Plant The Seed. Forget To Water

Each morning, now that the weather is nice, I walk about a mile and a half to a nearby train station to commute to work. It's really a very pleasant walk (altho wearing a suit each day, now that the weather is getting more sultry, makes for some unpleasant aftereffects).

I pass plenty of schools, bright young faces, happy for the moment's freedom in the sunshine. I pass a few convenience stores, the inner city version of a "7-11", bustling with laborers picking up a coffee and donut for the morning.

And I pass relics and remnants of a past age. Among these, I stroll past three buildings that, within my adult lifetime, were movie theatres. Now, they are warehouses or retail strips with apartments overhead, but at one time, they were minipalaces dedicated to showing movies and entertaining audiences.

There aren't many of these left in the world today. One or two in Manhattan and of course, the famous (Grau)Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Other than that, they've been divvied up into minitheatres, or sold and converted to other uses.

People's tastes change. Their habits change. Their opinions change. For lack of a blockbuster, gotta-go-see movie, most people are content to wait for the DVD, or worse, for cable to show the film. They won't make the effort to go and do something unless there's more bang for the buck.

I say all this, because in Time Magazine this week is a fascinating piece about democracy. Entitled Is Freedom Failing?, author Peter Beinart makes the case that the spread of democracy that we saw in the late 80s and early 90s, due in large part to the fall of the Soviet Union, is contracting quicker than Bush's legacy. An example:

In 1999 Nigerians did something remarkable: they elected a President. After 16 years of military rule and four decades of political and economic failure, Africa's most populous country held a free election. "Globally, things are going democratically," a Lagos slum dweller told the New York Times. "We want to join the globe."

It was a good time to get on board. The percentage of democracies in the world had doubled since the 1970s, to more than 60%. Many of the remaining autocracies--pariah states like North Korea, Burma and Iran--seemed to be living on borrowed time. In ideological terms, as Francis Fukuyama famously declared, history was ending--and Nigeria didn't want to be left behind.

That was then. But when Nigerians went to the polls again last month, democracy lost. In an orgy of ballot-box stuffing and violence, punctuated by an attempted truck bombing of the electoral-commission headquarters, the ruling party won what some observers thought was the most fraudulent election ever in Nigeria--which is saying something. Once again, Nigeria is catching a wave. From Bangladesh to Thailand to Russia, political freedom is in retreat. In a book due out this fall, Hoover Institution political scientist Larry Diamond notes that "we have entered a period of global democratic recession."

Why?

Several reasons, of course. Nigeria, like Russia and Iran, is heavily dependent on oil revenues. When oil prices are low, dictators have less power to control their populace and freedom can take root. When oil prices rise, more money means more oppression.

The biggest reason democracies are failing now is the one thing you might expect, and ironically, shouldn't have expected: Iraq. The failure of the United States to establish a democracy in a country that has long lived with tyranny is a glaring one, and does not give comfort to freedom fighters in other parts of the region.

Indeed, we rely heavily on autocracies and tyrannies to keep the Middle East as a whole from devolving into chaos. Look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Even Syria and Iran are buffers against the collapse of the Middle East.

But the overarching reason? People change. The fruits of democracy are hard to fight for, and seeing the example of the chaos in Iraq does not help others, like the Nigerians, like the Burmese, to keep on keeping on. Moreover, the fruits of democracy are fleeting in countries: no nation is more than three meals from a revolution, not even America.

You can't just drop seeds and hope they'll take root. You have to nurture them along until the roots are so strong that the tree stands on its own merits. Fighting a war for democracy in some other country is insanity at its most basic level. If we want to create a democratic tradition, if we want people around the world to be truly free, we have to offer assistance that keeps them free.

Troops aren't the answer, and in this case, I agree with Barack Obama: we ought to be doubling our foreign aid, taking away from our war efforts and investing in countries where democracy has already taken root but is in danger of collapsing.

We could start here in the US, of course.

Rather than spreading hatred for our ideals and our nation, we ought to be showing folks how democracies work. And we ought to be taking the time to make sure ours works, too. September 11 was a golden opportunity to show that a free nation can take a body blow like that, and not come up punching, but ready to punch, ready to fight for our rights and our beliefs and our freedoms.

Ironically, the attempt to spread freedom has revealed a powerful flaw in our own freedoms: when people stop caring because they're afraid, they won't make the effort anymore.

Unfortunately, you can't TiVo freedom.

True Christians Everywhere Shrug And Smile

Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges."

TRANSLATION: The internal organ that most humans call a heart was, in Falwell, a shriveled raisin.

Seriously, could there be a more poetic end to this man?

(h/t to Susan)

The Hunger

Question: What is the single greatest tragedy to befall humankind?

The Holocaust? Darfur? The tsunami of Christmas 2004?

I believe the greatest tragedy to befall humankind is the creation of "want".

I was watching the Today Show this morning, and as part of the set, the staff constructed a 40 foot long aqarium, in which they placed the usual suspects for a North American reef: surgeonfish, a moray eel, a stingray, a couple of horseshoe crabs, and a black tip reef shark, along with a plethora of other reef fish that, to put it bluntly, are herbivorous. Bait, in other words.

You might think that this would make for some compelling television. After all, Shark Week on The Discovery Channel gathers some of their highest ratings each year. People like to tune in to see nature in the raw.

Surprise, surprise: no one got eaten. Why is that?

Animals eat when they need to eat. Period. There's no forethought that, gee, in five hours, I'm going to be hungry so let me pre-feed. Animals live in the moment, mostly because otherwise their watches would be wrong.

Only humans seem to demonstrate the capacity to think about the future, and to plan for an abstract event. Similarly, and I think hand in hand, humans devised a clever precept: "want."

Humans have the same basic physical needs as any animal: food and shelter (we need clothing too, but that's more because we find hairy backs repulsive), and procreation of the species. Once you've satisfied those basic needs, the human mind can kick in and explore its environment. It's this "mind" place where things get tricky. Suddenly, we've constructed a mass of neuroses and paranoids: does he like me? Will she have sex with me? Can I keep this job? What about the people dying in Iraq?

Does any of this matter? Well, yes, some of it does: global warming is a very serious threat to the sanctity of both food and shelter. So is having sex and passing along your genetic material, which means a bigger shelter and more food.

Most of our day to day concerns are pretty abstract, though, and speak more to the comfort of our existence as opposed to the singluarity of it. Just look at any war if you want an example.

There's a book and a movie that are very popular now called The Secret. I confess, I spent ninety minutes and downloaded the program. It's pretty interesting stuff, all about the power of intention and how just asking for what you want can bring it to you, if you clear negative thoughts from your life.

And that's where I started laughing and haven't stopped. "Negative thoughts" are....what, precisely?

For isn't "wanting something" in itself a negative thought? Life is, after all, a zero sum game, and for every Nintendo Wii I buy, that's a) one less Wii for others to own, b) all those lost resources and clean air and water spent to provide me with that Wii (plastic doesn't grow on trees, you know!) and c) money spent that could have been spent elsewhere or better still, saved for a real need.

Now, I know what Rhonda Byrnes (and her carafe of teachers) means: negativity=hatred, to be replaced by love. And yet, it's still about want. It's still about that mass of neurons called a "mind". It's still about ego. And it's still about weakness, a desire that is overpowering your better sense.

The secret of The Secret is that by disciplining yourself to let go of what is holding you back, you will magically (and I do mean magically) find yourself being what you want to be and having what you want to have.

OK, nothing wrong with that, except...what do you want to be? What do you want to have? Is being rich, or having an Academy Award, or marrying the most beautiful mate, something you really want?

And if it requires a carrot at the end of a stick for you to undergo the self-examination needed to find out what you want and to put aside the things that hold you back, then what kind of discipline are you really pursuing? Emotional brainwashing?

It sounds like this to me. Humans are, well, human. We're all kinds of feelings and emotions. We're "beings". And this kind of stuff is about "doing". And it scares me a little to see that we're encouraging this in a society that needs less wanting and more being. All around us is a world that cries out for our participation, and yet here we are, cocooning ourselves in a blanket of self-indulgent pseudoscience, and pulling the covers over our heads. And paying for the privilege of doing so.

Better we should get out in the world, and as our long-dead ancestors risen from the veldts of Africa did, explore. In the exploration, we will discover who we are.

And what we want.

Monday Monologging

"People will come" - Field of Dreams

I Promise, The Last Rudy Post For A While...

After all the hoopla surrounding the March 31 fundraising reports for the first quarter of 2007, comes this little notice:

WASHINGTON -- Rudolph Giuliani has so far signed up only about a quarter of the major Republican donors he set out last November to enlist as fundraisers for his presidential campaign, records show.

Giuliani's failure to recruit most of those on this early "wish list" is revealed by his early presidential campaign-strategy documents leaked in January.

That anemic track record serves as another indication that key conservatives aren't yet sold on Giuliani, experts say, a problem that could become exacerbated by his recent decision to acknowledge his support for abortion rights.

The news could be worse: he corralled 24 of the 89 he acknowledged he needed, but lost only 21 to either Mitt Romney or John McCain, meaning 44 others, about half, have refused to publicly commit to any candidate.

This is not small potatoes money: these are donors who can reliably raise some $200,000 minimum each for any particular candidate they choose to lavish their attention on. It's still early in the campaign, but the campaign itself has been an anomaly in how early it has turned into a full-bore run for the tape.

Sorry. I've been promising myself I wouldn't report the race like it was a horse race and run poll after poll past you. I had a brain cramp here.

The trouble Giuliani had all along, and really should have acknowledged before setting such a far-fetched goal of obtaining the "89", is that apart from his public persona during the aftermath of 9/11, no one really knew him or understood who he was and what he stood for.

People who are going to pony up in excess of $10 million dollars in toto are going to want assurances that their voices will be heard in the White House, so at the very least, you have to pay a little lip service to tax cut, pro-life, and "American values" positions, none of which Rudy has a particularly strong record on.

That these heavyweight donors stood off to the side while waiting for him to flesh out his stances is not surprising. I should expect that by June 30th, many more will have committed. I'm betting that another half, say 22, will commit but will be split pretty evenly amongst the three top candidates.

There's something at stake for the donors, as well: back the wrong horse, and you have to work twice as hard to curry favor with the winner, and get your voice heard.

There's a cottage industry in "access", sadly it's determined not by need but by resources.

The person who stands to lose the most the quicker more donors jump in is, of course, the candidate who isn't even in the game yet, but I believe that ultimately, the field of candidates from both parties that we see will not generate both party Presidential candidates (save possibly for Hillary, should she survive the primary season, something that's more likely as California, New York, and New Jersey accelerate their primaries).

Who this really hurts is someone like Fred Thompson, who will have to either somehow make enemies all over the party to grab some of these donors, or will have to make do with "populist" fund raising tactics, like Barack Obama or Howard Dean did, but that will also mean staking out some pretty shaky positions slightly away from the inevitable party platform of pro-life, pro-war, pro-Bush.

Mother's Day Music Blogging

For Mom

Ancient Hegemony

It's easy to depersonalize early American history, particularly the Colonial times, when you consider just how foul the invaders were towards the native Americans.

Sometimes deliberately, as our near-genocide of "Injuns" as we expanded westward would have to be classified. Sometimes, inocuously:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For most U.S. citizens the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America is a time to celebrate pioneers who crossed the ocean in sailing ships and braved hardships to forge a nation.

But for American Indians whose ancestors lived in America when the English adventurers slogged ashore on Jamestown Peninsula in what is now Virginia, it is at once a reminder of their long struggle to overcome persecution and prejudice and a chance to reintroduce themselves to the world.

"We're celebrating 400 years of survival in a fairly hostile environment," said Anne Richardson, chief of the Rappahannock, one of several Powhatan tribes involved in the commemoration events this month that included a visit by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

You remember Jamestown, of course: Pocahontas, Powahatan, John Smith, all that lot? A chamring, Disneyesque tale of war averted by a child?

The war wasn't averted, however. It transmogrified to an economic war, and the white man still won, depsite thousands dying nearly endlessly, as wave after wave of ships brought new settlers, new crops and new pestilences to the New World.

National Geographic magazine this month has a stellar article on this aspect of the conquest of America:

It didn't take long for the settlers' early dreams to evaporate. One after another, business schemes failed, and those who had envisioned riches turned to praying for survival. Many colonists perished within months of stepping ashore. Three out of four who came to Jamestown between 1607 and 1624 died from disease, hunger, and conflict with the Indians.

Until recently, their tales were told only through written accounts of a literate few. Since 1994, Historic Jamestowne archaeologists led by William Kelso have dug up a fuller story: a million artifacts that reveal in minute detail the lives and deaths of settlers, both elite and ordinary, as they struggled to establish a colony that would become the first permanent English settlement in North America—and the birthplace of the United States.

For example, did you know that American earthworms were non-existent before Jamestown? That tobacco as we know it, that all-American crop that created the eventual economic boom that gave Europeans their foothold here (and ravaged Indian populations, as hunting forests were cleared wholesale for planting Sir Walter Raleigh's "discovery") was actually imported?

In a day and age when we are invading yet another country of "brownskinned people," the lessons of Jamestown ought not to be too far from our minds.

But sadly, they seem to be...

I've signed up to be a founding delegate. You can, too. Check it out!
Unity08
Y'know, to represent the Non Rapturists............and stuff. =^..^=

He Just Doesn't Get It....

...and therefore will lose the GOP nomination:

On Friday, Giuliani restated his personal opposition to abortion but support of a woman's right to choose.

"It's a difficult issue," he said.

He sought to defuse the potent subject that could harm his chances of winning over primary voters who tend to be more conservative, saying Republicans risk losing the White House if they allow themselves to be divided.

"If we don't find a way of unifying around broad principles ... we're going to lose this election," Giuliani said.

Well, he gets that much of it, to be sure: abortion is not the biggest issue in this campaign and any candidate the GOP elects based on a stance on this issue is sure to be heavily hampered, because abortion is so low in the hierarchy of concerns of the average voter, after the invasion in Iraq and the shaky economy, that it's not even pulling double digits in polls.

But here's the bit he doesn't get:

And he called for more respect between people who have good-faith disagreements about issues.

"Those principles come from God, and that's why we're so lucky," he said.

Rudy, according to these people whose support you so desperately seek, abortion = murder. Period.

There is no middle ground, no God-given right for a "baby" to be "killed," and God (the father) is very clear on this point: an eye for an eye. If you murder, God will see to it that you are murdered, and He will use whatever instrument of destruction He can. It is these passages of the Old Testament that the Religious Right take comfort in whenever an abortion clinic is bombed.

My suspicion as to why Rudy hasn't full-throatedly abandoned a woman's right to choose, the way Mitt Romney did, probably stems from an ugly skeleton in his closet. I have no other evidence of this, of course, but my guess is, somewhere deep in his past is a trip to a doctor with a woman to quietly "take care of a condition."

Rudy, you see, doesn't exactly have the best track record for fidelity, and I'd wager at least once, his peccadillo has backfired on him. If he were to fully abandon a woman's right to choose, even to pay lip service to overturning Roe v Wade, there's a woman with a doctor's bill poised to strike.

I say this, because Rudy's never been one to mince words or straddle a fence, even if he felt it might cost him a few votes. He's always relied on his "strength" (which apres W could be read to mean single-minded determination to fuck things up) to carry along people who might disagree with his positions on a minority of issues, trusting that his pigheadedness and "limousine redneck" stances on other issues will win the day.

One more thing: Rudy's trotted out a cutesy little turn of phrase to explain away his flip flop on abortion:

"I disagree with myself sometimes, and I change my mind sometimes," Giuliani said to laughter as he addressed a largely anti-abortion audience at Houston Baptist University.

Sound familiar?

Kerry: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Somewhere, there's a DNC ad writer furiously playing with Rudy's quote.

Friday Music Blogging

The Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now

Yet another video I really ought to redo...how many times in my life have I wanted to sing this to someone...

Friday Kitten Blogging

iiii'm 2 sssssexay for my bed

Subtraction By Addition

Chess is a game played best by conserving your resources while making your opponent waste his. Positional strategy forcing unexpected errors and moves while protecting your more vital pieces as needed.

A whiff of this strategy has begun to rise off the Democratic Iraq funding strategy:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives defied President George W. Bush on Thursday and passed an Iraq war funds bill providing only enough money to continue combat for two or three months, without a guarantee of future funding.

By a vote of 221-205, the House approved the Democratic-backed bill giving Bush $42.8 billion in emergency military funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in a Democratic drive to bring the four-year-old Iraq war to an end, the bill would withhold an additional $52.8 billion until late July, after Bush submits progress reports. Lawmakers then would decide whether to use this second batch of money to continue combat, or bring U.S. troops home.

Bush wants the nearly $100 billion up front and without conditions. "I'll veto the bill if it's this haphazard, piecemeal funding," Bush said earlier in the day.

What does this really mean?

Bush has already vetoed one Iraq spending bill that would have given him all the money he asked for and more, but tied that money to accepting a withdrawal strategy for our troops.

This bill gives Bush all the funding he's asked for over the period he asked for it, but limits his spending to a time frame, pending confirmation that the funds are being used productively. Let's call it an "allowance," for lack of a better term.

This strikes me as an interesting strategy: by pushing Bush's hand to the pieces they want him to move, the Democrats are setting a trap, I think. Ultimately, by September, no more than transitional stop-gap spending measures will have been passed (forcing Bush to fight this war à la carte, while leaving him few options to pursue the endgame he would prefer: a clean spending bill that he would only have to revisit late in an election year (thus neatly giving the Republican candidate a platform to campaign on that would sustain Bush's "legacy" while giving that candidate the option to let the war die after being sworn in or worse, allowing Bush to claim victory, and pass the mantle on).

When the Democrats won both houses of Congress in 2006, I assumed that the Bush strategy would be to run out the clock on his administration, but I didn't take into account the funding (or for that matter, rescinding the original war authorization).

Shows you why I'm running for NotPresident...and not President!

We're rounding into the summer now, and so I don't expect there will be much accomplished aside from funding the Iraq war, finally, on whatever terms the Dems can persuade the Republicans in Congress to accept on a veto-proof basis, but it's clear the Democrats are not just going to roll over, afraid of a veto-mad tinpot despot.

What's Good For The Goose...

This item was in the paper this morning:

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Rudolph Giuliani said yesterday that his differences with the Catholic Church over his support for abortion rights are between him, God and his spiritual adviser, not Pope Benedict XVI - seeking to avoid a head-on confrontation with the pontiff over the issue that has bedeviled Giuliani's campaign.

The pope took a hard line against Catholic politicians who vote in favor of abortion rights, saying Mexican lawmakers who did so lost the right to Communion and may have even excommunicated themselves.

Curious. In 2004, you might have made note of this?

Los Angeles, Oct. 18, 2004 (CWNews.com) - A consultant to the Vatican has said Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has incurred the penalty of excommunication from the Catholic Church.

The consultant made his statement in a highly unusual letter to Marc Balestrieri, a Los Angeles canon lawyer who formally sued John Kerry in ecclesiastical court for heresy.

Balestrieri, who launched his case earlier this year by filing a heresy complaint in Kerry's home archdiocese of Boston, told EWTN's "World Over" program on Friday that he had received an unusual, indirect communication from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the pro-abortion stance.

That communication provides a basis, he said, to declare that any Catholic politician who says he is "personally opposed to abortion, but supports a woman's right to choose," incurs automatic excommunication. It also provided a basis for Balestrieri to broaden his canonical actions and file additional complaints against four more pro-abortion Catholic politicians: Democrat Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Tom Harkin of Iowa; Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine; and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat.

Now, in fairness to the Vatican, it denies that it ever responded to Balestrieri (and you never heard the follow up, because Karl Rove got what he wanted: "Kerry" and "excommunication" in the same story).

The fact that the Vatican assigned a priest to explain church doctrine at all frightens me, since it means (as is demonstrated by the Mexican case cited) that the Pope feels it is appropriate to engage himself in world politics.

Popes, of course, have done this throughout history. Popes, in point of fact, have often been at the very heart of secular politics throughout history, attempting to fashion monarchies and empires to their tastes.

That was a long time ago, however, and in a day and age when democracy and democratic ideals trump centralized rule, you'd think a Pope would keep his mouth shut and focus on healing souls.

Apparently not.

And is there a double standard being applied to Rudy Giuliani? Despite not being excommunicated, Kerry was refused communion by several Catholic archdioceses and priests, but found some who would commune with him, thus sidestepping an uncomfortable photo op of kneeling in a church and being passed over.

Yet, Rudy has been at least as outspoken, if not more so, than Kerry about his support for choice. Why no outcry from William Donohue of the Catholic League? Or Cardinal Egan of NYC? Why have no priests stepped forward to enforce Vatican doctrine?

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

A little sacreligion never hurt anyone...

Who Would Have Believed?

It's been a year and a half since the Katrina and Rita disasters of 2005. In both instances, relief efforts were hampered greatly by reduced National Guard forces in the affected states.

So here we are, Spring of 2007, and guess what? We still have a large chunk of forces in Iraq and worse, we have equipment that is being destroyed on a daily basis there that really ought to be in barns and armories here:

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (Reuters) - Critics of the Iraq war said on Tuesday the Bush administration's failure to replenish vital National Guard equipment sent to Iraq caused Kansas to fall short in responding to last week's tornado disaster, and other states were equally vulnerable.

The White House and the Pentagon rebuffed the criticism, saying Kansas and other states had adequate resources that they could share in event of disasters like the Kansas tornado that leveled one small town on Friday and killed 10 in the area.

The debate was ignited by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, who said on Monday the federal government had failed to replace state National Guard equipment deployed to Iraq and the lack of equipment was hindering rescue and recovery efforts after a weekend of violent weather in the Midwestern state.

"Adequate resources" sounds like a misnomer, and also suggests that Gov. Sebelius has been deliberately underutilizing the resources at hand to make a political point. Currently, Kansas has available about forty percent of the hardware its National Guard needs to be effective domestically.

Estimates for National Guard material resources being used in Iraq that will need to be replaced hover just under $50 billion dollars, with an estimated four-year time frame to replace all that equipment. Sure, it's possible that the next four years will be free of any major disasters that would require, say, bulldozers, front loaders, backhoes and trucks.

Just like it's also possible that monkeys might fly out of my butt.

Kansas is a curious political duck. While it tends to vote "red" and is in fact, the reddest of red states based on election results, it does have a Democratic governor and has shown a tendency for "bluer" results creeping from the Missouri River valley inward, possibly as a result of the proximity of Kansas City, MO, right across the river and an influx of immigrants.

That Sebelius has been successfully able to make this complaint and that this complaint seems to be sticking, does not bode well for Kansas' continued support for the invasion of Iraq, or Senators Sam Brownback, Presidential hopeful, and Pat Roberts, both of whom have given full-throated support to the invasion.

Fighting Them There...

So we don't have to fight them here?:

NEW YORK -- Six men from New Jersey have been arrested in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according investigators.

Investigators said the men planned to use automatic weapons to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the N.J. base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said.

Investigators told Newschannel 4's Jonathan Dienst that these arrests are the result of a tip to the FBI and use of an informant to track the suspects. The terror suspects traveled over the last several months from New Jersey to the Poconos where they practiced firing automatic weapons, investigators said.

OK, a couple of points here.

1) These men were not Middle Eastern. They are Albanians and "citizens of the former Yugoslavia". You might remember this last group as people that we fought for, to prevent ethnic cleansing under the Clinton administration.

2) No specific threat beyond identifying which target they would attempt to hit had been received. They did train on automatic weapons in the woods of Pennsylvania, but hey, this is America, land of the gun.

3) These men are resident aliens of the United States, and while born in eastern Europe, have spent most of their lives here in America.

4) There was no apparent funding from overseas. These men were pooling their life savings together to commit this heinous act.

So what are we looking at here? We're looking at American residents so frustrated and so angry at the war being waged against people who share a religion with them that they are willing to forget all the goodwill we built up during the Kosovo campaign and target fellow Americans. We're looking at people who aren't "brownskinned," who could easily pass into any facility in America without so much as a second glance for racial profiling.

We're looking, in other words, at home-grown terrorism. Which is the folly of the "Flypaper Theory" in combatting terrorism and terrorists. And we're not looking at Al Qaeda. We're staring the anger that the Bush administration has created right square in the eye.

And that ought to scare us beyond the mouthed platitudes of Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al Zawahiri. And George W. Bush and the right wing pundits who still support his insanity.

"Poll-ez" Vous, Francaise?

There's an interesting dynamic coming out of the French election yesterday, one that bears a bit of analysis. First, it's pretty clear that France has become as polarized a nation as the United States, and possibly even more so:

PARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of people were arrested in France overnight in clashes between police and protesters who torched cars following conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in Sunday's presidential election, police said.

Official figures released early on Monday said demonstrators set fire to 367 cars and injured 28 policemen across France, and 270 people were arrested in the violent protests against the tough-talking former interior minister.

Reports and eyewitness accounts suggested the violence was worse than the official statistics indicated because they did not include other incidents such as petrol bomb attacks on buses near Paris or smashed up shop fronts in large cities.

Sarkozy is widely seen to be a fairly conservative French politician, which has American conservatives crowing (I guess they have to take comfort wherever they can these days), and for France, I guess he is conservative, but I'd gladly trade some of the problems he's looking to fix for some of what laughingly gets referred to as labor issues here.

The French work week is 35 hours. Overtime is heavily taxed at both the corporate and personal level, discouraging folks from working longer and encouraging more employment. Sarkozy aims to curb unemployment while eliminating the taxes on overtime.

Good luck with that. Then there's the unions to deal with. Many are pretty militant, most are anti-hardline, so Sarkozy will have strike after strike after strike to deal with if he tries to break the unions.

Meaning, effectively, he's about as "far right" in France as outgoing President Jacques Chirac. And we've seen over the past six years what "far right" means to Frenchmen.

American conservatives believe Sarkozy will be different because he has expressed a fondness for President Bush, but so did Angela Merkel of Germany, and all that came out of that was some silly photo-ops and a quick submersion of their relationship to lower echelon discussions. So let 'em "rah rah cheerlead" on this count: Bush will find a way to fuck it up, as well, possibly by making some inane comment about French fries...

A Portrait Of Patriarchy

I stumbled across this article this morning, and while many of its conclusions are obvious, the questions it raises are not:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently suggested Ehud Olmert should step aside and let her be prime minister, nobody batted an eye over the fact she is a woman.Golda Meir laid that debate to rest in Israel nearly 40 years ago.

Britain had Margaret Thatcher, Pakistan had Benazir Bhutto and India had Indira Gandhi. Women hold high office in a dozen countries around the world, in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines.

So why has the United States, where Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, never elected a woman to the White House?

The answer is not particularly surprising, except...

"The rules of the game are set up to the advantage of the dominant majority bloc, which is not just Democrat or Republican but is wealthy white males," said Andrew Reynolds, a professor at the University of North Carolina.

Um. Hm. Thatcher? If there was ever a nation that was predominated by rich old white guys, England would be that country...

Women have tended to have two main pathways to high office, he said. The first is dynastic, which has been the route in developing countries for many women, like Gandhi and Bhutto, who were daughters of prime ministers.

The second pathway is seen in wealthier democracies, where more women pursue careers and political positions that act as a springboard to higher office.

So what does that mean? Hillary, even before she was First Lady, was a highly visible figure in the world of women's rights and family issues. Continuing...

"You get more and more women in parliament and then you get more and more women in the Cabinet, and then you sort of have this critical mass where it becomes no longer surprising that a woman makes it into being president or prime minister," Reynolds said.

The United States is on the latter track but lags many of its European counterparts. Only 16 percent of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress are women. Compared to countries of similar wealth, one would expect 30 to 50 percent, Reynolds said.

Why?

There is an inherent structural block to women advancing in politics. We have a two party system, which is unusual in most countries. Again, England being that rare exception, save for the fact that there are minor parties that align themselves with either Tory or Labour, much like the Liberal and Conservative parties here align themselves with Democrats or Republicans. Too, England has had a queen for some 60-odd years now, so a highly visible women playing politics couldn't have hurt Thatcher's chances much.

More choices means more opportunities, obviously. One of the biggest problems this nation faces, in my view, is the duality of points of view on issues. In an attempt to throttle, out of paranoia, any dissident political faction from gaining momentum, the two major political parties went out of their way to roadblock smaller parties from the fray. Duverger's Law goes a long way to explaining how this works: the structure of elections in this country being what they are, a one-off, one-shot, winner-takes-all deal, tends to reinforce those parties that can muster financial resources for electoral success. If you don't win often enough, your party dies.

In fact, this just recently happened to the Liberal Party in New York State, having been de-listed from ballots for failing to even garner the minimum number of votes required to remain on, in part due to the rise of the Green, and Working Families Parties.

Which raises the other issue of the two-party system that Duverger points out: successful third parties will only supplant one of the dominant two parties, not supplement them.

Two-party systems tend to aggregate factions that would otherwise represent dominant single-issue parties, like pro-lifers or anti-warriors, because the attraction of wielding actual political power is too great to overcome, much like a black hole will suck up debris in its outlying solar system. This tends to quash dissent and radical solutions to problems.

And ultimately, every so often, it results in a spectacular supernova of political infighting, much like the Democrats underwent in the late 70s and 80s, and much like the Republicans are about to undergo (Carl's Political Theorem #1: Republicans run about 30 years behind Democrats in terms of evolution.).

It is due to this factor, above all, that women haven't been as successful in politics as you might expect them to be, because once you add to the dinosauric inertia of a huge political animal the gender factor, you can see that even in a allegedly progressive party like the Democrats, women are going to have a really tough time cracking the old boys' network.

Why do I say that? If a woman could run a successful third party candidacy for any major political office, say governor of California, she would be wooed and courted by both major parties, and shepherded to the front of the room, much like Barack Obama has parlayed his lone Senate win into a serious run at the Democratic nomination. In other words, if a woman could sidestep the party mechanics and prove she could win on her own, she'd be gold for the party that managed to land her.

Why would she agree to do this? Simple. Independent candidates who win major administrative (not legislative) offices tend to perform miserably. Just ask Jesse Ventura.

Legislators, like Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, ultimately align themselves with a party caucus (in these cases, Democratic). This way, they can get things done.

Independents who administer government, say a governor or mayor, have to deal with both parties equally, and will be trusted by neither, until he or she chooses sides.

As you can see, the political gravity of the two party system even influences winning candidates. This factor, the two-party system, raises for the me the largest flag that women have had to work harder in the US than anyplace else to get ahead in politics.

The good news? I think we will see a woman President before too much longer. And once that happens, I suspect it won't be long before we see an African-American, Latino, and Jewish president (maybe all at once? :-) )

Special Saturday Edition: Friday Music Blogging

My favorite Peter Gabriel video ever. That's Kate Bush with him.

Simple. Elegant. Just listen to the words and imagine a man who's worked for GM or Ford all his life.

Imagine the one thing he would want in his whole life at that final moment, as he stands on that bridge.

I've Had My Fill Of Patience!

The trope that Bush used to veto the funding bill (and deny our troops the armor and ammunition they need) was that to set a date certain would give our adversaries comfort, and allow them to withdraw until we leave. "All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq," he said.

Possibly true, although they don't seem to care all that much. This war isn't about "us v. them" as much as it's about "them v. them" and we're just occupying space. But an article at Reuters today made me formulate something that has been bugging me for a while now:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wearied by steady losses and few tangible signs of progress in the war in Iraq, the U.S. public is running out of one resource America's enemies appear to have in abundance -- patience.

Impatience with the war, now in its fifth year, was reflected in the elections that drove President George W. Bush's Republicans out of power in Congress in November. Since then, Bush named a new secretary of defense and new military commander in Iraq charged with implementing a new strategy.

But despite repeated appeals from Bush for patience while more troops arrive in Iraq to carry out the new strategy, opinion polls show that pessimism runs deep and most Americans favor a deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

Now, Bush has always said he doesn't govern by polls (despite the numerous flipflops that his administration has done based at least in part on, well, polling), and that might be an admirable trait for someone who has a grasp of reality.

But here's the truth: the insurgents, Al Qaeda, Iran, Syria, Sunnis and Kurds all DO read the newspapers, Mr. President, and believe it or not, they actually own calendars!

They know two things:

1) The American people stand three-quarters of the way out of the door of Iraq.

2) In 626 days, the next administration will take over. No one, despite what people are saying on the campaign trail to pander for right wing votes, will continue this war of yours much beyond that date, and that's assuming Congress hasn't figured out a way to take the widdle cap gun out of your hands and drag you home for supper, young man!

So they figure, "Eh! In 627 days, there will be another 3,000 American killed. No biggie. Then the fun begins anyway."

Judging from Islamic fundamentalist Web sites, there is no shortage of patience on the side of America's enemies. The insurgents appear confident they can draw on a seemingly endless supply of new recruits.

"Although ... we have killed some huge number of enemy combatants (perhaps 20,000+), without fail the armed insurgents, militia and Al Qaeda in Iraq apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in a memorandum to U.S. military leaders after a visit to Iraq in spring.

See where I'm going with this?

It doesn't matter if we set a date certain or not, the insurgents and the occupied are perfectly willing to wait us out. They know the American people won't allow you unlimited use of force, they know the army that's there already is exhausted, and worse, they know you're losing allies by the day.

My sense is that Bush is terrified. He's like the kid who got a failing grade in history, who doesn't want to show his dad the report card because he knows he'll be beaten (I should know the feeling; I was that kid...nevermind that I got the grade because some girl cheated off my test). So rather than own up to his mistakes and admit there has to be a better way, he's going to stubbornly stick to a path that can only lead to further death and destruction, hoping that some exit presents itself.

Praying the problem goes away, in other words.

There are plenty of plans on the table now that allow us to take some of the pressure off our troops, while protecting those precious few areas of Iraq that seem to be in pretty good shape, like the Kurdish north. For example, the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-Hamilton report, suggested perhaps partitioning the country into three autonomous regions, with equal shares of the national oil revenues going to all three. We could modify this to include American troops in the Kurdish north, allied troops in the Shi'a south, and the middle would effectively be labelled a "no-fight" zone, where we would enforce peace only when we had to, lightning fast strikes and back out. No more occupation.

Oops! I forgot. That was one of my "NotPresident" policies that I wasn't going to announce until I became NotPresident...

Friday Music Blogging

Herb Alpert - Rise

One of the sexiest songs ever written, in my opinion.

Friday Kitten Blogging

In ur tUb, cLoggging uR drainz

Some Good News On Global Warming

The latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released this morning and it contains some good news, for a change:

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Humans need to make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years to keep global warming in check, but it need only cost a tiny fraction of world economic output, a major U.N. climate report said on Friday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the third of a series of reports, said keeping the rise in temperatures to within 2 degrees Celsius would cost only 0.12 percent of annual gross domestic product.

"It's a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage," Bill Hare, a Greenpeace adviser who co-authored the report, told Reuters at the end of marathon talks that ran over their four-day schedule to finalize the document.

So let's say you make $50,000. The cost, on that scale, would be $60.

Cheaper than a cup of coffee a week.

This places the responsibility for cleaning up global carbon emissions squarely in the lap of the developed world, to both clean up their acts as well as assist the developing world in leapfrogging fossil fuel technologies to more efficient energy production methods.

Naturally, as this report is the result of over 100 countries having their say in it, it's a barely legitimate assessment of the costs and benefits of these expenditures, but hell, it's a legitimate start and may help enough to avert devastation and tragedies worldwide.

Too, there will undoubtedly be some bleatings on the right, as this tactic will pretty much ensure that new technologies to replace antiquated ones will be introduced. Privatization of utilities, for example, means that it will be more difficult to exchange older coal-based power generation with cleaner technologies, since there will be enormous pressure from short-term investors to keep the status quo.

Hey, I'm sure that extra buck or two in their annual dividends can help them reduce greenhouse gases, right?

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) I'm not a big fan of rap...I do have a couple of Run-DMC and Eminem tunes on my iPod, but I've always like Busta Rhymes as a personality, so it's sad to see him battling what looks like a very serious substance abuse problem, complicating what appears to be some anger management issues. Good luck, dude.

2) This looks like just the ticket for society today. It's funny how we revel in our shortcomings, but feel a need to cover them up.

3) Which leads me to today's thought: Truth is never profitable. Think about it (and yes, I'm brushing up on my Bokononism). The most profitable ventures in history have been about deceit and illusion.

4) This is a sea serpent found off the coast of Florida in shallow water. It's about seven feet long. The head appears to be just out of frame on the right hand side. I'll see if I can dig up the video for you. UPDATE:

5) Even the folks down in Texas don't want to wall off Mexico!

6) It's nice to see the New York Post being true to form as a homophobic sounding board. They even managed to side-slip the knife into the Catholic church pedophilia scandal, linking it to gay men.

7) Ten Little Indians.

8) Five dollar a gallon gas is just around the corner.

9) "Where In The World Is Matt Lauer?" is taking place this week on the Today Show. For once, it hasn't sucked. He's been to a Boeing plant in Seattle, Bhutan, Ireland, and today, Dubai, all newsworthy places, and has discussed real issues with people who know stuff. Tomorrow: South Africa. (prediction)

10) The weird winter we had --first we had a cold snap, then mild temperatures for nearly two months, followed by an extended cooling down-- has wreaked havoc in gardens all over the place. Tulips and lillies are blomming side by side, and the azaleas are not far behind. All this is happening as both cherry and apple blossoms begin to fade and fall to the ground. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

11) Needless to say, I think my allergies are hammering me, which is why I can't be bothered to think today and post some long screed about Condi Rice's Syria visit, and Bush's offhanding of any Iranian encounter. We really do have children in charge.

12) Martini Republic asks the burning question: which high school classmate has sodomized more people? It may take you a while to realize who the person on the right is, so let me give you some clues: add about a hundred pounds, mounds of body hair, and imagine a 14" dick. Let me know if you can't get it, still.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Monty Python explain the choices of the Bush Iraq plan

...Then Let's Break Him

While reading this article, please consider the concept of "karma" (the Wiccan Three-Fold Law, not the Hindu precept):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With his Iraq strategy mired in chaos, his inner circle besieged and a hostile Congress asserting itself, there is still one thing President George W. Bush can depend on -- his own refusal to bend.

Even with fellow Republicans increasingly questioning the wisdom of his policies, he shows little sign of wavering, reflecting a single-mindedness that has become a defining trait of his presidency.

Bush's supporters call it the mark of a principled leader, while critics see it as symptomatic of a reckless worldview that mistakes intransigence for resolve.

What it means in practical terms, however, is no end in sight to political gridlock in Washington.

It is at the very least feckless and reckless behavior. Presidents who have stood on principle without making some pass at compromise have found themselves on the very bottom of the food chain when the time comes to assess history.

This intransigence is not a signal of strength, but rather a fear of being wrong. That's fine for an umpire in a meaningless baseball game, whose authority must remain unquestioned in order to be effective, but for a President dragging 300 million of his countrymen down with him, it's not just suicidal, altho there are clear overtones of suicide in this thinking.

And suicide is borne out of fear: of pain, fear of loss, fear of suffering, fear of humiliation. Just ask Cho Seung-Hui. Fear becomes anger, anger becomes stubborness, and stubborness becomes an almost religious righteousness.

This is partly a calculated strategy on Bush's part: by engaging in gridlock, he hopes to effectively kill the Federal government. The problem is, the things that trouble America will still be there when he's gone and his successor, be she Republican or Democrat, will almost instantaneously transform the shabby, dark gray landscape Bush leaves in his wake into a vibrant world of laws and rules and nuance.

One hopes. It could go either way, now that Bush has opened the door of evil and allowed the US into the Garden of Gethsemane for his betrayal of our nation and its values, a place to prepare for our sacrifice. And what a sacrifice we face, if this evil is allowed to perpetuate, even until January 20, 2009, for his successor could just as easily exploit the weaponry Bush leaves in his wake (assuming he's adult enough to give up power that day) for her own purposes, and benign tyranny is tyranny still.

I am deeply troubled by this intransigence on his part. I believe it is time we broke him, if he will not bend.

I call on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to ignore his veto and his whining threats and to simply not offer up another appropriations bill for consideration: Make sure the blame is squarely on Bush's shoulders that he will not get to run out the clock, and thus lay blame for the tragedy that is the Iraq invasion onto the next President's shoulders.

Make sure the message gets out that Bush denied funding to his own troops fighting his own war, created within his own administration and lost on his watch.

Make sure that Republicans who seek to succeed him know that the Democrats will not roll over the way the 109th Congress did. This is a preventable catastrophe, unlike September 11 or Katrina. There will be no need for subpoenae and oversight after the fact if you apply the tourniquet now.

It is only in this way that President Bush, hat in hand, will come to the table and really talk. He may not, hell, he probably won't, do it, but at least the world will know that America now speaks with one voice and it is a voice of reason and sanity.

Women On Women

A very interesting study was released yesterday by the Associated Press:

An AP analysis of data from the 2006 American National Election Study Pilot Test found that when it came to selecting a candidate for president, gender matters more for women than for men. But it's a two-way street: Women are more likely to vote for a candidate because she is female, and also more likely to dismiss a candidate because of her gender, according to the analysis.

Meaning that while Hillary gets a first look by women because she's "one of us," women are also much faster to dismiss her as a candidate because she's a woman.

Interesting. Why, do you think, this would happen?

It's in part because some expect the first female president to be a reflection of them, only better, said Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, a group that aims to encourage women to lead in business and politics.

"We look at them and we say 'We want them to be perfect. ...' We hold them to a higher standard because they do represent us," she said. "Most of the male candidates running wouldn't be running if they were women. A woman John McCain's age would have a hard time, a woman with Barack Obama's experience would have a hard time."

Very interesting.

Granted, there's an idealization factor at play here. Whenever an unusual candidate runs for wide-range offices like Senator or President, we expect them to be like Caesar's wife: above reproach. This may not be a reflection of reality, but who said perception was reality? Remember, this current administration ran as "adults," yet turned out to be petulant children who believed in magic and fairies and miraculous solutions.

When John Kennedy ran as an Irish Catholic candidate, he took great pains to reassure middle Americans that he wouldn't be beholden to the Pope. He won, barely, against a sitting Vice President who had been handicapped by a notorious scandal while Vice President.

It should have been a walk in the park, but for the Catholicism issue (among other smaller issues).

Too, just this year, as Barack Obama has mounted what many consider the first serious contention for the Democratic nomination, we've seen an idealization factor at work, as noted by Senator Joe Biden: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, ... I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Ahem.

This is a deeper issue than just a woman running for President. The newness factor is inherent in many aspects of our culture, and we tend to set up our idols so high on the pedestal, it's impossible for them not to fall.

But with each fall, it makes it easier for the next one to climb a little higher on the pile of debris.

May Day! May Day!

Here's an excerpt from Armed Madhouse, Greg Palast's Most Excellent Book, now out in paperback goodness Plus! it's updated and expanded!
(More great investigative journalism-the real kind-including articles, podcasts, BBC-TeeVee newscasts, etcetera here.)

May 1st - Mission Accomplished

THE FEAR: Including Marines in a tube, learning to speak Terrorist, Bush’s Khan job, National Security Document 199-I and Osama’s Mission Accomplished.

What are you afraid of? Our Fear Salesman-in-Chief has something for everyone.

So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See?

…and Bush says, “Whad’l’ya have, pardner?” and Osama says…

But wait a minute. I’d better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, “Security is no joking matter.” But if security’s no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank God the “shoe bomber” didn’t carry Semtex in his underpants.

I’m a bit nervous. It’s an “ORANGE ALERT” day. That’s a “low threat” notice. According to the press release from the Department of Homeland Security, low-threat Orange means that there will be no special inspections of passengers or cargo today. Isn’t it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn’t use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day’s terror color.

“I can’t say I ever have. I mean, who would?” He smiled. “The terrorists.” America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won’t be monitored. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush’s team.

There are three possible explanations for the Administration’s publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook.

1. God is on Osama’s side.

2. George is on Osama’s side.

3. It’s about the oil.

A gold star if you picked #3.

Osama’s Mission Accomplished

On Thursday, May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Forgetting to undo the parachute clips around his gonads, our President walked bowlegged on the ship’s deck in a green jumpsuit looking astonishingly like Ham, first chimp in space. The scene was so exciting that the media failed to notice that the War on Terror had ended on the previous Tuesday.

On that day, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quietly acknowledged that he was withdrawing America’s armed forces from Saudi Arabia.

I’m always surprised at the debate over “What drives Osama? What does Al-Qaeda want?” There should be no confusion: Al-Qaeda states its mission, like most enterprises, on its Web site. Osama had it written out in English, in capital letters, so it wouldn’t be difficult to miss the point.

DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST THE AMERICANS OCCUPYING THE LAND OF THE TWO HOLY PLACES—EXPEL THE INFIDELS FROM THE ARAB PENINSULA The “two holy places” are Mecca and Medina, and their “land” is Saudi Arabia. That’s what Osama wanted: U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden issued his demand on August 23, 1996; and on April 29, 2003, the Tuesday before the President was chauffeured by fighter jet onto the deck of the Abe Lincoln, Mr. Bush gave bin Laden exactly what he wanted: U.S. troops sent packing from the Land of the Holy Places.

That’s astonishing. Until George W. Bush, the United States of America has never, ever, removed all our military bases from a foreign land no matter how much locals bitched or moaned. We even keep troops in Okinawa over the island’s strong objections, and World War II ended sixty years ago.

Am I accusing George Bush Jr. of being the first President of the United States to cravenly accede to the demands of terrorists? No, Reagan got there first, in 1984, when he gave in to Hizbollah’s demand and ordered our Marines to retreat from Lebanon.

No matter, President Bush was correct in announcing, “Mission Accomplished.” However, it was not America’s mission that was accomplished. It was Osama’s.

********

Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild, released this week by Penguin.

(In)Action By Committee

So, I sees this headline, EU-U.S. Summit To Call For "Urgent" Climate Action, and says me to myself, "Hmmmm, maybe finally something is going to start happening.

Wrong:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The European Union and United States will agree at a summit on Monday that climate change is a central challenge that requires "urgent, sustained global action," according to a draft statement seen by Reuters.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, making her first trip to Washington since assuming the presidency of the EU, hopes the joint statement will lay the groundwork for a broader deal on combating global warming at a June G8 summit she will host in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.

OK, so it's not pulling the fire alarm, but let's face facts: no multilateral agreement ever happened overnight, did it?

So what's this "call" going to entail? Well...um......errrr.....not so much, it turns out. See, America and the E.U. have different regulatory standards, so the agreement to be announced this week will create:

A council led by EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen and White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard will be set up to monitor progress in aligning regulations and present annual reports to EU and U.S. leaders.

A COMMITTEE?!?!?!? ANNUAL REPORTS!?!?!?!?

Oh dear lord, save us from those who stand in our way! Or to put it in the words of Queen Amidala:

I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee!

People will die. People are suffering.

Let's make this very simple: the E.U. environmental standards are barely more acceptable than America's, and do just slightly more than nothing to assist the environment and mitigate the damages of global warming.

New standards, tougher even than Kyoto's, are required now, thanks to the hands-sitting-on by the Bush administration and more important, the European Union, who should have pressured Dumbya much harder to accept Kyoto and get with the program.

global warming
global climate change
Bush

Gee....How Nice Of Him...

Three thousand Americans died on September 11, 2001. On September 14, President George W Bush vowed to get "the folks who did this"

I'm guessing Hamid Karzai missed that memo:

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban freed a French aid worker on Saturday as President Hamid Karzai marked the anniversary of the end of communist rule with a fresh offer of olive branch to the resurgent Islamic guerrillas.

WHA?????

Let's take a closer look at this:

At a colorful ceremony in Kabul for the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet-backed communist regime, Karzai again pleaded with the Taliban to talk peace.

"Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life," he said.

And those three thousand dead Americans, the nation that put you, an Unocal puppet, back in charge, including the natural gas pipeline Unocal is building to Pakistan?

Wouldn't it be nice if the those men and women could join you at your festival of peace?

The real kicker was the Taliban response to this offer:

France's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one member of an aid group who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan early this month had been released.

Why are we fighting in Iraq again?

tags technorati :

Friday Kitten Blogging

Iiii hav mi eyzzzzzzzzzzzzzz on u!

Friday Music Blogging

Sheryl Crow - In honor of her bitchslap of Karl Rove - "Soak Up The Sun"

I'd so totally have her baby...

To No One's Great Surprise....

....except maybe the sheeple on the right...:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Weaker exports and a steady slide in spending on homebuilding helped slow U.S. economic growth to its softest pace in four years during the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported on Friday.

Gross domestic product or GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, increased at a weaker-than-expected 1.3 percent annual rate in the three months from January through March.

That was a little more than half the fourth quarter's 2.5 percent rate and well below the 1.8 percent rate that Wall Street analysts had forecast GDP would expand. The last quarter when growth was weaker was in the first three months of 2003, when GDP expanded at a 1.2 percent rate.

Growth has been slowing since late last year under the impact of a hard-hit housing sector where rising defaults are taking a toll on the subprime lending sector and causing builders to scale back until inventories of completed but unsold homes are reduced.

The situation is worse than you might imagine.

If you factor out export businesses and products, GDP actually dropped in the fourth quarter (exports grew 10.6%, meaning the domestic economy was off in the fourth quarter, reflected in consumer spending in December and the housing markets).

In the first quarter of 2007, export businesses actually had a real decline of 1.2%. Let's call it flat for jazz sake, but this was the first time exports hadn't increased since the second quarter of 2003.

So we're looking at two components of a "perfect storm" of weakness: flat domestic growth and flat export growth.

Consumer spending increased 3.8% in the first quarter which is a good sign, until you realize that much of this increase was caused by inflationary pricing, with energy prices rising as the extended winter remained cooler than expected.

It's safe to say the economy is on shaky ground right now. Consumer and governmental debts are at all time highs, and while consumer spending is still going on, one wonders how much longer that can be sustained. Wages are stagnant, net worths are slipping, and consumer "wealth" (a true illusionary misnomer), is rocky and unstable.

The rubber band is stretched very thin right now. And gas prices are already rising ahead of the summer driving season.

Shivving A Lame Duck

I have to give Vladimir Putin credit. He sure does have his finger on the pulse of the American attention span.

Amidst all the fuff and bluster of the scrutiny of our domestic agenda, knowing full well that now that Yeltsin's funeral has passed and the spotlight is off Russia again (with the added formal bit of nostalgia for those heady days of glasnost and perestroika), he's slipped a dagger into the lame duck:

OSLO (Reuters) - A row between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans to build a missile shield in eastern Europe escalated on Thursday when President Vladimir Putin declared a moratorium on a key European arms treaty.

Putin's announcement to the Russian parliament came hours before NATO and Russian officials were due to discuss a project U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said was no threat to Moscow, dismissing such suggestions as "purely ludicrous".

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he would ask Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to explain Putin's decision to suspend the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) and rejected Putin's accusation that NATO was ignoring it.

And all this could have been a non-issue if Bush and his administration hadn't left themselves wide open for it. By running and hiding and not taking responsibility for its errors and mistakes in the past six years, Bush has forced a long, drawn out confrontation with a hostile Congress. Putin is merely taking advantage of the distraction.

The CFE Treaty was negotiated in the months after the Cold War among the then-22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries with the goal of achieving verifiable reductions in conventional military equipment. It was adapted in 1999 (during the Clinton administration, again showing the enormous impact that great man had).

What triggered this move on Putin's part?

Again, either out of spite for all things Clinton, or in simply the stupidest strategic move since Troy took in a wooden horse, Bush announced plans to base missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic, effectively negating the treaty anyway, and forcing Putin's hand.

There is a quid pro quo here, as well. Both the Czechs and Poles have contributed forces to the Coalition of the Bribed Willing, and have not announced major troop withdrawal plans. Other former Warsaw Pact countries who are now part of NATO and some who are not, have withdrawn troops (Bulgaria and Slovakia being notable amongst these) and subsequently have not been favored with US military installations (and the dollars these bring to those economies, as well as some protection from any potential hegemony by a re-forming Soviet Union.)

Putin, seeing an increased NATO and specifically, American presence on his west, really had no choice but to walk away from this treaty, honored more in the breach than in the commitment.

I'm not liking what I'm seeing. Between this move and the inroads China has made in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, we're sort of setting up this patchwork World War scenario: this country here favors that country there, while in between are two countries who are each supported by other nations.

Keep your eyes out for visits to unusual places by leaders of China and Russia. Already, Chinese premiere Hu has paid a call to South America, notably Brazil.

This is a chess game, and we're already in mid-game.

Bush
Vladimir Putin
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Hump Day Comedy Blogging: UK Division

This was too funny not to share today

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

The Marx Brothers explain how Conservatives complain

Your Morning Cup Of Snark

I'm not going to comment much on this, because if my thinking is wrong, I may end up in some alien cookbook:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When the aliens finally invade Earth, you may wish you had listened to Travis Taylor and Bob Boan.

And if the invasion follows the plot of a typical Hollywood blockbuster, they might also be the guys called in at the last minute to save the day.

After all, they have written "An Introduction to Planetary Defense", a primer on how humanity can defend itself if little green men wielding death rays show up at our cosmic doorstep.

You read that correctly. Alien invasion.

*snorfle*

Taylor and Boan are hardly basement-dwelling paranoids obsessed with tinfoil hats and Area 51. Taylor holds advanced degrees in astronomy and physics, and is an associate at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He and Boan have done consulting work for the Defense Department and the U.S. space agency NASA.

It turns out, however, that we may be living and learning the lessons that we can use against space aliens.

Failure to prepare may mean mankind will have to dig in and fight with improvised weapons and hit-and-run tactics, much the same way Islamic extremists have battled the U.S. military in Iraq, Taylor said.

"You'd have to create an insurgency, a mujahideen-type resistance," Taylor said. "The insurgents know how to win this war against us. It also tells us that if we were attacked by aliens, this is our best defense."

*biting lip*

Have your say...I, for one, welcome our ant overlords...

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Gender Bender

The other day, I posted my thoughts regarding the exoneration of the Duke lacrosse players. I thought my longest exchange would be with radical feminists, but curiously, a reader stepped up and posted some very long and interesting posts regarding the myth of male dominance in America.

I thought I'd revisit this issue, on the heels of a new study released yesterday, that indicates that women's earning power is affected immediately and longitudinally by the mere fact they are not men.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A dramatic pay gap emerges between women and men in America the year after they graduate from college and widens over the ensuing decade, according to research released on Monday.

One year out of college, women working full time earn 80 percent of what men earn, according to the study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, based in Washington D.C.

Ten years later, women earn 69 percent as much as men earn, it said.

Even as the study accounted for such factors as the number of hours worked, occupations or parenthood, the gap persisted, researchers said.

I haven't seen the report, so it's hard for me to verify that the research truly did factor out pregnancy and occupations. The report presented on the Today Show was very misleading, in fact, as it compared an English major (woman) to an engineering graduate (man). The Reuters article, however, goes into a bit more depth regarding the study:

Among factors found to make a difference in pay, the choice of fields of concentration in college were significant, the study found. Female students tended to study areas with lower pay, such as education, health and psychology, while male students dominated higher-paying fields such as engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, it said.

Even so, one year after graduation, a pay gap turned up between women and men who studied the same fields.

In education, women earn 95 percent as much as their male colleagues earn, while in math, women earn 76 percent as much as men earn, the study showed.

Interesting that even in traditionally female professions, like teaching, there would remain an apparent gender-based difference in salaries. Here's the kicker:

While in college, the study showed, women outperformed men academically, and their grade point averages were higher in every college major.

Presumably, that would make women more qualified for better paying jobs.

Onto leaves of absence: clearly, if a man or woman takes a leave of absence, it should affect her or his earnings, when compared to someone who worked straight through the gap. An appropriate study, in my opinion, would be to pair up groups: men who took leaves, for education or parenting, with women who took similar leaves; men and women who worked straight through; and of course, pairing up equivalent earners in both groups.

This study attempts to delineate the general pay gap:

Specifically, about one-quarter of the pay gap is attributable to gender -- 5 percent one year after graduation and 12 percent 10 years after graduation, it said.

One year out of college, men and women should arguably be the least likely to show a gender pay gap, the study said, since neither tend to be parents yet and they enter the work force without significant experience.

Statistically, it seems to me that the initial pay should be equal, of course, but here again, it's not clear if the "five percent gap" is attributable to field of study, gender, or some other factor. A five percent gap is pretty significant as an initial set of conditions.

Too, the gender issue is fraught with complications: how much of this is inherent gender bias, and how much of it is individual psychology? Are men trained to negotiate tougher, to be more self-oriented? Are woman more respectful of authority, more willing to accept the first offer because they want to be perceived as team players? Are companies less likely to hire a woman because she might get pregnant and take time off, providing a built-in "discounting" of a woman's work because eventually, the firm will at the very least have to do without her for a period of time?

To be continued, I'm sure...in the meantime Happy Equal Pay Day!

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Meme Mr. Mustard

Argh. I was tagged by Miss Cellania because I'm a "thinker".

I'm really more of a 'Finder" altho there is this whole fantasy about being a knight on a big black horse that...well, nevermind.

OK, so on with the show:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.

Hmmmmm....OK....Martini Republic has to be one. The wit and snark factor of that blog intimidates even me, and at the very least, it forces my mixology considerations up a notch. I'm tempted to cheat and add Big Apple Martini, but that's such an integral part of MR that it would be like splitting the eleventh dimension from the 26th. I'd rather dye my hair.

Next up, Jesus's General, where my humour had better be sharp as a tack, or I'm toast. Those folks are big league. I take it as enormous praise when one of them actually deigns to acknowledge my posts.

Third, and along the same lines, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. How sharp is this blog?

A) It's the only legitimate blog ever mentioned by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

B) They practically invented left wing blogging!

OK, Skippy invented the term "Blogtopia"....

Fourth, My Left Wing: I guess the best comparison is "Kos for the cognoscenti". They don't bullshit over there. They don't get all arrogant about being a vast source of information on dozens of topics.

Put it this way: it may be the first and only political blog where I feel like I have to ratchet up my knowledge just to keep up.

Finally, James Wolcott, where at least twice a week, I can spit water through my nose.

2) Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

3) Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote. OK, so...um...I'm not sure what post got me here, so....

Mitt Romney Endorses Hitler

"I'm afraid building a nuclear power plant in our country today would require us first to hire the French to show us how to do it because they've been building 'em and we haven't," Mr. Romney said in response to a question about energy policy during his talk, as captured on video by the Washington Post's politics Web log.

So far, so good. But he kept going. "Liquefied coal, gosh. Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there."

I'll bet he even loved dogs and made the trains run on time, too...

Video here:

Homeland Security

Much has been made of the United States efforts to fight terrorists around the world, the theory being if we fought them there, we wouldn't have to fight them here.

A ludicrous theory on the face, as an organization that can pop up like a Whack-A-Mole is not likely to suddenly freeze in one place and be hammered over the head constantly.

We should expect them here and relatively soon. So how good are our domestic defenses? We do a fairly good job at airport security, even allowing for the massive holes in the screening processes (like airport employees and faulty and inadequate equipment). Our land borders are absolutely porous as evidenced by the great Mexican immigration debate (our Canadian border is even more porous).

Port screenings are still nearly non-existent, relying on the Coast Guard to interdict on the open seas any suspicious ship.

Well...not for very much longer, at this rate:

Although it is busy and obvious and well known, the coastguard has long been a poor sibling to the navy, army and air force. At the same time, its responsibilities have grown. In 2003 it became part of the Department of Homeland Security, with increased emphasis on protecting America's 361 ports and 95,000 miles (153,000km) of coastline from terrorists.

Yet the 40,000-member service has to scratch desperately for money from Congress. Its boats are often in poor shape; some patrol cutters are over 50 years old. In 2005 USA Today ran a story on life aboard a 210-foot (64-metre) cutter, where equipment regularly malfunctioned and raw sewage flooded the sleeping quarters.

In an attempt to remedy all this, and to win back prestige, the coastguard launched “Deepwater” in the 1990s. This was a $24 billion upgrade of its ships and aircraft. The goal was a modernised fleet and air arm with complementary communications and tracking equipment, lower maintenance and better conditions for the crew. Contracts to start building were signed in 2002.

Five years on, Deepwater is plagued by catastrophe. A plan to enlarge the coastguard's 110-foot cutters into more capable 123-foot boats was scrapped last autumn after the first eight refitted boats showed signs of cracking apart. The flagships of Deepwater—eight state-of-the-art 418-foot National Security Cutters, the first of which is nearing completion—have structural flaws that will probably shorten their projected 30-year service life and lead to costly repairs.

Right smack in the middle of the first battles that includes American soil since the Civil War, we're losing the ability to defend our shores. The story includes tales of corruption due to the privatization of the contracts and the hubris and arrogance of an admiralty that finally was garnering the attention it deserved in the 90s (when Bill Clinton was President, efforts to defend this nation from domestic terror attacks were not only in the works, they were being executed and were successful).

This does not bode well for the security of the US coastlines. Ships in dry dock for repairs are ships that are not out patrolling the coastal waters. Ships in danger of sinking or overweighted are ships that cannot keep up with faster, more manueverable ships and boats. It's a little like a fat cat chasing a pack of mice. Maybe he catches one or two, but the other dozen manage to steal all the cheese anyway.

This is a disgraceful situation, made more urgent by the ill-conceived "fight them there" strategy that shifts the focus of homeland security away from the homeland itself. Had Bush instead pursued a strategy of treating the September 11th attacks as a crime as well as an act of war, his focus could have been on fixing the major problems we have in protecting ourselves and not on inciting and inflaming more terrorists and more terror groups than ever before.

When a criminal breaks into a house and kills the family living there, two things occur: the police hunt down and capture the crook, and the remaining family beefs up their home security system.

Right now, we've got the cops out looking (and not very thoroughly), but we've left the doors and windows open.

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Something You Probably Didn't Think Much About....

For me, reading this article was a "D'Oh!" moment. I had wondered why Reuters featured it, until I gave half a thought to it:

Of the nearly 24,000 wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, about a third suffer from some degree of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to the General Accounting Office.

The government has been on the defensive about veterans' medical care after a probe found shoddy living conditions of recovering wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, considered the jewel in the military's health care system.

A newly-appointed Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors was formed by U.S. President George Bush in response. A major topic is whether the civilian sector could be used more in treating traumatic brain injury, one of the fastest growing injuries of the war.

Brain injuries.

Losing a limb is one thing. Having shrapnel pierce your skin is one thing (my dad has lived into his 90s after having shrapnel nick his heart). Having your brains turned to scrambled eggs because of the concussive force of IED after IED?

That's a completely different kettle of fish.

With a corporeal injury, you see the damage, you fix the damage. Even with a physical trauma to the brain, you see the damage, you fix the damage.

But when you're talking about the effects that shock waves have on that 20 pound (in Republicans' case, about half that) mass of tissue, and what precisely it effects, you've got real problems that are long term and will require a lifetime of monitoring.

So 8,000 men and women have suffered brain damage in five years, just so this is put into perspective.

And the Bush administration's response? Outsource the problem! Here we have a chance as a nation to do right by people who may be irreparably harmed beyond repair, serving their country, and the first thing Bush's cronies can think is to help enrich their friends in the AMA and insurance fields.

Even if you take the most cynical view of this situation, that it's a marvelous opportunity to do research on brain function and trauma, this should be handled by the government, nevermind that the government not only ought to be footing the bill for this, but the government ought to have direct oversight over the treatment of these injuries suffered for an illegal invasion of a sovereign people who did nothing to harm Americans.

Pretty disgusting and feckless, if you ask me.

tags technorati : Bush Iraq brain injuries