Paint it black

They just can't help themselves, those brave National Review editors who, like the musicians on the Titanic, kept a stiff upper lip right to the end. Of course it's easy to be distracted when the ship of state is listing and the cold reality of political armaggedon calls from below decks.

But still, "Black" refers to Charlie Black, Sen. John McCain's sleazeball senior advisor, who lied about his shady lobbyist connections. Black, in this context, has nothing to do with the junior senator from Illinois.

By the numbers

In his ridiculous and embarrassing press conference today, the former governor of Texas said the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge contains "27 million gallons of diesel and gasoline from crude oil." That's as much gasoline as American's burn during a single 5 o'clock rush hour. But even if he meant to say 27 billion barrels of oil, that's still far from reality based. According to ANWR.org, a website that promotes the exploitation of the national wildlife refuge, "Studies of the ANWR coastal plain indicate it may contain between 6 and 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil." The 27 billion figure is wildly optimistic estimate of the oil "in place", that could be recovered if the higher estimates are correct, and if oil companies think it is profitable to invest in new technologies to suck the last drops of oil from the Earth's crust before the human race returns to its hunter gatherer roots.

How can Bush even pretend to be serious about a national energy policy if he can't even get the numbers right?

In hot pursuit

There was a time when Bush Administration officials could tell a lie with the best of them. Sure, they fell short of fooling all of the people all of the time, but you have to admit, their WMD/alQaeda-Saddam link whoppers had most Americans, and 99 percent of the press, going for a while.

And that's what has me puzzled about Cheney's latest prevarication. He's telling anyone who will listen (aka Sean Hannity) that if the US leaves The Land Between the Rivers, then al Qaeda will get rich on Iraq's vast oil reserves, and use its new found wealth to destabilize the world.

Listening to the interview, I can imagine Bush and his co-conspirators huddled around a radio in the Oval Office, one of them going "Here it is! Wait for it! It's coming!", and then breaking into Katrinas of laughter when the line comes. "I can't believe he really said it. I bet him a thousand dollars he couldn't pull it off without laughing," says Bush, wiping away a tear.

It's beyond improbable that al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group, could wrest control of Iraq's oil fields from 20 million or so Shiites, then develop and maintain the complicated infrastructure, let alone possess the technical expertise necessary to extract one barrel of oil. It's like fearing that the Detroit Crips will seize General Motors, execute a successful corporate restructuring, then use the profits to import more cocaine.

Cheney's fairy tale reminds me of those scenes in TV cop shows where the bad guy is chased down the street, and he keeps knocking things over so they fall in the path of his pursuer to slow him down - a baby carriage, a newspaper rack, a fruit vendor stall. Rebranding al Qaeda as a rogue union of petroleum engineers is intended to slow down the anti-war hounds, to give the toothless media lap dogs one more excuse to back off on pushing calls for troop withdrawal. It also provides Hannity and other barking loons with more talking points to use against the 72 percent of Americans who disapprove of President George W. Bush.

Thank you Chicago Tribune

Looks like the former first lady is padding her resume. The Chicago Tribune on Hillary's foreign policy chops:

Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples of foreign policy experience that has prepared her for an international crisis, Clinton claimed that she "helped to bring peace" to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited "standing up" to the Chinese government on women's rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia following the Dayton peace accords.

Earlier in the campaign, she and her husband claimed that she had advocated on behalf of a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda to stop the genocide there.

But her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was primarily to encourage activism among women's groups there, a contribution that the lead U.S. negotiator described as "helpful" but that an Irish historian who has written extensively about the conflict dismissed as "ancillary" to the peace process.

The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived to meet with government leaders. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, as well as her daughter, Chelsea, according to the commanding general who hosted her.

Sinbad deserves at least an ambassadorship for that one.

Hillary Clinton is a monster

What, that was some sort of secret? The only question is, what kind of monster?

Is she a vampire, sucking the life out of Obama's message of hope? Absolutely. By saying that only she and John McCain are fit to lead the military, she has handed the GOP a kick-Obama-in-this-shins card this fall, just so the super delegates will have a strong reason to nominate her this summer.

Or is she Frankenstein's monster, stitched together with Karl Rove's brain, Dick Cheney's black heart, and George Bush's phony charm? A case can be made.

Hillary Clinton's slash and burn style of taking her case to the people recalls Godzilla in many ways, a creature awakened from a long sleep by human avarice and folly, who brings violence and mayhem to an unsuspecting population. Yes, Hillary is like Godzilla.

But the most terrifying monster of all, and what I fear we are now dealing with, is the monster that we can't see. It's always out sight, but we know it's out there, lurking, waiting for its moment, we can feel its eyes. Then we remember - we know the monster! But then it is too late.

The monster is us. It's our own cowardice and comfort. It's our unwillingness to face down the fearmongers and doomsayers, the nasty little men and women in need of a balcony.

Yes Hillary Clinton is a monster, but she's our monster. We gave her life. Now it's time to drive a stake through the heart of her campaign, and that of every politician like her.



I'm Heraldblog and I approve this message.

Bush's press conference

Spare change from McCain

It didn't take long for John McCain (R-Roadkill), to beta test his line of attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Speeding car). From TPM:

"I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change."

McCain said the phrase "eloquent but empty call for change" repeatedly, indicating that the campaign had settled on it as a chosen phrase against the person they expect to be their opponent this fall.

"Eloquent but empty call for change." Get used to that one, you'll be hearing a lot of it.

McCain also reminded voters that Obama said he would bomb Pakistan, a supposed US ally. What Obama really said was that he would take unilaterial action against al Qaeda in Pakistan if the Pakistan government failed to act. Sort of like how the Bush Adminstration launched two Hellfire missiles from a Predator drone last month to take out an al Qaeda dude in Pakistan.

Abu Laith al-Libi, a wanted al Qaeda terrorist, was killed in Pakistan by a CIA airstrike, three U.S. officials told CNN Thursday.

Al-Libi was described as a senior al Qaeda leader believed to have plotted and executed attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, including a February 2007 bombing at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

He was on a "most wanted" list of 12 accused terrorists which was issued in October by the Combined Joint Task Force-82 -- an anti-terror unit in Afghanistan.

Earlier, a knowledgeable Western official and a military source confirmed al-Libi's death to CNN. The same official said al-Libi is "not far below the importance of the top two al Qaeda leaders" -- Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The officials said al-Libi was killed by a missile from an airplane.

Oops.

Mental mush

President Bush just gave an interview to Al Arabiya, the government-controlled voice of Saudi Arabia . Can you guess which quotes are actually his, and which ones are fabricated in order to heap well-deserved ridicule on this wantwit? The answer is posted in the first comment.

1. I think the major obstacle to peace is going to be the politics of both Palestinians and Israelis trying to take advantage of the difficult work that these two leaders are going to have to do to define a state; that's what I think. I think that extremists, in some instances, will try to stop the peace.
2. Taking dictation out of the region is a common interest of - is common to all of us.
   
3. There was common interests - common ground has been now recognized.
4. And so I've spent a lot of time with allies in Europe, for example, convincing them of the importance of working together to send a common to the Iranian regime.
5. And in order to have a safe and secure society, the state has got to show that it can provide security for the people and not tolerate pockets of extreme radicals who are murderers in their intentions, and he did.
6. The average - you know, it's still tough. There's still too many suiciders, but the level of violence is declining.
7. Freedoms are given - a gift from God, and whether you call God Allah or God, he tells us - or she - that it's given.
   
8. Relations are improving when they get better, but not with suiciders.
   
9. I would give - if, in fact, Syria is trying to stop suiciders, I will give them credit, of course. I hope that's the case. It's certainly one way to begin to earn better relations with the United States, is to stop the exportation of suiciders who go kill innocent people.
10. We've sanctioned Syria, and I'm looking at different ways to keep sending a tough message, because so far, he has shown no willingness to be constructive on Lebanon or in dealing with a militant Hamas or in stopping suiciders from heading into Iraq.

h/t: First-Draft

Rudy on MTP

Giuliani just told Tim Russert that he's opposed to mandating a 35 mpg standard for automobiles by 2020 because congress should concentrate on nuclear and hydroelectric power instead.

Huh?

Mike Huckabee - nauseating liar

In 1992, Mike Huckabee was running for the Republican US Senate seat from Arkansas when he said AIDS patients should be quarantined. Fast forward 15 years and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is running for his party's nomination for President. And he has some splainin' to do:

Before a disease can be cured and contained we need to know exactly how and with near certainty what level of contact transmits the disease. There was still too much confusion about HIV transmission in those early years. Recall that in 1991, Kimberly Bergalis testified in front of Congress after contracting HIV from her dentist, and that summer a study was published showing that HIV was transmitted through breastmilk more easily than had been thought. But the federal government provided some guidelines: Also in 1991 the Centers for Disease Control recommended restrictions on the practice of HIV-positive health care workers.

Huckabee is lying. HIV's transmission routes and epidemiology were fairly well understood by 1985. Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop took the lead in educating the public about the nature of the disease at least four years before Huckabee misled Arkansas voters.

It is asinine for Huckabee to claim he was advocating the "same public health protocols" as used for other diseases. Somebody should ask Huckabee to name a single disease where public health policy calls for quarantining victims. By 1992, it was well known that quarantines would have done little to stem the AIDS epidemic, since a person can carry the virus for years without showing symptoms.

But Huckabee wasn't concerned about public health policy in 1992 - he just wanted to appeal to his base's prejudice against people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for it.

Anti-evolution. Pro abstinence-only sex ed. Scientific illiterate. Yep, Republicans are going to love this guy.

The shadow candidate

Does every Massachusetts politician think he's the ghost of JFK? Is there something in the water in the Bay State? Willard Romney (and stop calling him Mitt, everyone) spoke directly to undecided Iowa Republicans today to put them at ease about his Mormon faith. Unfortunately for Willard, the rest of the country was watching when he said this:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

What utter hogwash. Willard Romney is selling two contradictory ideas in the same paragraph. First, that government should not interfere with religion, and vice versa. Then, in the next breath, that government should not be afraid to embrace religion.


Because that's what behind his sweeping generality about those who "seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God." What the hell is Willard talking about? The public airwaves are filled to the brim with God talk. Church groups are free to congregate on public lands for worship, baptism, or creation science scavenger hunts. Our coins bear the words "In God We Trust", despite apocryphal emails to the contrary. But the greatest testimony to Willard's mandacity is when our public domain news media give Romney a free pass out of respect for his religious faith. No lie is big enough that the media won't scurry for cover when uttered in the shadow of the cross.

John F. Kennedy famously spoke to an assembly of Texan religious leaders during the 1960 Presidential campaign, and it was JFK's memory that Willard Romney hoped to evoke in Thursday's speech, also in Texas. But when Kennedy spoke, he made it clear there were bigger issues at play than a candidate's choice of religious faith. Romney claims just the opposite, that a candidate's faith is important, but not which religion he belongs to. You can watch JFK's speech here:

Bangkok market

Bangkok's official population is 6 million, but many experts think it could be three times that. Space, obviously, is at a premium.

First Lego League

I had a great time last Sunday helping to judge the First Lego League competition at Mukwonago High School.

Laura Bush greets "Beekeeper of the Year"

Celebrating 200 years of American apiculture.

We do not torture

On Sept. 11, 2001, an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy was staying in a New York City hotel room when the planes hit. Higazy and other guests quickly evacuated the building, and a short time later hotel workers found a device in Higazy's room that enables a person to communicate with airline pilots.

Authorities suspected Higazy was involved in the 9/11 plot and arrested him. So far, so good.

But the FBI got a little crazy and threatened Higazy's family with extradition to an Egyptian torture chamber if he didn't confess. Higazy at first denied any knowledge of the strange device, but he couldn't hold out for long. He finally confessed, thus sparing his wife and children. A despondent, shocked Higazy headed for the bowels of the New York City justice system.

Meanwhile, an airline pilot showed up at Higazy's hotel and asked if anyone had seen the radio that he accidentally left in the hotel room closet.

So the courts free Higazy (Hey guy, sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?), and Higazy lawyers up and sue the hotel and the fascist prick FBI agent that threatened his wife and kids.

Now the story gets real interesting. Steve Bergstein, a legal blogger at Psychsound, was checking federal court decisions one day not long ago and came across a 44-page document on the Higazy case. Then he posted the story on his blog as he ate lunch, cause that's what blogging lawyers do. Then, well, I'll let Steve tell the story:

Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! I had never seen this before, and what made all the more strange was that it involved a coerced confession over 9/11. What the hell was going on?

I let some other legal bloggers know about this, particularly the How Appealing blog and Appellate Law and Practice. They both ran a commentary on the missing opinion. Then someone sent How Appealing a PDF of the decision (probably very few of them were floating around since the opinion was posted for a brief period of time) and How Appealing posted the decision.

Then things got even stranger. The Court of Appeals actually phoned How Appealing to request that he remove the opinion from his website since it contained classified information. The Court said that a revised opinion would come out the next day without the classified information. How Appealing actually refused to remove the opinion. Through it all, hundreds of people came to my legal blog to see my summary of the opinion. It was either my blog or printing out and reading a 44 page epic.

The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

Fortunately, the US Court of Appeals for Manhattan ruled for Higazy, so his suit can proceed.

More global warming denialist comments

Because some people were put on Earth for my amusement:

The sun is hotter now, the earth has warmed because of increased solar activity. That seems so simple to me, why would anyone believe that a naturaly accuring gas like CO2 could raise the earths temp?
Because some borderline retarded, self serving, pompous, hipocrit tells you it does?
Global warming is real, we cannot stop it, we need to stop wasting resorces on prevention and start working towards a nation that thrives in the warmer climate.

Such as investing in Florida waterfront property, currently located in Georgia.

Gore was very pissed after 2000 elections and he wanted to fight those that beat him. Bush being an oil man made Gore choose Global Warming as his platform.If Gore had won that election all this Global Warming fear would not have been an issue. That is as political as it gets Gore!

Don't leave out the Decline and Fall of the American Empire fear. Or the Arrest and Detention Without a Warrant Fear.

It is politically motivated and has already cost Americans billions of dollars.Power companies have had to retro-fit power plants to remove emissions that volcanos around the world spit out at a rates higher than all plants combined. Just one example of how it is political.

Volcanoes are Republicans?

What can brown do for you?

How does a non-white candidate for office overcome racism to become governor of the poorest, least-educated state in the union? By acting more ignorant than his constituents!

Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, was elected governor of Louisiana yesterday. Jindal, 36, is Oxford educated, yet supports teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, and banning all abortions. No word on whether he plans to marry his first cousin, too.

Lousiana hasn't elected a non-white governor in over 100 years, but this time things are different:

Yet Mr. Jindal, with his decisive victory on Saturday, appears to have overcome a significant racial hurdle that blocked him in 2003, according to analysts: race-based opposition in the deeply conservative northern and eastern parishes of Louisiana that once supported the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

Also welcome in "these areas" - non-uppity minorities. Mr. Jindal will fit in perfectly.

Meet Trent Wisecup

This is what panic looks like.

Trent Wisecup, the chief of staff to Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Bush's BFF), runs interference for his boss when a constituent starts asking questions. Apparently Wisecup's idea of constituent service is to channel Sean Hannity on a bad day. A sample of Wisecup's witty remarks:

"You're pro-Toyota and you live in Detroit."
"You're blinded by your hatred of this country."
"You're a political activited with a poilitical agenda."
"Go away. We don't want you here."

This really is how they think.

Congratulations Mr. Gore

A Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore is small consolation for a stolen election, but I'll settle for that, plus the sound of Rush Limbaugh's head exploding.

Man's contribution to global warming is as close to scientific certainty as it's going to get. Only fools and scientific illiterates disagree. And here's what they're saying:

After looking through the comments it seems everyone has rightly realized that Gore's arguments are see-through.

i believe the same tactics are used in arguing for evolution. all this crap about scientific consensus and how all other people who disagree are flat earth people. its just plain brainwashing.

I blame Galileo. Stupid empiricism.

answer this question ... you have an Olympic sized swimming pool (50m x 25m x 2m) filled with the current atmosphere. 2,500,000 liters worth. How many of these liters are man-made greenhouse gases? (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCm CCl4, CH3CCl3, CHF3, etc.)

Does this mean we'll have to wear Speedos and shower before we go outside?

I've studied the problem and done the math. The amount of green house gases in the atmosphere are man-made is less than 0.002% of the total. That's a tiny tiny amount, yet, we've been led to believe this amount is some how the tipping factor to global warming. What a crock. The problem is that these lies have been promoted as the truth, and the real truth is some kind of oil industry smear campaign. That IS the problem.

And I'll be presenting my data at the Cletus County Adult Education Science Fair tomorrow night.

Clifford May: liar and coward

That's right, Mr. May. Deal with it.

Can someone tell me what controversial procedures have been used at Guantanamo Bay? As far as I'm aware there is not a shred of hard evidence — and certainly no proof — that torture or even enhanced interrogation methods have been employed there.

Hey, we all make mistakes. But only creepy little fascists like Clifford May make mistakes and then stick by their words. He has a President to protect.

This is what I don't get about the neo-con right. They had this vision for how to project American power in a way that assured "an American century". I was OK with that, on a very abstract level. I mean I'd rather live the rest of my life in an American century than a Chinese century or a Brazilian century. And American values of free-speech and respect for human rights have had a pretty good run for the last 100 years or so.

But the neo-con vision didn't work out quite the way May and the other pukes planned it, and thinking people have tossed their fetid ideology in the compost bin of history, where it will slowly decompose with the dessicated orange rinds of communism and the stale coffee grounds of fascism. But still the neo-cons fight on with one ridiculous lie after another. We do not torture! The terrorists will follow us home!

It's not reasonable to expect corrupt wantwits like Clifford May to correct themselves, to admit what everybody already knows. They are not about accountability, or self respect, or contributing to the marketplace of ideas. For Clifford May and the rest, it's about saving their hides, the one thing about America least worth saving.