Bush's July 4th, My July 4th ...

Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.
My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.

Yours is the imperial presidency and "so what?" to public opinion.
Mine is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Yours is profiling and discrimination.
Mine is "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

Yours is "My country right or wrong."
Mine is avoiding "Offences against the Law of Nations"

Yours is the veto of child health care and rejection of Kyoto,
Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.

Yours is a monarchical presidency above the law.
Mine is, as Tom Paine said, "in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

Yours is aggressive invasions of countries that did not attack us first.
Mine is "and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."

Yours is water-boarding and electrocution.
Mine is the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Yours is the stench of a million mouldering corpses, military rule over 27-million who did us no wrong and the creation of oceans of misery.
Mine is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters, 'heckuva job Brownie.'
Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.

Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of “contractors.”
Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.

Yours is erecting "free speech" protest zones as zoos for free citizens.
Mine is "or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Yours is the swagger of the flight jacket and the bombs raining down.
Mine is the schooling of the next global generation.

Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.

May you enjoy an Independence Day that is truly independent of the depraved men and women who work for George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain.

It's Official: The Stupid Season Has Arrived.

Forget about Iraq, the environment, the economy, gas prices, unemployment or health care. The Associated Press and Yahoo teamed up to find out what's really important to voters.

Moments ago, it was announced that people would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than with John McCain. No kidding.

While many are still deciding who should be president, by 52% to 45% they would prefer having Obama than McCain to their summer cookout, according to the poll.

Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11%. Whites prefer McCain, minorities Obama. And Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.

Having Obama to a barbecue would be like a relaxed family gathering, while inviting McCain "would be more like a retirement party than something fun," said Wesley Welbourne, 38, a systems engineer from Washington, D.C., quoted in the Yahoo article about the poll.

No word yet on which candidate people would prefer having a beer with at the corner pub. It’s probably too early in the campaign for the beer poll.

The results are at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080702/ap_on_el_pr/ap_yahoo_poll_candidates_barbecue_3

Flip Flip, He Is Taking A Drop ...

If John McCain keeps changing positions as quickly as he is doing, he’s going to look like Lynda Blair in The Exorcist.

As Keith Olbermann noted last night on Countdown, thanks to Steven Benan at Carpetbagger Report, we now have a three page long catalogue of John McCain’s flip-flopping and yet the media has been reluctant to catalogue his Flip Flop Express.

Benan writes “I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the criticism is taking root. Consider yesterday’s “Cafferty File” on CNN where Jack Cafferty notes some of McCain more glaring recent reversals, adding, ‘If John McCain doesn’t stop changing his position on the issues, he threatens to make John Kerry look like an amateur. In order for McCain to win in November, he has to appeal to both the traditional Republican base and to Independents. Dana Milbank in The Washington Post says that’s a delicate dance. And if McCain’s not careful, ‘he’s liable to break a hip.’ Of course, any doctor will tell you a broken hip can be very difficult to recover from.”

The past couple of weeks have been especially difficult when it comes to McCain flip-flops.

• McCain supported the off-shore drilling moratorium; now he’s against it.
• McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.
• McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
• McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization though he actually still supports it.
• McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.
• McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
• He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
• McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.
• McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.
• McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
• McCain supported moving “towards normalisation of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
• McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas and Syria . Now he believes the opposite.
• He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
• McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
• He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.
• McCain supported the Lieberman-Warner to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.
• McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”
• McCain is both for and against a "rogue state rollback" as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
• McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.
• In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a 61cent-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.
• McCain has changed his economic worldview on multiple occasions.
• McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions.
• McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.
• McCain believes Americans are both better off and worse off than they were before Bush took office.
• McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
• McCain believes his endorsement from radical televangelist John Hagee was both a good and a bad idea.
• McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
• McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal.
• In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
• McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
• McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.
• On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own legislation.
• In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.
• McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”
• McCain said he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
• McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.
• McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
• McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.
• McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.
• On a related note, he said 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this despite it having been recorded on video tape, and insisted he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.
• In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.
• McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.
• McCain opposed a holiday to honour Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.
• McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.
• McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.
• McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.
• McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

Confronted with the inconsistencies in McCain’s record in March, the senator’s aides told The New York Times that the senator “has evolved rather than switched positions in his 25-year career.”

Evolved? Evolved! That’s some evolution.

Is George Will Morphing Into Bill Kristol?

In the May 5, 2008 issue of Newsweek, George Will posed a handful of questions for Barack Obama. Alas, like so many on the right, Will took Obama statements out of context and then set up straw dog premises that led to questions along the lines of “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

In many respects, what Will did is what New York Times columnist Bill Kristol does all the time: Make up “facts” and then demand an answer to a non-existent question.

Here are the questions Will posed of Obama, along with answers that provide context and meaning. No wonder the Obama for President website has an anti-smear page.

Q – "Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will nominate judges, you said: 'We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.' Such sensitivities might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to do with judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial function inimical to the rule of law?”

A – Mr. Will, you're taking Obama's comments out of context. He was talking about Supreme Court judges who, rightly so, must look at how statutes and their Constitutionality apply in the context of 21st century America. He never said or implied that a winning party in a dispute should be the side that does the best job of playing on a justice's sympathy.

Q – “Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said: Deciding 'truly difficult cases' should involve 'one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy.' Is that not essentially how Chief Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors, say, the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue "matter?”

A – Roger Taney and Clarence Thomas have a lot in common. Beyond that, Mr. Will, if you had bothered to read the Federalist Papers and other writings of the Framers, he would have seen great concern amongst the founders that future generations would understand that the Constitution was not intended to be frozen in time. Yes, the language of the Constitution is crucial. So, too, is putting the issue at hand in the context of what the Constitution intended and what life is like in the 21st century.

Q – You say, 'The insurance companies, the drug companies, they're not going to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care.' Why should they? Who will profit from making those industries unprofitable? When pharmaceutical companies have given up their profits, who will fund pharmaceutical innovations, without which there will be much preventable suffering and death? What other industries should 'give up their profits'?

A – Out of context, again, Georgie boy. Obama never said the drug companies should "give up their profits." In the context of the speech he was making, Obama referred to the extraordinarily high profits phara companies make in the US, much higher than they happily earn in Canada, Britain and the EU. Drug prices are negotiated and regulated in every Western economy except the US, setting a fair margin that the drug companies are happy with based on the fact that they keep doing business in those nations. Moreover, Obama was also talking about giving Medicare authority to negotiate drug prices -- just as the VA does.

Q – ExxonMobil's 2007 profit of $40.6 billion annoys you. Do you know that its profit, relative to its revenue, was smaller than Microsoft's and many other corporations'? And that reducing ExxonMobil's profits will injure people who participate in mutual funds, index funds and pension funds that own 52 percent of the company?

A – ExxonMobile's profit annoys everyone because it was a windfall resulting from as yet-unexplained rocketing upwards of oil prices (which ExxonMobil and other oil companies drill, sells to itself to refine and then sells to itself to put in mostly company-owned gas stations (as well as stations owned by others). If one carefully follows the footnotes in Exxon's 10K and other SEC filings, one will notice that Exxon, like BP, Chevron and other majors, operate an elaborate web of holding companies inside subsidiaries inside divisions, the purpose of all of them being "petroleum trading and storage." In other words, hoarding and pure speculation -- much like Enron. In fact, the McCain sponsored "Enron exemption" allows oil companies to do this. By contrast, CITGO, owned by Penevesa, has maintained its typical and healthy profit margins despite giving away heating oil to poor nations around the world -- including in the Northeast and Gulf Coast US where people have been especially hard hit by rising prices.

Q – You say John McCain is content to 'watch [Americans'] home prices decline.' So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How? Why? Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first house that declining prices are a misfortune?

A – George, you really ought to look up the words "taken out of context." Obama made that statement in the context of McCain opposing a bill that would financially assist families who are in danger of losing their homes due to mortgage lender fraud and abusive practice. (See last week's FBI arrest of 409 mortgage traders, brokers and real estate agents; the FBI says the investigation is continuing and that "hundreds, perhaps thousands, more arrests may follow."

Q – Telling young people 'don't go into corporate America,' your wife, Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in 'the helping industry,' not 'the moneymaking industry.' Given that the moneymakers pay for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is it not helpful?

A – I'm getting really tired of putting things in context for a nationally published columnist. Obama, and his wife, have said repeatedly that Obama would propose a program to pay for university. In exchange, recipients of the tuition grants, would be required to work X-number of years in their community: Teaching, doing social work, community organizing, whatever, as the means of paying back the country.

Q – Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans' lives have 'gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.' Since 1960, real per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor's degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2 percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled. Has y our wife perhaps missed some pertinent developments in this country that she calls 'just downright mean'?

A – Figures can lie and liars can figure. Let's look at numbers that are more relevant. Since 2000, real per capita income has declined markedly; the spread between those earning at top levels and those at the middle level has widened dramatically; since 2000, wealth has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a shrinking number of people as the middle class shrinks;' infant mortality declined but remains the highest in the Western world, home ownership fell dramatically over the past 18 months. If I were you Mr. Will, I would not brag about the spread of "McMansions" because they are way beyond the price range of typical income earners. Mrs. Obama is right: The country has become downright mean for much of its citizens.

Q – You favor raising the capital gains tax rate to '20 percent or 25 percent.' You say this will not 'distort' economic decision making. Your tax returns on your 2007 income of $4.2 million show that you and Michelle own few stocks. Are you sure you understand how investors make decisions?

A – Repeated studies show that investors make buy-and-sell decisions on what they see as profitable opportunities, not the marginal tax rates.

Q – During the ABC debate, you acknowledged that when the capital gains rate was dropped first to 20 percent, then to 15 percent, government revenues from the tax increased and they declined in the 1980s when it was increased to 28 percent. Nevertheless, you said you would consider raising the rate 'for purposes of fairness.' How does decreasing the government's financial resources and punishing investors promote fairness? Are you aware that 20 percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less than $50,000?

A – Actually, the percent of taxpayers you site is 17.87% but let's not quibble about a bit of rounding up. What you fail to mention is that 70% of taxpayers reporting capital gains had incomes in excess of $250,000.

Q – You favor eliminating the cap on earnings subject to the 12.4 percent Social Security tax, which now covers only the first $102,000. A Chicago police officer married to a Chicago public-school teacher, each with 20 years on the job, have a household income of $147,501, so you would take another $5,642 from them. Are they undertaxed? Are they too rich?

A – Social Security and Medicare won't pay for itself.

Q – This November, electorates in four states will vote on essentially this language: 'The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.' Three states, California, Washington and Michigan, have enacted such language. You made a radio ad opposing the Michigan initiative. Why? Are those states' voters racists?

A – When he announced opposition to the ballot initiatives, Obama explained that the measures are carefully coded ways of doing away with anti-discrimination laws; just look at the background of the organisations that got the measures on the ballots.

Q – You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you vow to use a metaphorical 'hammer' to force revisions of trade agreements unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?

A – Can you, Mr. Will? I wouldn't call Canada a "weaker nation," nor would I use that term to describe China, Japan, India or South Korea.

Q – You want 'to reduce money in politics.' In February and March you raised $95 million.

A – Again, a little context, please. Obama has said repeatedly that the money he raised during the entire campaign has come from small contributors -- 100 million of them, in fact, and the average donation was just over $10. He has spoken repeatedly of ridding campaigns of money from lobbyists, bundlers, etc.

Clearly, Republicans are so desperate to rescue John McCain’s campaign they won’t be content with the usual racial and ethnic slurs. As George Will demonstrates, the right will also try using out-of-context statements to subject Obama to policy smears, as well. They should be ashamed but we shouldn’t be surprised.

Congress Set To Pass The ‘Incompetent Banker Relief Act of 2008’

It looks as if Congress will pass a housing bailout bill to provide $300-billion worth of mortgage loan guarantees. But rather than benefiting homeowners, as the politicians claim daily on cable news talking head shows, the main beneficiaries will be the incompetent bankers and fraud artists who issued mortgages during the housing bubble that are now going bad by the bucket-full. The government will save these bankers billions by guaranteeing new loans that will pay off the existing loans at considerably above their market value.

Congress is running to the rescue of the bankers because, unlike autoworkers or people toiling in a dwindling number of textile plants, bankers have real power. When an autoworker or textile worker faces the prospect of losing their job, house and ability to put their kids through school, the politicians will feel their pain. They might even give a few good speeches. But they will not create policies that actually help US workers keep good-paying jobs.

The economists and people who imagine themselves to be economically literate will tell you that the basic story is that there is nothing that can be done. In a globalised economy, they say in stentorian tones, there simply is no place for the sort of high-paying jobs in manufacturing that tens of millions of middle-class workers held in decades past. The best policies they can produce are temporary adjustment assistance or other measures that can help acclimate these workers and their families to a lower standard of living.

(Yet, largely unnoticed, a large carpet manufacturer in North Carolina has proven the economists wrong, and kept good paying manufacturing jobs in the US. It required a new business model, genuine management and worker co-operation and meaningful profit sharing, but it does work. Why other companies in other industries haven’t followed their suit is beyond understanding.)

So, instead, when it comes to workers pain, we are told there’s nothing that can be done. What about the pain of incompetent bankers and fraudulent mortgage brokers? Well, we can't let incompetent bankers or mortgage brokers suffer. Congress, the president and the Fed will move heaven and earth to make sure that the bankers are not allowed to sink just because of their bad business decisions.

That was why Ben Bernanke was so quick to tell the creditors of the major investment banks not to worry that Lehman Brothers or Citigroup might follow Bear Stearns in going belly up. He promised that the Fed would throw out as much money as was necessary to make them whole. There was little concern for moral hazard or the incredible waste of taxpayer money to bail out the extremely rich. And despite what pundits say, guarantees are real money – if anyone ever tells you otherwise, ask them to sign a guarantee note for your mortgage or student loan.

The guarantees plus the below market loans from the Fed's discount window was just round one. Round two is the bailout package that is about to pass Congress. This bill is being sold as a bailout of homeowners. The big problem with the story is that the government guaranteed cheques go to banks, not homeowners. Furthermore, the banks get to decide which loans get placed in the programme.

This is simple Econ 101.

Banks are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of really bad loans. They can foreclose but this is costly. In addition, house prices have fallen so much, and the market is so glutted in many areas, that they will be able to recover relatively little of the original value of their mortgage through foreclosure.

So, along comes Congress with a big bag of taxpayer money and offers to guarantee new mortgages that will allow the banks to recover a much larger share of the original value of their mortgage. Who knows? With an exaggerated appraisal, they may even be able to recover most of their money. Oh. Wait a minute. Weren’t exaggerated appraisals one of the reasons we got into this housing mess in the first place?

Of course Congress sells this as a bailout of homeowners. And we all know homeownership is the American Dream so anyone who raises questions must be some sort of al-Qaida loving Communist.

Well, no one expects politicians to have any backbone. But where are the economists? These are the folks who get apoplectic about a 20% tariff on steel imports. Why are they so quiet about the much larger waste associated with this bailout?

The bottom line is that economists can be every bit as corrupt as politicians. They are happy to use their arguments about economic efficiency to beat down uppity autoworkers or textile workers, but when the gainers from inefficiency are the rich and powerful – like bankers or big pharma and health insurance industries – don't look for economists to be making arguments about economic efficiency. In such cases, the economists are happy to just salute the cult of home ownership and then go out and look for some union to beat up.

In short, the next time an economist whines about the threat of some form of protection that is designed to help ordinary workers, it would be worth asking where they were during the bank bailouts of 2008. If they weren't yelling at the top of their lungs, then their objections are based in their desire to aid the rich and powerful, not any genuine concern with economic efficiency.

Moyers On Iraq, War And Big Oil: A “Must” Watch Or Read.

PBS has posted streaming video as well as a transcript of this week’s Bill Moyer’s Journal where he indicts the Bush administration and its BFF’s, big oil, for being the root cause of the Iraq war.

You can watch or read it here http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/transcript3.html

Moyers says, in part:

James Hansen, who 20 years ago alerted us to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of big oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.

Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four-thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded for life, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force" doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others, or the earth itself.

Bill Moyers remains one of a tiny handful of mainstream journalists who actually does what a reporter is supposed to do: Uncover facts and tell the unvarnished truth.

Another Flip-Flop From Grandpa Munster aka John McCain

There’s been barely a whisper in the mainstream media today about its former BFF Ahmad Chalabi, who met yesterday in Tehran with Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Ali Larijani. According to an English language Iranian news report, Chalabi commented on the Status of Forces Agreement being negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraq government:

The INC's Chalabi retorted that granting immunity to US military personnel from prosecution under Iraqi law is baldly unacceptable. “The vast majority of Iraqi people and authorities oppose the security treaty and regard it as contradictory to Iraq's sovereignty and security.” Chalabi stated the treaty is counterproductive for Iraq in the long term and what the US is seeking is a binding bilateral agreement for the ongoing presence of its forces in Iraq whose UN mandate expires on Dec. 31.

Then Chalabi sat there while Larijani warned the US against "adventurism."

What is Chalbi doing discussing a bilateral US-Iraqi agreement with Larijani in Tehran? Let's see, I'm trying to remember whose idea it was for the US public to give Chalabi tens of millions of dollars and to try to put him in power in Baghdad

Oh, I remember: It was our very own Mr. Foreign Policy Experience, Grandpa Munster:

McCain welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money. When General Anthony Zinni cast doubt upon the effectiveness of the Iraqi opposition, McCain rebuked him at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In 2003, McCain joined four other Republican senators in asking Bush to “personally clear the bureaucratic roadblocks within the State Department” that stood in the way of increased funding for the Chalabi’s group. McCain also said of Chalabi, “He’s a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.”

The Confession Of A Former Hillary-ista

A close friend and colleague who first supported John Edwards and then gave her heart to Hillary is still upset about how the Democratic primary race ended up. She continues to refer to Barack Obama as “Obambi” because she remains convinced that he lacks the experience to be president. But in an e-mail to me this morning, she admitted that “whenever McCain opens his mouth, I start chanting ‘Yes, we can!’”

Given the poll numbers released last week – 60% of women who backed Clinton in the primaries are now supporting Obama – I suspect a lot of not just women but voters generally are doing the same thing.

David Addington: Lord Voldermont's Darth Vadar

If the roll is ever called up yonder to bring members of the Bush administration to account for their eight year reign of terror and lawlessness, David Addington ought to be in line right behind his boss Dick Cheney and ahead of even Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and John Yoo.

Yesterday, Addington told a Senate committee he would not answer questions because "terrorists might be watching C-SPAN." So, in addition to being a dangerous man, he appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, most paranoid schizophrenis are dangerous.

Addington is Cheney’s hit man, his “go to” guy when the Vice President wants to punch another hole in the Constitution or ignore inconvenient laws. Promoted to chief of staff from his position as Cheney’s Alfredo – in other words, his Alberto Gonzales – after Scooter Libby was indicted and resigned, Addington is both more extreme and more politically tone-deaf than Libby. He and Cheney are the harbingers of bad times for Bush: When their names are in the news, political peril seems to follow.

Whenever the hyper-secretive Addington name has surfaced, it’s usually been with embarrassing results. In 2002, for example, Chickenhead Productions unveiled Whitehouse.org, a parody website replete with photos and a fake bio of Lynne Cheney. Soon after the bio appeared, claiming that the second lady "likes movies, Infusium 23 Shampoo and postmodernist interpretative dance," Addington fired off a letter to the company demanding that it "delete the photographs of [Lynne Cheney] and the fictitious biographical statement about her from the website."

Rather than getting the site to remove the supposedly offending material, Addington's letter pushed droves of curious web surfers to Whitehouse.org to see Mrs. Cheney lampooned. It also led reporters to query Cheney's office about the VP's role in the affair, which denied he had any knowledge about the letter.

Some three years later, on October 31, 2005, when the real White House announced that Addington was going to replace Libby as Cheney's chief of staff, Whitehouse.org was quick to react, posting on his company's website a message to ASddington: Addington: "Chickenhead would like to formally congratulate its best-ever pal, David Addington, on his recent promotion."

According to the New Republic, the Chickenhead incident is emblematic of the larger role Cheney's staff – specifically Addington – plays in the Bush White House. On issue after issue, the Office of the Vice President overreacts and overreaches, pushing policies that end up embarrassing the administration and from which, more often than not, President Bush must retreat. But Cheney never seems to learn any lessons from these capers. If he had, he never would have promoted David Addington.

Addington was one of several Cheney aides cited in connection with the ongoing investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into PlameGate. Although not charged, Addington was mentioned in the indictment as part of a group of officials in Cheney's office who tried in early 2003 to identify Valerie Plame, gather information about her husband Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger and then spread this information.

The special prosecutor's investigation is only one of a series of controversies that have plagued Addington during his time in the VP's office. He has been accused of playing a central role in the decision to block the release of key documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding its investigation into pre-war intelligence. In 2002, he helped draft the White House "torture memos," which claimed that the president could sidestep the Geneva Conventions in the "war on terror". In 2001, when the General Accounting Office was trying to investigate the role of executives and lobbyists in helping Cheney put together his energy plan, Addington consistently attacked in letters to the GAO the agency's authority to investigate the matter. And Addington led efforts to block Congress's attempt to draft stringent rules governing the treatment of detainees in places like Abu Ghraib.

More recently, Addington was blamed for pushing Cheney to resist efforts by Bush administration lawyers to reverse the White House position on whether to allow court oversight of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance programmeme. When the administration announced in early January 2007 that it would allow oversight of the programmeme, Addington was viewed as having "clearly lost this round," as one unnamed official told the Washington Post.

The surveillance programme sidestepped a law passed by Congress in 1978 in response to Watergate. The law requires that efforts by the government to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens be vetted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is meant to protect civil liberties and prevent abuses of executive power. When former Secretary of State Colin Powell first heard about the administration's surveillance programme, revealed by the New York Times in late 2005, he said: "It's Addington. He doesn't care about the Constitution."

The net effect of Addington's and other administration lawyers influence on the president's own views, says Bruce Fein, a generally pro-Bush Republican activist, is "quite alarming." Fein says “Addington and his cohorts have "staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other administration. This president has made claims that are really quite alarming. He's said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the president's reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant.”

In other words, in Addington’s mind the entire world is a battlefield. According to this perverse view of the Constitution and American law, Bush could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants. It's got the stench of Louis XIV: “I am the State.”

Vegas By The Tigress?

I strongly suspect this is a hoax posted on YouTube but a self-described “foreign policy advisor” to the McCain campaign was purportedly interviewed last February on television in Baghdad about plans for a Las Vegas-style five star hotel and casino smack dab in the middle of the Green Zone in Baghdad.

He promises a “trickle down” effect of wealthy gamblers' losses helping Iraq's poor. He promises Iraqi women jobs as maids. He promises Thai and Russian masseuses. He reduces Iraqis to being like Native Americans on reservations. The Green Zone is a stone's throw away from Sadrist-dominated Sadr City. Why does he think religious Shiites would put up with all this? The Iraqi housekeepers will be viewed as violating norms of gender segregation. The other activities would attract sanctions under the Sharia. In fact, that wonderful Iraqi constitution that the US Republican Party was so enthusiastic about forbids Parliament to pass any law contrary to Islamic canon law.

Since gambling is forbidden in the Qur'an, it is unlikely that the Iraqi parliament can legalize it.The 'foreign policy adviser's' comments are particularly tasteless in light of the actual conditions under which most Iraqi’s live: No electricity, unreliable water, extreme poverty, most households having lost at least one family member to either American violence or religious death squads.

But if McCain does plan to turn Iraq into sort of a giant Las Vegas By The Tigress, that would at least explain his odd desire to be there for a hundred years.

And although the YouTube video may be a hoax, Mother Jones reports that Llewellyn Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.

Just what Baghdad needs: A casino next door to a theme park “experience."

Move Along Santa: North Pole Likely To Melt Next Month

In another frightening sign of how fast the earth’s climate is changing, the British newspaper The Independent reports this morning that, for the first time in human history, the odds are better than 50:50 the ice cap at the North Pole will melt this summer.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90’ north may well have melted away by mid-summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," The Independent quotes Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado as saying.

The only good news coming from this revelation is that perhaps, finally, the climate change deniers like Oklahoma Sen. Inhofe will shut up, and Congress will tackle the issue in a meaningful way.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are great because the normally thick ice formed over many eons at the Pole has been blown away, replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year. This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months. Satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.

Inuit tribes who have lived in Canada’s Arctic north since before the Alaska-Siberia land bridge disappeared, and who have a strong oral history tradition, say that their fishing and hunting takes – on which their survival depends – have been diminishing for the past decade and now are at the lowest levels ever known. Natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they are seeing wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable.

Meanwhile, John McCain is continuing his call for a summer gas tax holiday to encourage people to drive more, and off-shore drilling to produce more oil and gas, both of which only exacerbate the climate change crisis. So much for his pretending to be an environmentalist of convenience. It reminds me of when Ronald Reagan said trees are the biggest polluters.

By no means am I a “tree hugger.” But the evidence of global warming is so overwhelming, and reports such as The Independent’s means it is happening at a faster clip than even the most pessimistic predicted, that anyone who cares about the future of their children and grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren – to say nothing of the planet we all inhabit – better stop talking green and start acting green.

No one person, business, organization or government can do it alone. The phoney campaign hype of a $300-million prize for a new battery – McCain’s solution – only distracts the country and the world from the ravages mankind has brought on a planet that’s provided so much for so long to so many. It is long part time for genuine change.
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UPDATE 28.06.08 - My good friend Susan, an activist who lives in Washington, sent me an email about this item and she makes a strong point:

"The enviros have painted themselves in a corner (using lead-free paint of course). You cannot expect individuals to take action on global warming when the message from the enviro leadership is “we’re all going to die.” Changing lightbulbs or recycling is greenwashing at best, insignificant at worst. Our planet did not degrade in a day, and it will not improve in a day—metaphorically speaking—either. It will take serious long-term policy, economic and lifestyle changes if we are going to reverse our disastrous course. It requires coordinated, international action that involves every segment of our society thinking and working creatively and morally. The Supreme Court’s recent gift to ExxonMobil is an example of what we do NOT need. But scare tactics don’t work either (see life post 9/11). Shared sacrifice toward a common goal (our survival) is the only way. "

"I Am A Doughnut"

On this date in 1963, President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner). The crowd roared its approval but was smiling at the same time: A “Berliner” is what locals call a jelly doughnut.

Justice Scalia - Another Oxymoron

Not only is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – and if that’s not an oxymoron I don’t know what is – intellectually dishonest and a complete lightweight when it comes to understanding jurisprudence, it turns out he cites thoroughly discredited “facts” in opinions he writes and hands down from the bench. In other words, he supports his opinions by lying and just making stuff up.

The most recent example?

In his dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, where by a one vote difference habeus corpus was preserved in the land, Scalia wrote "At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield." It turns out that statement is false.

According to a new report just issued by the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research – aptly titled Justice Scalia, The Dept. of Defence and The Perpetuation of an Urban Legend: The Truth about Recidivism of Released Guantánamo Detainees – only one former Guantanamo detainee, "ISN 220," has been involved in a terrorist act since being set free. Written by Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall Law School, Joshua Denbeaux and R.David Gratz of the law firm Denbeaux & Denbeaux, counsel to two Guantánamo detainees, the article tears Scalia a new one:

The defining characteristic of an “urban legend” is its ability to perpetuate itself not only without factual support but in the face of overwhelming factual evidence that it is false. While it is not surprising to find urban legends in the unmoderated precincts of the internet, it is shocking to discover one in an opinion written by a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Last week, however, Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush, repeated the false accusation that “[a]t least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.” His source was a year-old Senate Minority Report, which in turn was based on misinformation provided by the Department of Defense.

Justice Scalia’s reliance on the these sources would have been more justifiable had the urban legend he perpetuated not been permanently interred by later developments, including a 2007 Dept. of Defense press release and hearings before the House Foreign Relations Committee less than two weeks before Justice Scalia’s dissent was released.

Scalia bolstered his hysterical claim that the Boumediene decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" with stale information that was proven to be false one year ago. More pointedly, in a stinging criticism of Scalia’s dissent, Professor Denbeaux said Scalia “was relying uncritically on information that originated with a party in the case before him."

The Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision that the Guantanamo detainees were entitled to file petitions for writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detention. More than 200 men who have been held for up to six years and have never been charged with a crime will now have their day in court. Many were snatched from their homes, picked up off the street or in airports, or sold to the US military by warlords for bounty.

In other words, Justice Scalia relies on urban legends, disproven facts and outright falsehoods instead of thoughtful and reasoned legal arguments in reaching decisions and writing opinions. And here I always thought Clarence Thomas was the biggest idiot on the court.

A Passing Thought About George Carlin ...

Normally I won’t be writing about entertainers or Hollywood-types, mostly because they are incapable of transforming our lives in any positive way. They basically screw around the periphery with “culture,” as if that is enough, and give us nothing in return except to make us all poorer in the long run. Sounds a bit harsh, I know, but bear with me.

When I heard that George Carlin died, all I could think of doing was screaming out the seven words you can never say on television. I feel as if lost a real “bro.” He was much more than a comedian or social commentator or anything else the pundits can think up. In a way, he was more like Will Rogers direct heir. He made all of us look at the “moral” restrictions placed on us by others, religious, political, cultural, etc., for what they truly are: Controlling, restrictive and ridiculous.

He believed whole-heartedly that satire was the best form of dealing with life because it expanded our awareness of both intelligent thought and inter-personal relationship practice. And it created a baseline for the rational examination of our existence as members of the society of man. It was true creative genius coupled with a basic instinct that most people had absolutely no clue as to what they were doing.

And now he is gone.

I’m really going to miss that guy.

Wait. Maybe he's up on the roof. An avid Frisbee player, Carlin said that when you die your soul gets tossed on the roof, never to be retrieved again.