ON THE RECORD.....
“Why do we as a nation, as a viewing audience, permit it: television news that institutionalizes willful ignorance of the world?” -- David Marash 4.12.08
"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," -- National Defense University Report 4.17.08
“The debate was a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world. This is not the first Democratic or Republican presidential debate to emphasize gotcha questions over real discussion. However, it is, so far, the worst.” -- From an open letter from more than 40 journalists lamenting the petty, nearly substance-free Democratic debate hosted by ABC. 4.18.08
"His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." -- Former New Hampshire Republican senator Bob Smith on John McCain. 4.20.08
“It will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.”-- Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason." 4.20.08
"Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court." -- Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, 4.19.08
"This wall is so asinine, and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors." -- Healy Hamilton, Director of the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, one of the wildlife researchers concerned about the consequences of the border fence which will bisect hundreds of miles of rugged habitat. 4.20.08
“Congress could pass a law saying: No company benefiting from a substantial federal subvention may pay any executive more than the highest pay of a federal civil servant ($124,010). That would dampen Wall Street's enthusiasm for measures that socialize losses while keeping profits private. -- George F. Will 4.20.08
“I have a terrible feeling the Senate just won’t get it, But the women will get it, and we will start a revolution.” -- Senator Barbara Mikulski, (D-MD) on the male-dominated Senate which blocked consideration of a measure intended to overturn a Supreme Court decision limiting pay discrimination suits. 4.24.08
"This will be another good year for Democratic Senatorial Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-NY). Despite holding a razor-thin majority, Democrats have basically zero chance of losing control, and they are poised to make major gains." -- Evans-Novak Political Report on the 2008 U.S. Senate races. 4.23.08
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1. Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand - How the Pentagon Spread Its Message (video)
David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals. 4.20.08
Watch the NY TImes video at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/20/washington/20080419_RUMSFELD.html
TV’s Response to Pentagon Propaganda? Never Happened. Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksSGdh-Sox4&eurl
2. Demand Accountability for Bush's Top-Down Torture Policy
In a stunning admission to ABC news Friday night, President Bush declared that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA's use of torture. Bush also defended the use of waterboarding - simulated drowning where the victim feels like they are about to die.
Congress should long ago have gotten to the bottom of which top officials approved, condoned and authorized U.S. involvement in torture. But, now that the President has admitted to a policy of top-down torture, it's even more critical that Congress get involved. More and what you can do at https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=853&page=UserAction
3. Mark Fiore: White House Life
http://www.markfiore.com/White_House_Life_0
4. Attack of the FreewayBlogger (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQdTBPONUDw&eurl
5. From the DAILY GRILL
- "This administration anticipated these times." -- Bush, on the recent economic downturn. 4/14/08
VERSUS
"[T]he economy's going to continue to grow." -- Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, 1/8/08
"[I]n each instance, when the [capital gains tax] rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money." -- ABC News's Charles Gibson, 4/16/08
VERSUS
"Even under the Treasury's most optimistic scenario about the economic effects of these tax cuts, the tax cuts would not generate anywhere close to enough added economic growth to pay for themselves -- and would thus lose money." -- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/18/08
"But let's be honest about stop-loss. This is sort of a myth of the left." -- Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, 4/10/08
VERSUS
"Lieutenant General James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff for operations, said he hoped that wartime demand for troops will decline enough by around the fall of next year to end 'stop-loss.' He said there are more than 12,000 currently serving under the practice -- an action that critics have called a backdoor draft. -- AP, 4/22/08
"This is an Iraqi led and Iraqi initiated operation. And this is what we've been wanting to see the Iraqis do is take on more responsibility." -- Press Secretary Dana Perino on the Iraqi government offensive against Shiite militias. 3/25/08
VERSUS
"[They] made it sound like we were just there supporting the Iraqi Army, but we did all the work. We just had four humvees out there with some Iraqi [troops]. -- U.S. soldier in Iraq, 4/21/08
"Public opinion of the [Iraq] war effort eroded when we were losing the war on the ground. Now that we're making progress, public support has rebounded." -- Conservative commentator Max Boot, 4/23/08
VERSUS
"In this poll, 64% of Americans said the war was not worth fighting. ... It been a steady majority for nearly 3 1/2 years, and opposition is more intense, with strong opponents of the war outnumbering strong supporters by 2-1." -- ABC News, 4/17/08
6. Scott Bateman: John McCain's healthcare fix (video)
http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2008/04/22/bateman_mccainhealth/index.html
7. VA Creates Roadblocks to Voter Registration for Injured Veterans
On the same day the Pentagon's commander in Iraq told the Senate that new troop withdrawals could not considered for months, Secretary of Veterans Affairs James B. Peake told two Democratic senators that his department will not help injured veterans at VA facilities to register to vote before the 2008 election. Steven Rosenfeld http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2966
8. Brave New World: The Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgq5suMXCV8&eurl
9. Brave New Films: Condi Must Go! (video)
http://condimustgo.com/
10. Jon Stewart Eviscerates ABC’s Hacktacular Debate (video)
http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Play/28443/2/tds_cbs_debate_041708.mov
11. Andy Borowitz: McCain Celebrates Huge Pennsylvania Win
- Presumptive G.O.P. nominee John McCain appeared at a mammoth rally in Philadelphia last night to celebrate the results of the Pennsylvania primary, calling the contest “a huge victory for me and my campaign.”
A jubilant Sen. McCain said that as the results poured in, “It became abundantly clear that the people of Pennsylvania want to send the Republicans back to the White House for another four years.”
Overjoyed McCain supporters packed the ballroom at the Philadelphia Hyatt to help their candidate celebrate what he called “the happiest night of my life.”
“My friends, tonight the people of Pennsylvania have delivered the White House to me on a silver platter,” he said, his eyes glistening. “This is the best thing to happen to me since I married a beer heiress.” www.borowitzreport.com
12. McCain On Earmarks/Israel (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akeFON3kg5E&eurl
13. Late-Night Political Jokes for Dems
- "Now, you may have seen this earlier on the news. Did you hear what President Bush said to the pope after his speech today? This is an exact quote. I'm not changing it. He said, 'Awesome speech, your Holiness.' That's what he said to the pope. See, he didn't want to say 'dude,' because it was a formal affair." --Jay Leno
"And today, John McCain said he disagrees with President Bush on the issue of climate change. And believe me, McCain knows what he's talking about on this subject. Of all the presidential candidates, he is the only one who's actually lived through an ice age." --Jay Leno
"According to a survey by the History Network, 98% of professional historians believe that George W. Bush's presidency has been a failure. The other 2% believe it was a total disaster. So, you could go either way." --Jay Leno
"Pope Benedict is in America! Wooo! Here he is being greeted by President Bush, the leaders of the two most powerful theocracies in the world. I personally have trouble telling them apart. They're both infallible. They both did some things when they were younger that they wish people would forget. One was a cheerleader, the other Nazi youth. It's a fine line." --Stephen Colbert
"President Bush also told the pope that he has prayed every single day since he became president. Hey, since Bush became president, we've all prayed every single day." --Jay Leno
"The president picked up the pope at the airport. How bored is our president? He's not the president anymore. Now he's like your college stoner roommate, doing favors for pizza. Next week I think he's helping Putin move." --Jon Stewart
"A former Pentagon official said this week that before the start of the war in Iraq, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave the Bush administration a list of horribles, things he believed could go wrong, which the Bush administration apparently mistook for a to-do list." --Amy Poehler
"Between gasoline prices and the mortgage foreclosures, people are hurting. And you know who finally noticed this? John McCain. He changed his position on people losing their homes, from his original, 'Drop Dead,' to a new policy called 'Go F*ck Yourself Plus.'" --Bill Maher
"Here's something interesting I learned. Did you know, John McCain does not use the Secret Service protection? ... Yeah, yeah. He hasn't been using them. He has his own team. In fact, you know what you call those six guys that surround John McCain all the time? Pallbearers." --Jay Leno
"The number two man in Al Qaeda in iraq, terrorist mastermind Abu al-Masri, is dead. He is dead. He reportedly died of natural causes. Died of natural causes. That's when you know the war has been going on a long time. Okay? When your enemies just start dying of natural causes!" --Jay Leno
14. Olbermann: Dick Morris "Worst Person" for "re-rewriting history" (video)
http://mediamatters.org/items/200804180004?f=h_clips
15. FLASHBACK: 1993 Stephanopoulos Criticizes The Tactics of 2008 Stephanopoulos (video)
http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Play/28456/2/Stephanopoulos-1993.mov/
16. Ann Telnaes: Bush and the climate challenge (Animation)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/telnaes/telnaes_main.html
17. Torture victim's records lost at Guantánamo
The former head of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay found that records of an al-Qaida suspect tortured at the prison camp were mysteriously lost by the US military, according to a new book by one of Britain's top human rights lawyers.
Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in 2002, tried to locate records on Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused by the US of plotting the 9/11 attacks, but found they had disappeared.
The records on al-Qahtani, who was interrogated for 48 days - "were backed up ... after I left, there was a snafu and all was lost", Dunlavey told Philippe Sands QC, who reports the conversation in his book Torture Team, previewed last week by the Guardian. Snafu stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.
Saudi-born al-Qahtani was sexually taunted, forced to perform dog tricks and given enemas at Guantánamo.
Other new evidence has also emerged in the last month that raises questions about destroyed tapes at Guantánamo. Elana Schor 4.21.08 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/21/guantanamo.humanrights
18. Disapproval of Bush breaks record
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. Susan Page 4.22.08 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-21-bushrating_N.htm
19. Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Skip to next paragraph
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. ADAM LIPTAK 4.23.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html
20. Standard Operating Procedure (video)
Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison. Watch the trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/standardoperatingprocedure/trailer/
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1. Mark Morford: Free Tibet? Hell, free America!
I know I know I know — we don't exactly have huge platoons of nasty jackbooted soldiers storming through the streets in riot gear and gas masks and large sticks bashing down on the shiny heads of peaceful monks.
We don't exactly have smashed and burning vehicles and dead bodies in the streets and vicious martial law, ethnic cleansings and curfews and media lockouts and blocked Internet access and all sorts of nefarious, disturbing reports of brutality and beatings and death. Well, except for parts of Oakland. And L.A. And Chicago. But never mind that now.
Overall, even under the deformed and wretched Bush regime and despite how much Dick Cheney's dead raisin of a heart leaps with excitement when he sees the videos of those bloodied and dead Tibetan protesters ("Damn hippies had it coming"), America is still far from the brutality and inhumanity happening right now in Lhasa and beyond.
Or maybe not. For here is what we do have: We have torture. We have a frighteningly simpleminded cowboy-wannabe president who supports and endorses the most inhumane treatment of prisoners imaginable despite its utter failure as a tactic, and this. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/16/notes041608.DTL&nl=fix
2. Joshua Holland: Hey George: How's That Plan to Lower Gas Prices by Sucking up to Oil Producers Working?
Hey, remember 2000? We had an election!
Let's recall then-candidate George W. Bush's pitch about how he'd lower gas prices, which were then averaging $1.66 per gallon:
"Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.
"'I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply,' Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. 'Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.'''
When Bush made that oath, crude oil was trading at about $35 per barrel.
Skipping forward to the present, Reuters reports that a new poll finds that "Eight out of 10 Arabs have an unfavorable view of the United States."
And "the price of New York oil hit a record high 115.54 dollars per barrel on Thursday." Average price of a gallon of gas today: $3.35
He's really done a heckuva job, hasn't he? 4.17.08 http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/82690/
3. Nicholas D. Kristof: Our Favorite Planet
Imagine if President Bush announced a plan for Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs that declared: ‘They will cease accumulating nuclear weapons by 2025. We will accomplish this through incentives and voluntary action, without mandates.’
Mr. Bush would be ridiculed, but in essence, that’s the plan he announced for climate change on Wednesday. He set a target for halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, without specific mandates to achieve that, and in the meantime he blasted proposed Senate legislation for tougher measures as unnecessary.
Unnecessary? When scientists detect accelerating melting in the Arctic and confidently predict centuries of coastal retreats and climate shifts, endangering the only planet we have? 4.20.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/opinion/20kristof.html
4. Raul Reyes: Government authority is crossing a line
Last week, Eloisa Tamez, 73, lost the latest round in her ongoing fight with the U.S. government. A judge ordered her to let Washington survey her land near Brownsville, Texas. It lies in the path of a proposed border fence. Now, Tamez, heir to an original Spanish land grant dating to the 1700s, fears that her property will be seized with good reason.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently waived more than 30 laws in order to expedite construction of the border fence. He did so with little regard for the concerns of residents, local officials and environmentalists.
And though the proposed path would cut through the properties of many citizens, it would bypass land owned by the wealthy and politically connected. The Texas Observer reported that the fence would detour around the River Bend Resort and golf course, as well as developments owned by the Hunt family, whose members are major supporters of President Bush. The fence would also cause irreparable damage to wildlife; two Texas nature preserves would wind up in Mexico. They'd likely have to close.
Chertoff maintains that the fence is necessary because Americans have been adamant about border security. Yet two recent polls by CBS and CNN show that Americans rank illegal immigration lowest on their short list of the most pressing national problems.
The fence wouldn't solve our immigration crisis. It would simply divert crossings to other places along the 2,000 mile border. It would do nothing about the 12 million unauthorized migrants already here. In fact, nearly half of all illegal immigrants entered the country legally and overstayed their visas, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is right in assessing the fence as a waste of money. 4.18.08 http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/04/government-auth.html
5. Joshua Holland: Carter Was Right to Meet With Hamas
Former President Jimmy Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee described as his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts,” is touring the Middle East, as a private citizen, in a bid to revive interest in a moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. He’s doing so at a time when their decades-long conflict is growing in intensity and distrust on both sides is running high.
As a result, Carter is once again under fire from conservatives. Last week, Republican Rep. Sue Myrick [of North Carolina] went so far as to call for the former president’s passport to be revoked on Fox News.
Carter’s crime was to sit-down with leaders of Hamas last week to explore the possibility of waging peace in the Middle East. For many Israel-hawks, it wasn’t a first offense; Carter is guilty of viewing the Palestinians as human beings and for condemning human rights abuses on both sides of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. “Any side that kills innocent people is guilty of terrorism,” he told an audience at Cairo’s American University after his sit-down with members of Hamas.
Carter rejects the short-sighted idea that negotiating with one’s enemies legitimizes or rewards them for their actions. According to the same logic, when a police department sends a hostage negotiator to talk down a gun-toting lunatic who’s barricaded himself in a house somewhere, that department would be guilty of “legitimizing” armed lunatics. It’s a ludicrous idea on its face, but one that’s essentially embraced by much of the American foreign policy establishment when it comes to the international arena. 4.21.08 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080421_carter_was_right_to_meet_with_hamas/
6. GLENN HUROWITZ: Something there is that doesn't love border wall
The concrete wall rising along the Mexican border is supposed to help keep illegal immigrants out of America. But it's precisely because it will do nothing of the sort that its politician defenders are willing to throw billions of dollars and hordes of political capital into constructing it.
Those politicians know something they hope their constituents won't figure out: Walls don't work.
A 10-foot wall does nothing to stop someone with an 11-foot ladder. The Border Patrol has admitted that there are dozens of tunnels under the wall. People fly over in small airplanes. More than 40 percent of illegal immigrants to this country come here legally and then overstay their visas.
There are ways to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants: more border security guards, deployment of a high-tech "virtual fence" (though technical glitches are slowing this down), vehicle barriers and (above all) enforcing America's immigration laws, including penalties against employers who hire undocumented workers. Indeed, according to border mayors and law enforcement officers I interviewed, the wall will perversely weaken our border security.
"We're fortunate that right now Mexicans have positive feelings about America and have provided invaluable assistance to the United States in several criminal investigations," McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez told me while I was investigating the wall for Grist Magazine. "But if you really want a security problem, have Mexicans hate the United States, and I'll show you a security problem."
A working solution is exactly what the corporations who fund politicians' campaigns don't want. Cracking down on illegal immigration would interfere with the flow of cheap, nonvoting labor they use to keep wages low and bust unions.
The great tragedy of the wall, however, isn't just the colossal waste of taxpayer money that's being funneled to build it. Its true lasting impact will be the scar it leaves on the landscape of the Southwest and on the wildlife of our great nation.
Illegal immigrants will find a way to tunnel under, climb over or go around the wall or just violate their visa terms as long as people are willing to hire them. Those options aren't open to the endangered jaguars, wolves and jaguarundi that need to cross the border to survive. 4.20.08 http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/592169.html
7. Gary Kamiya: Iraq: The ten commandments
The Iraq war is over. The failure of Bush's surge to produce political reconciliation in Iraq, combined with the unsustainable stress on our military and Congress' unwillingness to keep writing checks for $12 billion a month, all point in one direction: withdrawal. Even if John McCain is somehow elected president -- and for that to happen, there would have to be a near-miraculous breakthrough on the ground -- he too will have to face the reality that this is not the kind of war you win. You just have to decide when you're going to cut your losses.
This is a surreal situation. The war drones along on autopilot, but it's already finished. It's a dead war walking. We're just waiting for George W. Bush to leave. In Vietnam, the slogan was "How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?" In Iraq, it's "How do you ask someone to be the last man to die so that the worst president in U.S. history can keep his doomed war going until he leaves office, so he can blame his successor for losing it?"
Bush will face the judgment of history, and it will not be forgiving. But that is not our immediate concern. The most important thing now is to recognize the mistakes that led us into the most disastrous war since Vietnam -- a war that will thankfully cost America many fewer lives than Vietnam, but that has had far worse strategic consequences. If we don't want to repeat those mistakes, there are 10 lessons we must take away from Bush's war. In honor of the recently departed Charlton Heston, let's call them the Ten Iraq Commandments. 4.15.08. Read more at http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/04/15/iraq_ten_commandments/
8. Joe Conason: Obama, get ready for the "Clinton rules"
The sorry performance of ABC anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in this week’s final Democratic primary debate should serve as a signal of the coverage to come. Playing gotcha with Democrats and patty-cake with Republicans will remain basic operating procedure for the mainstream media this year, no different from the past half-dozen presidential campaigns -- except that the additional bias in favor of John McCain may make a bad situation worse.
Will anyone ask McCain why he doesn't wear an American flag pin, the burning question that the ABC anchors pressed on Obama? Perhaps the former POW deserves a pass on that issue, but it is interesting to note that photos of McCain with a flag pin are very scarce -- which may simply prove that not every patriot must constantly sport Old Glory on his lapel.
It would be refreshing to place the likes of Gibson and Stephanopoulos and their peers on the witness stand for a change to explain their choices and prejudices. Why did they require Democrats to make tax-cutting pledges that are based on bad economics and worse journalism? Why should they focus on Obama's tenuous connection with a reprehensible but inconsequential figure like former Weatherman Bill Ayers, when they have never mentioned the White House coddling of Cuban exile terrorists? Why do they obsess over the "bitter" gaffe by Obama while passing so lightly over the confusion of Sunni and Shia groups by McCain, supposed master of foreign policy?
Details may be different but the double standard remains the same. If the coverage of this election already induces a nauseating sense of déjà vu, be warned. It will only get worse. 4.18.08 http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/04/18/debate/index.html
9. Marie Cocco: McCainomics
Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, John McCain used 4.15—tax day—as the day to release his economic plan. Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, it offers more of the same.
But more of the same what?
Is it Reaganomics? Not quite. Reaganomics was premised on the magical thinking that cutting taxes, mostly for the best-off Americans, would increase revenue, improve the federal balance sheet and produce economic goodies that would trickle down to Americans from all walks of life. Does the Republican presidential prospect believe in voodoo? Not so much.
Is it Bushonomics? This is the more debilitating version of Reaganomics we have had for the past seven years. It has been more damaging, because neither President Bush nor the Republicans who controlled Congress through most of his tenure gave a whit about cutting spending, which Reagan, from time to time, tried to do. So one of Bush’s parting gifts when he leaves the Oval Office is going to be an overhang of debt —for everything from the frenzied homeland security buildup after 9/11 to the halfhearted recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
How to describe McCain’s fiscal plan? Well, it sounds an awful lot like Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.
“It’s a mind-boggling number,” Len Burman, who analyzed the McCain plan for the center, said in an interview. That is, massive tax cuts, estimated by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute to bleed as much as $7.9 trillion out of federal accounts through 2018. These would be coupled with unspecified federal budget cuts. Offsetting all these tax cuts—continuation of the existing Bush cuts, which would otherwise expire in 2010, plus more big tax cuts that McCain has put forward—would require spending reductions so deep that the government would return to the size it was during the Eisenhower administration, the Tax Policy Center estimates. “He can eliminate all domestic discretionary spending and that would pay for all his tax cuts,” 4.21.08 Burman says. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080421_mccainomics/
10. The Road to Somewhere Shady
The Senate has taken the unusual step of proposing that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation of a long-running Congressional embarrassment known as the Coconut Road earmark. At issue is who slipped the $10 million boondoggle back into the transportation budget after it had been rejected by Congress.
From the first, the project was classic pork — an earmark that Representative Don Young of Alaska, then the powerful G.O.P. transportation committee chairman, tailored after visiting Florida and receiving $40,000 in developers’ campaign donations.
The latest transportation bill includes a high-speed rail link between Nevada casinos and California that Mr. Young sought. Yes, the rail link developers made a contribution to Mr. Young’s campaign fund, and they even hired the same lobbyist involved in the Coconut Road project, according to CQ Today.
All this may strike taxpayers as an investigative slam-dunk. The Senate’s call for help from the F.B.I. is commendable, but requires House concurrence. Speaker Nancy Pelosi prefers that the inquiry be assigned to the House ethics committee, a panel heretofore noted for interring, not illuminating, scandal. Both investigations should go forward. That may be what is needed to finally solve the mystery of Coconut Road. 4.21.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/opinion/21mon2.html
11. Ted Rall: One Nation, Under a Heartless God
“The 82nd,” the man ahead of me in the security line at the Kansas City airport said. He was 64 and white, very Hank Hill and not the kind of guy you’d typically see chatting up a skinny 20-year-old Latino dude. But they were both veterans. Common ground is a given.” I was in the 82nd too,” the kid told the old man. I looked down. The kid’s legs were gone. He was standing on metal. Implausibly and heartbreakingly, white Converses adorned the tips of his prosthetic legs. High tops.
On the other side of the metal detector, I caught up with the young vet (Iraq? Afghanistan?). HomeSec was giving him the whole treatment: arms stretched out, the wand, stern expressions and stupid questions. The wand beeped and beeped. The TSA guy scowled. “I’ve got titanium all the way up my spine,” the kid explained.
You’re kidding me, I thought. After what he’s been through. After what he’s done for his country. I wanted to scream: Bastards! You should wave him around the checkpoint. Here, sir, we’d like to offer you a seat in first class. No, no, no charge.
I bit my tongue. Here in the land of the twee and the craven, I know when to shut up. That’s what we do now. Airports are nodes of high-intensity fascism in a nation settling into authoritarianism lite. Hassle the bastards and you might end up dead. I had a flight to catch, doncha know. 4.23.08 http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/23/8481/
12. Have we, at long last, any decency?
In one respect, the three remaining presidential candidates say, “Yes, we do.” They’ve promised to close Gitmo.
What ought to happen to the nearly 300 detainees is obvious. Hand each of them an apology, a bag of cash — a million bucks wouldn’t be nearly enough for what they’ve been through — and a plane ticket home. Those who can’t return to their countries of origin because their U.S.-backed dictatorships would murder them receive a penthouse suite in the U.S. city of their choice.
I’d let them switch places with their guards and 300 top-ranking members of the Bush Administration for a couple of days first. No questions asked. Just get on the plane, and don’t forget your bag o’ cash. 4.23.08 http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/23/8481/
13. Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis: End food-to-fuel diversion: The world is getting hungry
The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy.
It is in this spirit that we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels.
These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.
Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability. Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic energy source. Our environment would be protected by a cleaner fuel.
The result is devastating: We lose an ecological treasure and critical habitat for endangered species, as well as the world's largest "carbon sink." And when the forests are cleared and the land plowed for farming, the carbon that had been sequestered in the plants and soil is released. Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger has modeled this impact and reports in Science magazine that the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in global carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, the mandates are not reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Last year, the United States burned about a quarter of its national corn supply as fuel - and this led to only a 1 percent reduction in the country's oil consumption.
Turning one-fourth of our corn into fuel is affecting global food prices. U.S. food prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation, hitting the pocketbooks of lower-income Americans and people living on fixed incomes.
Globally, the United Nations and other relief organizations are facing gaping shortfalls as the cost of food outpaces their ability to provide aid for the 800 million people who lack food security. Deadly food riots have broken out in dozens of nations in the past few months, most recently in Haiti and Egypt. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warns of a global food emergency.
The immediate necessary step is a major increase in global food aid. But beyond that, America must stop contributing to food price inflation through mandates that force us to use food to feed our cars instead of to feed people.
Taking these together - the environmental damage, the human pain of food price inflation, the failure to reduce our dependence on oil - it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.
Congress took a big chance on biofuels that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead. 4/23/08 http://origin.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_9023696
14. Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery: Our New Energy Crisis
almost four years ago, when oil was trading at around $40 a barrel, Paul Roberts wrote a story for Mother Jones on a bleak scenario gaining currency among energy insiders, but not yet in the mainstream consciousness: peak oil, basically the notion that the world's petroleum resources are nearing exhaustion. If the theory held true, Roberts warned, oil prices could soon leap to "perhaps as high as $100 per barrel—a disaster if we don't have a cost-effective alternative fuel or technology in place."
Welcome to the disaster: $100-a-barrel oil is in the rearview mirror, and no cost-effective (or even cost-prohibitive) alternative has emerged. The most dire consequences of this failing—hurricanes, drought, extinction—are occurring far more rapidly than even Slideshow Al could have predicted four years ago. And then there's the war.
It's easy enough to blame Dick Cheney, Big Oil, Detroit—all of whom have done their part in obstructing progress. But their chicanery distracts us from the far greater problem, one that, unfortunately, comes down to Organic Chemistry 101. Every technological advance of the last 150 years has been powered by a unique, extremely energy-dense, but finite—and, as it turns out, planet-killing—source of fuel. Switching away from fossil energy requires an economic and social transformation at least as great as the Industrial Revolution. And we have to build this new economy on the fumes of the old, hoping that we don't run out of gas, or ice caps, before we get there. As Roberts points out in this special issue on energy, if we sit on our hands or let the process be hijacked by vested interests, "there may not be enough crude left in the ground to fuel a second try." May/June 2008 Issue http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/ednote/2008/05/editors-note.html
15. Ellen Goodman: How We Make Change
By now there are so many sports metaphors littering the campaign coverage that it’s hard to tell CNN from ESPN. The Pennsylvania primary not only had its wrestling matches and boxing rings and slam dunks but almost turned pinochle into a contact sport.
But let us take a minute to replay the seniors event. It was the over-60 crowd that helped Hillary wrestle (sorry about that) her 10-point victory in Pennsylvania. Voters over 60 chose Clinton by 62 percent to 38 percent. That’s almost the mirror image of voters under 30 who chose Obama by 60 to 40. In some actuarial twist, every birthday between 30 and 60 sent more voters into the Clinton camp.
Go figure. The quality that mattered most to exiting voters all across the age spectrum was who “can bring about needed change.” Yet the two groups on either end of the voting-age bell curve picked opposite change agents. Is there a clue to this grueling race? Does it swing on the idea of how we make change?
I’m not suggesting that people are consciously parsing their philosophy of change at the polling booth. The last two standing Democrats have great personal strengths and not a few flaws. Ironically, both represent the changes we talk about.
But this tale of two change agents folds into a central narrative of the primary, including the unresolved, in fact, unresolvable question about which candidate is better poised to run against John McCain. Will the main election be a tough slog from one attack ad to the next? Hillary, anyone? Or can Democrats energize an overwhelming wave that drowns the Republican opposition? Do I hear Barack?
To some, hope is just another word for naivete. To others, experience is an excuse for cynicism. What people believe about this seems to fall along the actuarial table. 4.24.08 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080424_how_we_make_change/
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