Category Archive

never thought i would see this type of thing in the LA Times:

Bush never lied to us about Iraq

welcome back, better.shorter.

brought to you by the AJC.

i haven’t heard a word about this in the news. just damn.

Say what you will about Moore, he’s a great interview.  My personal favorite line comes right at the end.  He also brings up a good point: how right was Fahrenheit 9-11.  I wonder?  Maybe I’ll do a little analysis.

“Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets. There’s rampant cheating, and endless stories of how select players are self-enriching off the government “market” in C02 credits. Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president’s oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period.”

Oops.

Bloomberg has a great take on terrorism, and by great, I mean on I really did.

“On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected.“There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life,” he said.

That “What, me worry?” attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg’s advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn’t let it tax their brains.

“You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist,” he added.”

I’ve almost been unable to watch the reports on the violence at Virginia Tech.  Unbelievable how bad it is, really.  In a way, the thing that has most bummed me out is the realization that the people in Bagdhad go through this experience almost every day.  It happened again today.  Bagdhad is full of Cho Seung-Huis.

Here’s a shot: “See, this man is a smart man; clearly I’m one crazy asshole.”

opinionjournal has a rather lengthy, but good read, of how the democrats are leading us down a familiar path in iraq. even after living in france, i couldn’t tell you of a single french military victory save napolean, but this article tells of a military victory but political failure in algeria.

the mainstream media is doing nothing to report on the success of the surge that president bush recently instituted 2 years after democrats demanded it. my impression is that it is working rather well. this following of history down the wrong path reminds me of many an instance that mona charen illustrates in useful idiots.

take a few minutes to read the whole thing, if you can, and i’d love to hear some feedback from the leftys as to if his point of the article doesn’t ring true.

i don’t know how long these have been up, but i just saw them. it will be interesting to see how much of this gets significant viewing as we get closer to election day. but they are entertaining.

UPDATE:  Some of you may have seen it, some of you didn’t, but the title of this post was a derogatory term for black people.  I saw it a second a go and couldn’t take it; so I changed it.

There, I said it. Is it okay? No, it’s not. And, yet, people seem to think it’s okay to use derogatory terms to describe homosexuals. I don’t understand people like Anne Coulter (or the audience from the American Conservatives Union) who think it is.

It’s a Times Select article, but Dowd has a quote from David Geffen in her column today that I think is spot on, with perhaps the esteemed producer of Dream Girls’ assertion that whoever is the nominee from the Republican Party will win or his assertion that the Clintons are evil.  I think, though, that he’s captured the sentiment of the zeitgeist.

Whoever is the nominee is going to win, so the stakes are very high. Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together.  Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television.

For what it’s worth, Obama and Hillary are having a real fight over Geffen.  Fineman’s got a good take.

In the other party, and continuing my reliance on the uber-liberal Newsweek, this portrayal of Mitt left a bad, bad taste in my mouth.  Read it here.

A good example of what I’m talking about:

Romney’s campaign aides like to stress that he is a “turnaround” artist. They are referring to Romney’s great success at salvaging failing companies as a venture capitalist in the 1980s and ’90s and his near-miraculous rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from scandal and debt. The label carries the promise that Romney could reverse the fortunes of the GOP and the nation after the Bush years. But Romney’s turnaround on the burning social issues of gay rights, stem-cell research and abortion has raised questions about the candidate’s sincerity—a dangerous doubt at a time when voters seem to crave authenticity. In Massachusetts, as an unsuccessful Senate candidate in 1994 and in his winning race to become governor in 2002, Romney cast himself as liberal-to-moderate on social issues. But as Romney aims for the conservative Republican votes he will need to secure the presidential nomination, he has emerged as staunchly pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Was he, his critics ask, pretending then? Or is he pretending now?

Is Romney our new Kerry?   I think he might be.  Read this exchange from the Newsweek article.  It feels like Kerry’s “Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian” moment to me: disingenuous and opportunistic.

As a candidate, he can appear slightly overproduced, a little too smooth for the hurly-burly of the hustings. Lately, Romney has been courting the evangelical vote, key to winning Republican primaries. He knows that some evangelicals regard his religion, Mormonism, as heresy (according to the National Journal, more than a quarter of self-identified evangelicals tell pollsters that they won’t vote for a Mormon). So last week, at a lackluster rally in the Bible belt of South Carolina where maybe 300 people half-filled an auditorium, Romney was trying, a bit unctuously, to show his down-home piety. As the crowd trickled out, Romney, his voice still at full decibel from his stump speech, grabbed the hand of state Rep. Bob Leach, a Baptist. “This man,” proclaimed Romney, “his prayers bring down the power of the Lord!”

Since when does a senior partner at a turnaround firm (Bain, for chrissakes) and the governor of Massachussettes, no less, proclaim anything.  I don’t think he does, unless he’s faking.  I’m not saying Romney’s not religious, but he’s not an evangelical Christian, either.

We call it the new math. The U.S. Central Command’s war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006. Oops. Courtesy of George Washington University’s National Security Archive.

This link leads to an article referenced by me in the global warming debate. It’s worth reading if you care about my comment that hybrids might actually cost less than non-hybrids over the life of the car (not including any tax breaks you’d receive for buying the hybrid). This directly contradicts Shores’ experience in looking at buying a hybrid in the past few months. I’m only posting here because I can’t figure out how to post a link in the comments section.

Here’s the quote:

Looking at both the Escape and Civic models you can see that even without the benefit of the tax credit, the hybrids have lower Total Ownership Costs over five years.

Just a silly photo.

Courtesy of Peter King in today’s Monday Morning Quarterback, Rush Limbaugh sticks his nose in the issue of race and sports yet again, for seemingly no reason at all. And you wonder why those of us on the left consider the conservative media elite (sorry, couldn’t resist) to be absolutely, flat-out insane. And stupid. Very, very stupid.

“And before we go to the break here, folks, I’ve got to get something off my chest. You know, the game was the game. And the game was what it was. But I - I can’t handle any more press criticism of Rex Grossman. They’re writing his name W-R-E-C-K-S. They’re just … worst quarterback ever to play in the Super Bowl. And it’s been like this since the Green Bay game — actually since the Arizona game, a little crescendo of it in the Green Bay game, the last game of the season for the Bears. And it’s just unrelenting! It’s just — they’re focusing on this guy like they don’t focus on anybody!

“And I tell you, I know what it is. The media, the sports media, has got social concerns that they are first and foremost interested in, and they’re dumping on this guy — Rex Grossman — for one reason, folks, and that’s because he is a white quarterback.’

I have tried unsuccessfully to post this as a comment to Harrison’s AEI post, but since that doesn’t seem to be working…

You could have also linked to the Science Journal column from the front page of the same day’s WSJ Marketplace section about how those called “fanatics” two decades ago when global warming first became a major issue have been proven correct and, in many cases, too conservative.

Here’s the key paragraph:

Now, some 20 years after scientists first warned that greenhouse gases would alter the planet’s climate in dangerous ways, it is possible to assess who is being more realistic. Starting with the first report of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, critics have called its projections foolishly apocalyptic. Some earlier reports did miss the mark on a few counts, but not in the way the “realists” contend. In some cases, the reality of climate change has been even worse than the alarming forecasts.

It should also be noted that the AEI article is actually an unsigned editorial from the Opinion section. The Science column is from the News section. Of the Wall Street Journal. Your typical, fascist liberal publication.

There is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that climate change is happening; that it is happening more rapidly than it has ever happened before; and that it is being caused by greenhouse gas emissions and deforestations. Yes, there are some that disagree. There are also those who disagree that HIV causes AIDS. Should we stop searching for an HIV vaccine until we have full “proof” that HIV really is the cause?

This “debate” has gone on for 15 years now, and the conclusion is clear. This is happening. We need to do something about it. Next.

Is it just me, or is the Bush administration starting to sound like a spoiled child who sticks his fingers in his ears and won’t listen to his parents?

From The New York Times:

A bleak new National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s future expressed deep doubts about the abilities of Iraqi politicians to hold together an increasingly balkanized country, and about whether the Iraqi troops might be able to confront powerful militias over the next 18 months and assume more responsibility for security. The analysis described in sober language a rapidly unraveling country in which the security has worsened despite four years of efforts by the administration.

Dick Cheney, one week earlier, on CNN denying that Iraq was in a perilous state and calling “hogwash” any suggestions that the war had been mishandled :

“The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress. Bottom line is that we’ve had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes.”

From the New York Times’ article on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings that global warming was “unequivocal” and that the main driver was “very likely” human sctivity:

“Since 2001, there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climate changes that are under way,” said Mr. Holdren, who is the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “In overwhleming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil-fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.”

The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies of past climate shifts; observations of retreating ice, warming and rising seas and other changes around the planet; and a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how the earth will respond to a growing blanket of gases that hold heat in the atmosphere.

Bush’s Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, on why he still rejects the idea of unilateral limits on emissions, which are urged by the panel:

“We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution.”

For the record, the US, with 5% of the world’s population, contributes 25% of the planet’s global greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other country.

And, to top it all off, trying to solve one problem might help us solve the other. Not that George will listen. Not that he ever does.

(And, of course, the new strategy is off to a swimming start.)

Biden “messed up out of the gate”?  That’s what a lot of people are saying.

This is the quote:

. . . Biden described Obama as “the first mainstream African American [presidential candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

What’s wrong with that?  Is it because Obama’s black? Cause, I could describe Bush almost the same way, except for the black part or the articulate part or the bright part, but he’s clean and nice-looking.

Obama’s response, by the way, was equally “political” and said something, I think, about how he plans to deal with racial issues:

“I didn’t take Senator Biden’s comments personally,” he said, “but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate.”

And, to be clear, Jesse Jackson is the only person on this list who may have been a legitimate candidate or “mainstream.”

For what it’s worth, Hillary’s going to win anyway.

I am always fascinated by the idea that a country can just “nationalize” an industry or a company. It happens all the time, particularly in second world countries. What interests me more is the complete non-reaction by the international community. As important as global trade and capitalism have proven to be for the improvement of the entire world in the last fifty years, it’s even more fascinating.

There’s very little international law and no international court system to allow a company to sue a federal government for proper repayment for taken assets. That’s bad.

The latest example is Hugo Chavez’s nationalization of communications companies. You know, this guy is a bad guy. It’s weird people don’t get that. The country will own the method of free speach.

Former (bad) Colorado Governor Bill Owens announced today that he is joining Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign advisory team.  You’ll notice, in relation to a previous post by me, that the second paragraph reads as follows:

Romney, 59, has not announced his candidacy officially, but submitted paperwork this week to form a presidential advisory committee, the first step in a race for the White House. If elected, he would be the first Mormon president.

Those italics are mine. Interestingly, there are not nearly as many second (or first) paragraphs that mention Obama being the first black president or Hillary being the first woman president.

As for Owens, well, that was a bad choice.  There have always been persistent rumors about an illegitimate child and, reading from the same page, he’s not that popular with the Free Republic types.

Shores, sometimes you’re right.  The view from here is that in the last six months the country’s environment for environmentalism has changed.  Here are a couple of significant examples: Walmart’s campaign to get everyone to change lightbulbs and the ever growing trend in homebuilding to get “off the grid.” Pretty cool.

What strikes me about these article is that the rich and the poor and the middle class, of all political stripes, are fingding ways to be more energy efficient and the market is meeting those needs.

Because I’m the Decider, see. And what the Decider does is decide. And if the Decider wants to take his time deciding, well, that’s what the Decider’s a’gonna do. It’s not like I’ve had three years to think about this, see? It’s not like we’ve been in a critical situation for the past six months, see? I mean, we thought we were gonna be out of there in three months, maybe six, so putting together a comprehensive plan for how we were gonna build democracy and secure the country….well, that just wasn’t ever on the agenda. It’s not like I’ve been talking to experts about this every day or anything.

Impressive leadership, George. You’ve made us all feel much, much better.

Talk about peaking too early, don’t you think people will be tired of this guy by the time election season really gears up? With people saying such things about him as “He’s fresh and new,” “He’s the real deal,” “He transcends politics” etc, I think he’s in for a hard road.

I personally like what one conservative strategist said “He’s the blank screen that people are projecting their hopes on.” We’ll see what it looks like when the screen begins to define itself.

Maybe he is great and I just don’t know it. But, he’s sorely lacking experience. He’s also gotten so popular so fast that I’m sure the Clinton machine has cranked up its opp-research in a huge way.

Frank doesn’t post anymore, for obvious reasons. But, if I had some time with him, I’d love to talk about Romney’s mormonism. Slate has a great article almost begging the presidential candidate to make his “I’m a mormon and proud of it” speech.

Mitt Romney has said that if his Mormon faith becomes an issue in his race for the presidency, he will address it at length in a speech. Does he have space on his calendar tomorrow?

The press is writing about his religion. Pollsters are asking about it, and GOP voters inevitably bring it up in any discussion of the 2008 candidates. Will his faith affect how he governs? Will it hurt his chances at winning the nomination? A debate in the blogosphere rages over Andrew Sullivan’s posting of a picture of the undergarment worn by some Mormons, an act that some of the faithful have found offensive.

When they’re talking about your bloomers, it’s time to clear a few things up.

It’s an interesting question and a telling one, I think. Will the evangelical wing of the Republican party vote for a person who has all of their values: no abortion, no gay marriage, no publicly-funded stem-cell research, etc., but whose values are based on a theology heretical to their own?

(I know, I know, it is possible to frame the evangelicals’ values in a way that doesn’t rely on the negative . . .)

Mormonism can be a little crazy. (Or, a lot.) But so can Christianity and Judaism and Islam and science and atheism, which is why I’m thinking about going Buddhist, which always makes sense. On the other hand, it’s a very unfamiliar religion, particularly considering how popular it is.

Anyway, interesting . . . and that underwear looks very uncomfortable.

A group of homeowners in Pagosa Springs, Colorado are fining a woman $25 a day for hanging a peace shaped Christmas wreath on the side of her house. Evidently, some families have children in Iraq and assume that the peace sign is a portest against the war. The president of the homeowner association says that if they let this go, people could put up posters saying bomb people. Under Colorado law, only one form of speech is protected in an HOA controlled development - the hanging of the American flag. Interestingly, this is a bigger and bigger issue across the country. I don’t think it’s ever been tested at the Supreme Court level; what exactly can an HOA control? This one seems pretty silly to me, particularly considering that some people living in the development thought the peace sign was actually a sign of the devil.

I know, I know, Fox and the right aren’t the same thing. But, if you’ve got this sort of person carrying your water, well . . .

A spokesman for News Corp., owner of Fox Broadcasting and publisher HarperCollins, confirmed that the company had conversations with representatives of Nicole Brown Simpson’s and Ron Goldman’s families over the past week and that the families were offered all profits from the planned Simpson book and”There were no strings attached,” News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher said.

In other words, this guy thought it would make it okay if the victims’ families got paid. Sure, every television executive is like this, except, well, they aren’t. On the other hand, you could have this guy carrying the water.

I feel liberated, and I’m going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried. Now, you might say, “Well, why have you been doing it?” Because the stakes are high. Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country’s than the Democrat Party and liberalism does.

Though, I’m not sure what else I expected.

I don’t really read this site, and I tried to find another source, but Atrios out that Tradesports got it wrong on Senate control.

Cheney just can’t fuckin’ believe it.

Should this have happened yesterday?

Things are tight, and the democrats are already nervous. As the blog post notes, it won’t matter by the end of the day, but, if you’re reading this on Tuesday, don’t you wonder how the democrats frame a victory that doesn’t result in such? When is a victory really a loss? I’d suggest that if the democrats don’t at least gain control of the House, it’s a loss. And, I’d suggest even more that this election is already proof of why Hillary Clinton is the wrong presidential candidate.

As Matt has pointed out, and Obama has constantly tried to prove, the current debates - racism, taxes, immigration, abortion, church vs. state, size of our military - are tired and done. The country leans right on most of these issues (except racism). They’re settled. On top of that, many of these things no longer matter; they are fringe issues. There are real issues with social security (there’s been no viable proposal), national defense (there is no simple enemy), health care (no one likes the way it works now), education (we’re constantly falling behind). These are the issues that a truly progressive democratic party would be addressing. Simply being “not Bush” is no form of platform. The democrats can’t win many of the old arguments; they should change the argument.

Some thoughts as we head into election day, courtesy of Thomas Friedman, posted on, of all places, Bruce Springsteen’s homepage.

A Little text to make this work.

john stossel reports on the idea i’ve floated here a few times about the problem with employer payed health insurance. he uses a nice analogy:

Suppose you had grocery insurance. With your employer paying 80 percent of the bill, you would fill the cart with lobster and filet mignon. Everything would cost more because demand would rise and supermarkets would stop running sales. Why should they — when their customers barely care about the price?

i’m sure you’re tired of my posting of these things, but with the dems continuing to want to push national healthcare (and with it’s failure here and abroad), i’d like to keep you thinking about market driven reforms that should work in america.

I’m not sure what the hell Jesus is talking about, but this is a simple one for me.

The President today announced that he and the administration were reviewing new options for solving the quagmire (yeah, I said it) that is Iraq. Here’s the money quote so far:

I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq. I’m not satisfied either. And that is why we’re taking new steps to help secure Baghdad and constantly adjusting our tactics across the country to meet the changing threat.

One thing that has driven me crazy throughout this entire ordeal has been the lack of new ideas and new tactics from the administration (and, equally, its critics). To paraphrase President Musharraf of Pakistan when he appeared on the Daily Show, we can point fingers after the crisis is over, for now we’ve just got to solve it.

At first blush, I’d add, placing a strong Iraq government at the center of any strategy seems wise to me. Clearly, no one over there like us too much, and ending their reliance on our military seems a worthy goal. Even a weak Iraqi government would be better at negotiating peace than a strong U.S. military. Easier said than done, but a good goal nonetheless.

UPDATE:  Turns out the Iraqi government doesn’t agree with me, too much.

GooTube Harold Ford, and you’ll get some other dandies.  GooTubing  Bob Corker’s got some pretty good ones, too.

Via: Wonkette.

I’m amazed by the complete lack of self-awareness.  Let me see if I can get this right: “We’re going to kill you because you said we’re violent, which clearly we aren’t?”

Over the past three and a half years, Christians have been subjected to a steady stream of church bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and threatening letters slipped under their doors.

Gibson, Foley, Ney….this is getting fun. I think every Republican who ever had lunch with Abramoff should just go ahead and enter rehab. In fact, let’s just have a show of hands. Please, everyone wishing to abscond from personal responsibility for their actions, form a line. We’ll get you in and out of AA in no time. Bet Nixon wished he’d thought of this one back in the day.

In separate news, a USA Today/Gallup poll shows that Democrats have a 23% lead among likely voters. This is double the lead the Republicans had prior to the 1994 election–back before they started hitting the bottle en masse, of course–and the most the Dems have had since 1978. Getting nervous, GOP? Better have a drink. Make it two.

Oh, and, really, this is indefensible. Nice to see that the Heritage Foundation is involved….

Where are all the Democratic pundits who said the Lieberman vs. Lamont primary was a barometer on Iraq policy now that Lieberman appears on his way to clear victory?  Also, notice in the same link that while it appears from the polls that the Dems stand to gain in the Senate, many of the races are very tight which means they could swing with any news or events right around the election.

Also, the lines over at tradesports would lead you to the conclusion that we’re looking ahead at a split Congress with the GOP keeping control of the Senate and the Dems taking control of the house.  What’s interesting and what the realclearpolitics.com page shows is that while there is a lot of polling/predicition data for the Senate races, not much data exists on the House races–even the most competitive ones.

I’m looking forward to watching the returns on November 7th.  Should be one of the more exciting mid-term elections in quite awhile.

This North Korea thing got me to thinking: What if the Chinese step up and respond, possibly with military action? I haven’t seen anything written about it, but i would think they might be viewing this as an opportunity to exert military force really for the first time. I think the result would be that the US would lose the “only superpower” moniker. Certainly, China has proven itself an economic and political (via tough diplomacy) power in the past few years. Am I right in thinking the last link to superpowerdom is military? It seems like this would also establish a (Far) Eastern/Western superpower bloc of political groups. I’m sure our diplomats are mulling over this potential outcome.

(I’m hoping this post might elicit a comment from our JFK school readers since they paid high dollar for their expertise.)

[Removed from "shorter." Anything more than two sentences probably isn't short. -Ed.]

This is a short post that was going to be a long post. I’m disobeying the rules in hopes that people will still read the link to this Time Magazine cover story. I had been working for a week collecting a whole series of links talking about how out of touch and bad the Republican leadership has become - the White House, Congress, the Party’s own leadership. But, I don’t need to post it now; you can read all about it in Time.

This will be the most important presidential election in decades for this reason: neither party has a direction. By the time the presidential season begins in earnest, each candidate will, for the first time in a long time, be setting the agenda for their party. That’s a good thing, because both parties currently have only one goal in mind: votes in Congress. The problem is neither knows what they’d vote for.

This piece on MSNBC.com really cracks me up.  It talks about Hillary Clinton’s faith and the fact that she’s a member of a very discrete, non-public, bipartisan group of Senators who meet together regularly to pray.  What’s interesting is that the group supposedly shuns publicity and partisanship.  Yet, this is an entire “news” article about Clinton’s involvement in this group.  Clear to me is that this is a biased opinion piece trying to make Clinton appealing to the Christian voting base.  Maybe I’m too cynical (or paranoid as Matt might put it), but the irony of the piece supposedly being apolitical and yet being very politically targeted is clear.  How can MSNBC really publish this as news and not a political promo piece?

i know that there was a little surprise a year ago when i pointed out that global warming was not settled science. it seems that 60 scientists are trying to get the canadian government to acknowledge this:

• Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.
• If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.
• The new Canadian government’s commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to “stopping climate change” would be irrational.
• It was only 30 years ago that many of today’s global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe.

the debate is, of course, continuing here. “Senator James Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, engaged in a heated exchange with CNN newsman Miles O’Brien over CNN’s biased and erroneous coverage of global warming.” o’brien “cited the fictional movie The Day After Tomorrow to defend his science reporting.” furthermore, Sen. Inhofe (R) explains that even if every developed nation deployed kyoto, there would be only 6/100th degree change, in 50 years.

not to mention that many of the people pushing global warming were involved in the killing of millions of africans over the past 40 years with the ban of ddt. thank god it’s back.

i’m just saying.

“We cannot ignore the uncomfortable fact that economic and social circumstances may better prepare some countries for democracy than others. Oddly, we seem to have forgotten what Vietnam should have taught us about the limitations of the military as an instrument of ‘nation-building.’ Promoting democracy requires attention to specific circumstances and to the limitations of leverage. Both because of what the United States is and because of what is possible, we cannot engage either in promoting democracy or in nation-building as an exercise of will. We must proceed by interaction and indirection, not imposition. In this respect, post-World War II experiences with Germany and Japan offer misleading guides to what is possible now, even in a period of American primacy.”

ex-presidential candidate forbes suggests redistributing to the masses the income of the Iraqi oil fields. oddly, with this i feel he has some truly good ideas for moving iraq forward.

curiously, since they have a democratically elected government, forbes suggests that, our “Administration, however, should introduce changes that would make this goal more realizable.” isn’t this something they should suggest to the iraqi parliment?

his points:

1. distribute a part of the oil income to everyone in iraq, much as the Permanent Fund does in alaska.
2. get rid of inflation by containing the dinar to a backed rate of dollars or euros, or simply using one of these currencies.
3. protect entrepreneurial interests a la hong kong.
4. allow each “ethnic community [to have] home rule, in which its affairs are largely run by local citizens,” with a weaker central government, similar to the french, german, and italian ethnicities of suisse, schweiz, svizzera.

with this short plan, that would likely be very hard to get through the parliment (particularly number 4 in which the central government would have to cede its new found power), i feel much of the “quagmire” which is iraq today would quickly turn into a stable, liberal democratic country in the middle of the east.

boortz, for the first time that i am aware, has written a positive comment on both pelosi and rangel!! i am frankly surprised to see that nancy would come out and defend bush this way. i’m glad to see it.

it is interesting to note how clinton and carter have broken tradition and spoken out against a sitting president. there is not much precendent for former presidents publically demeaning the oval office in quite the way the last two democratic presidents have done to bush.

given the partisan life in dc now, it is amazing and intriguing to see these two democrats (pelosi and rangel) defend the president in the face of chavez’s comments. good work, dem leaders. of course, you should see the next paragraph that reminds me why it will be so hard for me to vote democratic even though the republicans are no longer conservative.

ps why are the time stamps on mountain time rather than local as they were before (or were they just on eastern before)?

The New York Times has a fairly scary (if you’re running Congress or a voter) story about voter approval of Congress - it’s 25%. Turns out, there are probably three things that freak us out: The whole lot is too tied to special interests; nobody in Congress is doing anything, and there are not transformative issues moving through Congress.

The article has this to say, first:

The disdain for Congress is as intense as it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end 40 years of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold on to power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.

But it also points out, importantly, that voters are not nearly as likely as they were in 1994 to sweep the Democrats into power as a result of the dissappointment. It doesn’t say much about that party. It also doesn’t say much about our prospects. It’s as if pollees are saying, we don’t like you, but we don’t like you either.

It’s ridiculous to me that, when combining these statistics, which clearly point to disappointment with the Republican Congressional leadership, and the President’s very low approval ratings, that the Democrats can’t get control.

Why can’t they? It’s number one above. To borrow a phrase from the departed Mr. Clinton: it’s the special interest groups, stupid. And, I really believe it is. Special interest groups, from all sides, seem to lead the conversation on everything. Each issue is handled individually rather than underneath a broad set of guidelines that lead either party. I’ve been trying to think of a term for these sets of guidelines and I believe I’ve come up with one: a platform.

Both parties used to have one: now neither does. In modern terms, we call platforms mission statements. Mission statements set a framework for all decisions. The Democrats have no framework; they’re merely not Republicans and a little freaky. The Republicans have a platform - control spending and lower taxes and secure us without engaging in endless war - two parts of which have been almost entirely abandoned under this leadership and this administration.

Can we get another option?

I’ve noticed a new phenomena on the news websites I read most: the most blogged/most read/most e-mailed list. The most read list means almost nothing to me. After all, the longer the CNN.com editors leave the story about Muslims burning the Pope’s likeness, the more people read it. Plus, the better the photo, the more likely I am to read a story.

On the other hand, it’s fascinating to watch the most-blogged list when compared to the most-e-mailed list. At the New York Times, they almost never include the same stories. I’ve even posted an image of the site, snapped right before I started writing this. There’s not one crossover story.  (And, I’m making this easy for you to see if you take the time to click on the preceding the link.)
I think it’s fair to think this way: the things people take the time to e-mail to their friends are the things that matter to them. The things people take the time to blog are the things that matter to them. Using the transitive property, I come to the conclusion that bloggers and the rest of the world don’t care about the same things.

Here are the five diggbait reasons I believe this to be the case:

1. Bloggers are political wonks; the rest of the world isn’t.
2. Bloggers spend too much time complaining about the same thing; the real world is ready to move on already.
3. Bloggers really like talking about the things their friends are talking about; the real world is tired of those cocktail parties.
4. Bloggers really to talk about controversies; the real world wants to talk about things that actually effect them.
5. Bloggers already already got into Princeton; the real world has sex and thus has to worry about getting their kids into Princeton.

With the coming election and all the chatter about a changing Congress, it’s interesting to go over and check out the action on www.tradesports.com and also at the Iowa Electronic Markets (www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem). Personally, I don’t think the House or the Senate will change hands. Odds are pretty close on the House and the Senate seems to be favored to stay Republican. Recall how accurate these odds-making sites were last election cycle versus the “real” polls.