I visited the Frist Filibuster at Princeton today. I brought my two older kids so that they could be impressed and inspired by the peaceful and creative protest. I think I had to be impressed and inspired enough for all of us. But you never know with kids. A few years from now they could tell me they loved it and were awestruck, which I misread as slightly bored, wet from the rain and very embarrassed by their mom.

If you want to watch the filibuster live, you can do it here via their webcam. I can’t configure them to post here, but I have two photos at my site, which show the support tent the protesters have set up just across a walking path from the podium, where volunteers, who don’t want BushCo to get away with damaging the American tradition of government further, speak.

One of the students, a young man, working in the tent told me that they only got it set up very recently and that the whole protest started with a music stand outside the Frist Center. The jaunty, and very useful tonight, multi-colored umbrella came later. As of several hours ago, they had enough readers signed up to go through Tuesday.

I’m hoping that once the story overcomes the inertia that hobbles all stories about political protests that don’t involve the “culture of life” or missing brides-to-be, the filibuster will start to get some bigger media outlets reporting on it. Also, in the next few weeks, the issue is going to be heating up on the Hill. It would be nice if the idea they started at Princeton had spread to universities all over the country by then. Spread the word.

Cross-posted (sort of) at Fact-esque.

So Condoleeza Rice is wrapping up her five day trip to Latin America and how did mainstream media cover it? Let’s look first at the recent decision on the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

It’s no secret that the Bush administration was supporting Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican Foreign Minister. Yesterday, however, Derbez withdrew when it appeared that Chilean Foreign Minister Miguel Insulza was going to be confirmed. So, how did two major media outlets handle the story? The Miami Herald headline reads as follows: “Rice seals deal naming new head of the OAS.” The New York Times headline states “O.A.S. to Pick Chile Socialist U.S. Opposed as Its Leader.” I know that the writers do not select the headline, but here is the text from Pablo Bachelet’s article in the Herald relating to the headline:

The agreement, brokered in part by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made Chile’s socialist Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza virtually certain to win the post of secretary general when the OAS meets Monday in Washington.

[…]

U.S. officials portrayed the deal not as a loss for the U.S.-backed Derbez but as a victory for Rice, saying she worked hard to bring about the deal and worked with Insulza on the wording of his lengthy statement. Rice delayed her departure Friday from Santiago to El Salvador — the next stop in a five-day Latin American swing — by several hours to seal the deal.

Here’s what Larry Rohter’s and Joel Brinkley’s article in the Times says on the same matter:

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.

But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss.

Rohter and Brinkley’s article goes on to make several comments that showed they dug into the issue a little deeper:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited South America last month in what was seen as an effort to stitch together an anti-Chávez coalition, but got nowhere. Ms. Rice came to the region this week with much the same mission and received the same chilly reception from governments for whom the principles of nonintervention and sovereignty are nearly sacred.

“It’s counterproductive both to see what she is saying on Venezuela and what they are doing at the O.A.S., but the U.S. just doesn’t seem to get the political and diplomatic reality,” said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

If Washington wants South America to act as an interlocutor with Mr. Chávez, he added, “it would have been easy to drop our support for Derbez and push for a consensus at the O.A.S.”

Indeed, there is ample evidence to indicate that much of Latin America, especially as led by Brazil, is seeking its own path. Brazil has two major victories in the WTO on US agricultural subsidies: one on cotton and one on sugar. Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba are looking to China for trade opportunities. Brazil in particular, with vast iron reserves and now a very close second to the US in soybean production, is not looking only to China, but also to India. Even The Economist acknowledges in this subscription only article that Brazil “is too big and ambitious in its own right to accept American leadership.” Good for them. What’s wrong with treating this huge nation as an equal on these matters?

On the subject of Hugo Chávez, even though I have said that I don’t like to write about Venezuela much these days, I would like to point out these comments in the Center for International Programs blog, Plan Colombia and Beyond. I am most assuredly not a fan of hers, but these comments by Chávez about Secretary Rice are offensive:

Chavez has saved some of his most biting sarcasm for Rice, whom he refers to as “Condolencia,” which means “condolence.” In speeches, he has called her “pathetic” and illiterate and made oblique sexual references to her. “I cannot marry Condolencia, because I am much too busy,” he said in a recent speech. “I have been told that she dreams about me,” he said on another occasion.

I certainly don’t question Chavez’s legitimacy as elected leader (several times) of Venezuela, but if Bush made the same comment say about Michelle Bachelet or Soledad Alvear, two former cabinet members (and one of whom is the likely presidential candidate) of Chile’s center-left government he would be condemned - and rightfully so. Chávez shouldn’t get a pass for this.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems determined to head down the same dead end with Venezuela, no doubt much to Hugo Chávez’s delight.

Now Echidne has finally gone over the edge. What does this topic have to do with American politics? In one sentence: everything and nothing. Sexual politics underlie most other types of politics, and in that sense an orgasm is as important as a filibuster. Can we have them, please? That is, us women. On the other hand, orgasms are like hickups and have no political meaning whatsoever. Except that nobody is interested in hickups.

A silly little story reported by World O’Crap pretends to be a scientific analysis of the female orgasm, but it isn’t, of course. Scientists can speculate and speculate on this interesting topic, but the truth is that it’s all just speculation. Here is a taste of it:

Why, o why? It’s been 52 years since scientists first considered the female orgasm a legitimate object of scrutiny (thank you, Dr. Kinsey). But they still can’t settle on its raison d’être. Theories abound on how this intensely pleasurable pelvic reflex — which is overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, enjoyed by humans (a few other female primates can climax) — contributes to the survival of our species. And because each explanation affects how we think about “natural” female sexuality and relations between the sexes, feminists have been eager participants in these debates. But most evolutionists — feminist or not — aren’t keen to embrace the idea that the female climax could be entirely without evolutionary benefit. No matter how obsessively and doggedly pursued in the bedroom, it may be as frivolous as, say, the male nipple.

Who says that the male nipple is “frivolous”? Quite a few men I know would disagree. The nipple can be an erogenic zone for both sexes, and it’s even possible for a man to lactate under certain (though very unusual) conditions. But whatever one might think about the male nipple, this sentence in the above quote shows how silly the quasi-scientific argument supposedly presented here really is:

No matter how obsessively and doggedly pursued in the bedroom, it may be as frivolous as, say, the male nipple.

It seems to me that anything doggedly pursued in the bedroom can’t but help in the survival of the species. But what do I know?

Did you know that us liberals and progressives are the ones full of hatred? There was a recent incident in Randi Rhodes’s Air America show, and as is proper in our so-called liberal media, G.Gordon Liddy, an internationally admired expert on peace and mediation, was asked to comment on the meaning of this horrible event on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country. For your information, the Randi Rhodes incident was this:

The pre-recorded segment, about an “American Association of Armed Retired People,” included the sound of gunfire as the “answer” to Bush’s Social Security plans. Both Rhodes and Air America quickly apologized for the skit. “Our normal vetting process failed…. and we regret it,” Air America president of programming Jon Sinton told the New York Post (2/28/05).

Randi also apologized for the skit. It wasn’t in good taste and the apologies are most likely due (I have not heard the skit, hence the “most likely” qualifier). And what does Liddy have to do with this? Well, he was naturally interviewed because of his own pacifistic tendencies:

On MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough turned to Liddy for his response to this incident, asking: “G. Gordon Liddy, are conservatives guilty of similar hate speech on their shows?” Liddy’s response: “Well, if they are, I certainly haven’t heard of it.”

I thought it was Rush Limbaugh who had hearing trouble among the wingnuts. Or maybe Liddy doesn’t listen to his own voice? Or could it be that advocating killing people doesn’t count as hate speech if it is from the wingnut side of the aisle:

On August 26, 1994, Liddy told his radio listeners: “Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.” Liddy’s advice that day was explicit: “They’ve got a big target on there, ATF. Don’t shoot at that, because they’ve got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches.” This was far from an isolated incident. On September 15, 1994, for example, Liddy told his listeners: “If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they’re wearing flak jackets and you’re better off shooting for the head.” The theme was repeated so often that Liddy’s callers began to exclaim “head shots!” to express their agreement with the host, the way Rush Limbaugh’s callers say “megadittos.” After Liddy’s talk of shooting federal agents received media attention, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing (London Independent, 4/24/95), some stations dropped Liddy’s program. In a press conference responding to the controversy (Associated Press, 4/25/95), Liddy clarified his advice by noting that shooting a federal agent in the head might not be the ideal plan: “So you shoot twice to the body, center of mass, and if that does not work, then shoot to the groin area.”

We have always been at war with Oceania, of course. (This is a liberal elitist reference to George Orwell’s 1984.)

The Pentagon can hang another trophy on its wall, the head of Private Lynndie England can go right up there next to that of Sergeant Charles Graner, as Private England stands ready to plead guilty to various charges stemming from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. England becomes the seventh soldier (all enlisted) to face criminal penalties; naturally, not a single senior officer in the chain of command, has been charged.

Defense lawyers had argued that England, a records clerk who had no training as a prison guard when the Army sent her to Iraq’s toughest prison, was following orders of officers and CIA agents at the prison when she took part in the abuse. One lawyer said England’s commanders ordered her to pose for the leash picture. “They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman they could find, and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi man,” [spokesperson for the defense team] Rose Mary Zapor said.

*******

The White House and the Pentagon have said that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was the fault of a few low-ranking enlisted soldiers.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that the Army’s inspector general concluded that no Army generals in the chain of command should face charges stemming from the Abu Ghraib abuse. The only general officer expected to face sanction is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, a reservist called to active duty for the war, who may receive a written reprimand.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, testified to Congress that he was responsible for the prison abuse that occurred in his command. The inspector general reportedly concluded that Sanchez should face no sanctions.

Not much more to say here. Clearly, anyone with any power (or actual responsibility) whatsoever, as low as a newly minted second lieutenant, is getting a pass to at least the later rounds of Survivor Abu Ghraib; comic relief redneck grunts like England (who, despite how it sounds, really were just following orders) just weren’t getting the kind of ratings the network needed, so it’s off the island and into the stockade for them. The definition of “making this look good” is not what we all would think; it would seem that once again, 9-11 changed everything.

When all the reasons proved wrong and plan A, B, and C have been tried and failed, what’s plan D?

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s 1-day-old government was hit Friday by a wave of deadly attacks against its security forces and the angry withdrawal of several Sunni politicians whom it had hoped to bring into leadership posts.

The bloodshed and discord revealed the weaknesses of the new administration of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and his Shi’ite-dominated cabinet, including the inability of Iraqi forces to stop insurgent attacks and the political failure to include the Sunni minority in governing the war-ravaged nation.

The group of Sunni political leaders from the National Dialogue Council withdrew from negotiations and said they wouldn’t enter the government after a series of raids and the arrests of three Sunni religious leaders overnight.

“From the first day, they want to show their muscles,” Mishaan al-Jubouri, a Sunni assembly member and part of the National Dialogue Council, said Friday, complaining about the raids. “This is a very dangerous message by the new government … which may lead to civil war. I’ll not feel safe about myself and my people under such a government.”

At least 12 suicide bombings and mortar attacks Friday killed three U.S. troops and more than 40 others, and injured more than 100 at Iraqi police and military sites in Baghdad and other cities, authorities said.

The Americans were killed in car bombings outside the capital, in Balad and Diyarah, said Lt. Cmdr. Gil Mendez, a U.S. military spokesman. Another U.S. soldier was killed and four were wounded in a roadside bombing Thursday night in Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the military said Friday.

Several Iraqi civilians were among the dead, including a woman who was found slumped over her baby. The infant was believed to be the sole survivor on a minibus that was caught in one of four bombings in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Adhemiya on Friday.

The horror of such violence in their neighborhoods has eroded many Iraqis’ faith in the leaders they risked their lives to elect.

“We don’t care about any government,” said Mansour Ibrahim, 34, a car salesman who witnessed the attack Friday. “They will work on their parties’ interests. And the Iraqi people are the victims.”

Memo to George of the Bungle: ‘D’ is for ‘Depart’.

‘D’uh.

Unless you prefer being ‘Defeated’.

Even Republicans.

With oil companies reporting profits 35% to 44% above their profits of a year ago, it’s important to keep it in perspective. If you sell more product or work harder and are more productive, it’s only fair to make more profit.

Except for the oil companies, which reported that production had declined.

As I’ve noted before, the overstated result of oil usage growth in China and India can be seen through 2002, with the spike up in March 2003 coinciding precisely with the start of the War on Iraq.

1574 Americans troops have died, and over 21,000 Iraqi civilians have died, Big Oil’s production has declined and they’ve boosted their profits 35% to 44%.

Where I come from, that’s called war profiteering and I still believe it’s time for a war profiteer windfall profits tax. With all the new revenues dedicated to insulating and weatherizing poor peoples’ homes.

Call or email your Reps if you agree.

“Mah name is George and do I have the perfect used car for you and the missus or what?”

(Scroll for it).

I don’t know how long it’s going to take Democrats to understand that those who vote one way or the other on that issue [parental notification] alone cannot be finessed. We can try to sound sympathetic to the “ick” factor and whittle away at the rights of women over time until there is only the most bare right to abortion if the woman’s life is threatened and it won’t make a difference to those who believe it is a fundamental issue of morality. We have to fight this one on the merits.

The discussion was begun by Matt Yglesias, and Digby’s thoughts on it are worth your time. As are the commenters, some of whom disagree with Digby’s suggestions.

Now I don’t discuss the personal stories of the abortions my own actions helped lead to in great detail, to protect the privacy of the women. I can say there was nothing casual about such decisions. They were not easy for me, nor for the women who made them. Pregnancy and abortion are both big changes for a woman’s body to endure.

And whether it’s my Mom, sister, daughter or friend, I can’t imagine why such decisions have any business being in the hands of any politician at all. Of all the great prophets and messiahs, I’ve heard none say politicians should enslave the bodies of women this way.

I say let’s make a deal. When the politicians demonstrate that they can insure that every child in the world is provided adequate nutrition, clean water and air, shelter, medical care and affection, and when they demonstrate that they’ll no longer be sending any children into war, then and only then will we even think it worthy of discussing whether the state has an legitimate interest in the contents of women’s uteruses.

The politicians will never demonstrate the capacity to help all existing children live, so why do they think they should compel the birth of more? The uteruses of the women I most care about is simply not their domain.

Addendum: It’s kinda weird how things happen on a group blog. I’d been offline for about 6 or 7 hours, returned to the computer and surfed a few blogs. I wrote this post, then when proofreading the final result, started reading the posts of others that wrote earlier. And it seems abortion’s been on a few minds today. Coincidences happen.

In a post written earlier today about Justin Raimondo’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, commenter Al Hill had this response.

He also posted today’s dismal war reports on his own blog.

The perspective of veterans always fascinates me, because it’s as close to the truth as it gets. I’ve worked with homeless veterans of both Vietnam and the Gulf War begun by Abu Bush (Abu means ‘father of’). I’ve also known many who remained a productive part of society, from my age up to my late father’s, as he spent a year in theater, flying recon missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Just Wednesday night, my best friend - who did a short stint in the Navy in the mid-60s, and another friend of his who served in the Army, were discussing Vietnam and war in general. I had noted to them that the stats from this war were horrific in the sense of the wounded, of whom 60% are coming back with injuries to the brain. I completed the thought by adding “and that’s not even counting PTSD.”

Now my friend had worked on an aircraft carrier, so as far as I’d known previously, his direct line of vision on the war was watching bomb-laden jets taking off and landing, plus one on-board fatality when a safety officer was sucked into the meat grinder of a jet engine. At such a distance from scenes of combat, I’d presumed he was spared any possibility of PTSD.

But he launched into a derisive commentary of the official position on the roughly 12% the government claimed was afflicted by the post-trauma of that war. He said the real number might be 100% and that some who maintain a brave front were simply masking the turmoil within. The army friend, who’d seen combat directly, was quick to concur.

Then my friend related how one time, his ship was close enough to shore that he could see the flashes of multiple bomb explosions from aircraft that had left his flight deck. He felt a deep sense of guilt at that moment, wondering what he’d wrought. And from that day on, he was a changed man.

That, from a guy who was a real straight arrow, possibly the most honest man I’ve ever known. I’d known him for 24 years and it was the first time I’d ever heard that.

The Army man then discussed how his military record left out all the places he’d fought in. It simply listed his location as Danang, though he’d been in several countries where Americans officiallly weren’t. Both agreed that you could search the records of every guy who fought in that conflict and there wouldn’t be one that mentioned Laos or Cambodia, among others.

They said, if that’s the history that remains hidden back then, they fear how much more’s being hidden now, in the War on Iraq. Their faces were the grimmest of the entire discussion at that. Then silence. And that’s where it ended.

The politicians and the chickenhawks claim the media’s not covering the positive news out of Iraq. It’s clear from the words I heard Wednesday night that many old veterans are thinking the opposite, of the negative crap that may never get reported. And considering what we do know - from Abu Ghraib to extraordinary rendition - that’s pretty depressing. What are our troops being exposed to this time around? And the greater questions remain….

Why? What did our country gain? Was their sacrifice worth it? And how many chickenhawks will dismiss the ones who come back unable to cope? Will they dismiss them as a few misfits, like previous chickenhawks have done?

Bitch, Ph.D notes that if you get raped in Denver and end up at a Catholic hospital, you get tested to see if you’re ovulating. If the test indicates that you may have dropped an egg, emergency room workers are instructed not to tell you about emergency contraception.

Not ovulating? No problem, they’ll tell you all about it and write you a prescription.

As Jim Spencer says in the Denver Post:

This isn’t about abortion; it’s about crime victims. The so-called EC bill is a symbol of mainstream American values. It comforts the afflicted. It restores control after a terrible trauma. It allows individuals to have information.

Let’s see, how many ways does this violate the bounds of decency?

• Unequal treatment based on menstrual cycle status
• Hospitals that receive public dollars are pulling this crap
• Women are possibly being tested without notification
• Rape victims are treated as nothing more than potential baby machines

Colorado Governor Bill Owens, who recently vetoed a bill requiring emergency rooms to notify rape victims about EC,

…argues that religious freedom allows private religious hospitals to collect public dollars, then lets them treat rape victims differently based on a definition of conception that differs from that of the National Institutes of Health.

This is ridiculous! If you live in Colorado, please contact your legislators and tell them to get busy and override his veto. The wingers are getting completely out of hand. What’s next, burqas for all?

The Medium Lobster is only mildly pleased to see the House pass a new bill making it a federal crime for non-parents to transport minors across state lines to get an abortion. The law is certainly a step in the right direction; up until now, parental notification laws only served to hand control of a minor’s reproductive system over to her parents. The new House bill, however, moves towards finally putting America’s wombs back where they belong: in the gentle care of the federal government.

And yet the nation’s valuable uterus supply still isn’t secure under this latest law. Yes, America will now be able to reign in some of the worst embryo smugglers in the nation, but the onus for bringing them to justice still lies with the parents of the wombs in question. What is the nation to do with those irresponsible parents who allow this fetucide to take place? Who will hold them accountable for their role in tampering with America’s fetus factories?

Uteruses are a vital, limited public resource which must be properly monitored and regulated on a federal level, like television and libraries. What’s needed is not parental notification, or even federal enforcement of parental notification, but Congressional notification. Any woman seeking an abortion should have to petition the House and Senate for permission. Indeed, Congress should create a new cabinet-level Department of Wombs to oversee fetal production across the nation. Are our uteruses meeting the country’s fetus needs or falling behind them? Where is production slackening, and why hasn’t it been increased? Why has there been no effort to shut down wombs which produce offensive content, such as terrorists, traitors, and gay people? These are questions which cannot be addressed until Congress finds the courage to clear away the last vestiges of the corrupt, private monopoly on reproduction.

The Family Movie Act of 2005 signed into law by George W. Bush this week may become the precursor of a new twenty-first century trend to create a parallel media universe in Red States. Like Sherman�€™s march across Dixie, brimstone and fire breathing crusaders will soon inject other media with out-of-reality experiences to comfort sheltered offspring while parents are busy monitoring their Social Security private accounts.

Thanks to the Family Movie Act, parents afraid that a movie like Schindler�€™s List may teach their children that hate can be painful, the government now sanctions third-party modifications of a director�€™s work. Just a few appropriately placed cleansing agents in the DVD can turn the Holocaust drama into a documentary about fashions worn by little blond-haired girls in the early 1940�€™s.

It won�€™t be long before the �€œEverything is Beautiful�€� philosophy will be extended to media like television news. A news story such as this from the Canadian Broadcast Company is a prime target:

Four car bombs killed 13 people in Baghdad’s Aadhamiya district, one striking a crowded restaurant. Security officers had been eating breakfast there. The blasts left shops shattered and cars destroyed in the mainly Sunni district.

With a software cleansing agent, the story would be broadcast into Red states like this:

Iraqi Security officers this morning enjoyed breakfast of olives, shoeleather bread, and yogurt �€” not to mention their newly found freedom �€” at a local coffee shop in Baghdad’s Aadhamiya district. The officers thanked George W. Bush, the American people for giving them the opportunity to have one last meal prior to sacrificing themselves for the cause of freedom.
As he watched his own vehicle destroyed in an impromptu demolition derby outside the restaurant, the officer also gave thanks to the American military that had given him a link to a US car insurance carrier. �€œI saved a bundle on my car insurance,�€� the security officer said in the final moments of the larger than life explosions.

Bush administration insiders say the cleansing of news reports is not censorship, but a patriotic addition to a policy that already bans non-supporters from attending presidential campaign-style events, forbids �€œnattering nabobs of negativism�€� from cabinet meetings and prohibits taking the name of Tom Delay in vain.

�€œI have a dream, �€œ George W. Bush said at a prime time nationally televised press conference Thursday night. �€œIn the future, our children will no longer be judged by the color of their sheets, but by their ability to hide their dirty laundry.�€�

It was a Hobson’s choice to vote for Our Noble Lame Duck to keep The Ketchup Consort out of the White House. That doesn’t mean I can’t denounce the winner for wimping out now that the election is over. Time and again his administration fails to reach far enough, and thus winds up in pitched battles over muddled minor movements in the right direction instead of sweeping changes. If this is such a “practical” strategy, why hasn’t it worked? Not only are we not debating junking the whole Socialist Security Scam, but we are arguing fine points about symbolic “reforms” that will likely wind up including tax increases. How frustrating, and all due to a failure of nerve. This is not how a labor boss would negotiate. We should ask not just for more than we expect, but for more than we even want, then let the other side compromise on that.

Here’s another example of a glorious missed opportunity. Restrictions on the right of consumer bankruptcies were passed, to the joy of bankers and hospitals who dream of foreclosures, and the wails of liberals complaining about the high cost of un-socialized medicine driving people over the brink. We could have gotten much more. Instead of just seeking minor limitations on individuals filing for debt relief, we should have taken a page from history and called for the Mongol plan for such cheaters:

Genghis Khan (1162-1227) … rose to become the most successful conqueror in history. … His laws prescribed the death penalty for merchants who allowed themselves to go bankrupt for a third time.

Again, the administration should have asked for even more than this. Perhaps a death penalty for mere second bankruptcies, with loss of a hand for the first one? Naturally, this should apply not to noble merchants, but just to those carelessly over-charging consumers out there. If they had asked for this, how much more could they have pried from those cowardly appeasing Democrats in Congress than the trivial bill that passed? At the very least, we should have been able to put bad debtors in the stocks and throw organic fruit at them. I can see this as a new participatory reality show….

Yeah, I know, it’s Friday funnies…and this actually, you know, real “news” (sortof, in that funny “George W. Bush, President, USA” kind of way) but I had to cull out a highlight reel of zaniness (zanyness?) from last night’s stand up routine. What a card!

But, nevertheless, there are still some in Iraq who aren’t happy with democracy. They want to go back to the old days of tyranny and darkness and torture chambers and mass graves.

Yeah, whew…so glad last week is over…

I believe we’re making really good progress in Iraq, because the Iraqi people are beginning to see the benefits of a free society. They saw a government form today.

Would that be ice or steam?

Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was spotted yesterday flexin’ pecs with the vanguards of the next stage in the battle for Iraq: comic book super heroes! Not limited by reality, the Bush Administration has enlisted some of nation’s most powerful cartoon crime fighters to join the fight for freedom in Iraq. Captain America and Spiderman, pictured, will be in the first wave, followed by Chuck E. Cheese and the Phillie Phanatic in the second and third divisions.

It’s a given that the people most terrorized by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were right wing columnists, pundits, and bloggers. Children who lost parents in the attacks have faced life since that day with more courage, hope, mercy, charity, and forebearance than these cowardly lions who have been scaring themselves witless every day since by pulling their own tails.

“Oh, it’s hard believe me, missy,

When you’re born a Right Wing sissy…”

Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah.

It wasn’t hard to terrorize them, since I’m afraid there’s no denyin’, they were just some dandy lions to begin with. That’s why they are attracted to the Right. They love the love of power and the willingness to rain down, at least the willingness to wish out loud for, death on all enemies that has become the hallmark of Right Wing rhetoric.

Enemies being anyone who scares them, which is to say anyone who is not them.

Their basic cowardice has been exposed day in and day out since 9/11. Most of them are young and none of them have enlisted to go fight the enemies they want dead, dead, dead. And although many of them are working journalists—Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin, for example—you don’t see them rushing off to Bagdad to report on the war like the man who ought to have been their hero and role model Michael Kelly, the editor of the Atlantic who died covering the early days of the invasion. You’d think that even if they’re too chicken to fight, the least they could do would be to spend a month or so in Iraq to bring back all the good news they claim the rest of the media is failing to tell us about.

Lance Mannion’s take on the Rightwhingers, and especially Roger Simon, is a classic.

Justin Raimondo provides the distinctions today that make the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam apt. I’ve heard it said ad nauseum that the Left ‘needs to get over Vietnam’, but find few Lefties obsessed by or haunted by that travesty of governmental excess and human tragedy.

The Right, however, contains many who chafe at that loss, blame antiwar protestors for that loss, and maintain a complete set of delusions to match that. Iraq was their first chance to try and exorcise their demons against a sizable country that was only our enemy because they said so. Just like Vietnam. And by ignoring antiwar people this time around, they were able to prove there are and always will be limits to the aggressive acts of superpowers. And militarism that emanates from democratic societies cannot prevail over nativism without absolute brutality.

While a couple of minor assertions I could quibble with, Raimondo’s explanation is the most accurate assessment I’ve seen yet.

This updated classic musical is now set in Fort Bend County, Texas. It features a visit by a rabble-rousing politician, Ken Delay, a pesticide manufacturer from the neighboring town of Sugar Land. He stirs up voters to elect him to Congress so that he can pass a Homogeneous Marriage Amendment. He does this with a nearly-rap rant about the “otherwise infatuated” that provokes a chorus to sing:

Couples, there’s unwed couples,
Here in Missouri City!
With a capital “U”
That rhymes with “Q”
And that stands for….

The lyrics get more graphic after that. (This musical is R-rated, for politically incorrect language and gratuitous draggings by pickups.) Here’s the big final parade number, after the candidate has been elected and built his own powerful machine:

Seventy-six big PACs gave to Ken Delay,
And all of the church groups filled many a page.
He was sent off on trips and trips,
All on lobby-funded ships,
To prevent higher minimum wage.

Plenty of corp’rate chiefs paid to hear him speak,
And fundies invited him to come and talk.
Then came wanna-be gambling tribes
Who’d not give out bribes
But for flights abroad would never balk.

There were many pro-life activists for Terri’s sake;
Congressmen, Senators, who would vote his way
Happily volunteering to freely take
Campaign funds given by Ken Delay.

There were broadcasters with licenses before the feds,
Scaife and Moon and Murdock pundits on the team,
Ever quick to improvise
Spin to help Ken realize
And fulfill his great one-party dream.

Dishonest George:

“If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty,” he said.

Bush spoke as White House officials issued written material saying the type of change he had in mind could be accomplished with a “sliding scale benefit formula.” That would mean lower payments for future retirees of middle and upper incomes than they are currently guaranteed a fact Bush himself did not mention in his 60-minute session with reporters.

It’s pretty condescending to think Americans can’t handle the facts and pretty bad policies if he’s afraid to explain them fully. If he ever created a good policy, do you think he’d tell the whole truth, or do you think it’s compulsive?

Just as Bush prepares to give his “I’m a weeniehole for the oil and nuclear industries” speech to the nation, Iraq’s interim Oil Minister is named… Ahmad ‘Bite My’ Chalabi.

Americans seek a little reassurance about the hurtin’ they’re getting from the War for Iraq’s oil, and George thinks we’re asking for more of his Saddami.

If Tony falls, will it leave George twisting in the wind, alone? Would it mean a pullout of Brit troops?

Will it mean somebody in our government will finally take responsibility for an error that costs tens of thousands of innocent lives?

I only know that Blair will be gone - and good riddance. Though it’d be lovely to have an impeachment follow here, just to demonstrate what a real culture of life is.

just when you thought the whole annthrax cover of time brou-ha-ha had blown over, we bring you news of dead trees duplicity.

readers of this space will remember when we made a big stink over the online version of time magazine incorrectly labeling a picture of the conservative satire group “communists for kerry” as real live lefties prostesting annthrax.

we wrote a letter (as did countless others) to time’s editors, and voila, the next day there was a correction on the caption on the online gallery (and, we modestly point out, so many bloggers linked to our letter that our one day traffic total broke records).

we, like you, thought it was over. because, we, like you, are bloggers, who only deal with news in blogtopia (yes! we coined that phrase!) and in our pajamas in our basement. we hardly ever read dead trees media anymore, save in the waiting room of our dentist and the check out line at the grocery store.

which is where we open our story.

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Noting that no oil refineries had been built in the United States since 1976, the president also said that he would encourage the building of new refining facilities on closed military bases, though he did not detail where or how many.
–N. Y. Times, April 27, 2005

Hand of the Market, still unseen –
Whose wisdom is our party line.
Thy blessings manifest in green
For those who do not prices bind.
One thing might make our power pass:
The price of gas — the price of gas!

If, profit-drunk and option-fed,
The GOP forgets Thy might –
The states that we still count as red
Will kick us out into the night.
One thing might make our power pass:
The price of gas — the price of gas!

For cheap-run cars our bases shut;
Runways will sit ‘neath storage tanks:
And cracking towers will be put
Among them to earn drivers’ thanks.
One thing might make our power pass:
The price of gas — the price of gas!

For oil the forts will close their gates;
Our votes with wallets are entwined.
The people will decide our fate
By how much fuel is refined.
One thing might make our power pass:
The price of gas — the price of gas!

We’ll beat our swords to pipelines and
Ain’t gonna study war no more.
Election day will still be grand:
We know what drivers hunger for.
We’ll prime the pump to spare this land
From those who would encuff Thy Hand!

The GOP has worked out a budget deal, sans Dems of course:

The largest single portion of the $35 billion would come from Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income Americans, officials said.

In political maneuvering over the issue this year, Democrats have repeatedly accused Republicans of planning cuts in the program. Republicans respond that despite the anticipated changes, overall Medicaid spending would rise annually from current levels.

$10 billion in Medicaid cuts and $70 billion in tax cuts.

If they keep killing off the poor this way, how will they keep on finding new folks to suck dry to aid the growing need for tax cuts for the well-off? The middle-class? Are you sure there’s even a middle left?

There won’t be much longer if these GOP street muggings continue. Dooh Nibor? Read it in reverse and you’ll get it.

Addendum: “Disposable personal income increased $41.2 billion (1.9 percent) in the first quarter, compared with an increase of $232.7 billion (11.2 percent) in the fourth. Real disposable personal income decreased 0.3 percent, in contrast to an increase of 8.3 percent. ”

So in Q1 ‘05, folks are refinancing their homes to spend their equity now, rather than saving it. The mortgage bankers announced the present softness in interest rates caused a rise in mortgage applications and refinances just last week.

It’s worth it, though, for the peace of mind I get knowing no millionaire will have to go to bed yachtless.

In the spirit of Kevin’s last post, I want to encourage everyone who reads this to call their representatives in Congress (Senate, House) to tell them to vote against any budget that includes drilling in our National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. A vote is expected today.

PennEnvironment and Tom DeLay make the case that the Arctic Refuge is just the first step:

It’s not just the Arctic Refuge at stake in this budget battle. If drilling in the Arctic Refuge is allowed, pristine, untrammeled lands like Arches National Park and offshore areas like Florida’s coast could all be at risk.  House Majority leader Tom Delay said it best when he said about Arctic drilling that "It’s about precedent."  One of President Bush’s major supporters, Houston energy industry investment banker Matthew R. Simmons, said, "If you can’t do ANWR, you’ll never be able to drill in the promising areas."

Please call today and spread the word.

By Justin Blum and Jim VandeHei, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Industry analysts reacted skeptically to new energy proposals President Bush announced yesterday, saying they would do little to bring down soaring prices of gasoline and other forms of energy.

Bush, whose aides blame high oil and gasoline prices for his sagging poll numbers, made several proposals, including allowing refineries to be built on closed military bases and renewing consumer tax credits for hybrid vehicles. This was his second speech in two weeks devoted to energy. Bush will hold a news conference tonight to press his energy plan as well as provide specific details about his proposals for restructuring Social Security.

They go on to write:

Industry leaders said it is not clear that companies would want to build new refineries because the business historically has not been highly profitable, even though demand and profit margins are high now.

So ‘highly’ is the standard now of business. Profitable and growing isn’t enough. It seems to me the free market is speaking loud and clear on this whole petroleum business. If there’s a missing link in the chain that can’t meet the demand for finished product, their product will be finished soon.

And what did the conservative Business Week report?

By John Carey

Bush Is Blowing Smoke on Energy

Hitting all the points in a noted GOP pollster’s playbook, the President’s plan is driven by politics not policy. Worse, it won’t cut oil dependency

On Apr. 27, President Bush made an impassioned plea for an energy plan that would wean the U.S. from imported fuels. “Our dependence on foreign energy is like a foreign tax on the American people,” he declared in a speech to a gathering of small-business owners and entrepreneurs in Washington.

Powerful sentiments, indeed. But the words are largely hollow. Sadly, the plan Bush proposed would do little to increase existing supplies of oil, gas, or electricity, or decrease domestic demand for energy — the two steps that would really make a difference. Charges Frank O’Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based environmental group: “The new Presidential energy plan seems mainly to be a public-relations stunt aimed at trying to reverse some of the latest polls, which show a growing public discontent with high gas prices — and the President.”

LOW PRIORITY. Of course, environmentalists such as O’Donnell can usually be counted on to bash GOP policies. But in this case the criticism is deserved. Plenty of evidence indicates that the White House’s sudden interest in energy policy is driven far more by politics than substantive policymaking.

It gets better from there.

But the thing that strikes me are the claims made that there’s nothing Bush can do to affect gas prices right away and that this represents new Bush initiatives. More refineries. More nuke plants. Drill Alaska. Renew tax credits to all the alternatives to pretend we’re still interested in them. Don’t demand higher ,ileage from auto manufacturers.

His initiatives are warmed over wishlists that replay like a 33 RPM record with a needle as sharp as Paris Hilton. Since the energy embargoes of the 70s, this is the same porridge the GOP has served over and over. Is there a dangerously polluting energy CEO they won’t get on their knees for?

As far as what Bush could do to have an immediate impact? Higher mileage standards. Pumping oil from the Strategic Reserve. Announce the beginning of a withdrawal from Iraq. A windfall profits tax, with the revenues dedicated to subsidize the cost of electric cars in the top ten most polluted cities.

If Bush put half the energy into driving down shortterm energy costs coupled with longterm solutions as he has into dismantling Social Security, he could demonstrate vision and have an impact that historians would applaud throughout history.

But his only vision is to demonstrate that Big Oil is still his daddy. And rather than share the all-American concern about the monetary price of gas, I’m left with the same concern I’ve had for the past thirty years: how many bodies of dead soldiers (and dead Middle Eastern civilians) per gallon is this country willing to pay still for its addiction to Middle East oil? Because walking around holding hands with repressive rulers from the House of Saud is a submissive tradition that remains a humiliation to the entire nation, and a deadly one at that.

The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. Every year, people in hundreds of communities and at worksites recognize workers who have been killed or injured on the job. Trade unionists around the world now mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning. A proclamation can be seen here (pdf).

You can honor the workers by checking the listings of events taking place today in your own city or town.

Here are some other ways that workers who have been killed or injured on the job have been honored:

* A Collection of Workers’ Memorials and
* Workers Memorial Day poems and tributes.

I was amazed to see this New York Times image on the front page of the Portland Oregonian this morning. Not only was it there; it took up nearly a quarter of the page. Usually, anything to do with protests is buried or ignored. The Oregonian also reported on our local rally in front of Senator Gordon Smith’s (R-OR) office.

My friend Maureen Markham attended the Social Security rally in Washington DC yesterday and sent the following report. As a member of the DNC, I can’t tell you how nice it is to hear someone saying that they are proud to be a Democrat.

I have never been so proud to be a Democrat as I was this afternoon. “Awesome” is a word that is much over-used, but it is the right word to describe the social security rally that I attended today on the Capitol grounds near the Russell Senate Office Building. It was inspiring enough to see the thousands of people of all colors and ages, and to hear the many short speeches from movement leaders, FDR’s grandson, and ordinary people who had benefited from the program.

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You’re BushCo again! Oil is in short supply getting shorter. You’re fighting a war in the Middle East to lock down a sizeable supply but even you agree that it’s dangerous to put all your eggs in that particular basket. Venezuela supplies 15% of US oil, but they’ve elected a leftist to lead them. What do you do?

a) Invade Venezuela! There’s no time to lose!

b) Get the country working on a new energy future that includes the staggering and inspriational goal of getting the US independent of foreign oil in fifty years.

c) Sponsor a failed coup then do your best to undermine relations with Venezuela by attempting to isolate Victor Chavez, the leftist president. Struggle to make the US as unpopular in it’s own backyard as it is in the Middle East.

d) Announce that our concerns about the steps that have been taken in Venezuela relate to actions that move away from democratic institutions and freedom for the Venezuelan people.

Find out after the jump.

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You’re BushCo! The Big Pharma drug benefit is going to lead to increased Medicare claims and appeals. What do you do?

a) increase the number of staff trained to handle claims and appeals
b) look into making the system easier to navigate, reducing claims and appeals
c) cut the number of Medicare offices across the country and the number of judges available to hear claims from Medicare patients
d) tell America that you strongly supported and advocated the Medicare Modernization Act because it expanded benefits for seniors and provided them prescription drug coverage. So starting in 2006 — low-income seniors have already started to realize some benefits, but starting in 2006, they’re going to see better and expanded benefits for seniors, ones that they have previously not had, like prescription drug coverage under Medicare. And they’re going to see a health care system that provides better care for our seniors and gives them more choices. This was — the reforms that we passed will help provide our seniors better health care and more options and better benefits to choose from.

Find out what answer the administration chose below the fold:

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It’s funny how stereotypes work. Latin American immigrants head to the US and provide a labor pool for jobs US citizens don’t want, working the fields, picking fruit, moving with the seasons to do the backbreaking work that keeps our agricultural produce costs low. Politicians clamoring for stronger immigration controls do so with a wink and a nod to the CEOs of massive farms who depend on that labor. Right?

US laborers are unwilling to do that work because it’s hard, dirty, and requires stamina and a willingness to work for peanuts. A common perception, yes?

The reality extends well beyond the realm of agriculture, however, and extends far beyond the Southwest and West Coast, too. Consider the field of high-rise construction in heavily unionized New York.

Unionized construction laborers there average between $17 and $19 per hour. 77% of them are accruing funds in retirement pensions. Only 35% of non-union folks are given pensions and they average $10 to $12 per hour. 82% of the union members get company provided healthcare while only 46% of the unorganized folks do. [source]

Now let’s consider the rest of the reality.

Though the number of annual fatalities remains fairly stable, the proportion that are Latinos has been growing. This not only points to differences in safety precautions but suggests Latinos are a fast growing percentage of the construction force.

Thomas Leavitt of Seeing The Forest provides the skinny from Truthout on the way illegal aliens are utilized (read: victimized) by the creative ways employers use temp agencies to skirt the law.

So it’s $7.50/hr and no overtime, compared to the $10-$12/hr other nonunion laborers make. For the employer on a building that size, that could mount up to millions saved. But at what cost to those immigrant’s families? And at what cost to US citizens?

Leavitt asks humorously where Eliot Spitzer is. But we know he’s off policing Wall Street. James Wolcott, quoting economist Steven Roach, points to a similar obsession off top Wall Street traffic cop Alan Greenspan.

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three more pieces about the denver 3, the people ejected from an awol rally by a secret service-impersonator, which we told you about here.

ann imse of the rocky mountain news identifies one of the people involved, and surprise, it was the chairman of the colorado young repubbbs:

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Talk of a march on Washington is heating up again and, speaking as American Street’s Lady of the Sacred March, I couldn’t be happier. But with great power comes great responsiblity so I feel like I have to share what I learned during my painful failed attempt to generate excitement in Blogtopia (term owned and operated by Skippy Inc.) for the idea of a summer march on our nation’s capitol.

Last month, I posted two posts about marching on Washington. The first was a plea to organize one. I have a fantasy that Americans left out of the BushCo agenda will march on Washington and rally on either August 28, the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington or on August 14, the 70th anniversary of FDR’s signing Social Security into law. The second post was a grudging acceptance that nearly everyone I talked to about that idea did not share my enthusiasm for a march, although some had very good ideas of their own.

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PTAs all over California are starting their Caravan for Kids march and rally today. Thousands of parents and kids will be traveling to Sacramento to rally at the Capitol on Thursday. They’ll be protesting Ahnold’s broken $2 billion promise he made to the state and her schools:

Schwarzenegger was desperate for money, and school officials wanted to cozy up to the charismatic, larger-than-life new governor. Also, they feared a worse result if there was no cooperation. So they agreed not to fight for the $2 billion on the condition that it be returned �€” that is, returned to their guaranteed annual funding base. It hasn’t been.

The governor assured schools that if tax revenues increased this year, he’d give them their normal cut under Prop. 98. Revenues did, but he didn’t.

The final paragraph of the statement Schwarzenegger released at the deal’s announcement read: “This Prop. 98 funding will be restored as required by law and our agreement. Today, I am making that promise to our teachers and students.”

Schwarzenegger didn’t just renege on the deal. He’s pushing a budget “reform” to amend Prop. 98 so that repayment of back money owed schools �€” roughly $4 billion �€” is stretched out over 15 years and not added to the guaranteed base.

And now the California PTAs are mobilizing in a two-day event. Good for them. If you live in CA and want to attend the rally, all the information you need is at their website, Caravan for Kids.

Press kit (pdf) available here.