployed.

His lawyer claims none of the discussions were of confidential matters and that release of the notes would tend to prejudice a jury.

Still, one wonders where the prattling purveyors of purity are on this? A businessman, involved in an illegal transaction with an enemy nation, discussing troop movements and strengths ahead of an invasion to liberate said nation from the grip of evil?

Oscar Wyatt, along with Bayoil executives David B Chalmers and Ludmil Dionissiev, is charged with fraud and conspiracy, but not treason, in connection with illegal transactions under the UN "oil for food" program in 2003. Under that program, Saddam Hussein was allowed to "sell" oil to companies (other than US companies) in exchange for staples like food, clothing and other necessities. The intent was that no money could trade hands, so that Saddam could not profit from these deals.

As these things always go, some palms were greased and some other negotiations took place, such that Saddam indeed made out handsomely.

So nevermind about discussing troop movements, these guys committed treason from the get-go.

Yet, not a peep out of the right wing noise machine. And if you recall, a LOT of hay was made about how France and Russia were the major players in the scandal, and how then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son was behind it all.

Eh...not so much, it turns out!

So why would two dumb hicks from the sticks warrant such a large distraction, drumming up lies about Kofi Annan and Russia and France?

Here's one reason. Here's the other, although to his credit (or debit), Wyatt and his father seem to have spread out their contributions amongst both parties. And here's a third.

But notice something: no man gave to any Presidential campaigns, even though all are obviously politically active, tend towards more conservative candidates and, critically, all are Houston-based oilmen!

Why, what magic! They didn't give to Bush-Cheney, '00 or '04????

Not likely, I'm sure. But it would take a lot more digging than I have either the time or resources to pursue.

The real question is, who fed them this troop information, which I recall was scrupulously NOT discussed on the major television networks in the run-up to the war, for fear of revealing, well, troop movements and deployments?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...pardon me, I need to sneeze...Dick Cheney.

There, that's better!

Rove'd And Rambled

I came across this little bit of news analysis from the Canadian Broadcasting Co's website. Read a bit of it. I'll meet you on the flip:

Karl Rove had no real expertise in foreign or domestic policy, but he knew how many votes it would take to win an election and, just as importantly, he knew what his Republican voters needed to hear to get them out to the polls.

He was not content simply to get George W. Bush into the White House. He wanted to turn the Republican party into a political force that would dominate the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government for a generation.

He believed he could do that with a Republican base made up of social conservatives, the Christian right and supporters of lower taxes, small government and a muscular foreign policy. The entire policy thrust of the Bush/Rove White House was directed at keeping those people happy and motivated.

At the same time, Rove could do the math. He understood that his Republican base was too narrow to ever make up a majority of American voters. He knew that most American voters were politically indifferent, waiting to be given a reason to get excited.

Enthusiasm is catchy. Neighbours influence neighbours. Energize your base, whip them into a frenzy of political activity, get them to donate their time and money to the cause, and others would follow in their wake. As George W. Bush demonstrated in both 2000 and 2004, you don't have to win by much to occupy the White House, you just have to win.

As for the other half of the country — the so-called blue states in the red-blue carve-up of the nation's interests — well, Karl Rove had little time for them. Other administrations may have tried to reach out to their political opponents, to build a big and welcoming tent as the saying goes. Uniting the country was generally seen to be a goal worth pursuing.

But Karl Rove had no illusions about attracting Democrats and left-leaning independents to his side. So why bother trying?

That way, if you don't care about reaching out to people on the other side of the political divide, and if your priority is winning elections, no matter how narrowly, then there is really nothing standing in the way of practising politics with the gloves off.

Much has been made in Blogtopia (© Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo) of the politics of the current crop of Democratic contenders and how they should be more vicious, going after Republicans more rather than talking about "inclusion" and "bi-partisanship".

Reading this, you begin to get a sense as to why the Democrats have backed away, somewhat, from those tactics (they did use the moral scandals of the GOP in 2006 to great benefit).

There's a strategy at work here, and one suspects the long term goal is to create a Democratic dynasty. Rove was onto something in that the country is ripe for one party to dominate the political landscape for a long time. It's just a sense I get that there's a brass ring just around the corner to grab.

Rove was successful at politics of division, that no one can or will deny. The question is, what did it cost the party and the American people, that he beat up on Ann Richards, John McCain, Al Gore, Max Cleland, and John Kerry so viciously?

A lot. And the 2006 elections showed, I think, just the first thrust of the backlash, which will be long and brutal for the GOP. Why?

Because if you're going to demonize the other guy, you'd better damned well make sure you're a saint. From before September 11, when Bush's poll numbers were floundering in the low 40s, through Katrina, the Scooter Libby indictments, Katrina, and mostly, the Iraq debacle, Rove has been unable to get this administration to prove its mettle just when Rove needed it most. For his dream of a Republican dynasty to take shape, he would have needed the perfect President.

What he had was the perfect candidate: malleable, affable, and idiotic. Simple, which for American voters translated into safe.

You really can fool all of the people some of the time, in other words. Bush could not actually run the country, and the people around him were too busy suckling at the teat of the administration to pay attention to Rove's political vision.

If this sounds like a paean to Rove, to a point it is. As a political junkie, he took a bushel of lemons and made a yellow liquid that could have been lemonade, but for the fact it wasn't. He paid attention to about 25% of the American people and made them feel like they were in charge.

Which explains the deep feelings some in the blogosphere feel for this administration, despite the fact that it will go down in history as the single biggest disaster to befall this nation since the British invasion of 1812. Buyer's remorse doesn't apply, because they didn't buy Bush, they sold him, and that creates an even deeper attachment. Ask any salesman.

We liberals owe Rove a debt of gratitude as well. See, Rove is like a forest fire in an old growth forest: he's burned up the little weeds and twigs at the roots, but never really got hot enough to take out the entire forest. All he's done is given us more nutrients to live off.

For nearly thirty years, liberals have watched as the progressive agenda-- an agenda of tolerance, of equality, of taking care to make sure everyone benefits from the bounty that is this land-- had been whittled away, a slice here, a sliver there.

Rove took an axe to it.

Already, massive grass roots movements have sprung up in response to the "frenzy of political activity" Rove created in the 25%. And those movements will march forward, slowly at first, but in greater numbers, and more strongly. 25% of the nation couldn't possibly hold back the tide of change. It will come. It is coming, and thanks to Rove, it will be more progressive and more liberal than ever before.

And the seeds of his failures are very apparent:

Rove's relentlessly polarizing tactics and his over-the-top use of government power for political purposes, critics say, were bound to wear out their welcome with a fundamentally pragmatic and moderate electorate.

"Karl will always be known as a brilliant political operative who has a great tactical sense," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, "but tactics only get you so far. Did they change politics forever? No."

Fabrizio asked: "At the end of the day, is the party better off today than it was when it was taken over six or seven years ago?" He believes Rove's strategy has alienated middle-of-the-road voters and left the party in worse shape.

How Rove's approach could misfire in the evolving political climate was illustrated when Bush, after his reelection, sought converts to the GOP cause by pushing to create private investment accounts in the Social Security system.

In the Rove playbook, the proposal -- with its call for a new "ownership society" -- would attract younger voters distrustful of government and fearful that Washington would not deliver on promised retirement benefits.

The campaign failed. Democrats charged that Bush and the Republicans would weaken or destroy the whole Social Security program.

Rove also played a major role in advocating an immigration-law overhaul that would have offered some illegal immigrants a way to become citizens and would have tightened border security. Hard-line congressional Republicans deserted the White House on the bipartisan effort, which had embodied many of Rove's ideas.

There's much more to come. The long national nightmare is over.

Or to put it more succinctly, DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!

Red Rover, Come Over

Obviously, the big story of the day is Karl Rove leaving the White House in a rush at the end of this month.

Much speculation will center on why:

"I just think it's time," Rove, 56, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday.

"There's always something that can keep you here and, as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family."

Hm. The stock political excuse, and it covers all manners of sins. For some, it's covered a pending indictment. For others, it's covered internal clashes with others in the White House, which one has lost. To save face, one claims a family matter, and leaves graciously.

We can hope for the first, but I seriously doubt it's the latter. Rove has too much sway with Bush, having guided his political career for fifteen years straight to the Presidency.

Speculation is that he had a contempt of Congress charge hanging over his head. Leaving the White House takes away any executive privilege cover, and of course, he would now be subject to prison time for refusing to testify.

So not a likely reason.

The real clue is this:

Rove finally decided to leave after Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, told senior aides that if they remained past early September, they would be obliged to stay until the end of Bush's second and final term in January 2009, the paper said.

Ah. There we are.

Rove intends to get back into the fight with another candidate. After all, why not run out the clock? Yes, he has a son heading to college...so what? The last time I checked, the last thing a father has to do is be around for a college kid. By that point, they're either going to swim or sink on their own.

What clues can we look for to confirm this suspicion? Well, Rove and Karen Hughes were integral parts of Bush's 2000 campaign, and while Hughes left the White House (to return in 2005 as an Undersecretary of State in charge of burnishing the US image abroad, something she's fucked up worse than before she got involved), she's been very quiet for two years now.

Indeed, about the only news from State regarding Hughes has been the resignation of media affairs director Floyd Price, who quit after 17 years at State because he believed the Bush administration had so screwed up foreign relations that it would require a new President to get any glimmer of respectability back in the world's eyes, partly because he felt Hughes had approached it from the wrong angle.

You'd have to think that Hughes will be announcing her resignation shortly. Should that come, you'd have in place the strategy and communications team that very effective vaulted Dubya from a crappy governor of a middling state (in administrative terms) to the Presidency (no matter how obtained).

So who hires them? McCain? Old news. Giuliani? Possibly, but Rudy has this need to be the focus of attention and center of the universe, large and in charge of everything. I don't think he could cede the kind of dirty work that Rove is known for to him. He wouldn't trust him.

Which really only leaves Mitt Romney. And I think the fit is good. Mitt is a slightly more polished version of Dubya, all Ivy League, Massachussetts, coiffed and burnished. All it really requires is a little adjustment in the playbook, and Rove could make Mitt more than a viable candidate.

It's early enough in the process that Rove could even be pondering taking up Fred Thompson nascent campaign, but the fund raising difficultiues Thompson has demonstrated seem to tell me that his run is a non-starter. Just a sense I get, nothing more than that.

At 56, he's young enough to do this for at least two more campaigns, and his ego is big enough that I think he wants to prove it was him and not Bush who won the White House.

It will be interesting.

Money. Money, Money, Money Moneyyyyyy!

Sorry, gang, it's Sunday, I know, and hardly the day you want to think about mooney and markets and economics...hell, my hangover has me hating writing this more than you hate reading it.

But it's important:

Global central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, added more than $300 billion of extra cash to the banking system over the last 48 hours to stabilize credit markets.

"Central banks like the Fed and ECB are adding liquidity, and that has done a lot to calm the markets," said Rafael Martorell, chief dealer at BNP Paribas in New York.

That helped U.S. stocks recover from an early plunge, sending currency traders rushing to sell their newly acquired yen.

Recently, the Japanese currency has slipped when equity markets rose because investors could borrow in low-yielding yen to finance purchases of other risky assets. When stocks slid, the yen firmed as investors unwound those carry trades and bought back yen.

The Dow was down nearly two hundred points Friday morning, even after the Fed injected $19 billion. When that barely bumped it up to a hundred point loss, the Fed funneled another $16 billion. That made the markets go into positive ground, briefly, and it took an additional $3 billion to keep them about flat for the day.

$38 billion. About the cost of the Iraq invasion for a month and a half.

Shove it, Bush, seriously. This isn't the only news of the week that should be deeply tied (literally) to Bush's psychotic obsession with warmongering. The heavy price we've paid to secure perhaps ten percent of the known oil reserves could have basically bought us 25% of them without any military intervention whatsoever. Oh, but then there's the Republican obsession with not signing international treaties to contend with, but let's face facts: a trillion dollars buys a lot of goodwill.

Back to the stock markets. The Fed will have exhausted its ability to intervene in the markets probably by Wednesday. My guess is Bernake spent much of the weekend on the phone with the banks who control the Federal Reserve with his hat in hand, trying to find bail out money. All it will take is one banker to say no, and the entire house of cards collapses by Tuesday.

Why is this happening?

Two words: housing woes. Last year, 46% of home sales returned to the seller less than five percent equity. Since most mortgage require at least that much in a down payment, 46% of Americans either lost money or barely got back their down payment in selling a house.

I'd estimate maybe another 30% got back between 5 and 10% in equity, so about 3/4 of Americans who sold a house last year broke even. Maybe. It might be much much higher.

People have financed this recent economic growth, as feeble as its been, on their credit cards and home equity loans. Now, there will be no more home equity loans and credit card growth.

And you know who will be bailed out? Not the home owners, but the banks, who will keep lending money faster and faster and just get deeper and deeper in debt. Meanwhile, watch as people try to file bankruptcy only to find out that they can't, that they'll have to pay back each and every penny they borrowed...

The Beauty Pageant

You may or may not be aware that today marks the Iowa Straw Poll.

Unarguably the second most idiotic political tradition in America (the first being the casting of the first ballot in the New Hampshire primary, which is now fading fast in relevance), the Iowa Straw Poll is a popularity contest that candidates voluntarily enter every four years. It is not binding on the caucuses held early in 2008 (which actually choose the winner of Iowa's delegates), and since not every candidate is entered in the cotillion, begins to take on the look of choosing the Runner Up to the Iowa Corn Queen.

Appropriate, since the poll is basically conducted like a state fair, with people paying $35 to listen to rock bands, enjoy rides and, yes, vote for the person who paid their admission! Why is this considered at all a relevant political turning point?:

AMES, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney and a handful of lesser-known rivals hunted for votes in Iowa on Saturday at an informal straw poll that offered the first big test of the 2008 White House race.

Iowa Republicans began lining up at mid-morning to vote in the nonbinding mock election, with Romney an overwhelming favorite to win and several candidates slugging it out for a second-place finish they hope will vault them into contention.[...]

The straw poll, an Iowa tradition since 1979, is an early test of a campaign's organizational strength in the state that holds the first nominating contest. It often thins the field of weaker candidates and gives the winner a temporary shot of momentum.

Only Republicans could imagine a way of using money to winnow candidates out: if you can't afford to buy enough votes to maintain your place in the field with respectability, you get out now.

"I can't buy you, I don't have the money," [Former Arkansas Gov. Mike] Huckabee told the Ames crowd. "I can't even rent you."

And yet...

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson has said anything less than a top two finish will finish him, and several other candidates could face similar decisions.

"We've got a tremendous opportunity to show the country that Iowa, not the political pundits in Washington, make the selection," Thompson told supporters jammed into his tent.

Right, Tommy. I think it's so cute that you believe that! Iowa makes the selection...the selection the pundits and moneychangers pay them to make!

Friday Music Blogging

The Zombies - She's Not There

If you could give an award for the greatest song ever written and sung, this song would have to rank right at the top of the list. I think it may be the most underrated song in pop history.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Wha? Huh?

Nobody Asked Me, But...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A Hopeful Sign

But how long will it last, and how effective with they be?:

"There has been a proliferation of activist groups ... especially after the 2004 elections. I would speculate that these groups will get more active as the 2008 elections come up," said Anthony Michel, a communications professor at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri.

The movement is fueled both by suspicion of mainstream media and burgeoning access to information via the Internet, Michel said.

Email, blogs, virtual meeting spaces and rapid-fire links for like-minded people make it easier and faster for individuals to come together in letter-writing campaigns, petition drives, fund-raisers, meetings and marches.

An example of its power, the recent Capitol Hill debate over a federally funded health insurance program for children triggered an outpouring from the political hinterlands, and Congress voted August 1 to expand the program despite a veto threat from the White House.

Vox populi. It's a good thing.

But then there's the downside and we've already seen cracks in the foundation: when the movement becomes big enough to earn a seat at the table, as dKos demonstrates, it also becomes part of the machinery, subject to the same co-optations that any other political faction suffers.

Too, the "outsiders looking in" end up attacking those who can been labeled as "selling out"

Prima facie evidence of the past twenty years has shown this to be true. Think about the Christian Coalition and other religious-right-wing groups and you see my point. They've allowed politicians to skew their principles in the cause of expediency, with nary a word from the Falwells and Dobsons of the nation.

Why? Because the Falwells and Dobsons of the nation were bought off, as was anyone else who accrued enough influence to make it worth the Republican party's while. Hell, Sun Myung-Moon had Republican Congressmen at his coronation ceremony as the Second Coming of the Messiah! You think that hasn't influenced how he deals with those Congressmen when they have ethical issues, much less how they shape and vote on "morals" legislation?

But even now, those who have been co-opted face challenges from their rear and right:

The Grassroots Conservative Majority, a political group started in Tennessee last November, focuses on "returning the Republican party to its core principles of social and fiscal conservatism" by supporting specific candidates in key races. The Web site gets about 700 visitors a day, according to organizer Ed Sistrunk.

So it's not just limited to progressives and liberals who are thoroughly frustrated with the inability of the Democratic party to do something, anything, about Bush and Cheney and the moral bankruptcy this nation faces, on top of the fiscal bankruptcy we've already entered.

But make no mistake: people who are liberal, who for years hid that fact, are starting to crawl out from under the wreckage of decades of being vilified and hated, because after Katrina, after Iraq, after Attorneygate, after Chinese imports tainted with melamine and Ground Zero toxic fumes and bridges collapsing, a Presidential cock being sucked sounds like precisely what it was: a big fat nothing.

The article I linked to points out that the 2004 elections were a watershed for this movement, the real impetus, and to a degree, I concur. The elections proved that either the system is dangerously screwed, if you believe that the election was stolen yet again, or at the very least, America is heading down the wrong path with its eyes wide open and that this time in our history will be crucial to righting the ship of state. Or both, to be honest.

I'll point to an even more narrow event that I think ignited the progressive grassroots movement to come out of the shadows and organize at the local level. It was Jimmy Carter's speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

To hear one President talk about courage and honor, and how the current President lacked them, well, it was a jarring note at a convention where the word was "No Bush Bashing". Read an excerpt:

In repudiating extremism, we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences.

First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs.

CARTER: Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic.

Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.

Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others.

And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.

You can't be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the next, depending on the latest political polls. [...]

And in many ways, the last few months have been some of the most disturbing of all. But I am not discouraged. I really am not. I do not despair for our country. I never do. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency and compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail.

CARTER: And so I say to you...and so I say to you and to others around the world, whether they wish us well or ill: Do not underestimate us Americans.

We lack neither strength nor wisdom. There is a road that leads to a bright and hopeful future. What America needs is leadership.

Without mentioning Bush by name and opening a door to repeated bashing back by right wing pundits and radio jocks, Carter laid out the case for what America needs to do to right itself.

You'll notice that much of it is addressed right to the American people, not the party. Echoing FDR, he said we must not allow ourselves to be bullied into fear, either by terrorists external or worse, the ones ruling us.

In other words, see something, say something. And I think a lot of people let those words wash over them like a soothing bath and got the courage to make a call, to talk to a friend, to challenge the bar bully know-it-all who tries to talk over people (like, say, Sean Hannity) by confronting him.

And if it meant a punch in the face, literally or figuratively, the point was made: we weren't going to be afraid of the fight any longer. Eventually, we'd prove our point and win.

You see it in the news and on the talking head programs more and more, as well: people willing to stand up and be counted, rather than avoid confrontation. It must be driving Bill O'Reilly crazy that liberals are talking over him now.

I don't think we should ever have been bullied in the first place, but that's just me. I know I wasn't, and I've had some nasty run-ins with neo-con right wingers, many of whom I've managed to make friends with despite our differences.

The political pendulum in America swings to and fro, and right now, it's swinging from the fro to the "to": To America. To the left. To the future. To what's right. We're at the beginning of a new era in American politics, American policy, and American prestige. Our beacon of freedom and liberty, hidden under a bushel of corruption, anger, hatred and greed for these past six years, is being uncovered by a new generation of caretakers, who will point that beacon at our enemies and more important, our friends, and remind them of what makes America great.

All the money in the world can't buy greatness. All the debt we've rolled up won't buy us prestige. None of the bounty that God in His (or Her) infinite wisdom has blessed this land with will help us now. We have to get back to the basics of this country. Opportunity for all, justice for all, freedom for all.

We must stop being afraid of terrorists, but more, we must stop being afraid of those who would exploit terrorism for their own political benefit. We've allowed Osama bin Laden, a pathetic, sick, weak, evil man, to become a bogieman of immense proportion because he startled us.

But I say to you, there is more courage in the New York City secretary who gets dressed in the morning and hops on a subway train to her job in lower Manhattan than in all the conservative bloggers in the country. She is not afraid of Osama bin Laden because of Osama bin Laden. Instinctively, she knows she's afraid of what's been represented to her by these evil twisted and sick men (mostly) who would want nothing more than to watch her sweat and shake while their cronies stick their hands in her pocket the next time she fills up her Honda Accord with gas.

There's the real enemy. There's what we really should be angry at. And we should be angry at a government that's allowed this situation to get so far out of control that the very mention of an ancient steam pipe exploding in Manhattan or an undermaintained bridge over the Mississippi collapsing raises the immediate spectre of Al Qaeda.

Fuck them, I say. Al Qaeda wants to come over here and get rowdy? Let 'em! They'll buy a whole lot more trouble here than they bargained for. I know neighborhoods in Brooklyn that would just be itching for some moron to show up with C4 strapped to his chest.

And in the meantime, we can bring our troops home from Iraq and let them get on with their lives, making America a great place, once again.

The people will speak, and they will be heard, and we will take our country and government back.

And to the Hugh Hewitts, the Sean Hannitys, the Michael Fumentos, the Dean Barnetts of the country, and every other ignert right-wing scaremonger?

Fuck you, too. We're through with you. Go ahead and pick on the big boys, the candidates, the Democrats who are front page news. We're coming up behind you, so keep your scared little eyes behind you, too. We won't be so polite and kind.

And to any grassroots movement that builds enough momentum and enough stroke to be co-opted? We'll take you out after them.

Wrath Of God

About once a year, the New York City area, usually Northern Jersey, sometimes Westchester County, suffers a tornado.

For nearly anyone else who has a tornado infestation, our tornadoes are things you guys probably drive through: F0.

Not today.:

National Weather Service officials confirmed Wednesday night that a tornado had touched down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn this morning about 6:30 a.m.

The tornado, which was confirmed by twisting patterns in the debris left behind, was probably moving at speeds of 111 to 135 miles per hour, meteorologists said.

Hours after the tornado and violent thunderstorm pounded the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited one of the blocks hardest hit, shook hands with residents and said that, thankfully, no one was seriously hurt there.

That's an F2, for those of you keeping score.

Worse, it's the second tornado to touch down around NYC in the past month. The last one was three weeks ago, during the storm that eventually was blamed for the massive steam pipe explosion on 41st & Lexington.

But, as they way, wait! There's more! The torrential rain of this storm, almost and in some areas over three inches in one hour, caused massive infrastructure flooding and shut down nearly every subway line in Manhattan, and most in Brooklyn and Queens (the Bronx lines are mostly elevated, and so service wasn't completely wiped out, altho getting to Manhattan was a challenge).

Major roadways were flooded out and by 6AM, the start of rush hour, police were reporting 35 separate automobile accidents on the area roadways.

The good news, because, you know, it's all about me, I was able to get a table at lunch easily. I did have a struggle on my commute, naturally, and what is normally a twenty minute train ride stretched out to an hour and twenty minutes.

New Yorkers, despite their fairly gruff reputation, shouldered it well. Although there were a few cross words, mostly from suburban commuters who felt the need to remind everyone of their self-importance when plowing into an already overcrowded subway car, most people understood that it was what it was: rain can take down the biggest subway system in America. Period.

By the way, the light show was awesome!

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

The inimitable, the immortal, Bugs Bunny

"Aw, now you're mad at me again!" Classic!

Uh Oh, We're Fucked....

(hat tip to Mr Doggity, who is a welcome addition to Blogtopia (© Skippy The Bush Kangaroo)

You might want to pass this story around amongst friends, then start making survivalist plans. This could get rough:

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

To get an idea of the magnitude of this, the US debt outstanding is just under $10 trillion, so about ten percent of our debt is in China's hands, the second or third largest creditor we have, after the UK and possibly Saudi Arabia.

It's curious that China would make these comments on the heels of their recent export tragedies, but China's never really been beholden to Western sensitivities.

Congress has announced they would be looking into imposing more tariffs on Chinese made merchandise, partly in response to trade protectionist forces within the Democratic party, partly as a sop to those who have accused China of currency manipulations (thus covering both labor and management, and making a political stand on China ahead of the 2008 elections).

China's yuan is pegged to the dollar at a fixed rate so the first real warning shot would come when China loosens those ties. It has allowed the yuan to float to a higher level in recent months, and yes, has made what appear to be manipulative moves with their currency trades, but has not completely freed the yuan from the dollar.

Such a move would force the yuan to rise against the dollar and force Chinese officials to sell dollars to cover losses. The dollar would then drop precipitously and, well, forget about getting loans for a while as the credit markets tighten to absorb the new US demands for credit to repay China.

What? You thought we'd grow our way out of this mess?

A Primer In How To Exploit Your Own Life

Rudy Giuliani sounds an awful lot like Bill Clinton on the campaign trail when confronted about his personal life, weaving in details when it suits him, ducking questions that clearly make him uncomfortable:

In speeches in small towns and large here, Giuliani has emphasized his resume as a hard-boiled prosecutor, a tough mayor who tamed New York City, and a terrorism expert.

Yet he also tries to show his personal side, picking and choosing when to reveal personal details.

At Flapjacks Fine Restaurant in Maquoketa, for example, he made a point about his health care policies by talking about how he had survived prostate cancer but his father had not.

Giuliani insists that questions about his personal life are relevant only if the subject involves his performance as a public official.

Now, hang on a minute! This is a man with a full blown libido, not unlike the Big Dog, and Republicans nationwide in their bloodlust all said "If it matters in our house, it matters in the White House!"

You'd think Rudy would have come up with a better way of handling these questions than to duck them, but...

Despite the stresses of his colorful and troubled past - the highly public divorce from his second wife and his wooing of the woman who became his third wife when he was mayor in 2000, for example - Giuliani insists his performance never has been affected.

But Giuliani finds his message of the day sometimes is lost in questions about personal issues he would rather not discuss.

On campaign stops yesterday, his message about stopping drugs, particularly the rampant problem of methamphetamines here, got lost in questions about his daughter and religious life.

Unlike Clinton, however, Giuliani bares his teeth:

He refused to comment, asking reporters instead, "Don't you think we should be talking about methamphetamines?"

Likewise, you may recall during the 2004 Presidential campaign that several Catholic bishops warned that Kerry would be refused communion and excommunication unless he repudiated his pro-choice stance, and that any other Catholic (at the time, no distinction in party was made) who refused to renounce this position would be subject to excommunication as well.

No one's ever accused Rudy of being particularly religious...as a New York City resident, I can't recall one story in the papers about him being at a church, unless it was a funeral or the cameras were there (Christmas mass at St. Patrick's, for example), and yet:

The question about his Catholicism raised other questions about whether he goes to church regularly or could partake in Communion because of his support of abortion rights.

He brushed off the question, saying there shouldn't be a religious litmus test for public office, winning applause.

Not a bad answer, but one that Kerry would never have been allowed to get away with in a Republican crowd, and one Republicans shouldn't allow the Mayor of America to get away with, either.

George Bush managed to get elected despite a history of serious and severe personal and psychological problems, such as untreated alcoholism, drunk driving, drug abuse, and extreme cowardice. He had several advantages over Rudy in covering these up, however: first and foremost, Bush comes from a culture that is used to covering up for the extremes of youthful behavior (i.e. Upper class Connecticut) and buying off the evidence. Second, Bush had Karl Rove and while Rove might be consulting with one or two campaigns already, he likely won't become fully involved until 2008, if at all.

Lastly, Bush's temperment allows him to laugh off personal insults (or at least, appear to). Rudy is far more confrontational about such things, notoriously of thin-skin. Eventually, the pressures of the campaign trail will catch up to him. He was barely able to contain himself as mayor.

The Republican race is an interesting dynamic, in that it seems every candidate is playing to lose.

Thank You, Once Again, Captain Obvious!

Well, duh!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. summit in September on climate change, one of at least four international meetings set for this year, is already raising doubts about any action being taken before President George W. Bush leaves office.

The big question is what will replace the Kyoto Protocol when that agreement to cap greenhouse gases expires in 2012.

The United States has never been part of the Kyoto pact, with Bush having said its economic costs make it "fundamentally flawed." But the president has been vocal recently about the need for a new strategy to curb climate-warming emissions.

Action? On global warming? By a President who has paid lip service at best (on June 21, 2001, he admitted that the science proving the earth was warming and was created mostly by man was there), and at worst, has gone four-square in opposition to any initiative, including the Kyoto Protocols, that would limit greenhouse gases?

Gee, Cap'n Obvious, how nice of you to make this observation!

Several arguments were raised about the Kyoto Protocols, and one could make the case that by allowing China and India to be exempt from them made them fundamentally flawed. However, let's take a look at that.

The United States currently pumps some 20 tons of carbon per capita into the atmosphere right now. China, for example, pumps perhaps 3 billion per capita (with a larger population to be sure, but even factoring that out, it's still only about 9 tons on an equivalent sized population). India's rate is lower still.

Yes, these are growing economies, and could surpass us in the next decade. But in forcing us to comply with Kyoto, Bush could have had six or seven years to this point to develop cleaner technologies, cleaner energy sources, and better use of renewable energy, to lower our carbon footprint, and...here's the big one, folks...to sell to India and China!

Meaning, economic growth for us, something this country has sorely lacked within its borders in the 21st Century (don't be mislead by reports of American economic growth: most of that is predicated on the rise of the global economy and our multinational corporations' overseas subsidiaries upstreaming money to the US). It also means homeland security, national mobilization, and a sense of pride of accomplishment, that America is destined for greatness and doesn't have to rest on its laurels.

Oh, but tax cuts and wars for oil...far more important than the survival of the planet. I keep forgetting who I'm dealing with.

The problem with the Republican love of "volunteerism" is the whole "you go first" philosophy. Yes, many businesses are starting to understand that greenhouse gases, global warming and climatology are important factors that are going to cost us a lot, economically. The problem becaomes the hemming and hawing about what to do about it, and what is the competition doing about it.

The great strength of capitalism, that competition promotes lower costs and greater efficiencies, simply is not applicable to a situation that demands a sacrfice for the greater good be made. The first company who makes inroads into more environmentally conscious productivity will necessarily pay a price that his competitors will not pay, deflating his earnings and making his stockholders very angry, until his competitors decide to take the plunge as well and incur those same costs.

This will not happen fast enough.

If there's any one observation to be taken from last week's bridge disaster in Minnesota, or the infrastructure nightmare that is New York City or any older urban area, it's this: the ounce of prevention that could have, should have, been spent years ago becomes not a pound of cure when applied to critical conditions. It becomes a ton.

Although private enterprises are waking up to the fact that global warming is real and will hurt them badly, the overwhelming costs associated with even mitigating it will scare businesses away from taking the steps needed now.

And yet, those costs are nothing compared to the costs that will be incurred through catastrophic loss associated with global warming and the deterioration of the human environment.

The problem, of course, comes down to human psychology as well. We'll pay through the nose to fix something that gets broken, but we won't pay an "unnecessary" dime to prevent it from happening in the first place. This is what municipalities and states have counted on for centuries, that to ignore a problem is to make it go away.

Bush claims his meeting will be the beginning of a process that will run past the 2008 elections, so even this lip service conference is both politically-oriented (and you wonder how China feels about promoting a Republican election agenda) and designed to run out the clock on the Bush administration, who will pray nothing untoward will happen on their watch (e.g. pray the problem goes away).

Too, the lack of credibility that Bush has with world leaders will hobble, not hamper, any agreement in the first place. One wonders why he is bothering.

Right. Rupert Murdoch Won't Screw Up The WSJ....

Exhibit 1, from the formerly respected London Daily Times:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.

Note the doubleplusgood trick Murdoch's editors pulled here: not only do they reinforce myths regarding global warming...that it's non-existent, that it's not human-related, that more carbon is emitted by cows and trees (later in the article)...and couples it to the opinions of a Green Party candidate, thus ensuring that both sides of the issue have to be circumspect in how they handle this story, the Greens being the leftist, environmentally correct peace party.

So make it a double slam against lefties, with a small hit to the "no global warming" crowd of right-wingers.

Now, it's bad enough that the Wall Street Journal editorial page is practically a recruiting poster for the John Birch Society, if this is the kind of irresponsible, slanted reporting that we can expect from a Murdoch regime, swallowing some knucklehead's claims whole without pointing out even some of the more obvious flaws in his conclusions (for example, what guarantee does Goodall have that people who walk more eat more meat? In fact, observation indicates just the opposite: people who walk more tend to eat healthier meals), and just transcribing whatever diatribe du jour is fashionable.

UPDATE: Yea. Whoops!

[Q]uestions were immediately raised about the Special Committee when Reuters reported that one appointed member was not only a personal friend of Murdoch's, but he also ran a computer education foundation that had received $2.5 million from Murdoch's News Corp. That represented a rather obvious conflict of interest for someone who was supposed to be independent from News Corp.

Worse, the Special Committee is going to be chaired by a far-right GOP yes man who not only faithfully regurgitates Republican talking points in print for a living, but who in early 2003 predicted the fighting in Iraq would be "relatively inconsequential," and who months later declared that America had won the Iraq war in "a cakewalk."

That's who Murdoch has tapped to protect the Journal's editorial integrity? Good luck. I mean, was Sean Hannity not available?

The Impeach Pit

The drumbeat of Blogtopia's (© Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo) march towards impeachment is getting louder with each passing Democratic somersault at Bush's command.

I haven't said much about this, either here or on various blogs that I comment on. I'm of mixed feelings regarding it, and I hadn't really sorted them out, and still haven't. I do think it's important as a gut check for any politician who peruses Blogtopia (© Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo) to hear all sides of the issue, even the wishywashy middle.

Look, Bush is a crook, I think we can all agree on that. John Dean, who both helped mastermind and then expose Watergate, has likened the criminality and unconstitutionality of the Bush crimes against America to being far worse than Nixon's. Liz Holtzmann, who was on the House Judiciary Committee investigating and drawing up articles of impeachment against Nixon, has even written a book laying out the case for Bush's impeachment.

That there's factual reasons for impeachment cannot be denied, except by the thirty percenters who still support the jackass-in-chief. And still...

Liberals complain about Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, so much so that you can't even hear the right wing blogosphere complain about them much anymore (which might say something in its own right). They complain about capitulation, they complain about cowardice, they complain about caving in.

But if I'm House Speaker or Senate Leader, I'm not sure I start impeachment proceedings now, either. History will judge the Bush administration as one of the most corrupt, stubborn, self-aggrandizing, and ignorant group of people to run a nation since the Soviet Poliburo. The hubris of their misjudgements and abuses of power practically drips like honey off a comb.

But history will also turn a harsh eye towards Congress in the years to come, and in the cold light of a sober morning after inhaling the vodka of retribution, history is going to write one fact that will stand out amongst all others: Congress started impeachment hearings of the Commander In Chief while troops were on the ground, fighting a war.

Whether the war was just or not, whether you agreed with the war in 2002 and don't now or disagreed with the war from the start (which I did), we have troops there, and history shows that a nation at war which suffers what amounts to a revolution within its borders ends up destroyed. It happened in Rome. It happened in the Holy Roman Empire, as France peeled off bits of that agglomeration while civil war ensued. It happened to the Csarist empire during World War I, as any Finn can tell you, and indeed, you can make the case that the downfall of the British empire occurred simultaneously.

So there's historical precedent to consider. Another factor against impeachment is time. The break-in that kicked off Watergate happened in June 1972. The House committee didn't even sit until June 1974, and then only after several high-level members of the White House staff had been indicted. A fairly sizable part of this delay revolves around "executive privilege" and ultimately, the Supreme Court had to step in.

As I said in March, Bush's best defense in these last two years of his term is to merely run out the clock. Time is the enemy of Congress, time and SCOTUS. I had these two factors in mind when I said Bush would run out the clock.

Even with the entire weight of Congress pressing against Bush, with the hedged bet of a loaded Supreme Court on his side he'd gladly take his chances with a court fight. And the judiciary is notorious for not wanting to get involved in a fight between Congress and the President, so the delaying tactic would take on an even greater urgency, since SCOTUS would simply tell them to come to some sort of compromise.

Finally, in the argument against impeachment made by someone who favors it, at least partly, is the emotional factor. How much of this demand for impeachment about the criminality of the Bush administration and how much of it is anger at a man who was born on third base thinking he'd hit a triple and stumbled into nearly every break he's ever gotten in life? The image of that smirk on Jan. 20, 2009 over the shoulder of President Hillary or Barack might invite a riot in some of the rougher quarters of America, even if, as John Dean has pointed out, Bush could be impeached after the fact, altho it would amount to a slap on the wrist, since the only concrete effect it would have is to prevent him from ever seeking office again, and to disbar him, if he were a lawyer. Oh, and to enter his name in the record books.

I understand now how some of the more rabid conservatives felt about Clinton, even if the Big Dog did nothing, and I mean nothing, to warrant the level of anger that Bush has engaged with his criminality.

I, for one, would hate to see Bush leave office without an official tarnish to his record, for the right wing to point out and make the case that, in two terms, Bush was never indicted or impeached, unlike "that liberal hero, Clenis". It ain't fair.

But life ain't fair. Sometimes the bullies get away with it while the nerd sits detention for fighting back.

Carl's Insomniac Theatre

Created for Live Earth by Airside

Go Figure

The more things change, the more they stay the same:

Fuel thirst deepens despite more mass transit

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lofty gasoline prices have helped push public transit ridership to the highest level since the country spawned its highway system in the 1950s -- but the growth is not enough to drive down demand for motor fuel any time soon.

U.S. public transportation use rose to 10.1 billion rides last year, the most since 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower signed the interstate highway bill into law, according to the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group.

The trend toward public transit has been driven in part by high retail gasoline prices, which have hit levels above $3 per gallon each summer since hurricanes damaged oil production and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.

Now, you gotta figure, with more people riding trains and buses, there might be fewer car trips taken, right?

Um. No.

Even so, the increase in transit use won't put the brakes on rising U.S. gasoline demand, mainly because only about 5 percent of workers who commute in a motorized vehicle use public transport, said Pisarski.

This year gasoline demand is running more than double 1957 levels, according to the Energy Information Administration. U.S. gasoline demand was more than 292 million barrels in May, the last month for which data was available, up from nearly 118 million barrels in May 1957.

Fuel demand is rising as car owners increase personal and business trips, said Pisarski. And people are increasingly both living and working in suburbs, a trend that is hard to service with public transport, he said.

Which may be true, of course. The traffic in suburban areas is noticeably higher than even five years ago. Here in New York, there's been a huge debate in Nassau and Suffolk counties about what to do to improve the load-bearing capacity of highways that don't come anywhere near the city.

The problem? Residents of these counties around the nation moved to the suburbs specifically to get away from the smells, the smoke and the asphalt of the city, so they are foursquare against any kind of improvements. Factor in that many if not most of these exurban areas are already fully developed, leaving precious little land that the county can seize and use to expand the road system anyway, and you begin to see the scope of the problem.

This exodus of jobs from the cities to the suburbs is a pretty recent phenomenon. Although the trend was in place before 2001, the terror attacks of September 11, coupled with the subsequent deliberate manipulation of information by the Bush administration to paint a picture that urban centers were constantly under the imminent threat of attack, created an environment that pushed employers to leave the cities in droves.

This is also reflected in housing prices. For example, a recent study showed that the type of rise in real estate values normally experienced in Manhattan had been occuring in Queens, Brooklyn, Nassau and Suffolk counties, too. Why commute by bus or rail across half the city to your job, when if you move off the island, you can buy a car and drive yourself to work?

And there's a big part of the problem, right there: the fact that, given a choice, more people prefer to be alone on their way to work than to be subject to the whims of a public transit system. In the city, it may be the most efficient and fastest way to get from point A to point B, but that's because it has a budget big enough from a large enough tax base to provide continual and frequent service particularly at rush hours, but also frequent enough away from rush hours that putting in overtime at your job isn't a tragic inconvenience.

Suburban systems would have to rely on a rider base that is far less densely packed together than its city counterpart and the buses (presumably) would have to cover a far bigger area in order to pick up the same number of people that a city bus does. Those two factors alone would make it impossible to achieve the level of service that a city transit system has.

Right now, suburban mass transit is mainly focused on getting people to the city. It would be hard to justify altering many routes to include intrasuburan commutes, but in saying that, it's also important to recognize that many of the suburban office centers themselves are near rail stations or in towns that are feeders to the big city, so it theoretically could be done.

Me, I love the subways. I also love my (dear departed) car, as well. I don't mind taking a train to work (it's only a twenty minute commute) since it afford me a chance to read a little, or even think about what I'm going to yammer on this blog. Driving into Manhattan would only leave me scarred emotionally.

I do understand the appeal, however.

This is a tough nut to crack, to be sure, but it's important. In an era when it's become patently clear that we must wean ourselves off the fossil fuel bottle, we find ourselves using more and more of it.

Humans is funny peoples.

Friday Music Blogging

It just dunnit get any better than this:Stevie Wonder & Ray Charles - Livin' For The City

In honor of Stevie's announcement that he will be touring again!

Friday Kitten Blogging

Cuz ma dadby es rilly bizzee thes week, he wuz not can has mah pitchers, so ah tole hem ah would fine some funnay pitchers an pose 'em. K, bai!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) First, it was terrorist squirrels. Then, it was spy squirrels arrested in Iran. It seems like there's an entire subculture on the planet made up entirely of squirrels engaged in criminal behavior.

2) What if FDR ran World War II the way Bush has run the Iraq invasion? (h/t MissCellania)

3) It's bad enough that the administration is doing stuff on the QT, but the courts ought to know better than to be complicit in the Bush crimes. Yes, this is a secret court...so what?

4) Apparently, I'm too mellow, according to some of my critics.

5) Overly dramatic presentation aside-- come on, Barack, pauses are for children, unless you have some new bit of data to convey. We all knew you meant to exclude civilians-- Obama's statement regarding nukes was on its face a pretty moderate one, but Hillary seems determined to drive Obama onto her turf by making him seem to mimic the positions of any hack politician. She's doing a good job, too.

6) Wal-Mart's likely to take a hit on this. The old adage, you get what you pay for, is true. That Wal-Mart has made billions off the sweat of low-paid Chinese workers, and those same factories now appear to have been run on an even tighter shoe string, means that Wal-Mart will now have to go back and reconsider all products that it outsources to China, as well as all vendors. The last thing they'd want is people dropping dead in their aisles.

7) Sharight! Run another one past us, Rupert!

8) Let's put up a hat trick of annoying, hated corporations, shall we? If I walk out my office right now, one block in any direction, I can get a Starbucks coffee...if I was that insane, could take out a second mortgage for a cup, and if I felt like spending the rest of the day getting that god-awful bitter taste out of my mouth. Apparently, that might change in the future.

9) First, it was the rhinos, then it was the sharks...

10) Hm. It seems I haven't been keeping up...

11) First, it was Genesis. Then it was The Police...

12) Happy anniversary to me.

The Oil Slick

I'll have some analysis on the other side of this excerpt:

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil is headed straight to $100 a barrel, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said hours after prices surged this week to an all-time high near $79.

But others remember the price collapses of the last four years and wonder if markets are headed for a repeat.

U.S. crude on Wednesday climbed to a record high of $78.77 a barrel, surpassing the previous peak of $78.40 reached in July 2006.[...]

Since 2003, the oil market has entered into a sharp correction phase after climbing to its highs for each year.

After reaching last year's peak, prices tumbled 36 percent in the following six months to below $50 a barrel.

For the record, the futures market is betting that prices will drop, and while I concur, notice a trend that develops here: each peak is higher, each floor also rises, and longer-term, the floors are rising faster than the ceilings:Some of the heaviest hitters in the commodities markets have predicted that, even without adjusting for inflation, gasoline will hit $15 a gallon in 1995 dollars within eight years (adjusting for inflation, the actual price you'll pay would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $23 a gallon). And lest you think I'm talking out of my hat:

Chavez is not alone in believing oil's rally will continue. Goldman Sachs said last month prices could reach $95 by the end of the year.

It's hard to predict precisely what $100 a barrel oil will mean immediately for Americans. The correlation between crude and gasoline, for example, is less tethered than the correlation between crude and home heating oil. We see today, in fact, that oil at $79 a barrel has hardly budged gasoline prices upward, where oil at $65 a barrel back in April had prices at the pump well over $3 a gallon.

The perfect storm for Americans would be an oil spike in October. Even at $80 a barrel, refining capacity would be limited by physical production requirements: the shift to more environmentally-friendly winter blends of gas demands that refineries be shut down for retooling. And some of the crude, much of the crude, would be diverted for the imminent heating oil season. If global warming keeps the weather unseasonably warm in the fall in the Northeast, thus encouraging more people to drive later into the fall and winter, $4 a gallon at $80 a barrel would be likely. $5 a barrel in states like California and Massachussetts would be reachable.

$75 just to fill up a Toyota Corolla, $150 to fill up an SUV, will bring home the crisis to Americans in a way they'd never imagined.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV

Posted Sep 22, 2006

The Asylum Street Spankers with an ode to Republicans.

Hillary's Gambit

Hockey is a dirty game. Even when it's played beautifully, with grace and speed, there is the inevitable cheap shot elbow to the ribs, or stick between someone's feet. Often, the provocateur gets caught and penalized, but more times than not, he (or she) won't, and many times, it's this chippy kind of play that sets up scoring opportunities.

Politics is a dirty game, too. Elbows get thrown in the corner, skates get kicked, groins get kneed. You accept this when you play because you understand the nature of the game: that everyone is trying to get to the goal (office) and can't afford to play Alfonse et Gaston games.

This week, Hillary scored a goal:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over fellow Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination, a new poll showed on Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll also showed that if the elections were held today, either of those Democrats would beat former New York Major Rudy Giuliani, the current Republican favorite.

Forty-three percent of Democratic respondents said they preferred the New York senator and former first lady over other Democratic candidates in the 2008 contest, up from 39 percent in June, the poll showed.

That put Clinton even farther ahead of chief rival Obama, the Illinois senator who slipped from 25 percent in the June poll to 22 percent in July. Clinton and Obama have sparred in recent weeks, trading accusations last week over foreign policy positions.

How did this happen?

It's early yet, to be sure, and there's plenty of time for that lead to get chipped away, but the race is starting in earnest now, and this was a bit of a surprise, but it bodes well for Hillary's third quuarter fundraising, I think, so it bears some examination.

For my part, I think the semi-"Sister Souljah" moment for Hillary came in the recent YouTube debate. You may recall a question regarding sitting down with people we don't particularly like to negotiate with them:Obama stated categorically he would (with, I think, the inferred background work of making sure there was something to be gained from talks). Hillary jumped on this:

Clinton sensed an opening. “I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year,” she said, adding, “I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes.”

Figuring she had the high ground, Clinton continued on the attack Tuesday, calling Obama’s position “irresponsible and frankly naive.”

In one short stroke, she turned around the debate, during which Obama tried very hard to paint Hillary as "Bush lite" (ouch, that was a nasty elbow!), and made Obama seem lost at sea and unprepared to deal with the world at large.

A not-too-subtle dig at his rapid rise from state legislator to a contending Presidential candidate, and a reminder that we've just had six years of someone getting on-the-job training. Talk about calling someone "Bush lite".

Many, as that last linked article implies, have said that Obama gained ground and momentum from that debate exchange, making Hillary out to be, well, "Bush lite" by continually bringing up her Iraq invasion vote, but the truth is, that story has played itself out already, particularly in the 2004 election when Kerry was called on it by Bush himself.

Too, Obama's own voting record in the Senate has mirrored Hillary's nearly perfectly on issues like funding the continuation of the invasion. Yes, there's ground to be gained in the more rube-laden sections of the left with reminders of the war and Hillary's regrettable complicity with this administration, but I think we've reached a point where people don't care about how we got there, just what we want to do about it now. In that regard, Obama has not distinguished himself from Hillary, pretty much "me-tooing" her positions.

Why this matters, at least in my analysis, is that Hillary will now start to draw the serious money that's stayed out of the race so far: it's too early to contribute, no one's scored any points, there's two or three legitimate (four, if you count Al Gore which no one seems to be doing much lately) contenders and the penalty for jumping in too early is severe if you choose the wrong horse.

By drawing up into the 40 percent range, Hillary has put this contest up on a new plateau. People cited her experience and competence as reasons for choosing her. That she took most of her new-found support from Obama is no surprise, then.

Some have called her attack a "cheap shot." I don't think it's any cheaper than what's been thrown at her from both sides of the fence. That she took a chance and scored a point is indicative to me that the vaunted Clinton team is back and is running the show again.

*WHEW* That Was Close!

We can all breathe just a little bit easier now:

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has admitted it is now "highly unlikely" it will proceed with its $5bn (£2.5bn) offer for the Dow Jones media group.

It said this was because of the reported present level of opposition from the Bancroft family, which owns 64% of Dow Jones' voting shares.

With the Bancrofts expected to make a statement later on Tuesday, reports say less than a third are backing the deal.

The board of directors, which presumably has many of the Bancrofts on it, did OK the deal last week, but the Bancrofts themselves clearly had issues with Rupert Murdoch's overbearing presences in his other holdings.

It's hard to describe how sensible people feel about Rupert Murdoch. He's not precisely beloved in most circles (save for the low-normals in the Republican party), and is viewed as a sort of "necessary evil" wherever he goes, not because he can actually contribute anything to anybody or any organization, but simply because he buys ink by the barrel. You can't really ignore him and to challenge him is to risk taking any shred of privacy and decency off in public.

He's not known as someone who is a gracious loser, in other words.

The Wall Street Journal is not exactly a bastion of left-wing rabble rousing. It's editorial board sits somewhere to the right of Augusto Pinochet, the brutal former dictator of Chile, and it's hatred of anything smacking of any government control is legend.

Except of course when said government intervention saves its own bacon or covers its losses (not directly, of course).

The reporting in the news pages, however, is stellar, and something the Bancrofts can rightly be proud of. That coverage, quite objective and therefore quite "liberal", has its skirts covered by the savage reactionarism of the editors, who would probably like nothing less than to bring back child labor...after all, those kids are spending their worthless lives sitting idle in classes, learning, while they could be out there earning money for their corporate overlords!

While they may not agree with the stories they edit, they can smell a money maker a mile away, and the Journal can point with pride to the stories they cover and how they cover them. If the Journal was a newspaper as opposed to a business periodical, and invested money in the reporting staff and their resources, the WSJ could easily wrest the "paper of record" mantle from the New York Times.

And it's this that worried me most about the Murdoch take-over attempt. See, he'd rebrand some Fox channel as a "business channel in the tradition of the Wall Street Journal," and I'd be OK with that. After all, Beatle tunes are being used to sell diapers now and that's what sells now, is the brand. I accept that.

What I don't accept is, well, look, you can hear "All You Needs Is Luvs" and while you may momentarily lose your lunch over it, you can dust off Magical Mystery Tour and play the B side, and reaffirm your belief in all things Beatles.

Unfortunately, in the news business, old news is bad news and it's pointless to try to dig up an old Wall Street Journal and reminisce over the way they handled the terror attacks on 9/11. You'd want to read a current Journal and experience their top-notch journalism on a fresh story.

And if you need further proof of the Journal's reportage, Daniel Pearl was working for them when he was kidnapped and killed.

Which puts him about three million percent higher on the totem pole than the people who read only the editorials, then repeat them near-verbatim on right-wing blogs using Cheeto-stained keyboards, sitting in Mom's basement.

So you can exhale now. While the Journal's future is uncertain, it's not destined for Page Six treatment.

UPDATE: Sadly, I didn't bite when they stuffed the moosecock in my mouth, so I swallowed this story whole. I should have, could have, known better. The deal was practically done late last week, but my hopeful heart and firm faith in the better nature of humanity did me in to believing that Murdoch would be repudiated.

Silly me. Mea culpa, gentle reader. I try hard to be cynical. I let my heart get ahead of the facts here.

Murdoch, it appears, will own the Wall Street Journal. I shall now mourn.

Spoiling For A Fight

This is utter lunacy. I'm reminded of the apocryphal story recounted in "Citizen Kane" about the start of the Spanish-American War: "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war.":

NEAR SHATT AL-ARAB (Reuters) - Mandated to secure Iraqi waters, the commander of a U.S. gunboat orders his crew to watch an Iranian look-out post for activity as his ship sails through waters with no clear divide between Iraq and Iran.

It was in this murky stretch that 15 British military personnel were captured by Iran earlier this year and accused of straying into its waters. A long-running dispute over the nearby Shatt al-Arab border river has helped spark war in the past.

Now, the U.S. military and its allies patrol as close as possible to where they believe Iraq's territorial waters end, but as tension rises between the Islamic Republic and the West, so does the potential for accidental escalation.

"We set a line where we think it's reasonable, and by customary use, going up and down that line, we try and set the tone," said John Chandler of the Australian HMAS Anzac warship, part of the coalition patrolling Iraqi waters.

"The Iranians have slightly different view as to where the line is."

Uh, yea, not like you don't have binoculars or anything, and can stand off a few hundred yards...but the clearest sign of provocation comes from the idiots on patrol there:

"We're going to drive down the line on the Iraqi side, and we're going to drive down slow. For Americans, we see this as driving down the strip on a Friday night, waving to all our friends," [USS Typhoon Commander Joel Lang] said on the way to the disputed area.

Now, I don't know where Commander Lang grew up, but I'm fairly sure the neighbors weren't polishing their guns and pointing them in your general direction. Perhaps a slightly more serious attitude is in order, rather than this reckless and insane lightheartedness?

I mean, I know you work for a man who thinks nothing of popping wheelies in a golf cart with the British Prime Minister at his first summit, but a little decorum is in order, and this isn't a dick-swinging contest to see if you can outjerk the President.(video at link)

All this comes on the heels of a warning from Iran over the weekend:

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has told a German magazine that the United States has too many problems in Iraq to become involved in armed conflict with Iran. The United States "is not in a position to get into a new military conflict," Mottaki was quoted as saying in an excerpt of an interview to be published in Focus magazine.

Who'd have ever thought Iran would be the bastion of reason in this conflict?

That's not to say that Iran is innocent. No sir, and in fact, insurgents in Iraq have already issued warnings to Iran that they face an all-out border skirmish if they don't stop meddling in Iraq, but the simple fact is, 170,000 soldiers are tired of fighting. Americans are tired of fighting and probably won't support another war in a region we have no business meddling in at all. They might, correctly, it turns out, view an Iran-US showdown as a provocation on our part, as opposed to some imaginary slight.

Particularly given this administration's track record with honesty and forthrightness. You know, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, errrrr...won't get fooled again" (which may be the first time The Who have made it into international diplomacy.)

Ripples Across The Pond

Earlier this year, neo-cons had great rejiocing when France elected "conservative" (because, really, he's practically middle-of-the-road-right, from an objective American viewpoint) Nicholas Sarkozy president. I wonder what they'll make of this?:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative ruling camp was headed for a devastating election defeat on Sunday that could well force the 52-year-old leader to resign, media exit polls showed.

The election for half the seats in parliament's 242-member upper house is the first nationwide electoral test since Abe took over as prime minister 10 months ago, pledging to boost Japan's global security profile, rewrite its pacifist constitution and nurture economic growth.

Public broadcaster NHK said Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its partner, the New Komeito, were seen winning between 39 and 55 of the 64 seats needed to keep their majority in the upper house, where half of the 242 seats are up for grabs. The New Komeito had aimed for 13 seats.

Japan, a far more traditionalist and conservative society, put up with Abe's nonsense for less than ten months before deciding they'd like to go back to the more liberal administration of government.

Likely because, as with so many conservative administrations, Abe's administration has been rife with corruption and ineptitude almost from the very start.

But doubts about his leadership abilities were fanned by a series of gaffes and scandals that led two cabinet members to resign and one to commit suicide, as well as revelations that the government had lost track of millions of pension premium payments.

Like Bush, Abe succeeded a wildly popular Prime Minister (Junichiro Koizumi), with Elvis-Presley-like charisma.

There's a lesson here for Democrats, as well. The opposition party, the LDP, pledged to "shrink income gaps and ensure the weak are not neglected." This echoes the 2006 Congressional campaign, to an extent, but should become the focal point for the presidential campaign next year.