OK, Hillary, I'll bite: Are you ready to renounce Douglas Coe and The Fellowship?

Hillary Clinton appeared on Billo's show in a two-part interview, and said that SHE would have NEVER stayed in a church the spiritual leader of which was someone like Jeremiah Wright:

Obama went on the offensive Tuesday, saying he was “outraged” and “angered” by Wright’s statements the day before in Washington, D.C.

Clinton matched that outrage, and repeated that she would not have stayed in the church if Wright were her pastor.

“Well, I take offense. I think it’s offensive and outrageous. I’m going to express my opinion, others can express theirs. It is part of just, you know, an atmosphere we’re in today,” she told O’Reilly.

Wright capped off a round of public appearances Monday at the National Press Club. There Wright taunted reporters and declined to retract his statement that the government is responsible for afflicting minorities with HIV.

“I sure don’t believe the United States government was behind AIDS,” Clinton said in the Wednesday interview. “This is part of the mosaic and diversity of America. I happen to think it is just totally off base … but what people are talking to me about is not that.”

Yes, Barack Obama has attended a church run by an angry black man. But let's take a look at Hillary Clinton's spiritual framework, shall we?

Meet "The Fellowship":

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

The Fellowship's ideas are essentially a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect" chosen by a single voter—God—and a devotion to Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers....The powers that be are ordained of God." Or, as Coe has put it, "we work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

When Time put together a list of the nation's 25 most powerful evangelicals in 2005, the heading for Coe's entry was "The Stealth Persuader." "You know what I think of when I think of Doug Coe?" the Reverend Schenck (a Coe admirer) asked us. "I think literally of the guy in the smoky back room that you can't even see his face. He sits in the corner, and you see the cigar, and you see the flame, and you hear his voice—but you never see his face. He's that shadowy figure."

[snip]

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

We contacted all of Clinton's Fellowship cell mates, but only one agreed to speak—though she stressed that there's much she's not "at liberty" to reveal. Grace Nelson used to be the organizer of the Florida Governor's Prayer Breakfast, which makes her a piety broker in Florida politics—she would decide who could share the head table with Jeb Bush. Clinton's prayer cell was tight-knit, according to Nelson, who recalled that one of her conservative prayer partners was at first loath to pray for the first lady, but learned to "love Hillary as much as any of us love Hillary." Cells like these, Nelson added, exist in "parliaments all over the world," with all welcome so long as they submit to "the person of Jesus" as the source of their power.

Throughout her time at the White House, Clinton writes in Living History, she took solace from "daily scriptures" sent to her by her Fellowship prayer cell, along with Coe's assurances that she was right where God wanted her. (Clinton's sense of divine guidance has been noted by others: Bishop Richard Wilke, who presided over the United Methodist Church of Arkansas during her years in Little Rock, told us, "If I asked Hillary, 'What does the Lord want you to do?' she would say, 'I think I'm called by the Lord to be in public service at whatever level he wants me.'")

Coe counsels that Fellowship cells shouldn't engage in direct evangelical activism, but rather allow Christian causes to benefit from the bonds that develop within the cells. Former Nixon counsel Chuck Colson provides a rare illustration of the process in his 1976 Watergate memoir, Born Again. Facing prosecution in 1973, Colson allowed Coe to ensconce him in a Fellowship cell with a Nixon foe, Senator Harold Hughes. Hughes became the Nixon hatchet man's staunchest defender, voting in favor of a possible pardon for Colson and later supporting Colson as he built Prison Fellowship, now one of the most powerful organizations of the Christian right.

That's how it works: The Fellowship isn't out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward.

This is in line with the Christian right's long-term strategy. Francis Schaeffer, late guru of the movement, coined the term "cobelligerency" to describe the alliances evangelicals must forge with conservative Catholics. Colson, his most influential disciple, has refined the concept of cobelligerency to deal with less-than-pure politicians. In this application, conservatives sit pretty and wait for liberals looking for common ground to come to them. Clinton, Colson told us, "has a lot of history" to overcome, but he sees her making the right moves.

These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives' group into what may be Coe's most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons' approach to faith-based initiatives "set the stage for Bush." Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.

Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose "politics of meaning" Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator's ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. "There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there's no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay."

In politics, those who pay tribute to the powerful also reap rewards. When Ed Klein's attack bio, The Truth About Hillary, came out in 2005, some of her most prominent defenders were Christian conservatives, among them Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. "Christians," he declared, "should repudiate this book and determine to take no pleasure in it."

Senator Brownback understood the temptation. He used to hate Clinton so much, he told us, that the hate hurt. Then came the Clintons' 1994 National Prayer Breakfast appearance with Mother Teresa, who upbraided the couple for their pro-choice views. Bill made no attempt to conceal his anger, but Hillary took it and smiled. Brownback remembers thinking, "Now, there's gotta be a great lesson here." He didn't know what it was until Clinton got to the Senate and joined him in supporting DeLay's Day of Reconciliation resolution following the 2000 election, a proposal described by its backers as a call to "pray for our leaders." Now, Brownback considers Clinton "a beautiful child of the living God."

Want to know why today all the Republicans love Hillary? This is why -- because she's part of the same bunch of theocrats that they are.

Now, last time I looked, one aging, bitter preacher from a church in Chicago who says that the government created AIDS and that 9/11 was blowback for our policies didn't have any kind of master plan for the rest of the nation and doesn't have a role in government. But Douglas Coe, who is Hillary Clinton's spiritual adviser, has done a bang-up job at making "The Fellowship" practically its own branch of government. And frankly, the last thing we need is another president who thinks she's been ordained by God to be the architect of God-knows what and who's a member of a kind of Fight Club of the soul.

More on The Fellowship here, here, here, here, and here.

Now WHY are we supposed to think Republicans are the ones to keep us safe from terrorists again?

Six and a half years ago, the Republican administration of George W. Bush received a number of intelligence reports that Al-Qaeda was preparing an attack in the U.S. And they did nothing.

Six and a half years later, the Republican administration of George W. Bush has received a report that Al-Qaeda is reconstituting and plotting in the tribal mountains of Pakistan. And they are doing nothing:

Picture this: A terrifying new report is delivered to the U.S. President. It states starkly that al-Qaeda is in the last stages of preparing to attack the United States. But the response is…nothing. The President takes no action, and the report goes basically unreported in the media.

We’ve heard this story before. But this is not the infamous August, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” This happened just over a week ago, when the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a scathing report about the mounting danger of a reconstituted al-Qaeda growing and plotting in the tribal sections of Pakistan. The President’s reaction now, as it was in 2001, was silence.

According to the report, “al-Qaeda’s central leadership, based in the border area of Pakistan, is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the United States…” In 2002, after the al-Qaeda-supported Taliban was forced from power in neighboring Afghanistan, al-Qaeda members and their Afghan extremist allies fled across the border into the mountains of northwest Pakistan, known as the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” (FATA).

The FATA is desperately poor, undereducated and underdeveloped, with a per-capita income of less than seventy cents per day, half the Pakistani national average. It was in this region—where millions of Afghan refugees fled during the Afghan civil and anti-Soviet wars of the 1980s and 1990s—that the Taliban built the backbone of its army: recruiting, indoctrinating and training a generation of “holy warriors” in radical madrassas. The region’s literacy rate is 17%, leaving a massive educational void to be filled by extremist education. There are about 300 religious madrassas registered in the FATA and potentially hundreds more unregistered Islamic schools. Evidence indicates these schools foster public support for Islamist extremism and terrorism. The Taliban succeeded by taking young refugees who looked forward to no schooling, no jobs and no path in the world, and giving them a religious education, a position in an army and both a spiritual and social purpose.

al-Qaeda and the Taliban have built a new, safe home in the FATA from which they can train and prepare to launch more terrorist attacks across the world. This GAO report demonstrates clearly that they are succeeding in this endeavor, in part because the White House has failed to plan adequately, and act effectively, to defeat our primary enemy.

I suspect that U.S. domestic politics is the primary reason the White House has all but ignored this report, at least in public. Ironically, while the administration has failed to seriously confront this problem, the Republican Party has repeatedly won the presidency and lower elections by banking on its macho image and playing the tough guy, portraying their Democratic opponents as effeminate wimps. (Their campaign has already begun to use the same smear campaign on Barack Obama, pitting him against John McCain and his prisoner of war record.) This Republican machismo translates into a governance love affair with massive, explosive weapons systems like National Missile Defense. It means belittling most international policies designed to support development (economic, political and social) in the underdeveloped regions of the world where terrorism is most easily born. It means investing in large-scale military resources (useful to fight the Nazis or the Soviets) at the expense of “soft-power” tools proven more effective at defeating terrorist groups.

The vast majority of conservative, liberal and moderate national security experts—including General David Petraeus and other counterinsurgency gurus now gaining prominence in the U.S. military—recognize that we can only close these safe havens and defeat al-Qaeda through mostly non-military means. But as the GAO report states, that current U.S. policy directs literally 99% of all funding for Pakistan's FATA toward military and security efforts, and less than 1% for development. Defeating al-Qaeda will require something more than a 1% solution.

This macho image plays well into the President’s Iraq policy as he and his supporters brandish phrases such as, “Bring it on” to challenge insurgents, and label their Iraq policy critics as cowardly “surrender monkeys.” Again, while this is politically advantageous for their own constituencies at home, it has locked the President and his would-be-successor John McCain into a fixation on Iraq when the real threat to the U.S. is in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pentagon is sending more aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf to gear up for an attack on Iran -- a country that, like Iraq, is perhaps a threat to Israel, but not to the United States, while ignoring the threat from Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is preparing to paint Barack Obama as a pussy, unlike their military macho man, John McCain, who doesn't know the difference between Shi'ite and Sunni, and thinks that we can have a presence in Iraq in perpetuity the way we have one in Germany.

And the damnedest thing is that guys like Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer and the Faux Noise crew are going to once again convince the beer-chuggers of the heartland that it's the preening, macho, bellicose posturing of Republicans like John McCain that will keep them safe rather than actually having policies to deal with terrorism.

Now playing at the Hell Plaza Octoplex

Esquire has retired the Dubious Achievement Awards, so I can appropriate that moniker.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present:

"Weenies", written and directed by Lower Manhattanite, and starring John and Cindy McCain, Chris Matthews, Candy Crowley, and "Smokin'" Joe Scarborough.

The ANWR Myth

Reuters has a nice rundown of why George Bush's claim that gas prices are a result of Democrats' refusal to allow oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is just so much horsepuckey:

President George W. Bush during his first year in office made giving energy companies access to the estimated 10 billion barrels of crude in the refuge the centerpiece of his national energy policy that sprouted from Vice President Dick Cheney's controversial and secretive energy task force.

With gasoline prices soaring to records in recent weeks, Bush has stepped up his argument that ANWR oil is a solution.

"We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR," he said last week when asked about record pump costs. "But, no, we made the decision and our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways and now we're becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil."

Congress has tried several times in Bush's two terms to pass legislation to finally open the refuge to energy exploration, but always fell a few votes short due in part to concern over what drilling would do to ANWR's wildlife.

"They've repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR," Bush complained to reporters on Tuesday at a Rose Garden press conference. He said oil supplies from the refuge "would likely mean lower gas prices."

The Energy Information Administration, which is the Energy Department's independent analytical arm, estimated that if Congress had cleared Bush's ANWR drilling plan the oil would have been available to refiners in 2011, but only at a small volume of 40,000 barrels a day -- a drop in the bucket compared with the 20.6 million barrels the U.S. consumes daily.

At peak production, ANWR could have potentially added 780,000 barrels a day to U.S. crude oil output by 2020, according to the EIA.

The extra supplies would have cut dependence on foreign oil, but only slightly. With ANWR crude, imports would have met 60 percent of U.S. oil demand in 2020, down from 62 percent without the refuge's supplies.

While the media are obsessed with Jeremiah Wright...

...and John McCain says we won't leave Iraq until we "win", but he hasn't a clue what "winning" looks like, this has been the bloodiest month for Americans in Iraq in seven months:

The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

The statement did not give a more specific location. But the eastern half of Baghdad includes embattled Sadr City and other neighborhoods that have been the focus of intense combat between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.

In all, at least 4,059 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

John McCain likes to talk about a permanent presence in Iraq as taking the same form as our presence in Germany or Korea -- one in which American soldiers are not involved in active combat because the governments of those countries don't object to us being there. But in Iraq, the government is perceived as a U.S. puppet and isn't actually running things. So on what basis does he think this utopia is going to occur? By clapping our hands really, really hard and saying "I DO believe in fairies. I DO I DO I DO!"?

What l'affaire Wright tells us about how this country views black people

I wonder if the talking heads of the television press are as fickle in their personal lives as they are about presidential candidates? For months they loved Barack Obama. Then some four-year-old videos of his Scary Negro™ preacher showed up and they became frightened and decided they loved Hillary Clinton. Now it looks like they may be back in love with Obama after he finally threw Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus yesterday.

I don't know why Wright had to start in again now that the story had started to die off. I know that it was a supporter of Hillary Clinton who invited him to speak at the National Press Club, and what would serve Hillary better than to give Wright a podium? What would make him not see, or not care, what the impact on Obama's campaign would be? I'd like to believe that this man, who served his country in the Marines and has a 30-year history of service to his community, somehow saw this as an opportunity for racial dialogue, and that he's tired of tiptoeing around the issue of race. But he had to have known that praising Lewis Farrakhan and claiming that AIDS is government-created genocide against black people wasn't exactly going to open up a dialogue. Perhaps he's just a narcissist who just wanted his fifteen minutes to go on longer. Or perhaps he resents that this young whippersnapper is getting an opportunity that the leaders of his generation were denied.

But the ugly fact that the whole Wright debacle has underscored is that in the United States in 2008, Black America still has to answer collectively for the follies of its few in a way White America does not. Just as the John McCain is not being asked to take responsibility for what his "spiritual advisor" John Hagee has said, why should Barack Obama have to take responsibility for what Jeremiah Wright says? If you want to argue that Hagee's remarks about the Catholic church and about Hurricane Katrina being God's punishment for a gay parade have to be taken in the context of a larger framework of spiritual leadership and good works, then why shouldn't Wright be granted the same good faith?

It's because white America still, at its core, has a guilty conscience about slavery. Fear of the Black Man™ is all about what Jon Stewart cheekily asked Barack Obama last week -- the fear that if given power, a black president will attempt to exact retribution by enslaving white men. That these white men are already enslaved by the corporations that outsource their jobs, poison their air and soil, make them work long hours to prove their worth, squeeze their wage structure, and make them live in fear of poverty never occurs to them, because it's all about the image of a black man now being the one to wield the whip.

There are few Americans who can even imagine what it must have been like to grow up as Barry Obama, the tall skinny biracial kid with the funny name who straddled Africa and America in a direct way not even the descendants of slaves do, raised in the heartland and all over the world by a free-spirited white mother, living in a world where even in the post-civil rights era, to be at all black is to be black. It's not difficult to imagine him finding a home -- and a father figure -- in the message of Jeremiah Wright, nor is it difficult to imagine how wrenching it must have been to have to break from him completely yesterday:

At a news conference here, Mr. Obama denounced remarks Mr. Wright made in a series of televised appearances over the last several days. In the appearances, Mr. Wright has suggested that the United States was attacked because it engaged in terrorism on other people and that the government was capable of having used the AIDS virus to commit genocide against minorities. His remarks also cast Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, in a positive light.

In tones sharply different from those Mr. Obama used on Monday, when he blamed the news media and his rivals for focusing on Mr. Wright, and far harsher than those he used in his speech on race in Philadelphia last month, Mr. Obama tried to cut all his ties to — and to discredit — Mr. Wright, the man who presided at Mr. Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters.

“His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Mr. Obama said, his voice welling with anger. “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.”

The question the pundits are asking is "Will it be enough?" I would ask, "Would ANYTHING be enough?" The mere fact that Obama's loyalty to the country of his birth has been questioned where that of others has not simply over the absence of a cheap made-in-China flag pin; that he is still perceived as being a Muslim despite the relentless flogging of the Wright connection; that there are so many Americans so utterly terrified of the leap of faith that could change this country for the better, tells me that there is nothing that could be enough. It tells me that when push comes to shove, the color of Barack Obama's skin means that his every action, his every word, is going to be scrutinized for "treasonous intent." The association with Islam that his middle name and his childhood time spent in Indonesia add to this fear, but I suspect that if he were a black man named Barry Oscar whose family could be traced back to slave ships, he'd be subject to the same suspicion by a country clasping its collective handbag tighter to its collective chest because of his mere presence.

While the media have been obsessed with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Bush Administration has sent a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf -- a sign that this bunch doesn't plan to go quietly, preferring one last blaze of glory, one last slaking of its bloodlust before going to live off the public purse and rake in millions of dollars in access fees from corporations. When the world is going mad, we have a choice among another Republican with issues about his father who wants his therapy to take place on the world stage, a Democrat who seems to be running as the Republican's running mate as much as for the office herself, and a man who can truly be said to be a citizen of the world, one who promises something different from the same old crap that got us into this mess. Yes, it's a leap of faith, but I for one am willing to make that leap.

Because the alternative is disastrous for all of us -- black, white, and everyone in between.

Digby has more.

UPDATE: Because I am white and female, I'm probably the last person equipped to pontificate on race in America. But I was surprised to hear the often lunatic Coz Carson this morning decrying Jeremiah Wright, claiming that while Wright has every right to his opinion, he does not have the right to sabotage Barack Obama's chance for becoming the first black president. I would have expected Carson to rail against the media's obsession with Wright in the first place. Which shows you what I know.

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Is This Idiot Still In Office?...Its Backwards Day and the World Has Gone Topsy ....

Wait a minute...did he just say what the regular people want? Did he just say tough times? Did he just blame everything on the congress?
Well, I guess that an uprising was in order; something akin to impeachment or at least some NO votes, as per the American people. So I could spread the blame around; theres plenty there for the blaming...no rationing, no lines....
According to the Sunday NY Times, Connecticut section, there was an article about how bread prices are about to go way up because flour's rising price. Add that to rice and corn rationing at Costco, and the 85% jump in the price of corn due to Ethanol production (or 15% as Bush says...take your pick...but which number would lead to rationing and rising prices?)
Just remember, its all congresses fault!
Is anyone else worried yet?...Why was it we were not taking action against this clown?


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c/p RIP Coco

A View from the Subcontinent

Yesterday I ran across what I thought was an extraordinary article by Ashok Mitra from The Telegraph out of Calcutta, India, "Agonies of Connection - How a New Government in the US May Affect India."

I often read online Indian newspaper articles because I often find out more about a story than what is being told to us in the States. (For example, details about the Chrysler-Tata deals.) What I found fascinating about this story was what I thought was the depth of analysis about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, particularly concerning the outsourcing of American jobs to India. (Note: Mitra has some intelligent commentary about the war in Iraq, which really deserves its own post.)

I thought Mitra really hit the nail on the head when he talked about the challenges of using campaign rhetoric in order to be elected, coupled with the challenges of being held accountable for that same rhetoric after being elected into office.

Here are a few choice tidbits regarding outsourcing:

It is not altogether inconceivable that the resolve once expressed by a past chairman of the Federal Reserve Board — he would bring the prime rate down to the level of zero if that would save the American economy — might well be rendered real by his present successor. Even that most extreme measure could be of little avail. For meanwhile, business process outsourcing has cast a shadow across the nation’s landscape. [Emphasis mine]. If to the American entrepreneur an open economic system offered the opportunity to outsource work whereby costs could be markedly pared down, the crisis in employment would persist irrespective of whatever happened to the interest rate structure. Low interest rates will encourage the induction of relatively more capital-intensive technology, while the supply of trained personnel to operate such technology could be ensured by persuading the authorities to issue generous H1B visas. The thrust of the presidential poll campaign has been directed against both BPO and H1B visas, with politicians crying hoarse for a return to a non-liberal regime; leaders of the badly scarred American working class have been shouting the most. Not surprisingly, proposals about how to restore for domestic workers the estimated three million jobs the Bush administration has exported out of the country have held centrestage in the campaign debates.

It's amazing how the Bush administration is reluctant to even admit that there is even a problem, while an Indian newspaper is stating all of the above as fact! Mitra says a little later on:

All the greater reason to expect that greater attention will be riveted on the pre-poll commitments on economic issues. The cry of saving the jobs of American youth will grow shriller. Pressure will intensify to close loopholes in trade laws to prevent placement of orders on foreign firms on work that could be as competently done at home [emphasis mine] never mind if at higher costs. In case necessary, some tax relief may be considered for firms offering extra consideration to domestic workers. Penalty for breach of legislation enjoining preference to domesticemployees, could be stiffened too. There could also be a drastic reduction in the number of H1B visas issued each year.

I'm fascinated by this analysis. From where I'm sitting, I can't possibly see any of the above ever happening, even if a Democrat is elected President. The lure of corporate money flowing into campaign funds is just too difficult to resist. Loopholes could be closed, but other loopholes could be opened just as quickly. Companies would find more ways to send profits to offshore pirate coves (as Elaine Meinel Supkis would say), or, companies could simply just close shop here and move overseas. However, in India, they have reason to monitor the situation very closely, and they are worried.

How will all this affect India? The fastest growing among our industries is the information technology-related services. Many of them depend for as much as 90 per cent or more of their activities on orders flowing in from the US. A substantial part of India’s high rate of growth of GDP, touching more recently almost 9 per cent per annum, has a strong link with the high rate of growth in IT services. Suppose a severe contraction occurs in the activities in the IT sector following the ushering in of the new administration in the US next year. The spin-off could be a major setback for our GDP growth too. Whether such a possibility would turn into a probability can only be speculated on at this moment. What is however obvious is that an interdependent global system has its positive as well as flip sides. Foreigners can offer us bliss; excessive attachment of foreigners can also bring problems in its train.

Mitra practically admits that India's economic success can be greatly attributed to the offshoring of American jobs to their country. Contrast India's growth of GDP with research by economist Susan Houseman, where she states that costs savings from outsourcing and offshoring is incorrectly being applied to U.S. GDP. Ironically, jobs pouring into India is helping their GDP, while these same jobs pouring out of the U.S. is also helping our GDP.

Even in a world ruled by neo-liberal ideology, economics does not decide everything. Just because in an international framework of costs and returns, our software industry has proved to be a world-beater, we cannot expect the Americans to favour us perpetually, if to do so would hurt the interests of their own workers. Economic calculations cannot afford to ignore the desideratum of national interests. [Emphasis mine.]

See that? Even Indians recognize the importance of national interests over pure money-making economics. Do you think they'd ever treat their citizens this way? Mitra finishes up by saying:

Should not we at least prepare ourselves for the contingency of a sudden shrinkage in the demand from the US for our IT-related services? If we have to maintain the momentum of our GDP growth, we need to look for a substitute commodity or service to fill the space the IT sector would be forced to vacate. Do we have the faintest notion where to look for it? In case we have not a clue in that regard, we would have to fall back on growth induced by demand germinating within the domestic economy [emphasis mine]. That would however call for a drastic restructuring of income and assets distribution, including widespread land reforms. This is where China has scored over us. China’s export boom is pivoted on exports of commodities, not so much on outsourcing. That apart, it accomplished one of the most thoroughgoing programmes of land reforms the world has ever seen before it set on the road to export-led growth. It did not put the cart before the horse; we did.

Imagine that! Redistributing assets so that economic growth would depend on increased demand within a country's borders! Do you think we could ever come up with anything so radical? The Indians are looking ahead to what will happen if the influx of IT jobs into their country all of a sudden comes to a halt or even reverses. Mitra does not claim something ridiculous like 4.5 to 7 jobs will magically appear every time they lose a job in the IT sector, or that Indians will move on to higher and better careers in a "new economy", or even that the inevitable "green technology" bubble will transform the entire subcontinent. Mitra and others realize that their nation needs to look ahead and do some serious planning for the future.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Farewell to a tough old broad

The first time I met my sister's cat Katie was probably in the late 1980's, on one of the rare occasions when I visited my sister in those days. She was a gorgeous cat, regal and elegant, a rare orange longhair. I took a photograph of her on a pale carpet that was one of those rare moments that one was able to capture with a Kodak Instamatic in those days that made one seem like a real photographer. Katie and Lynn butted heads in those days, and indeed did for most of Katie's life. It almost seemed that Katie took that T-shirt that reads "The Egyptians worshipped cats....cats have never forgotten this" seriously and always resented that Lynn wasn't bowing before her with tasty morsels of delicate fish served on a fine china plate.

Sometimes I think that there's something karmic in the pets we end up with. I always seem to end up with one cat who needs incessant attention and another one who wants to kick that one out of the cats' union for conduct unbecoming a feline. But for some reason, the fates deemed that Lynn should spend eighteen years with a narcissistic cat who got angry when things don't go her way.

My cats are gargantuan compared to Katie, who was always, like Gossamer the monster in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, all hair and sneakers, especially in her later years when she experienced that wasting that old cats get. And yet Lynn tells me of the time she took on a group of raccoons and scared them away. I believe it, too, because Katie had one of the greatest "shit on you" faces of all time, in a species whose natural expression tends towards "shit on you."

And yet, Katie could be very sweet, though I always had the sense that she hated herself for doing it. She knew that if she sat on your lap at TV time with crossed paws, she'd get a treat. This is something my brother-in-law Rich taught her to do. And I just knew that during the night, she'd probably be off in a corner, muttering dire things to herself about what she'd do to these silly humans if she had only been born the Bengal tiger she just knew she was meant to be.

Most of us who like cats like them because they represent the perfect blend of elegant and silly. Katie was a cat that I'm not sure you could love, but you had to respect.

For the last three years, I've been visiting my sister and as part of my goodbyes, saying to Katie, "Well, Katie, I don't know if I'll see you again, but take care." And every time, she was still there. Katie raged against time. She raged against the infirmity that made her no longer able to beat the crap out of any cat that came around. She raged against her inability to jump on the counter any longer. From what Lynn tells me, she raged a lot, mostly at night....all night...quite vociferously. But at eighteen, and as shrunken as she was, it seemed she'd be around forever, out of sheer stubbornness.

This morning Lynn e-mailed me that Katie had finally stopped eating, which I had mentioned to her would be a sign that she was ready to go. And today the vet came, and she and Lynn helped Katie on her journey across the rainbow bridge. On the other side of that bridge are Lynn's old Golden Retriever Mandy, and all the dogs we had as kids, and Oliver and Wendy -- my last generation of cats. And as Katie strode across that bridge to greet them, I know as sure as I'm sitting here exactly what she said:

"Step aside, peasants. There's a new sheriff in town."

Green tea marble cake

Gung Che Num PlaKing prawn cocktail with spicy garlic and lemon dressingwith Khai Look Koei son-in-law eggsThe G-man always feeds us well.At a recent dinner party for eight, we knew we were in for a feast. We started with a fancy looking prawn entree surrounded by quartered son-in-law eggs. A barely-cooked prawn curled its way into a plunge pool of hot and tangy dressing, intensely flavoured with

Is Hillary Clinton vying to be John McCain's running mate?

It sure seems that way sometimes, what with her praise for his readiness to be commander-in-chief, and now her advocacy of a suspension of the federal gasoline tax:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

This is pandering of the worst kind. The federal gasoline tax is for infrastructure maintenance. How many of this country's failing bridges does Senator Clinton want to see collapse so that Americans can continue to drive their SUVs for one more summer?

We are now seeing the results of not heeding the warnings that go all the way back to the gas lines of the 1970's of the pitfalls of our dependence on oil -- not just foreign oil, but oil in general. We have lost eight years of research and efforts to find alternatives to petroleum and its derivatives becuase the Supreme Court installed a Texas oil man in the White House, and now we are seeing the consequences.

Making gasoline cheaper by allowing our infrastructure to fall apart is not the answer. It might help get Mrs. Clinton the nomination, or it might make John McCain consider her as a running mate, but all it does is stave off for a few months the difficult decisions and adjustments we're ALL going to have to make in how we live.

He's not Stephen Colbert, but then, who is?

Have I ever mentioned how I loves me some Craig Ferguson? Of course I'm a sucker for the speech cadences of the land of kilts and haggis (sorry, Liss), which go a long way towards turning a recitation of The Brothers Karamazov into a riotous comedy. And of course he has those craggy, Basset Hound-y good looks. But I think Ferguson ascended from being just another goofball into Comedic Valhalla with his brilliant riff on the media treatment of Britney Spears in the context of his own recovery from alcoholism.

Nothing will ever again hit the absolute perfection of Stephen Colbert's wicked skewering of both George W. Bush and the media at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years ago. Last year they decided to play it safe with the spectacularly unfunny Rich Little, and learned that really bad comedy can lay as big a turd in the punchbowl as Colbert's scathingly dry indictment of the whole room did the year before. Sure, there's the mandatory Shecky humor; the bad jokes that seem to come right out of the Borscht Belt that are missing only the snare drum. But if they're not going to have the guts to bring in Marc Maron to do this gig, I think Ferguson found a way to skewer the media and the administration at a level they could understand.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Craig Ferguson (and don't miss the Rumsfeld montage in Part II):

Monday Cat Blogging

Because sometimes we need it more on Mondays, especially rainy, dreary ones like today.

An Engineer's Guide to Cats:

(h/t: Melina and PJ)

Where is the cry of outrage from the people about this?

Ever since the 1980's, when Ronald Reagan invented the "welfare queen in the Cadillac", Republicans have been successful in convincing Americans that 'government spending" equals "welfare". Interestingly, as both parties have spent the last quarter-century shoveling more and more cash into the pockets of corporations, too many Americans have continued to rage against those lower on the economic scale, whether black Americans or immigrants, while turning a blind eye to the turning over of their government, the government that is supposed to serve them, to the service of multinational corporations. Even the recent outcry over executive compensation pales when compared to the outrage that the ill child of an illegal immigrant might obtain medical care, or that someone may not have understood the documents s/he was signing in the quest for the American dream of homeownership.

While utterly silent about executives like Angelo Mozilio of Countrywide Financial receiving boatloads of cash for running companies into the ground, George W. Bush is highly vocal about those who find themselves over their heads after their mortgages adjust:

Congressional Democrats and the White House are on a collision course over an ambitious proposal drafted to address the spreading mortgage crisis.

The Bush administration calls the bill a "bailout," saying it "strongly opposes" the legislation sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, intended to make it easier for homeowners to refinance their loans and stay in their homes.

Some congressional Republicans also oppose Frank's proposal, saying it essentially forces one neighbor to pay for the mistakes of another.

"You're telling the guy who did it right that he has to help pay for the guy who did it wrong," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. "When people are struggling to pay for their mortgages, they shouldn't be forced to pay for their neighbors' mortgage.

"I think about 95 percent of America is either renting a home, they own their home outright, or they're current on their mortgage," he said. "So 95 percent of America who's doing it right is asked to help bail out 5 percent of America who probably wasn't doing it right."

Hensarling also said Frank's bill amounted to a bailout of the large banks that made the ill-advised loans in the first place.

"You can not bail out borrowers without bailing out lenders," he said. "This is a massive Wall Street bailout bill."

And all of this may be true, for in fact, there are people so over their heads that not even mortgage assistance will help them, and the writeoffs of bad mortgage have the entire financial house of cards in this country teetering on the edge of complete collapse. But the idea that creating entire neighborhoods dotted with foreclosed homes, left empty to become the province of squatters and those plundering them for applicances and bjuilding materials, to "punish the irresponsible", is a positive thing ought to be similarly outraged at the government bailout of Bear Stearns. And yet there's been relative silence about that from the very people who look askance at the mother in front of them at the supermarket swiping her food stamp card. And the very people who call Rush Limbaugh and rail about "tax and spend liberals" are curiously silent about how the government has squandered billions of dollars on corporate welfare in Iraq:

Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say.

The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.

The special IG's review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance.

In addition, the audit said many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or otherwise successful when they were not. In one case, the U.S. Agency for International Development contracted with Bechtel Corp. in 2004 to construct a $50 million children's hospital in Basra, only to "essentially terminate" the project in 2006 because of monthslong delays.

But rather than terminate the project, U.S. officials modified the contract to change the scope of the work. As a result, a U.S. database of Iraq reconstruction contracts shows the project as complete "when in fact the hospital was only 35 percent complete when work was stopped," said investigators in describing the practice of "descoping" as frequent.

And after Hillary Clinton succeeds in making John McCain President, we can look forward to an accelerated pace of bankrupting the country for George Bush's Folly.

Open thread: What are you doing with your government hush money?

You know what I'm talking about; that "stimulus check" that the Administration is sending us in the hope that we'll STFU about the collapsing economy. I'm in the process of getting estimates for insulation so that heating oil doesn't break us next winter. What are YOU doing with yours?

Frankly, I think the whole thing is a stunt to promote the new Harold and Kumar movie

In the new movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Rob Corddry plays an overzealous intelligence agent who's convinced that the two stoners are a sign that Al-Qaeda and North Korea are in cahoots with each other. What I'd like to know is who sent George W. Bush an advance DVD of the film? Because the Administration's claims about a nuclear reactor in Syria built with the aid of North Korea sure sounds like the most gonzo kind of viral marketing in the history of viral marketing.

Yesterday on CNN's Late Edition, Republican Pete "Ren" Hoekstra and DINO Dianne Feinstein tried to straddle the fence between concerns about the Syrian facility and recognition that they are dealing with an Administration that has proven itself to be 100% full of shit:

"The administration has handled this very badly" and "has a credibility problem," Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's "Late Edition."

The allegations come as negotiations continue between the United States and other countries and North Korea over the dismantling of the Pyongyang government's nuclear program.

In exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration has offered to ease sanctions on the isolated country and remove it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism -- steps that conservative lawmakers see as unacceptable concessions.

Hoekstra said he believed that the administration's revelations were an attempt to gain leverage in the talks, but that the strategy might backfire with Congress, particularly among those conservatives.

"I think the administration believes it will help them get to a deal with North Korea," he said.

"The timing of it, what information they released, what information they did not release and who they released it to, is going to make it more difficult for them to reach an agreement that will be supported by Congress and supported by the American people," Hoekstra said.

Both Hoekstra and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the CNN program that based on the administration's presentation, they had little doubt the Syrian facility was related to nuclear production.

Some photos appeared to show rods that control heat in a nuclear reactor and buildings that bear strong structural and engineering similarities to North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

"This is compelling information," Hoekstra said.

And this is the problem with an Administration that has played politics with national security for the last six years:

Can we rely on this bunch to give us ANY information that isn't fabricated?

Wouldn't it be Teh Awesome if Alan Shore were real?

Too bad he's just a character played by James Spader on TV. Because I'd PAY to see someone do this in front of the REAL Supreme Court:

(h/t: John Amato)

This is the correct way to answer horseshit questions

THIS is the guy they're painting as the elitist? What about the guy who won't release his $100 million wife's tax returns because their finances are 100% totally, utterly separate, but he's using her corporate jet?

Meanwhile, the woman who in a sane world would be hale and hearty and SHE would be the first woman president, had some things to say about the coverage of the Democrats:

The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.

Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.

What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.

And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.

But it was not to be. Indeed, the Biden campaign was covered more for its missteps than anything else. Chris Dodd, also a serious candidate with a distinguished record, received much the same treatment. I suspect that there was more coverage of the burglary at his campaign office in Hartford than of any other single event during his run other than his entering and leaving the campaign.

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.

[snip]

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

[snip]

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

And the future of news is not bright. Indeed, we’ve heard that CBS may cut its news division, and media consolidation is leading to one-size-fits-all journalism. The state of political campaigning is no better: without a press to push them, candidates whose proposals are not workable avoid the tough questions. All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter. (Look, the press doesn’t even think there is a difference!)

[snip]

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie “Network” but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.

And if you have friends like Nash McCabe, a casualty of the Bush economy, who doesn't have a job but worries about Barack Obama not wearing a flag pin because if she can focus on something trivial like that she won't have to worry about what she's going to do if she can't find a job, demand that they look at the real world around them, and base their votes on that, not on ridiculous non-issues cooked up by the press to fill the 24 x 7 news cycle.

Indecision 2008

The bromide says that the more things change the more they stay the same and this 2008 general election is the perfect delineation of that.

Although only the wild card super delegates can save Hillary this summer (it’s amazing to me that it still hasn’t sunk in with the press that even if Hillary runs the table between now and June she still won’t have enough pledged delegates to get the nomination), I have never once called for her to leave the race. This is still, after all, a democracy in theory. And as long as several hundred super delegates are sitting on their pledges, this side of the race will still be in a state of flux, the will of the voters be damned.

The Democratic party, as we saw two years ago, as we’d seen in all too many general and midterm election cycles, offers not so much diversity in a female and African American candidate as fractious division and confusion. Neither Clinton’s not Obama’s respective campaigns are offering a single, unified vision for how this nation ought to be led nor even an effective compromise. Instead of healthy debate, we’re seeing squabbling (here Camp Clinton has to assume most of the blame) on minutia ranging from flag lapel pins, patriotism and dissident pastors.

Clinton’s campaign, especially, has turned Decision 2008 into a sort exit poll-driven, electoral Iraq: A quagmire offering no clear vision, no workable solutions and ones that create dissent within the ranks and no exit strategy.

While I’ve always been dubious of the existence of an eponymous state that’s perfectly representative of the other 49, the exit polls taken in Pennsylvania last Tuesday night nonetheless resurrected some trends revealed by exit polls in previous primary and caucus states, such as 8% of Pennsylvania voters (presumably all white) admitting that they wouldn’t vote for a black candidate. When one factors in white voters’ reluctance to admit such racism and prejudice to exit pollsters, that number almost surely shoots up into double digits.

As Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote in this morning’s byline,

When the Pennsylvania returns rained down Tuesday night, the narrative became clear fast. The Democrats’ exit polls spelled disaster: Some 25 percent of the primary voters said they would defect to Mr. McCain or not vote at all if Barack Obama were the nominee. How could the party possibly survive this bitter, perhaps race-based civil war?

But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.

This shows two trends: That while the Republican party may be fractured at the grassroots level with party voters defecting from McCain for reasons ranging from a legitimate dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq for which he’s still cheerleading to him not being conservative enough, the party itself is still supporting McCain. This is obviously because McCain had become anointed through process of attrition, of being fortunate or savvy or lucky enough to once again throw his hat in the ring during an election cycle that featured other Republicans that were so banal, stupid and outright loathsome that even the 71 year-old McCain looked like a legitimate and infinitely likeable contender for the White House. By implication, even Hillary Clinton said that we should elect the next president based on sheer amounts of experience. If we’re to follow her logic down the rabbit hole to its conclusion then our next president ought to be not the freshman Obama, not the two-term Clinton but the four term senator from Arizona.

By contrast, the Democratic party is fractured and divisive not only at the grassroots level but even at the national echelon. Howard Dean’s and the DNC’s draconian decision to deny Florida and Michigan of its delegates at the convention in Denver this August simply for moving up their primaries cannot be anything but harmful for the party. It’s an albatross that’s rotting around the necks of all concerned and only increases the likelihood of a brokered convention. In other words, it’s virtually impossible to get two Democrats on the same page about anything, whether it be Iraq, the war on terror, the economy, health care, high gas prices or the subprime lending and housing crisis.

Another factor that confounds the Democratic party and voters looking back and forth at each candidate as if watching some existential tennis match, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Obama and Clinton are all too similar where they ought to be different (such as Iraq) and too divisive where they ought to be on the same page (national health care).

As the three candidates start slumming, remembering and reaching out to the blue collar voters, the one who comes off looking least like an elitist is John McCain. During his poverty tour this past week, potential Republican voters came out because they liked him. In other words, McCain’s the type of guy with whom they’d like to have a beer, an election year criteria that worked wonders for America and the world eight years ago. Obama’s too urbane to pull off “the common touch” and Hillary “Wal-Mart” Clinton on the eve of the Vegas caucus showed herself to be anti-union by trying to prevent pro-Obama union workers from caucusing.

The Republican party’s power structure, its rebellious constituents notwithstanding, is proving to be virtually as cohesive as ever. Granted, McCain’s not rallying and unifying the party as George W. Bush did in 2000 or Reagan twenty years earlier. But, Republicans being Republicans, they need to vote for the only guy who has that “R” after his name regardless of his flipflopping, regardless of his avowed ignorance of economics and recent astonishing pronouncement that, in the weeks after admitting his ignorance, he had become a master in matters economic.

For all his mantras about effecting change, for all the support he seems to be getting from young and African-American voters, Barack Obama has yet to come close to rallying either his party at the national level or white, middle aged-to-elderly and blue collar voters. If McCain pulls off the improbable and wins the presidency this November, it won’t be because he’s got the answers: It’ll be because the Democratic party has too few or too many of them. And just as McCain benefited from simply being in the right place at the right time, that same man, as stupendously unfit to lead this country as the idiot who preceded him, could benefit on election day both from a more or less united GOP that itself was forced to settle and a Democratic party still waiting for a Godot named Al Gore.

The Australian Heritage Hotel, The Rocks, Sydney

BBQ emu pizza $14.50 smallwith Spanish onion, fresh basil leaves and cherry tomatoesThere are few things better than beer and pizza with friends, bathed in a late burst of autumnal sunshine in the bliss of a long weekend.Crispy bacon pizza $19.50 largewith mushrooms, tomatoes, spanish onionsand tasty cheeseThe Australian Heritage Hotel has long been a favourite with locals, office workers and

Know Where We're Going To

The juxtaposition of these two items on RawStory is alarming.


VA official denies cover-up of veteran suicides

A top-ranking official at the Department of Veterans Affairs defends the agency's treatment of disabled veterans and denies the agency has tried to cover up the number of veterans committing suicide.

Dr. Michael Kussman, a department undersecretary for health, testified during a trial in San Francisco federal court that will determine whether the VA is shirking its duty to provide adequate mental health care and other medical services to millions of veterans.

The two veterans groups suing the VA want U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti to order the agency to dramatically improve how fast it processes applications and how it delivers mental health care, especially when it comes to preventing suicides and treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

The groups contend that veteran suicides are rising at alarming rates in large part because of VA failures. In court, plaintiffs' lawyer Arturo Gonzalez clashed Thursday with Kussman over how to compile and report the suicide rates.

For instance, VA Secretary James Peake told Congress in a Feb. 5 letter that 144 combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide between October 2001 and December 2005.

But Gonzalez produced internal VA e-mails that contended that 18 veterans a day were committing suicide. Kussman countered that the figure, provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, included all 26 million veterans in the country, including aging Vietnam veterans who are reporting an increased number of health problems.

And:

Joint Chiefs chair: US prepping military options against Iran

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Pentagon is planning "potential" military actions against Iran, reports The Washington Post.

Mullen criticized Iran's "'increasingly lethal and malign influence' in Iraq," writes Ann Scott Tyson for the Post.

Addressing concerns about the US military's capability of dealing with yet another conflict at a time when forces are purportedly stretched thin, Mullen said war with Iran "would be 'extremely stressing' but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force," Tyson notes.

"It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," she quotes the U.S.'s top military leader at a Pentagon news conference.

If you follow veterans' affairs, you must be aware of how seriously this will fuck up the active military and wounded veterans in the future. We must prevent this madness born of hubris, thoughtless cruelty and greed. Please speak up and don't shut up.

Crossposted on Poor Impulse Control.

Jon Stewart and John McCain: The Romance is Over

Jon Stewart used to get along just fine with John McCain, who never missed an opportunity to be on Stewart's show. But because Jon Stewart doesn't have to whore for guests, he gets to do stuff like this:

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to continue my archaeological dig through my house in search of things to get rid of at next Saturday's yard sale, where other people will buy them for peanuts and use them to clutter up their OWN homes.

Cornell West on Bill Maher: The "Elitism" Label

I'm cleaning out the drafts folder left over from a week of dismay and complication, so bear with me:
According to Cornell West on Bill Maher last week....

In order to call someone an elitist we have to define what we mean by "elitism." An Elitist is either someone who knows more than you in the face of relative ignorance, or it's someone who is "arrogant, condescending, or haughty towards everyday people..."


So, according to West, we are watching the spin on something that can be manipulated either way.

In my horrible paraphrasing and limited understanding, (in good company because Maher was pretty blown away too,) which is apparent from the clip below, and which I hope everyone will watch:
What standards have we got concerning the concept of truth?
If understanding truth is considered actually allowing suffering to speak,
then understanding justice is what love looks like in public.

And...Then,what suffering voices did we hear in this primary debate?
what questions and concerns about justice are manifest in the debate? Understanding this includes the questions askedand the answers given....
So according to West, and regarding Obama;
Is he smart enough?
Is he dumb enough?
When we accuse anyone of being too elite are we asking if maybe they don't know just a little too much? And if that's the case, then don't we want someone who knows a bit too much? Or is that an attitude problem?...and where do we hit the "uppity negro" concept?
Isn't this whole thing, tearing the party apart, some incarnation of a deep feeling of "how dare he aspire to the highest office in the country!"




Is there compassion informing our expertise? Because expertise without caring is empty. And at this point, I'm trying to figure if who the candidate is, isn't the very thing that might make it possible for America to get back on track.



c/p RIP Coco

We're Going to Need Bigger Buckets

When I first began blogging nearly three and a half years ago, I made the hardly original observation that no president running for office had ever been voted out while America was in a major military engagement. It’s only natural, patriotic, even, to want to support your commander in chief during a time of crisis. However, the intoxicating smell of blood about to be spilled happens to drown out what can yet prove to be very valid questions about a president’s motives for going to war against a country without just cause or even illegal reasons.

Bush cannot run for a third term yet we’ve seen time and again that he’s willing to commit more and more warm bodies into the meat grinder of Iraq (many of whom are being caught in the crossfire between Shi’ite militias and Iraqi government troops) and countless hundreds of billions, if not trillions, more in an ever desperate crap shoot to win back everything that PNAC and Dick Cheney ever promised him: Namely, a legacy worthy of a dead Democrat like Roosevelt or Kennedy.

If you’ll notice, the two highest points of Bush’s capable stewardship from an approval standpoint were when we either got attacked on 9/11 or when we irrationally invaded Iraq. This graph, courtesy Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, shows this very disturbing trend, at how even an idiot’s approval ratings can go through the roof when violence on an epic scale is visited on us or on someone else by us.

Consider: In the Gallup poll ending September 10th, 2001, Bush’s approval rating was a humdrum 51%. Right after 9/11, his approval rating shot up to an irrational 90%, almost 40% within hours of the 9/7-10 poll. Just before the largely unquestioned invasion of Iraq, Bush’s approval rating had settled back down to 57% yet the next Gallup after the invasion shows his rating shooting back up to a very respectable 71%.

The interesting thing is that Bush’s rating actually went down from 37% to 34% in the Gallup polls taken just before and after the announcement of the surge. In the week the surge began (Feb. 2007), his popularity sank even lower to 32%.

It could be said that Bush is merely the victim of political fatigue, of a nation getting tired of a lame duck president and yearning for change. But that doesn’t always apply, especially regarding his fellow Republicans. If Eisenhower could run again in 1960, he and not Marilyn Monroe would’ve beaten the pants off Jack Kennedy and Kennedy was the first one to admit it. If Reagan hadn’t started falling asleep during Cabinet meetings and drooling on his PDB’s, he, too, would’ve been a shoein for a third term.

The fact is, since November 2-5, 2006, Bush’s approval rating has never been above 38%. As of the last Gallup poll, his actual approval rating is a mere 28%, with 69% disapproving.

Iraq is a dead horse that ain’t ever going to get livelier no matter how many additional troops flog it. Ergo, it looks like a good time to have contractor ships fire on the Iranians (providing OPEC with a wonderful reason to gouge us another three dollars for a barrel of oil) and to try to make them look bad by waggling our fingers and sabers at the Syrians and North Koreans.

After McCain’s drooling and doddering through a Beach Boys song last year about bombing Iran and for all his anti-Iranian rhetoric, an invasion of Iran based on even the most specious of claims and most circumstantial of evidence will automatically focus attention on McCain as Bush’s presumptive heir and less on Obama and even Hillary, who voted to allow Bush to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

The press, starting with Fox as the Pied Piper behind whom all the other outlets will march, will hail McCain as not only a maverick but a visionary, as well, the one man who saw the threat coming and thank God we're going to elect him as our next president (or else) since he used to be in the military and all.

Another war against another Muslim nation could still prove to be the political stimulus package and popularity surge that the Republican party will need this November to pull them out of their own public relations recession. And, in times of war, as always, truth will be the first casualty, with children a close second.

Where the IOKIYAR Rule must end

It's kind of hard to justify incitement to riot, even by the IOKIYAR rule:

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

"Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don't elect Democrats," Limbaugh said during Wednesday's radio broadcast. He then went on to say that's the best thing that could happen to the country.

Limbaugh cited Al Sharpton, saying the Barack Obama supporter threatened to superdelegates that "there's going to be trouble" if the presidency is taken from Obama.

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh's comments, when he later stated, "I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver."

Limbaugh said with massive riots in Denver, which he called "Operation Chaos," the people on the far left would look bad.

"There won't be riots at our convention," Limbaugh said of the Republican National Convention. "We don't riot. We don't burn our cars. We don't burn down our houses. We don't kill our children. We don't do half the things the American left does."

He believes electing Democrats will hurt America's security and economy and appeared to call on his listeners to make sure that doesn't happen.

"We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We're the only one in charge of our affairs. We don't farm out our defense if we elect Democrats ... and riots in Denver, at the Democratic Convention will see to it we don't elect Democrats. And that's the best damn thing that can happen to this country, as far as I can think," Limbaugh said.

Later, Limbaugh downplayed his "dreaming of riots in Denver" statement, and said that he wasn't calling for riots and was referring to warnings of trouble if superdelegates decide the nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Limbaugh's comments prompted Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to say: "Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings."

Bullshit he wasn't calling for riots. What he's calling for is for his listeners to pretend to be Democrats, just as they've done during the primaries while crossing over to vote for Hillary Clinton, and start riots while posing as liberals.

Whether Limbaugh's idiotic, slobbering, mindless, chickenshit listeners are willing to risk getting arrested, even for show, to fulfill his dream remains to be seen. But as Richard Blair at All Spin Zone says:

Someone needs to tell me the difference between Rush Limbaugh and Moqtada al-Sadr (above and beyond the fact that al-Sadr is an ordained cleric, and Limbaugh is just an ordained asswipe). And I want to know how Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, etc. etc. can continue getting away with inspiring their listeners to violence, yet are never called on it by either the Republican Party leadership or law enforcement authorities.

If you feel so moved, you can contact the Colorado Attorney General's office and express your concerns. At a minimum, inciting to riot is a serious offense. When the call goes out from someone like Limbaugh who has legions of loyal dittoheads hanging on his every word, it's very, very likely that his "call to arms" could motivate some right wing crackpots to action.

Why Barack Obama Matters

3 NYPD detectives acquitted in 50-shot killing

Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a Queens courtroom packed with spectators, including victim Sean Bell's fiancee and parents, as at least 200 people gathered outside the building.

As word of the verdict spread, many outside the courthouse began crying and yelled "No!" Some briefly jostled with police officers.

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 — his wedding day — as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends.

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

If not now, when?

This, folks, is why as bad as sexism is, racism is worse. Yes, there was a case here in NJ a few years ago of a bride murdered on her way to her own wedding by a violent ex-boyfriend. That was a tragic and horrific example of the toxicity of sexism and how men try to control women. But as heinous as it was, and as heinous as similar cases like it are, and even as pervasive as such cases, as well as the many incidences of rape, job discrimination, and other toxic examples of sexism in our society, they are not cases of state-sanctioned murder. The fact of the matter is that for the most part, Living While Female won't get you killed by the state. Living While Black still does.

Meanwhile....

Meanwhile....

The third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives and one of the country’s most influential African-American leaders sharply criticized former President Bill Clinton this afternoon for what he called Mr. Clinton’s “bizarre” conduct during the Democratic primary campaign.

Representative James E. Clyburn, an undeclared superdelegate from South Carolina who is the Democratic whip in the House, said that “black people are incensed over all of this,” referring to statements that Mr. Clinton had made in the course of the heated race between his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. Clinton was widely criticized by black leaders after he equated the eventual victory of Mr. Obama in South Carolina in January to that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1988 – a parallel that many took as an attempt to diminish Mr. Obama’s success in the campaign. In a radio interview in Philadelphia on Monday, Mr. Clinton defended his remarks and said the Obama campaign had “played the race card on me” by making an issue of those comments.

In an interview with The New York Times late Thursday, Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Clinton’s conduct in this campaign had caused what might be an irreparable breach between Mr. Clinton and an African-American constituency that once revered him. “When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar,” Mr. Clyburn said. “I think black folks feel strongly that that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation.”

Mr. Clyburn added that there appeared to be an almost “unanimous” view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were “committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”

What I will defend Hillary Clinton for doing...and what I won't

As someone who really didn't get the chance to vote for my choice in New Jersey's primary, I'm hardly in a position to tell the denizens of North Carolina, Indiana, and the other states and possessions yet to have their presidential primaries, that they should have to take a pig in a poke. And for all that it would certainly be easier to have this primary race over with and a presumptive nominee chosen now, the fact of the matter is that we don't. So while I wish with every fiber of my being that Hillary Clinton would take one for the team, there's only so much griping I'm going to do. And I'll defend her right to take her campaign right up to the convention -- with the following rules:

1) No do-overs. You agreed to the party rules in Florida and Michigan and you didn't complain then. So you have to live with them now.

2) No more moving the goal posts. Every state matters. Primaries and caucuses both count. No more of this talk of how the only processes that are important are the ones you win.

3) No more doing the Republicans' dirty work for them. If you have substantive policy differences with Barack Obama, then air them. Insist on a REAL debate with real policy questions -- about health care mandates, about Middle East policy, about global warming, about the housing debacle, about job outsourcing, and about the current food and energy crises. Let the remaining voters decide based on the differences in the way you would address these problems. No more negative ads, no more Obama/Osama bullshit.

4) Explain why you think you're the better choice, but stop this crap about how the world will come to an end if Barack Obama gets the nomination.

5) If by the beginning of June, there's no way you can obtain this nomination without strongarming and bullying delegates, threatening them with the Wrath of Clinton if they don't fall in line, then for God's sake do the right thing, drop out, and throw your support behind Obama. He's going to need it. The future of this country is more important than you, your ego, your idea that what you thought was a shoo-in for you wasn't, your competition with the Bush family for who can do a better job with a restoration.

Barack Obama still might lose in November, but if he does, that doesn't mean you would have won. Today's Republicans are the dirtiest, foulest people in the history of American politics. They know how to appeal to Americans' worst instincts and impulses, and history shows that their tactics work -- but only when Republicans use them because we EXPECT it of them.

And if you do this, I might even consider supporting you in 2012 -- assuming we all live that long and assuming you cut the crap about nuking Iran. Because if John McCain is president, we're going to need you to take a leadership role in putting the brakes on him, because he is completely batshit crazy. Lately you've been talking as if you are too, but I'm willing to chalk that up to having to be tougher than the boys are -- unless you continue what looks to be a campaign tactic of trying to ensure an Obama defeat in the fall to hold the Democratic nomination open for you in 2012.

If you do that, then both this fall and in 2012, you can go Cheney yourself.

It's up to you.