Friday, September 14, 2007

Bill Maher Interviews Chris Dodd

... with Conservative Closed Captioning for the ideologically challenged:


Click image to watch the clip.

Just when you thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel

Dollar's Retreat Raises Fear of Collapse
By Carter Dougherty / The International Herald Tribune


The Euro is the New Dollar - Get used to it.

Frankfurt - Finance ministers and central bankers have long fretted that at some point, the rest of the world would lose its willingness to finance the United States' proclivity to consume far more than it produces - and that a potentially disastrous free-fall in the dollar's value would result.

But for longer than most economists would have been willing to predict a decade ago, the world has been a willing partner in American excess - until a new and home-grown financial crisis this summer rattled confidence in the country, the world's largest economy.

On Thursday, the dollar briefly fell to another low against the euro of $1.3927, as a slow decline that has been under way for months picked up steam this past week.

"This is all pointing to a greatly increased risk of a fast unwinding of the U.S. current account deficit and a serious decline of the dollar," said Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and an expert on exchange rates. "We could finally see the big kahuna hit."

Read the rest here ... if you have courage.

Free Market doesn't work ...

when one side has all the guns.

UN General Assembly backs indigenous peoples' rights

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted a non-binding declaration upholding the human, land and resources rights of the world's 370 million indigenous people, brushing off opposition from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.*

The vote in the assembly was 143 in favor and four against. Eleven countries, including Russia and Colombia, abstained.

The declaration, capping more than 20 years of debate at the United Nations, also recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination and sets global human rights standards for them.

It states that native peoples have the right "to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties" concluded with states or their successors.

Indigenous peoples say their lands and territories are endangered by such threats as mineral extraction, logging, environmental contamination, privatization and development projects, classification of lands as protected areas or game reserves and use of genetically modified seeds and technology.

The rest of the story at Yahoo News ...



* That looks like a list of the countries that support democratic self determination. Right?

What's wrong with this picture. It sounds like those countries are saying, "We conquered you people, friggin' STAY CONQUERED!" I guess that support for HUMAN RIGHTS is what you might call "lip service"?

The arguments against protecting the rights of indigenous peoples?

"They said they could not support it because of their concerns over provisions on self-determination, land and resources rights and giving indigenous peoples a right of veto over national legislation and state mangement of resources."

"'Unfortunately, the provisions in the Declaration on lands, territories and resources are overly broad, unclear, and capable of a wide variety of interpretations, discounting the need to recognize a range of rights over land and possibly putting into question matters that have been settled by treaty,' Canada's UN Ambassador John McNee told the assembly."

  • Property is more important than people. Human rights are fine as long as they don't interfere with property rights and profit.
  • Treaties, most of which were ignored by the conquerors, most of which were initiated at the point of a gun, have already settled many issues.
  • The original treaties were ambiguous but when the shoe is on the other foot, it's a problem.
  • Justice is not part of the equation. The maintenance of power is.

All Things to All Women



Who would know more about what women want than a guy in a dress?

Perhaps you were wondering

... why Liberals are so obsessed with Larry Craig's personal life:


This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow does it again.
(Click on graphic to see the whole thing.)

Actually, it seems to me most liberals have been pretty quiet. I've heard more commentary from conservatives - certainly more anger. But I'm not complaining. It's about time something tapped into all the deep seated "moral outrage" inherent in the so-called Family Values Party.

Yes, but how are they DIFFERENT?

By CHRIS FRANCESCANI / ABC News
ST. GEORGE, Utah, Sept. 14, 2007


Warren (God) Jeffs
Would you buy a used car
from this man?


The key witness in the trial of polygamist Warren Jeffs testified Thursday that she was taught Jeffs was the prophet and the only way to eternal salvation was a complete surrender to his teachings.

"The prophet was God to us. He was God on Earth and his counselors were pretty much the same, so they had jurisdiction over us," the woman said, explaining why she agreed to Jeffs' order to marry her 19-year-old cousin when she was 14 years old.

More on "knowing what's on gods mind" ... and the man who says he knows.


How is this man any different than a Pope who declares that his church is the only true church and therefore, the only path to salvation - or the fundamentalists who who so look forward to the Rapture - or Christian Evangelicals who claim THEY have the only way to salvation - or Ossama bed Linen and his religious perspective?

How do you tell them apart when their beliefs are fundamentally so similar?

Haven't I seen this movie before?



"And now the whole nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

- Mark Twain, American philosopher

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Bush: Return on Success

... or Catch 22?

The more successful our troops are (in a situation that has no military solution) the the more of our soldiers can come home.

I'm not sure that's a good deal. If there's no military solution, it's holding out a false hope because all military solutions are doomed to fail. Did anyone else see that go by?

When I heard that my first thought was, "Oh, my God, he just said we're going to be there forever!" Or at least until Bush can palm his mess off on someone else who'll shoulder the blame for his incompetence and total lack of judgment.

And then there's this ...

President Petraeus? Iraqi Official Recalls the Day US General Revealed Ambition

By Patrick Cockburn / The Independent UK

Thursday 13 September 2007

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.

"I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.

General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.

His able defence of the "surge" in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made him the best-known soldier in America. An articulate, intelligent and energetic man, he has always shown skill in managing the media.

But General Petraeus's open interest in the presidency may lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq .

Mr Khadim was a senior adviser in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in 2004-05 when Iyad Allawi was prime minister.

More of it here.

Sad and Sorry Coincidence

2 G.I.’s, Skeptical but Loyal, Die in a Truck Crash in Iraq

by DAVID STOUT / NYTimes

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — “Engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act,” the seven soldiers wrote of the war they had seen in Iraq.

They were referring to the ordeals of Iraqi citizens, trying to go about their lives with death and suffering all around them. But sadly, although they did not know it at the time, they might almost have been referring to themselves.

Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo truck in which they were riding overturned.

The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were among the authors of “The War as We Saw It,” in which they expressed doubts about reports of progress.

Full article here.




I posted about their op-ed a little while ago.

Unfortunately, the link to the full text of their op-ed on the NYTimes site is one that requires a suubscription to the NYTimes. However, I was able to locate a copy of the full text of their op-ed on TruthOut.org - I think it's worth reading what the troops in the field are thinking.


Sgt. Omar Mora

It is sad that two more soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq. Sadder still that their voices, so clear such a short time ago, have now been silenced.

What Crocker and Petraeus Didn’t Say

by Nancy A. Youssef and Leila Fadel / McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration’s top two officials in Iraq answered questions from Congress for more than six hours on Monday, but their testimony may have been as important for what they didn’t say as for what they did.

A chart displayed by Army Gen. David Petraeus that purported to show the decline in sectarian violence in Baghdad between December and August made no effort to show that the ethnic character of many of the neighborhoods had changed in that same period from majority Sunni Muslim or mixed to majority Shiite Muslim.

Neither Petraeus nor U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker talked about the fact that since the troop surge began the pace by which Iraqis were abandoning their homes in search of safety had increased. They didn’t mention that 86 percent of Iraqis who’ve fled their homes said they’d been targeted because of their sect, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Read the article here.



The piece goes on to make three basic points:

  • There has been no real drop in civilian casualties among the Iraqis. The evidence presented is statistical sleight of hand.
  • A "fall in violence" has taken place in some neighborhoods, but it is not the result of American troops suppressing sectarian violence. Quite the contrary, it is the result of the fact that violent ethnic cleansing has been completed. That is, previously mixed neighborhoods have been purified [usually with the aid of American troops, who drive away the armed militias (always labeled as "terrorists") that defend embattled Sunni residents].
  • As a result of this sustained ethnic cleansing, which is continuing apace in the still mixed neighborhoods, the number of refugees inside and outside Iraq continues to mount dramatically, creating the kind of terminal misery that only losing your home and livelihood in a disaster area can produce.

I guess that's the definition of "progress" and of "winning in Iraq" that we're looking for.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Jon Stewart: Considers the Petraeus Report

... and concludes that it has a lot on common with an M.C. Escher vision of reality.



See it here ...

Senator John Warner (D-VA):
“Does that make America safer?”

General Petraeus:
“Sir, I-I don’t know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind, uh-what I have focused on and been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the Multi-National Force Iraq.”



Actually, I have a great deal of sympathy for Petraeus and for his answer. Petraeus is not there to determine if his actions are making America safer. He's there under orders and tasked with making his mission in Iraq work. Whether our presence in Iraq is making us safer or not is not part of his mandate, it's a policy question and I don't think we want our generals making policy decisions. It would not be good for our generals to be forming opinions (particularly publicly) about whether or not their missions were "making us safer".

The decision to be in Iraq was made at levels far above General Petraeus' position and his orders resulted from those decisions. For him to question whether or not his orders were politically effective (politically in terms of the broader picture) could very easily put him in a position of questioning his orders.

In the past several years several well known generals have resigned because they found themselves questioning their mission. Their choice was to accept their mission or resign so they could express opinions about their mission. They chose to resign. General Petraeus chose to accept his mission.

I believe the only way Petraeus could publicly express an opinion that suggested the mission was a failure in terms of the degree to which it enhances our overall protection would be to resign as others have. In order to pursue his mission he must accept at the onset that those who made the decision to be in Iraq made the right decision. Only with that assumption could a soldier of honor follow his orders.

In the meantime, how many general officers under the Bush administration have been relieved of their duties for expressing thoughts contrary to the Alice-In-Wonderland views of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld? How many careers have visibly crushed, side tracked or destroyed (not counting those behind the scenes) for questioning policy?

Iraq - the Fable



"Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy the next evening.

"He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you born--Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun w'at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see what de news wuz gwine ter be. En he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road--lippity-clippity, clippity -lippity--dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin' 'long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz 'stonished. De Tar Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"`Mawnin'!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee - `nice wedder dis mawnin',' sezee.

"Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low.

"`How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.

"Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'.

"'How you come on, den? Is you deaf?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,' sezee.

"Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"'You er stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I;m gwine ter kyore you, dat's w'at I'm a gwine ter do,' sezee.

"Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummick, he did, but Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nothin'.

"'I'm gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter 'spectubble folks ef hit's de las' ack,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Ef you don't take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I'm gwine ter bus' you wide open,' sezee.

"Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin' nothin', twel present'y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip he tuck 'er side er de head. Right dar's whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis' stuck, en he can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"`Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you agin,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch 'er a wipe wid de udder han', en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain'y sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"`Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de natal stuffin' outen you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on, en de Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don't tu'n 'im loose he butt 'er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa'ntered fort', lookin' dez ez innercent ez wunner yo' mammy's mockin'-birds.

"`Howdy, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. `You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin',' sezee, en den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he couldn't laff no mo'. `I speck you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no skuse,' sez Brer Fox, sezee."

Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.

"Did the fox eat the rabbit?" asked the little boy to whom the story had been told.

"Dat's all de fur de tale goes," replied the old man. "He mout, an den agin he moutent. Some say Judge B'ar come 'long en loosed 'im - some say he didn't.



In case you haven't guessed and need a score card to keep track of the players:
  • Ossama bed Linen plays the part of Brer Fox,
  • Iraq plays the part of Tar Baby and
  • Our Fearless Leader plays the part of Brer Rabbit.

Of course, in real life things are a little different. The difference is that, in real life, Brer Fox didn't make the Tar Baby that Brer Rabbit got tangled up in. Brer Rabbit made it aw bie hizsef.

To quote Elmer Fudd (but not to mix the metaphor), "Siwee wabbit!"

American Attitudes toward Dependence on Foreign Oil

... Global Warming,
The Melting Ice Cap
and other related issues.



It's not easy to hold out hope for the future.