ANOTHER WINGNUT GROUP

Don Crawford had a guest from Wall Builders, a group dedicated to making America a Christian theocracy. The central claim seems to be that judges have no right to overturn the will of the people, so public school teachers can officially lead their classes in prayer.

WHAT THE IRAQ SURVEY GROUP FOUND ABOUT SADDAM'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

I post this as a rebuttal to the wingnuts' lie about the uranium.

DCI Special Advisor Report on Iraq's WMD, Chapter 4, section 1:

Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, nor had it tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991.

ISG has uncovered no information to support allegations of Iraqi pursuit of uranium from abroad in the post-Operation Desert Storm era.

Iraq did not reconstitute its indigenous ability to produce yellowcake.

Post-1991, Iraq had neither rebuilt any capability to convert uranium ore into a form suitable for enrichment nor reestablished other chemical processes related to handling fissile material for a weapons program.

Available evidence leads ISG to judge that Iraq’s development of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment essentially ended in 1991.

ISG also judges that Iraq continued work on none of the many other uranium enrichment programs explored or developed prior to 1991, such as EMIS or lasers.

It does not appear that Iraq took steps to advance its pre-1991 work in nuclear weapons design and development.

LISTENING TO THE FLIPSIDE SHOW

on Right Talk Radio, the host Don Crawford was going on and on about the need for a revolution in America and when he finally got the the reasons, all he had was standard wingnut memes:

- we can't pray in school
- we can't pray in public
- private property is under assault (Kelo decision)
- we are over-taxed
- partial-birth abortion is still legal

The first 2 are obviously false, the third one is debatable, the fourth one is an exaggeration, and the fifth one is misleading because Roe v. Wade did find that the State has a much greater interest in the fetus in the 3rd trimester.

A CHARACTER FLAW IN McCAIN

No, not his temper or his ignorance, it's his inability to manage people. It seems that he just can't get rid of people who aren't doing the job and that immediately reminds me of Bush and Rumsfeld.

Internal Politics Heat Up at McCain Campaign
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: July 8, 2008
NY Times

All of this intrigue breeds discouragement among even those former McCain associates who do not dispute the notion that voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which a McCain White House might be managed. They are hard-pressed to explain why Mr. McCain tolerates this — or encourages this — or why he has trouble cutting ties with people who have not served him well over the years.

McCAIN IS ALREADY LYING ABOUT OBAMA

First, he claims that Obama will "raise your taxes" and the obvious implication is that Obama will raise taxes on everyone. This is FALSE. Second, he claims Obama reversed himself on Iraq and that's also FALSE.

Mr. Straight Talk is no more honest than Sean Hannity.

RICHARD LAND ON JESSE HELMS

Land is the president of the Southern Baptist Association's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land's July 5th broadcast is here.

Land says Helms was no racist. (about 6 minutes in) Opposing MLK's birthday was just a "stumble."

ZEBARI & OBAMA ON THE SAME PAGE

(Pretty much.) Obama wants us out in about 16 months and Foreign Minister Zebari said that the new security arragment would be for no more than 24 months

Iraq demands pullout timetable in US defence pact talks
Jul 7 11:02 AM US/Eastern
AFP

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that Washington has agreed to one key demand from Baghdad, the scrapping of immunity from prosecution in Iraq of the tens of thousands of foreign security contractors operating in the country.

Since the 2003 invasion, foreign security firms have operated virtually outside the law, neither subject to the Iraq legal system nor to US military tribunals -- an exemption which has been a persistent source of outrage to ordinary Iraqis.

Last Wednesday, Zebari said if the new US security pact were not finalised by July 31, there were two options for Iraq.

One is to enter into a substitute bilateral agreement, the other to request the UN to extend its mandate by another year, he said.

Zebari stressed that the United States could not stay in Iraq without an international legal framework, while any security arrangement would be for "one or two years" only, and not for decades.

FIORINA: OH-FER-TWO

First, she tries to paint McCain as being tech savvy. Her evidence? McCain is against net neutrality. Second, she gets taxes wrong. (h/t Atrios) There will only be a few hundred thousand affected instead of the 23 million she claims. And remember, they pay taxes in the net income, after expenses like payroll and fuel costs, not the gross.

WINGNUTS DEFEND SWIFTBOAT LYING WHORE

In response to Wesley Clark's remarks, John McCain trotted out a dried-up lying sack of shit, Bud Day:



who was one of the original Shifty Vet Liars. McCain has even accepted donations from these whores and their patrons.

DAN SURBER IS STUCK ON STUPID

And that's putting it in a nice way. I suspect he's a lying war whore but I can't prove it. He writes about the yellow cake in Iraq:

Finally, they really did find yellowcake in Iraq. Hussein wasn’t supposed to have it. He did.

As Reuters noted:

The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. But tonnes of nuclear material remained there under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when it was left unguarded and looted by Iraqi civilians.

NO WONDER SHE'S ON FAUX NEWS

(h/t Atrios)

Mara Liasson doesn't seem to know much about the U.S. politics even though that's what she's paid to know and speak about. She was completely wrong on McCain's immigration position and now she has the temerity to speak of what the American people want in Iraq. Glenn Greenwald finds that she came out with this howler yesterday:

LIASSON: I think the 16 months -- he is trying to get himself out of that box. Look, Samantha Power got in a lot of trouble . . . where she said, "Well, of course he's not going to just stick to some campaign promise of 16 months. He's going to look at the facts on the ground."

Well, that's what the American people want a commander in chief to do. That might not be what his left-wing base does. The question for Obama now is what kind of Iraq does he want to leave behind.

As Glenn points out, the polls show that the majority of Americans want out of Iraq in 2 years or less, no matter what the situation on the ground is. Why can't Liasson be bothered to read the polls?

RADIO TIDBITS

Fats Limbaugh was asked by a caller what his credentials were to talk about global warming and Fats made a classical reply: "Who has to have credentials?" Wingers have been denigrating expertise since the 80s because their radical agenda has little or no empirical support. Fats completed the meme by later claiming that credentials are elitist.

In his intro, Hannity tried hard to paint Obama as a flip-flopper and claimed that Obama "does not have core values and principles to guide him." He later said that "the issue here is character" and that reminded me that Jonathan Chait was right to point out how the GOP tries to focus on the spurious character issue instead of policy positions.

LISTENING TO UNCLE BILLY CUNNINGHAM...

Locally, his show replaced Drudge's on Sunday nights and I figured I needed to get a little adrenaline flowing so I tuned in online. One of his callers swore that Obama was a Muslim and Billy not only agreed, he said the Press wouldn't look into Obama's background. Another caller said that people who back reparations for blacks are giving Obama all his money. (I've also seen this claim on AOL message boards) Billy riffed that Obama is trying to buy the election by making very expensive promises to various groups.

Billy did praise The Greatest Generation and also said he'll have Grover Norquist on later. Does he know that Grover thinks the Greatest Generation is anti-American?

I think Billy went off message about the GWOT because he said we had worse times in the 60s (Vietnam) and 40s (WW II) and the 30s (Great Depression). In the neo-con world, the Islamo-fascists represent a mortal threat that we must address at all costs (and we must defend Israel at all costs).

Another caller claims that Islamists are carrying out health care crimes and by that he means that they are killing patients. (Even Billy couldn't follow this one.)

I don't want to call down the wrath of Rick Perlstein¹ but many of the callers seem like real morons. Yes, I know morons have the right to vote but they shouldn't be catered to.

Billy has a demeaning nickname I hadn't heard before: Anti-Christian Legal Union. Maybe he got it from Mark Levin.

There was an extended call about the costs of illegal immigration.

Like other wingnuts, Billy doesn't think there is man-made global warming.

Rats! I didn't get to hear Grover.


¹Here's some Perlstein from TPM:

Just to add a brief aside: I can't read more than a paragraph of Hofstadter on conservatism at a time. I find him teeth-gratingly condescending.

I SAW THIS STORY...

"U.S. Helps Remove Uranium From Iraq" and right away I thought that the wingnuts will falsely claim that Bush was right about Saddam pursuing a nuclear weapon. I was right. Open Left finds Red State is pushing that lie and so is Randall Hoven at American Thinker. No doubt this will be on gasbag radio tomorrow and there'll be no rebuttal.

UH, WHO WAS DIVERTED?

AJ Strata goes sticky-wet and solid stupid over this post by Andrew Sullivan and lapses into tired old lies about Iraq. Here's one:

one of the most important goals of the invasion was to divert al-Qaeda’s attention.

THE FURTHER BREAK-UP OF THE ROVE COALITION

I knew that libertarians weren't too pleased with Fredo and the Fundies and they aren't the only ones. Even AEI-types have gotten fed up with the current flavor of the GOP.

Why some conservatives are backing Obama
Carolyn Lochhead, SF Chronicle
Washington Bureau
Sunday, July 6, 2008

"The untold story of the Bush administration is the deliberate annihilation of the Reaganite, small-government wing of the Republican Party," said Michael Greve, director of the Federalism Project at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "A lot of people are very bitter about it."

Many conservatives and their brethren, the free-market, socially liberal libertarians, are deeply skeptical of Obama's rhetorical flirtations with free-market ideas and view his policies as orthodox liberalism. Yet one measure of their rupture with the GOP is their open disregard for Republican nominee John McCain and their now almost-wistful view of a president the Republicans tried to impeach.

"When he leaves the room, everybody thinks he just agreed with them," Greve said of Obama. "We don't know if you're really buying a pig in a poke here. It could be the second coming of the Clinton administration. If people have any confidence in that, I think a whole lot of conservatives would vote for him."

AND it looks like Obama will draw some of the religious vote:

Doug Kmiec is former chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and now a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University and a devout Catholic. Kmiec endorsed Obama earlier this year, despite his conviction that Obama "believes in a pretty progressive agenda."

Kmiec said his support deepened after meeting with Obama and other faith leaders last month, during which the busy candidate spent 2 1/2 in a freewheeling discussion with people who differed with him.

"I think he's the right person at the right time to re-establish principles of constitutional governance that have been ill-treated by the current administration, and to free us from the tar paper that we know is Iraq," Kmiec said, adding that many Republicans privately agree. "I think he's a man in the market for every good idea he can find, and he doesn't care what label it comes with."

BTW, if you don't think Pepperdine Law School is conservative, the Dean is Ken Starr.

THIS IS A PATTERN

We just can't seem to stop killing civilians in Afghanistan. We killed some just a couple of days ago and now there's another sad report.

Afghan officials: US missiles killed 27 civilians
Jul 6, 2008 2:47 PM (ET)
By AMIR SHAH and JASON STRAZIUSO

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan officials said fighter aircraft battling militants accidentally killed up to 27 Afghans walking to a wedding ceremony in eastern Afghanistan early Sunday, the second military attack in three days with reports of civilian deaths.

Things got so bad that a British commander kicked U.S. Special Forces out of his area because the air strikes they called in killed too many civilians. Of course, the wingnut war whores, like Uncle Jimbo, think it's all enemy propaganda.

WHAT IS SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM SMOKING?

I know he's a surrogate from McCain but there has to be some limit to the lies! He was on Face the Nation today and made some astounding claims. The first one is about Teh Surge:

John McCain has come up with a strategy called the surge, Bob, that worked.

We've heard a lot of different stories about who came up with the idea of the troop surge and this is the first time McCain has been given credit. Lindsey follows this up with a preposterous claim:

Iran's being contained by a--by a stronger, more democratic, more effective Iraq.

As Billmon pointed out years ago, the one clear winner of the Iraq War is Iran. Ahmadinejad can openly visit Baghdad while our leaders have to sneak in and out.

JAMES KIRCHICK == LYING WAR WHORE

I can't recall where I first read about this atrocious article by Kirchick of the The New Republic so I can't give a "(h/t)" but I do appreciate whoever it was who wrote about it. Kirchick sounds like William "The Bloody" Kristol or some other neo-con hack and LIES about the SSCI Phase II Report.

Bush never lied to us about Iraq
The administration simply got bad intelligence.
Critics are wrong to assert deception.

By James Kirchick

June 16, 2008
LA Times

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."

Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

I converted the original report from an image-only file to an MS Word 2003 file and this is what the report stated:

(U) Conclusion 12: Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence. (page 73)

(U) Conclusion 13: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well additional statements, regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qa'ida were substantiated by intelligence information. However, policymakers' statements did not accurately convey the intelligence assessments of the nature of these contacts, and left the impression that the contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation or support of al-Qa'ida. (page 73)

SEN. DOMENICI IS WRONG

In an article in the NY Times about oil prices, "American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot," Sen. Domenici is quoted:

“Much of what we’re seeing today could have been prevented or ameliorated had we chosen to act differently,” says Pete V. Domenici, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a 36-year veteran of the Senate. “It was a bipartisan failure to act.”

I don't want to minimize the role Democrats played in this but it seems to me that beginning with Reagan, the GOP as a matter of principle has opposed doing anything substantive about our energy problem. Months ago, perhaps even a year, I recall hearing Sean Hannity say that he didn't want to change his life style because of high oil prices and he wouldn't buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle until the price came down. Now Hannity can clearly afford to buy any vehicle available, so that statement is more humbug. (Today he praises the GM hybrid vehicle he drives, no doubt because GM is a major sponsor of his radio show.)

In the same NYT article, Newt Gingrich claims that cheap gasoline is part of the American Social Contract:

Indeed, low-priced gasoline has long been part of the American social contract, according to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican leader. While in office, Mr. Gingrich battled efforts to modulate demand through tools like increased gas taxes and tighter fuel standards, and he argues that voters won’t support such measures even now.

“They will work if you coerce the entire system and if you pretend the American people are Japanese and Europeans,” Mr. Gingrich says. “Our culture favors driving long distances in powerful vehicles and the car as a social expression.”

Rather than call for changes to our culture, which suits them when they try to get the Fundie vote, the conservatives try to pretend that it can't and shouldn't be changed. They even made efforts to do so against the law in 1995:

Congressional Republicans made matters worse in 1995, when they attached a rider to a huge appropriations bill forbidding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from spending any money to raise fuel standards. That law, in effect until 2001, made any change in CAFE standards impossible, says Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has pushed for better fuel efficiency.

WELCOME TO FRED BARNES' WORLD

On FAUX News Sunday, Barnes provided us with a couple of more examples of wingnut delusion. First, he claimed that Iraq will become a "pro-America" state. Considering that the Iraqis don't want us there, this is a remarkable claim. Add in all the innocent civilians we've murdered, it becomes preposterous.

On Memeo I found that he made another whopper in giving advice to the McCain campiagn: pander to the bigots by attacking gays. This is from Matt at ThinkProgress:

BARNES: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose.

WHAT ARE THE DEMS THINKING?

I just don't understand why the Dems not only want to give immunity to the telcoms but also greatly increase the power of the Executive Branch to spy on us. Randi Rhodes has suggested that the Dems think they will be able to pursue criminal actions against the telcoms, so giving them a free pass on civil suits is OK. Via Kagro X, I learn that bmax has pretty much destroyed this rationale.

I am unaware of any polling that shows the American people overwhelmingly support the telcoms, so I just can't figure out why so few of them are standing up for the 4th Amendment and the rule of law.

WHEN A GENERAL IS IGNORED

(h/t FAIR)

Maj. Gen. Taguba's accusation that the criminal Bush regime committed war crimes was not in the print editions of the WaPo, the WSJ or the LA Times. It was covered in the online version of the WaPo and the NY Times did have a story on 7/25/2008¹ but it was on page A 17.

¹Bipartisan Group to Speak Out on Detainees
The New York Times, June 25, 2008 Wednesday, Section A;
Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 17, 705 words,
By SCOTT SHANE

EVEN JOHN HARRIS ADMITS GEN. CLARK WAS CORRECT

(h/t FAIR)

John Harris is Editor in Chief of Politico.com and told NPR that Wesley Clark's comment about McCain was prefectly reasonable¹:

PESCA: Yeah, I know, and I listen to them on the iPod later. But I did see the Clark quote online, and I almost fell off my chair. I thought that was a beyond-the-pale attack, especially by a fellow member of the military. But then, I saw it in more context, it seemed a more understandable quote. He was answering a question. But what are your thoughts on it?

Mr. HARRIS: Well, he certainly was responding to a question from CBS host Bob Schieffer. Nonetheless, that was definitely the line that echoed off the Sunday shows, because, in whatever context, that's a pretty - speaking of audacity, that's a pretty audacious statement, to seemingly challenge what is John McCain's most impressive personal and political asset, which is his war service and extraordinary human sacrifice, spending five years in a Vietnam war prison.

Now, logically, he's right. What does that have to do with whether or not he would be a good president? Not much, if anything. But nonetheless, a real eye-opener, and the thing is, you can find much stronger stuff on liberal blogs. We had a story in Politico today about just a number of commentators saying, wait a minute, what is John McCain's war record, really?

¹National Public Radio (NPR)
June 30, 2008 Monday
SHOW: The Bryant Park Project 8:00-9:00 AM
Candidates' Surrogates Sling Mud
LENGTH: 1466 words

OUR PRESS SUCKS!

Josh Marshall points out this mistake in a 7/4/2008 AP report by Jennifer Loven:

His problem is that his change in emphasis to flexibility from a hard-nosed end-the-war stance -- including his recent position that withdrawing combat troops could take as long as 16 months -- will now be heard loud and clear by an anti-war camp that may have ignored it before.

This isn't a recent position and I used Lexis-Nexis to find out that Obama said this almost a year ago:

Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)

August 23, 2007 Thursday

Obama on foreign policy
SECTION: TIMES; Pg. B6
LENGTH: 766 words

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sen. Barack Obama is getting polite applause at best when he tells the delegates at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention here this week that in running for president, "I know I am running for commander in chief." And then he tries to convince this intensely skeptical audience that he's the right man for the job.

Obama added some new (and potentially controversial) foreign policy details in an interview Tuesday afternoon, before he hopped a plane for his next stop in New Hampshire. He said he expects there will still be U.S. troops in Iraq when the next president takes office, and he is discussing now with his advisers how this residual force should be used.

"For getting out in an orderly way, withdrawing one to two brigades a month is realistic," he said. With 20 combat brigades currently in Iraq, that would imply a withdrawal schedule of at least a year

NO WONDER FATS LIMBAUGH HAS HIGH RATINGS

Too many Americans don't know shit about most political issues. The widespread ignorance has been partially documented in Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter (Basic Books, 2008). He also has a blog that's worth reading, "How Stupid?" .

Alternet has an excerpt from his book and I found this tidbit scary:

Only 34% know that it is the Congress that declares war (which may explain why they are not alarmed when presidents take us into wars without explicit declarations of war from the legislature). Only 35% know that Congress can override a presidential veto. Some 49% think the president can suspend the Constitution. Some 60% believe that he can appoint judges to the federal courts without the approval of the Senate.

ED SCHULTZ RESPONDS TO A WAR WHORE

(h/t Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars)

Ed was on Anderson Cooper 360 and rightfully took offense at Cliff May's assertion that some on the Left want us to lose in Iraq. What I think Ed should've done is reply that it's up to the Iraqis to win because it's their country. Here's the link to the full transcript.

MAY: Yeah, I think also on some of the left wing blogs, Obama is taking some hits. But this does move him to the center and look, I want to put the…I’m not a big fan of his, but I’m going to put the best spin on it, which is that he understands the situation…fairly…well. Certainly better than the Daily Kos does and some of those on the left who would like to see America defeated in Iraq as a demonstration exercise that US power can never, never be used for good.

SCHULTZ: That I am…whoa, whoa! That is absolutely outrageous! That is outrageous for you to say people on the left want to lose in Iraq. I’m not going to sit here and listen to that. This is the Fourth of July, we are Americans, we don’t believe in fighting in Iraq the way we are doing. We are depleting our resources. That’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous.

MIKE ALLEN GETS IT WRONG

In Politico, Mike Allen writes:

Next week, Vets for Freedom — a 20,000-member, nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — plans to begin spending more than $1 million on a TV campaign that will include Ohio, Virginia and New Mexico.

It's NOT non-partisan. It's a group of war whores lead by Pete Hegseth who will lie about Iraq to prop up their own egos. The NY Times comes closer to the truth:

An independent group that has been highly critical of Senator Barack Obama is preparing a multi-million dollar television advertising campaign promoting what it deems the success of the troop buildup in Iraq.

Vets for Freedom is a non-profit advocacy organization for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan that claims 24,000 members. In late May, the group released two Web advertisements attacking Mr. Obama on Iraq, challenging him for not having visited Iraq in two-and-a-half years, a line of attack that the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee picked up on as well around the same time.

MORE ON THE DEAD RAT BASTARD

Billy Graham thinks Jesse Helms was a terrific guy and John Fund of the WSJ compares him to Ronald Reagan.

Let me repeat: Jesse Helms - bigot, racist and foreign policy fool - is a solid member of the movement conservatives.

SPIN MACHINE ON OVERDRIVE

The NY Times has an article about McCain's inability to read a teleprompter and how his spin machine is trying to make this liability and asset. The spin is that because he makes so many mistakes like his promise to "veto beer," he comes across as authentic. Yeah, authentically a boob.

MATT YGLESIAS IS TOO NICE TO THE WINGNUTS

On the praise the rat bastard Jesse Helms is getting from major wingnuts, Matt writes:

But instead conservatives are taking a line that I might have regarded as an unfair smear just a week ago, and saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.

And if that's what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I'm happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen -- as best exemplified by bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies.

Matt, this is what movement conservatives support. If you listen to wingnut radio, you'll quickly learn that they are extremists and they love extremists like Helms.

THE GOP AT WORK

First, GOP senators block an attempt to prevent a 10% cut in Medicare payments. Medicare provides health care to many of the elderly, who are facing other cuts in services because of high gasoline prices. It's nice to see that the Democrats are pushing back on this issue:

Democrats hit GOP on support for Medicare cuts
Jul 5, 11:07 AM (ET)
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, accused Republicans of putting seniors and military families at risk by siding with President Bush against a measure to prevent Medicare cuts.

Durbin, D-Ill., used a Saturday national radio address to call on Republicans to back the bill to stave off a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.

It passed the House overwhelmingly last week in defiance of Bush's threat to veto it, but it fell just one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance in the Senate, with most Republicans voting "no."

"It's time for the Republican senators who are filibustering this measure to put our seniors and our military families ahead of private insurance companies and let the Senate pass this bill as soon as possible," Durbin said.

CONSERVATIVES LOVE RACIST BIGOTS

It's not just freakshows like Mark Levin, either! Ed Feulner, the president of the Heritage Foundation and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, both have fulsome praise for the rat bastard Jesse Helms.

A WAR CRIMINAL IN DENIAL

This time it's Condaleeza Rice, our Secretary of State. When she was National Security Advisor, she lied about Iraq and went along with the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal.

Condoleezza Rice Says She's `Proud' of Decision to Invade Iraq
By Janine Zacharia
July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she's ``proud'' of the U.S. decision to wage the Iraq war and insisted that the world is not more dangerous than it was when George W. Bush took office.

``We're now beginning to see that perhaps it's not so popular to be a suicide bomber. We're beginning to see that perhaps people are questioning whether Osama Bin Laden ought to really be the face of Islam,'' Rice, 53, said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television's ``Conversations with Judy Woodruff.''

``And I am proud of the decision of this administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein,'' said Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser at the time of the March 2003 invasion. As of yesterday, 4,107 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and more than 30,000 were wounded. She said the Iraq war has been ``tougher than any of us really dreamed.''

IT'S HARD TO BE A CONSERVATIVE...

especially when you have to defend a racist bigot like the late Jesse Helms. Mark Levin calls him "a Conservative Great" and that tells you all you need to know about Foamer Levin's lack of moral compass. Another NRO creep objects to the NYT obit, which correctly states that Helms opposed civil rights for blacks.

HOW DID THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT BEGIN?

I thought it was Roe v. Wade that marked the beginning but according to research by Randall Balmer, it was the attempt by the IRS to remove the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, a school that practiced strict segregation. (h/t Bfgrnnnn on AOL) NPR has an excerpt from his book:

Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.


"What caused the movement to surface," Weyrich reiterated,"was the federal government's moves against Christian schools." The IRS threat against segregated schools, he said, "enraged the Christian community." That, not abortion, according to Weyrich, was what galvanized politically conservative evangelicals into the Religious Right and goaded them into action. "It was not the other things," he said.

During the following break in the conference proceedings, I cornered Weyrich to make sure I had heard him correctly. He was adamant that, yes, the 1975 action by the IRS against Bob Jones University was responsible for the genesis of the Religious Right in the late 1970s.

AT IT AGAIN IN AFGHANISTAN

We seem to have made a habit of killing civilians in "the other war."

Aghan official says US strikes killed 22 civilians
Jul 4, 9:04 PM (ET)
By FISNIK ABRASHI

Nuristan's Gov. Tamim Nuristani said, however, 22 civilians were killed in the Waygal district of Nuristan province. "This afternoon (Friday), two civilian vehicles were hit by airstrikes," Nuristani said over the phone.

Among those killed were a woman and a child. All 22 dead bodies were brought to a provincial hospital, Nuristani said. Seven other people were wounded.

SPOT THE CONTRADICTION

From the AP's "Jesse Helms: a polarizer, not a compromiser"

THESIS:

As a television commentator before running for the Senate, Helms said, "Dr. (Martin Luther) King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior." He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."

ANTITHESIS:

"Senator Helms certainly was no bigot," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday. "He was a man however not into subtlety. You know what he thought about a particular issue. You certainly knew because he was not into the kind of nuance and subtlety that so often divides American politicians."

WILL THEY EVER "STAND UP"???

You may recall Bush saying that as the Iraqi forces stand up, we will stand down. You may even recall Gen. Petraeus writing that Iraqi security forces are making some progress. In reality, the Iraqi forces aren't very good even after years of training and billions of dollars spent.

A 'surge' unit sees change, but questions its permanence
By Sam Dagher Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 3, 2008 edition

On a recent house-to-house search in Adel by members of the 1/64, accompanying Iraqi soldiers seemed more interested in chatting and texting on their cellphones than the mission at hand.

"It's tiring. It has been five years. Now it's called knock-and-search instead of raids. A lot of the [Iraqi] soldiers do not want to do their jobs," grumbles Staff Sgt. Jose Benavides from Miami. "If the Americans leave, the sectarian violence will flare up."

COLMES VERSUS ROVE

Alan Colmes took on Karl Rove over the issue of Habeas Corpus for Guantanamo prisoners and Karl lost. John Amato at Crooks & Liars provides the video clip and a partial transcript of the exchange. On his radio show, Colmes mentioned a Supreme Court decision that ruled the 14th Amendment applies to persons, not just citizens, in territory under U.S. control. Open Left provides a link to the decision, Wick Yo v. Hopkins (1886), and this relevant excerpt:

The guarantees of protection contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution extend to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, without regard to differences of race, of color, or of nationality.

YES, POLICE CAN CATCH TERRORISTS

The wingnuts and McCain have argued that fighting terrorism isn't a police matter despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Here's a little more evidence:

Suspected terrorists arrested in Indonesia
Published: July 3, 2008 at 1:48 PM

JAKARTA, July 3 (UPI) -- Indonesian authorities say they have arrested nine suspected terrorists along with home-made bombs and other explosives. The suspects from South Sumatra have been taken by national police to Jakarta for further interrogation and efforts to determine their exact plans and connections, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Thursday. "We still do not know who they are and to what networks they belong because they were arrested only yesterday," said police spokesman Gen. Abubakar Nataprawira. In a Wednesday raid on a house in Palembang, police allegedly discovered and seized eight partly assembled bombs, 13 fully built-up bombs and 50 kilogram of explosive materials. The men allegedly first planned to attack foreign tourists on Sumatra Island. But they later decided to target Jakarta instead after realizing too many Indonesian lives could have been lost, Indonesian TV One quoted anti-terror police as saying.

YES, OBAMA WAS A LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR

I'm posting this now because I know that the wingnuts will keep lying about Obama's status at the University of Chicago Law School:

Statement Regarding Barack Obama

The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

WHY WON'T THIS GET MORE COVERAGE?

I know trashing the Constitution isn't as important to the Villagers as lying about a blow job but there are serious issues political issues that need debating.

Bush welcomes new US citizens on 4th of July
Jul 4, 1:36 PM (ET)
By PETE YOST

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - President Bush invoked the memory of Thomas Jefferson Friday in welcoming new U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony at Monticello...

Anti-war protesters shouted out calls for Bush's impeachment on nine occasions during Bush's brief remarks, and the president responded by saying he agrees that "we believe in free speech in the United States of America."

The 150 or so demonstrators, from a variety of groups opposing Bush's policies on the war in Iraq, also rallied along the path of the president's motorcade to Monticello.

The Raw Story has more on this:

At his AfterDowningStreet.org website, activist David Swanson explains why he and others "interrupted Bush at Monticello."

"When Bush opened his mouth to speak I shouted 'Defend the Constitution, Impeach Bush!'" Swanson writes. "I repeated that several times, as people nearby knocked me over, cops handcuffed me, people gave me smiles and thumbs up signs. They threw me out and a couple of more defenders of our Constitution behind me, and then a few more, and then a few more. The handcuffed citizens who'd done their duty kept coming down the hill. They did not arrest us but did give us a ride down the mountain where we joined a crowd of protesters in the road who greeted Bush's limo coming and going."

Here's a brief video:

MOVE OVER JERRY, JESSE'S COMING TO JOIN YOU

One of the major reactionaries of my time passed away and CNN let's us know that he didn't even like the Apostles:

Helms was known as "Senator No" for his staunch opposition to an array of liberal causes, including affirmative action, arts funding, gay rights and a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to socialism," Helms said in an editorial he wrote at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, according to The Associated Press.

"They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New Deals, and Fair Deals and New Frontiers and the Great Society."

THE DEAN FLUNKS AGAIN

This has been gnawing at me since I read David Broder's column "One Nation No More?" Broder seems to believe that political cohesion is genetic and thus makes another category mistake. This would not be so bad if the year were 1808 instead of 2008 but to make such an anachronistic observation should mean its time for him to stop writing. Here are the reactionary passages:

The takeoff point for the argument is an observation about the uniqueness of America that was made by Thomas Jefferson -- and by myriad other worthies in the centuries since. They all have drawn attention to the fact that the national identity of America, unlike that of other countries, rests "not on a common ethnicity, but on a set of ideas."

And so, the Bradley scholars say, "knowing what America stands for is not a genetic inheritance. It must be learned, both by the next generation and by those who come to this country. In this way, a nation founded on an idea is inherently fragile."

Knowing what any country stands for is NOT a genetic inheritance. It's all in the realm of politics, not biology.

"DEAN" BRODER DOESN'T GET IT

(h/t Atrios)

In an insipid column nominally about patriotism, David Broder refers to a study from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Broder worries about "whether America's national identity is eroding under the pressure of population diversity and educational slackness." By funding right-wing extremists, The Bradley Foundation itself has eroded America's identity.

As Matthew Yglesias noted, these extremists are the ones behind the criminal actions of the Bush regime:

...the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any number of legal commitments to refrain from torture.

A "WHAT IF?" ECONOMICS EXERCISE

Steven Greenhouse at TPM writes a piece anout economic inequality and provides this interesting observation:

Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary, found that were it not for this increased inequality the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be doing considerably better. If the distribution of income today were the same as in 1979, Summers said, assuming the same level of economic growth since then, income of the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be about $670 billion more a year--or about $8,000 per family. For many households in the bottom half, this would mean a welcome 20 to 30 percent increase in income, perhaps the boost needed to avoid foreclosure.

I think that would be a better America for everyone.

FEITH GETS AN OP-ED IN THE WSJ

Douglas Feith, one of the Iraq War criminals, has an op-ed that Booman takes apart and it reminded me of a fact I had forgotten about: Chalabi and the INC were known fuck-ups since 1995.

Coded Cable In 1995 Used Chalabi's Name
Intercepted Iranian Message Involved Plot to Kill Hussein
By Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01

Officials yesterday recounted an incident in early 1995 when Chalabi's name turned up in an encrypted Iranian cable reporting a purported CIA-backed plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein, then Iraq's president. The message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence and caused a major political stir in Washington.

The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein.

Shortly after the intercept, Chalabi's militia forces and Kurdish fighters went ahead with an attempted coup, launching a three-city strike against Hussein's troops. But the offensive quickly foundered.

The White House, having warned Chalabi not to proceed because Iraqi intelligence had learned of the operation, declined to provide air power to help him. Hussein's troops crushed the attackers, leaving the CIA angry that it had funded such a fiasco and infuriating top officials in the Clinton administration.

CRANKY OLD MAN CAN'T ANSWER

Why can't McCain answer this simple question: What about your military service qualifies you to be President?

(h/t Faiz at ThinkProgress)

McCain in Colombia
July 02, 2008 7:08 AM
ABC News' David Wright reports from Cartagena, Colombia.

McCain bristled at the comments on "Face the Nation" last weekend by an Obama supporter, retired general Wesley Clark, who belittled the relevance of McCain’s wartime experience as a qualification for the Presidency.

"I think it’s up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose," McCain said.

McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"Please," he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain’s wartime service as well.

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

$1.7 TRILLION HAS GONE "POOF!"

According to the Fed Reserves Flow of Funds Accounts, released on June 5 2008, American's net worth declined in the 1st quarter of 2008:

Household net worth—the difference between the value of assets and liabilities—was an estimated $56.0 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2008, $1.7 trillion dollars less than in the preceding quarter.

CNN Money puts some of this in perspective:

Americans $1.7 trillion poorer
Americans' net worth falls for the second straight quarter as home and stock prices decline, but it may not hurt consumer spending, experts say.

By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: June 5, 2008: 4:12 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Americans saw their net worth decline by $1.7 trillion in the first quarter - the biggest drop since 2002 - as declines in home values and the stock market ravaged their holdings.

Meanwhile, the amount of equity people have in their homes fell to 46.2%, the lowest level on record.

The first quarter's decline follows a $530 billion drop in wealth in the fourth quarter of 2007.

HERE'S WHERE FISA REALLY NEEDS AMENDING

There's a Catch-22 in the most recent court ruling about illegal wiretapping: the plaintiffs can't use the transcripts they were inadvertently provided. Without the transcripts, it will be very difficult to prove that they were in fact spied on and thus have standing to sue. THIS is a change that should be made.

As Glenn Greenwald puts it:

For procedural reasons, the court yesterday ruled that plaintiffs -- in order to obtain a ruling as to whether the Bush administration broke the law -- must be able to show that they were subject to warrantless surveillance without using the accidentally produced transcripts, something that will be very difficult to do. Congress has refused to pass legislation to fix this Kafkaesque, Catch-22 trap -- whereby the President illegally spies in total secrecy, with no oversight, thus preventing anyone from being able to prove they were subjected to the illegal spying and thus preventing anyone from having "standing" to challenge the legality of the spying in court.

THE HAPPINESS RANKINGS

I tried to convert this into an image file and the results were uniformly too small so here's a text version. You can get the original Word document here.

Subjective well-being rankings of 82 societies
(based on combined Happiness and Life Satisfaction scores)

Puerto Rico 4.67
Mexico 4.32
Denmark 4.24
Ireland 4.16
Iceland 4.15
Switzerland 4.00
N. Ireland 3.97
Colombia 3.94
Netherlands 3.86
Canada 3.76
Austria 3.69
El Salvador 3.67
Venezuela 3.58
Luxembourg 3.52
U.S. 3.47
Australia 3.46
New Zealand 3.39
Sweden 3.36
Nigeria 3.32
Norway 3.25
Belgium 3.23
Finland 3.23
Saudi Arabia 3.01
Singapore 3.00
Britain 2.92
W. Germany 2.67
France 2.61
Argentina 2.61
Vietnam 2.59
Chile 2.53
Philippines 2.32
Taiwan 2.25
Domin.Rep. 2.25
Brazil 2.23
Spain 2.13
Israel 2.08
Italy 2.06
E. Germany 2.02
Slovenia 2.02
Uruguay 2.02
Portugal 1.99
Japan 1.96
Czech Rep 1.94

S. Africa 1.86
Croatia 1.55
Greece 1.45
Peru 1.32
China 1.20
S. Korea 1.12

Iran 0.93

Poland 0.84
Turkey 0.84
Bosnia 0.82
Morocco .74
Uganda 0.67
Algeria 0.57
Bangladesh 0.54
Egypt 0.52
Hungary 0.41
Slovakia 0.40
Jordan 0.39


Estonia 0.24
Serbia 0.21
Tanzania 0.13
Azerbaijan 0.13
Montenegro 0.06
India 0.03
Lithuania -0.07
Macedonia -0.14
Pakistan -0.30
Latvia -0.70
Albania -0.86
Bulgaria -0.87
Belarus -0.92
Georgia -1.11
Romania -1.30
Moldova -1.63
Russia -1.75
Armenia -1.80
Ukraine -1.81
Zimbabwe -1.88
Indonesia -2.40
High-income countries are shown in bold face type. All 28 high-income countries (in bold type) rank high or medium-high on subjective well-being; and all 10 Latin American countries (in italics) except Peru also rank high or medium-high. All 25 ex-communist countries (names underlined) except Vietnam, Slovenia and Czech Republic are low or medium-low (the median ex-communist country has a negative score); and all ten ex-Soviet countries are Low (eight of the ten have negative scores).

OBAMA, FISA AND THE LAW

In HuffPo, Obama writes "The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court."

(He also had this posted on MyBarackObama.)

This was already the case and on Wednesday, a federal judge re-affirmed that (h/t Atrios):

Judge Rejects Bush’s View on Wiretaps
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 3, 2008
New York Times

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

The Justice Department has tried for more than two years to kill the lawsuit, saying any surveillance of the charity or other entities was a “state secret” and citing the president’s constitutional power as commander in chief to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court under the agency’s program.

But Judge Walker, who was appointed to the bench by former President George Bush, rejected those central claims in his 56-page ruling. He said the rules for surveillance were clearly established by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a warrant from a secret court.

“Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted,” the judge wrote. “Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.”

WE'RE NUMBER 1? - NOT SO MUCH, REALLY

The wingnuts go on and on about how America is the best country in the world and often imply that there's really no need for much change. On an individual level, I think this might come from an over-identification with America. The bitter wingnuts try to feel better about themselves by strongly identifying with the "greatest nation on Earth."

This makes any critcism perceived as not only an attack on America but on them.

It's turns out that on a wide range of measures, including health care, we aren't number 1. In a broad measure - happiness - we are 16th.

Denmark 'world's happiest nation'
Page last updated at 11:25 GMT, Thursday, 3 July 2008 12:25 UK
BBC

Denmark is the happiest country in the world, according to the latest World Values Survey published by the United States National Science Foundation.

The annual study surveyed people in 97 countries to discover who is happiest.

The survey asked people two simple questions about their happiness and their level of satisfaction with life.

Puerto Rico and Colombia completed the top three happiest nations.

The study was directed by University of Michigan professor Ronald Inglehart. He says that unlike other studies, which have focused on economic factors, his research has found that financial prosperity is not the only reason for happiness.

"Our research indicates prosperity is linked with happiness. It does contribute," he says, "but it is not the most important factor.

"Personal freedom is even more important, and it's freedom in all kinds of ways. Political freedom, like with democracy and freedom of choice."

Dr Inglehart says that gender equality is also an indicator of happiness, as is rising social tolerance. He says that both of these things have risen dramatically in recent years.

The world's wealthiest nation, the United States, was found to be the world's 16th happiest country, behind Switzerland, Canada and Sweden.

ANOTHER QUOTE TO REMEMBER

A. J. Strata writes on 7/2/2008:

The Surge and Awakening that hit Iraq last year (in the face of dour predictions from Democrats that Iraq was a failure, the Surge was a failure, etc) has succeeded, victory is at hand.

Minor correction: The Awakening started in 2006, not 2007.

WINGNUTS DON'T GET IT

Chris Satullo of the Philidelphia Inquirer writes about how conservatives have disgraced America:

Chris Satullo: A not-so-glorious Fourth
U.S. atrocities are unworthy of our heritage.
Posted on Tue, Jul. 1, 2008

This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.

For we have sinned.

We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.

The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.

The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.

The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.

Memeo has links of wingnut reaction and Sister Stupid has a standard wingnut reply:

Further proof that the self-loathing that comprises the far left doesn’t take
breaks, even for a holiday.

We don't have self-loathing, Sister, we loathe what you and people you support have done to our wonderful country.

WHY FATS GOT THE BIG BUCKS

(h/t Matt at ThinkProgress)

This pretty much explains it:

In truth, Limbaugh is less a theoretician than a popularizer of what he regards as the correct conservative responses to contemporary issues. Most of his concerns are economic. “I consider myself a defender of corporate America,” he told me.

EVIDENCE? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' EVIDENCE

One thread that runs through the several strands of American conservatism is the distrust of evidence. We can go from global warming denial to Intelligent Design Creationism to reports on the economy, past and present and what unites these positions is denial of empirical evidence. The prisoners at Guantanamo have also been subject to the cavalier attitude to facts and now a Federal court has rebuked the criminal Bush regime with a bit of real snark.

Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: July 1, 2008
NY Times

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Times also provides some excerpts from the judges' decision:

Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has “said it thrice” does not make an allegation true. See LEWIS CARROLL, THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK 3 (1876) (”I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”). In fact, we have no basis for concluding that there are independent sources for the documents’ thrice-made assertions.

Many of those assertions are made in identical language, suggesting that later documents may merely be citing earlier ones, and hence that all may ultimately derive from a single source. And as we have also noted, Parhat has made a credible argument that — at least for some of the assertions — the common source is the Chinese government, which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs.

Despite their claims to be afraid of Big Government, wingnuts have a scary belief that government can be trusted without question and that's the rationale Sen. Kit Bond offered in defense of the telcoms.

THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF TIME...

but McClatchy reports that the GOP Slime Machine is low on funds and isn't itching to attack Obama. You can be sure that Hannity & FAUX and to a lesser extent the Press will do what they can but maybe we won't see any swiftboating this time around.

Lack of money hobbling 'Republican attack machine'
By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008

...there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent $22 million attacking Democrat John Kerry. Prominent groups and donors that played key roles in independent conservative 527 groups four years ago say they're sitting out this election. And while they've raised more than they did at this point four years ago, the independent pro-Republican groups still lag more than $50 million behind pro-Democratic groups.

AND EXACTLY WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

(h/t Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars)

The Denver Post has a report on a truly massive spying operation by Americans on Americans.

Terror watch uses local eyes
Privacy advocates worry that officers' snooping will entangle innocent people.
By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for "suspicious activity" — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases.

It's a tactic intended to feed better data into terrorism early-warning systems and uncover intelligence that could help fight anti-U.S. forces. But the vague nature of the TLOs' mission, and their focus on reporting both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.

"Suspicious activity" is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.

Does believing that the Earth is only 6,000 years old count as "extremist"? If not, why not?

EXAMPLE:

Evidence of a Young Earth

#1 - Posted on 7/01/08 at 01:16 AM

Nelms1947


Christians need to watch or here this video, more so than others with little or no faith in God.
Most that go to a Bruce Malone seminar come away with a greater understanding of just how Young our Earth is, not some billion of years old as some would like for you to think;but possible as young as 6,000 and not much over 10,000 years old.....
Watch and here it all, it starts out some what boring from simple basic understanding but gets into evidence and facts of creation and so much more...

Astounding Evidence for a Young Earth by Bruce Malone. The PowerPoint file used in this seminar is also available and may be viewed online or downloaded for personal use

WE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF OURSELVES

First, we learn that we used a torture guide that described how the Red Chinese tortured people wrote when we interrogated terrorists. I know that many wingnuts are still rabidly anti-Communist so I wonder how they will react to this, IF they even learn of it.

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 2, 2008
NY Times

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Second, Christopher Hitchens voluntarily subjected himself to water-boarding. The title of his article gives the basic point but I'll include some of his observations here.

Believe Me, It’s Torture
by Christopher Hitchens August 2008
SALON.COM

You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me.

Hitchens decided to try again:

Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex.

He concludes:

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

UNCLE JIMBO IS STILL BITTER AND DERANGED

Over at BlackFive, he writes standard agit-prop smears:

...the concepts of Duty, Honor & Country are dirty words to the left/press.

Barack Obama believes America is evil and ruthless and needs the cleansing only he can lightwork.

BUT BACK TO MY POINT

In USA Today, Jonah Goldberg wrote

"Many progressives in the 1920s considered the American hinterlands a vast sea of yokels and boobs, incapable of grasping how much they needed what the activists were selling."

Well, they WERE yokels and boobs. In Tennessee, for example, it was against the law to teach Darwin's theory of evolution and that law wasn't repealed until 1967.

A LITTLE CENSORSHIP

I was trying to reply to some nonsense Jonah Goldberg wrote in USA Today, "Obama's real patriotism problem," and I quoted this line in my reply:

Many progressives in the 1920s considered the American hinterlands a vast sea of yokels and boobs, incapable of grasping how much they needed what the activists were selling.

This is the "error message" I received:

Comment not posted.
Your comment contains language not suitable for our site, such as "boobs". Our goal is to keep the discussions on USATODAY.com respectful and readable by a general audience. Please edit your comments and re-submit them. If you have any questions about our policies, please see our Terms of Service or send feedback to our editorial staff. Thank you.

ANOTHER McCAIN TEMPER STORY

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MISS) said McCain became violent with a Sandanista official 21 years on an official visit to Nicaraugua. Here's what McWAR had to say:

"Twenty-one years ago?" McCain answered with surprise, taking breaks between his sentences so a translator could help local journalists understand his remarks. "I think that information…it's just -- it's simply not true.

“Let me remind you, Sen. Dole and then Sen. Mitchell appointed two senators, Sen. Dodd and me, to be the co-chairs of the Central America Observer Group. This special group was appointed because of all of the issues that surrounded Central America at that time. I made many, many trips and had many, many meetings with the Sandinistas and with other legions -- leaders in Central America. There is nothing ever -- I must say I did not admire the Sandinistas very much. There was never anything of that nature, and so it just didn't happen."

Why doesn't the press give more attention to this character issue?

HAS FATS LIMBAUGH BEEN GOOD FOR CLEAR CHANNEL?

Clear Channel signed Fats to an 8 year extension for $400 million. Randi Rhodes just mentioned that when she worked for Clear Channel, her stock was worth $100/share and I was wondering how well the stock has been doing.

There hasn't been a stock split since 7/29/2008, so the results since then indicate what the markets thinks of Clear Channel and indirectly, Fats Limbaugh. Here's a graph from Yahoo:



Let's see how the market reacts to this news.

THE ROT AT THE HEART OF CONSERVATISM IN AMERICA

I've written before that Fats Limbaugh is very important voice for the wingnuts and in a story in the NYT Sunday Magazine, "Late-Period Limbaugh," I get confirmation not only from Fats himself -

For his part, Limbaugh sees himself as a thinker as well as showman. “I take the responsibility that comes with my show very seriously,” he told me. “I want to persuade people with ideas. I don’t walk around thinking about my power. But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement.”

but also from Karl rove:

“Rush is an intellectual-force multiplier,” Rove told me. “His listeners are, themselves, communicators.”

This gasbag represents the pretty much the best agit-prop the wingnuts have and it just isn't very good.

SHALE OIL IN COLORADO

There is an enormous amount of shale oil in the U.S. and Shell Oil company set up a demonstration project to test one way of extracting the oil. The Shell site doesn't seem to report how much energy and water is needed to extract the oil but I found a few other sources.

A CBS report, "Squeezing Oil From A Stone," mentioned mentioned that there were significant costs:

The technology requires a lot of electricity and a lot of water. Three barrels of water for every one barrel of oil that that comes out of the shale.

The Salt Lake Tribune provides a little more information:

Utah senators slam congressional oil-shale development moratorium
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/02/2008 10:09:47 AM MDT

Oil shale development requires huge amounts of water and electricity and emits tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas emission most responsible for global climate disruption.

The Utah Division of Water Resources has said Utah's share of the Colorado River could soon be fully allocated, so where the water would come from is unclear.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Southwest, there are several states that depend on drinking water from the Colorado river, so the development of shale oil will not be painless by any means. As it is, global warming may greatly reduce the amount of water available for any use.

THIS YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE...

but I really did hear this today. I was listening to Hannity's radio show and Barry Farber was the guest host. Somewhere between the 80 minuite mark and the 90 minute mark, Farber started talking about how the industrial democracies would only stand for so much when it came to the price of oil. He said that beyond a certain point, they would take military action to lower the price. What was especially amazing to me - and I'm almost quoting here - was this statement: "Hitler gave aggression a bad name." He said something similar about Stalin.

I sent Mediamatters an e-mail about this and maybe they will make a report.

GOOD FOR GEN. WESLEY CLARK, PART II

Despite the wingnut inspired uproar, Gen. Clark has not backed away from his perfectly reasonable statements about McCain's wartime experiences. I note that the McWAR campaign has held not one but two conference calls with reporters to attack Clark and I take that as a sign he realizes that Clark attacked one of his strengths.


Gen. Clark won't back off critique of McCain
Jul 1, 9:38 PM (ET)
By DAVID ESPO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Retired Gen. Wesley Clark rejected suggestions he apologize Tuesday for saying John McCain's medal-winning military service does not qualify him for the White House. Elaborating, Clark said a president must have judgment, not merely courage and character.

...Clark declined to back down in an interview Tuesday morning with ABC. "The experience that he had as a fighter pilot isn't the same as having been at the highest levels of the military and having to make ... life or death decisions about national, strategic issues," he said.

...in a National Public Radio interview, Clark was asked about his statements in 2004 that Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, had "heard the thump of enemy mortars. He's seen the flash of tracers" and could lead in a time of war.

"I think that you can always cite a candidate's service in the armed forces as a testimony to his character and his courage. But I don't think early service justifies moving away from looking at a candidate's judgment," he replied.

YOUR "LIBERAL MEDIA" AT WORK

Major news outlets have taken up the wingnut meme that Gen. Clark criticized Sen. McCain's wartime service. In fact, all Clark did was point out there's a disconnect between being shot down and being President. MediaMatters catches the Big Three nightly news programs, the Wapo and CNN and other outlets.

This is one of the worst cases of the news media acting as surrogates for Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

RADIO AGIT-PROP

The American Petroleum Institute and Freedom's Watch have both sponsored ads on local wingnut radio arguing for more drilling. In FW's case, it was combined with an attack on one of our local congressmen, Gabrielle Giffords, AZ-8. In 2006, she won a formerly GOP seat and I guess they want the seat back. The ad tries to blame her and the Democrats for the high price of gasoline.

TURNING A MEME AGAINST THEM

The GOP uses the meme that if something bad happens to America, it's good for the Democrats, at least electorally. This does conflict with their attempt to blame Democrats for high gasoline prices but contradictions don't really count in Wingnut World.

Anyway, how about we use that meme against Big Oil? It would go something like this: High oil prices are bad for America but good for Big Oil.

BTW, posting will be lighter today.