Kick Ass Democracy

"Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"
— George W. Bush, during a White House videoconference call, April 6, 2004

Gotta love the hypocrisy of the Shrub's "vision" of democracy. Americans were going to force democracy down the throats of Middle Eastern countries, like Iraq and Iran, and if they didn't like it, Americans were going to "kill them" and "wipe them out" rather than accept that there could be multiple points of view that (gasp) might be voted on to see what the people there wanted.

The Stupid

Lexington is an anonymous columnist writing opinion pieces about the American economy and politics for The Economist. (There are similar, anonymous columnists for Britain and Europe.) This week's column, Ship of Fools, is interesting for what it says about the Republican party: they're brain dead. Not that this is a surprise to those of us on the left, but, considering that Lexington is a Republican (it's obvious from his/her writings), I wasn't expecting him/her to dare speak the truth. (Likewise, read the comments to see much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Lexington by the "faithful.") Some excerpts:

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head.” He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favorite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasized entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals.” McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives — particularly lower-income ones — are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honor.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans,” with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s.

...

Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride.”

...

Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

New York Times Interview with James Galbraith

The New York Times Magazine has a very short interview with James Galbraith, whom I've done several posts about in recent weeks. The interview is interesting for Galbraith's comments on the subject of economics and on several prominent people in the Bush administration, Dick Cheney in particular. BTW, one might be tempted to brand Galbraith's answers as "pithy" as well after reading this interview, but the notes at the bottom of the page mention that Galbraith's answers were "condensed." (And, if you read his recent interview with Bill Moyers, you'd know that this isn't the case.) The entire interview can be read here.

Do you find it odd that so few economists foresaw the current credit disaster? Some did. The person with the most serious claim for seeing it coming is Dean Baker, the Washington economist. I saw it coming in general terms.

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis? Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science? It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

You’re referring to the Washington-based conservative philosophy that rejects government regulation in favor of free-market worship? Reagan’s economists worshiped the market, but Bush didn’t worship the market. Bush simply turned over regulatory authority to his friends. It enabled all the shady operators and card sharks in the system to come to dominate how we finance.

...

What do you think the future holds for Vice President Cheney? I suspect that Cheney will spend much of his life fending off legal challenges, but that is a different area. I’m quite sure that the human rights issues will follow him for the rest of his life.

Any thoughts on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who engineered the bailout? He is clearly not a superman. This is the guy who had the financial crisis on his plate for a year, and when it finally became so pervasive that he couldn’t handle it on a case-by-case basis, the best he could do was send Congress a bill that was three pages long.

What’s wrong with that? Maybe he’s pithy. It shows he wasn’t adequately prepared. The bill did not contain protections for the public that Congress had to put in.

Regulation is the new mantra, and even Alan Greenspan in his mea culpa before Congress seemed to regret he hadn’t used more of it. I would say a day late and a dollar short. Greenspan blotted his copybook disastrously with his support of deregulated finance. This is a follower of Ayn Rand, an old Objectivist. His belief was you can’t really regulate and discipline the market and you shouldn’t try. I think Greenspan bears a high, high degree of responsibility for what has happened.

James Galbraith: Goodbye, Conservatives. Hello, Predators.

A very interesting article in Slate's The Big Money about the so-called "conservative" wing of the Republican party. Galbraith's thesis, in fact, is that the Republican party is beholden to a predatory class of politicians (who, IMO, aren't necessarily neocons) that practice crony capitalism. Galbraith's conclusion is that the presidential election really hinges on a single issue: Do Americans want a continuation of the predator state, or is it time to clean the government out?

Below is the meat of the article:

Real conservatives know that neither Bush nor McCain is one of them. Bush is a bread-and-circuses reactionary with a clientele of lobbies. McCain gets his economic ideas from Phil Gramm, the ultimate architect of the Enron culture, of libertine speculation and financial disaster. As for Sarah Palin, back in Alaska she took every dime of pork she could lay her hands on. This crowd deregulates and privatizes not because they think it might work out for the public but because they know it won't. What they care about is putting their friends in charge.

Under Bush, oil and gas, drug companies and defense contractors, insurers and usurers, banks and big media control the government of the United States. John McCain was a key member of the Keating Five and a lynchpin of the savings-and-loan debacle; then, as chair of the Senate commerce committee, he presided over Lobby Central; notoriously, his campaign is run by lobbyists to this day and until last week his policy could be summed up in slogans: he was a "free market" man, a "deregulator." Sarah Palin is an interesting case. What was she known for in Wasilla and Juneau? For trying to fire any public servant, from the town librarian to the state commissioner of public safety, who didn't toe her line. Bush and McCain are the predator state writ large, and she is the predator state writ small.

The predator state has no public purpose. Apart from a few empty slogans-smaller government, balance the budget, feel your pain-the connection between actual problems and actual policies has disappeared. It has become clear that, if the Republicans had their way, this election would not be about issues. It would be about anything else: personalities, associations, the politics of fear, and the life history of a long-ago prisoner of war.

But fate blew McCain's cover. On the morning that Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch fell, John McCain spoke the immortal words of Herbert Hoover: "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." He said it twice. It's a phrase with deep resonance in American politics. People understand it. No politician says "the fundamentals are strong" unless they know that they are not.

The Dow Jones average fell 504 points that day. As stocks crashed, suddenly people remembered that modern markets cannot exist without a cop on the beat. Every important market out there, from fresh food and safe drugs to autos and air travel to housing and health care, depends on government to maintain trust, and without it, none of them would survive. Without regulation, predators take over, and when they do, trust eventually collapses. Every important market is in peril now, precisely because of the predators in power these past eight years. And none more immediately than finance.

The Bush-Paulson bailout exposed the predator state in detail. Deregulation and desupervision were the origin of this crisis: the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealing Glass-Steagall, and the Gramm-authored loophole legitimating credit default swaps in 2000. Bush's financial regulators brought chainsaws to press conferences, a clear signal to sub-prime hustlers that "anything goes." "Liar's loans," "neutron loans" and "toxic waste" became financial terms of art. When the crash came, Paulson and Bernanke were plainly not up to the job. The original three-page Treasury bill was less a power grab than a punt; it said to Congress: "there's nobody home over here."

The crisis forces McCain back to issues and exposed the emptiness of his campaign. He resorted to theatrics, "suspending" his campaign to fly to Washington to "work" on a bailout bill, only to demonstrate that his leadership charms were lost on Republican members of the House. At the White House summit he had nothing to say. Later he attacked the morals and ethics of Wall Street, but backed a bill that was aimed to protect the stock prices of the Wall Street firms, while imposing no new discipline and doing nothing to stop the foreclosures. And when it came time to actually cast his vote, he couldn't be bothered even to speak from the Senate floor.

It seems unlikely that John McCain, the regulation-wrecker, will become, overnight, the man who would turn vice to virtue on Wall Street. But even suppose he were serious. Who would trust him? No one with money on the line.

This is McCain's deeper problem. If he is elected, under his leadership, trust cannot be restored. No one with his philosophy or record can do that. Restoring trust requires a government of trustworthy people. Team McCain doesn't have any, and some, especially Gramm, inspire the opposite. It wouldn't matter what their policies were or pretended to be. Nothing they attempted would work.

The Democrats did not do well in the crisis; they were conflicted, divided, unsure of their ground, and they got rolled on many details. Yet they nevertheless broke through politically; Nancy Pelosi's stinging speech last Monday was a rare statement of plain truth. And so the choice in this election is well-defined. One party believes that the government serves no public purpose. The other believes that it must. One party has turned the government over to lobbies, to cronies and to big donors. The other is beginning to realize that a real government must be rebuilt. One party would keep the same crowd in office; the other would have to begin by clearing them out. No one can say there is no difference between the parties this year, and the basic issue in this election is really just as simple as that.

Want a Job? Vote for a Democrat!

A couple of interesting posts on unemployment today, the first being from Spencer at Angry Bear:

So much for Sarah Palin's claim that Republican tax cuts create jobs. In the post WW II era every Democratic President has left office with a lower unemployment rate than they inherited from their predecessor while only one Republican president left office with a lower unemployment rate than they inherited. That was Ronald Reagan, but his first term still holds the record for the highest average unemployment rate of any post - WW II four year Presidential term.

George Bush inherited a 3.9% unemployment rate and the results of all his tax cuts has been a rise in the unemployment rate to 6.1%, so far. By contrast Bill Clinton inherited a 7.4% unemployment rate and with his prudent fiscal policy left Bush a 3.9% unemployment rate.

Leave it to Team Bush to be the only American President to throw a war that failed to stimulate the economy.

Another scary graph comes from Economist's View:

A grim morning: Double plus ungood news on multiple fronts this morning. The credit crunch is getting worse: LIBOR jumped again, the TED spread is at a new record. Bad news on employment: payrolls down 159,000, average work week down, official unemployment rate flat at 6.1 percent but broad measure (U6) up from 10.7 to 11.

We are going over the edge.

The track record: This chart shows U6, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (No data available before 1994.)

Obama on Islam

I'm a little surprised none of the other Muslim blogs I read picked up on this yesterday. This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria with Barack Obama on foreign policy issues. Comments below the excerpt.

ZAKARIA: But how do you view the problem within Islam? As somebody who saw it in Indonesia ... the largest Muslim country in the world?

OBAMA: Well, it was interesting. When I lived in Indonesia -- this would be '67, '68, late '60s, early '70s -- Indonesia was never the same culture as the Arab Middle East. The brand of Islam was always different.

But around the world, there was no -- there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions like rule of law.

And now in Indonesia, you see some of those extremist elements. And what's interesting is, you can see some correlation between the economic crash during the Asian financial crisis, where about a third of Indonesia's GDP was wiped out, and the acceleration of these Islamic extremist forces.

It isn't to say that there is a direct correlation, but what is absolutely true is that there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there's bottom-up economic growth.

You know, the way we have to approach, I think, this problem of Islamic extremism ... is we have to hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively.

But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse.

And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together result in us not only being less effective in hunting down and isolating terrorists, but also in alienating what need to be our long-term allies on a whole host of issues.

There are some good points and one bad point about this excerpt. First, the bad point:

The reason why I read this interview in the first place was because CNN had placed a banner on TV saying Obama "linked Islam to economics." As you can see in the article, Obama tries to tie Islamic militancy in Indonesia with the 1997 Asian financial crisis. But neither Obama's math (over two years, the Indonesian GDP fell by only 15%, not the "about a third" Obama claims) nor his timeline really fits the data. Basically, I feel that Obama's trying to tie militancy with poverty. The problem is, that theory is outdated. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed's book, Who Speaks for Islam? point out that politics, not poverty or piety, is what drives Muslim extremists. This point isn't new; Esposito and Mogahed released a report that brought this point up back in November 2006. So I think Obama needs to be a little more careful in trying to understand the root causes of the problem. Economic solutions may not be the best solution when the problem is political in nature.

Obama gets it right when he said, "there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions like rule of law."

I also agree with Obama when he said, "there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there's bottom-up economic growth." Bottom-up economic growth is always important, whether it's a Muslim country like Indonesia or the United States. But economic growth needs to be pursued not for the sake of preventing Muslim extremists, who tend to be better off economically than moderate Muslims (according to Esposito and Mogahed), but for the sake of improving standards of living globally.

Likewise, when Obama said, "And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse." Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen until Americans become more mature in learning how to interact with the Muslim world.

Finally, I was very pleased when Obama said, "And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together..." Unfortunately, many prominent Republicans, such as George Bush and John McCain, have shown over the years that they are essentially clueless to vital nuances, such as the difference between a Sunni Muslim and a Shia Muslim or between an Arab and a Persian. It's refreshing to see a politician who has a clue about foreign policy for a change.

Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused by His Disastrous Presidency

HT: Crooks & Liars

Update: How Much Oil Does America Import?

Currently, my most popular blog post by far is How Much Oil Does America Import?, written back in May 2006, two years ago. I thought it was time to update the figures and see how the U.S. is doing since I first wrote that post.

The U.S. gets its oil from two sources: either it pumps its own oil, called "Field Production" by the Department of Energy, or it imports oil from other countries around the world. In 2000, American commercial field production made up 38.69% of the total supply of crude oil, while imports made up 60.28%. In 2005, when I wrote the last post, those same percentages were 33.67% and 65.84%, respectively. (These numbers are different from what I wrote back in 2006 as adjustments have been made to the official statistics; these types of revisions are normal for economic statistics.) In 2007 (the most recent year), the percentages were 33.72% and 66.19%, respectively. While there has been an extremely slight increase in the amount of oil pumped domestically (0.05%), imports have also increased as well. (The reason why both numbers can increase is because a third number, "supply adjustments," fell.)

In 2007, the U.S. imported a total of 3,656,170 thousand barrels. Of those 3.66 billion barrles, the U.S. imported from a total of 46 different countries. The top 5 importing countries were: Canada (18.61%), Saudi Arabia (14.50%), Mexico (14.07%), Venezuela (11.48%), and Nigeria (10.80%), for a total of 69.47% of all American imports. In contrast, imports from countries six through ten (Angola, Iraq, Algeria, Ecuador, and Kuwait) made up only 17.95% of the total; countries 11 through 46 made up the remaining 12.58%.

Looking at petroleum imports in two other ways...

In 2007, imports from OPEC countries* made up 53.85% of all U.S. imports, compared to the 46.15% from non-OPEC countries. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. Since 1993, when the Energy Information Agency (EIA) started breaking out the statistics, non-OPEC countries have been the dominant exporters ten years out of the past fifteen. The year 2007 was the first time since 2001 that OPEC countries had sold more petroleum to the U.S. than non-OPEC countries.

With respect to the Persian Gulf, those countries** only made up 21.19% of the total imports. This is down slightly, one-half percent, from my 2006 analysis. Note that the U.S. imports no oil from Iran.

Conclusions/Predictions:
Two years ago, I made four points as to how I thought things would go with respect to American oil imports and consumption. We'll look at how good or bad those predictions were:

1. American field production will probably go below 25% of its total annual supply within the next five years.

I think we can write this prediction off; I don't foresee this happening within the next three years (or perhaps even the next ten).

2. In that same time frame, imports will probably be in the high 50s percentage (perhaps 58-59%).

On the other hand, I think this prediction is very much a lock at this time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this number goes back up again, remaining in the 60-65% range.

3. America will continue to seek the majority of its oil from non-OPEC countries, such as Canada and Mexico, if only to avoid being as dependent on OPEC countries as they have been in the past. However, this will probably turn out to be a pipe dream in the long run unless Canadian oil reserve estimates turn out to be near the high end. (Estimates for Canada's proven oil reserves ranges from 4.7 billion barrels (World Oil) to 14.803 billion barrels (BP Statistical Review) to 178.792 billion barrels (Oil & Gas Journal). Obviously, this extremely wide range of guesses shows that no one truly knows how much oil Canada has.)

Since I wrote this, I've gotten a better understanding with respect to Canada's oil reserves. The problem with the Canadian oil sands is that it is made up of a very dense and viscous type of petroleum called bitumen. Bitumen is like molasses at room temperature, and needs heating just to flow. (The tar that we pave roads with is bitumen.) Oil refineries are set up to process certain types of crude oils, and bitumen is normally not one of them. So, while Canada has a lot of proved oil reserves, most of it is not in the form the refineries need to produce products like gasoline. In this respect, the lower reserve amount mentioned above is probably closer to the amount of crude oil Canada actually has. In time, more refineries may convert to take advantage of the Canadian oil sands, but that will probably be a gradual process.

4. Persian Gulf oil, which has ranged between 19.81% and 28.56% of all U.S. imports since 1996, will probably continue to hover in the high teens-low 20s, despite President Bush's goal to cut American consumption of Middle Eastern oil by 75% by 2025, per the latest State of the Union address.

I don't see this forecast changing at all. What President Bush said in 2006 about cutting the amount of Middle Eastern oil America consumes was complete and utter bullshit (and shame on you if you believed him). BTW, shame on you again if you believe either McCain or Cheney that drilling for oil offshore or up in Alaska will make a significant difference. Two reasons: "drop in the bucket" and "long-term projects," neither of which will lower your gas prices. I may post on this in the near future, insha'allah, but in the meantime I recommend that you read John McCain's Oil Scam over at Informed Comment (Juan Cole), and Drilling Our Way to... by Menzie Chinn over at Econbrowser.


References:
US Crude Oil Supply and Disposition (DoE)
US Crude Oil Imports by Country of Origin (DoE)

Notes:
* OPEC countries include Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Venezuela.
** Persian Gulf countries include Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. However, Iran and Qatar export no oil to the U.S.

Kevin James, Moron

This guy, Kevin James, appears to be one of the dimmest of the dimbulbs that support the Bush administration. Truly amazing stupidity. And they asked him to be on TV??? This guy's a lawyer? Yeah, right! The following was taken from Wikipedia:

"You don't know anything. You don't know what you are talking about.”
— Chris Matthews to Kevin James

On May 15, 2008, James appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, debating with Mark Green of Air America Radio to discuss remarks made by George W. Bush's speech to the Israeli Knesset in which the president drew a comparison between Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in World War II with Barack Obama's expressed willingness to meet with leaders of U.S. adversaries.

After James vigorously supported Bush's comparison, Chris Matthews asked James for a "history check", asking James "What exactly did Chamberlain do wrong?" Frustrated by what Matthews perceived as James' inability to demonstrate any knowledge of the period, Matthews went on to repeat the question a total of 28 times. Finally with James' admittance of "I don't know," Matthews accused James of being a "blank slate" who didn't know anything about history. Matthews ended by telling James "When you are going to make a direct historical reference, get it straight," and then likened James to White House spokesman Dana Perino, who in an appearance on NPR's radio program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me admitted she had had no idea what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.

HT: TBogg

Update: Crooks & Liars has a rough, partial transcript of the video:

Chris: I want to do a little history check on you—what did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in 1939? What did he do wrong?

Kevin: It all goes back to appeasement. It’s the key term.

Chris: No, what did he do, tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s the key term.

Chris: You have to answer this question. What did he do?

Kevin: It’s the same thing, it puts it all…

Chris: Well tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s appeasement.

Chris: What did Chamberlain do wrong..

Kevin: His actions, his actions enabled, energized, legitimized

Chris: What did Chamberlain do?

Kevin: It’s the exact same thing.

Chris: No stop, Kevin. I’m not going to continue with this interview unless you answer what that thing is. What did Chamberlain do in ‘39, tell me? ‘38?

Kevin: Chris, it’s the exact same thing alright?

Chris: What did he do? What did he do!

Kevin: '38, '39 Chris what year do you want?

Chris: What did he do? I want you to answer, what did Chamberlain?

Kevin: He’s talking, He’s talking about appeasement.

Chris: What did Chamberlain do, just tell me what he did, Kevin? What did Chamberlain do that you didn’t like?

Kevin: What, what Chamberlain did? What, what, the President was talking about, you just said the President was talking about Barack. Look…

Chris: You’re making a reference to the days before our involvement in WWII. When the war in Europe began. I want you to tell me as an expert, what did Chamberlain do wrong.

Kevin: You’re not going to box me in here, Chris. President Bush was making that. I’m glad, I’m glad.

Chris: You don’t know, do you? You don’t know what Neville Chamberlain did

Kevin: Yeah, he was an appeaser, Chris….

Chris: You are BS’ing me… You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Tennessee's Finest

After watching this video, it sorta makes me say to myself, "Thank God I wasn't raised in Tennessee," ya know? Parochialism at its "finest."

A)I don’t want a man that’s going to use the Koran to be sworn in as President instead of the Bible.”

Q) Where did you get this information that Barack Obama wanted to be sworn in on the Koran?

A) From one of our Church members that’s keeping up with what his comments are and you know he wouldn’t even do the Pledge of Allegiance. He refused.

HT: Crooks & Liars

Lapdogs of the Corporate Press

Hysterically funny. Would it be possible to deport all of these people onto some deserted island in the Pacific?

Operation Change for the Better

"From the United States government and Halliburton, working together to round up every cent you have."

Juan Cole on the Iraq War, Chretien, Bush and Afghanistan

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has an important post today that bears repeating. The first half of the post reads:

Whoever is responsible for this disgusting travesty is an automatic candidate for Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World." My guess is that the trail will lead back to Donald "its not a guerrilla war" Rumsfeld and Richard Bruce "most prominent traitor in American history" Cheney. Gregg Zoroya of USA Today reports that 20,000 US troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered brain injuries were never classified as wounded by the Pentagon and are not included in the official statistics for the wounded issued by the Department of Defense. Although some of the under-reporting of this condition could be inadvertent, the scale of it strongly suggests an underlying policy.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says that it was among the great victories in his life that he stood against US pressure to join in the Iraq War.

Uh, the purpose of a wise and mature US foreign policy is to avoid close allies ending up speaking like that. Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead. Leaders who threw in with Bush, like Aznar of Spain and Berlusconi of Italy, have been ushered off the political stage by enraged publics. As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.

Among the biggest irritants in NATO countries against the US now is the mission in Afghanistan, which seems both open-ended and ultimately fruitless. Canada did not dodge that bullet, and has lost dozens of soldiers there, though you would not know it from reading US newspapers. On Friday, Pushtun guerrillas killed an Australian soldier in Uruzgan province (Mulla Omar's birthplace), and others killed 3 civilians, attacked a police checkpoint and killed 7 officers and kidnapped 6 others. (What is the mission? If the mission is to get Pushtuns to stop worrying about Islam and start welcoming foreign troops in their country, I wouldn't hold my breath).

"Bad, Democracy! Down, boy, down!"

Truly, verily, the Party of Hate and Cowardice™ is filled with the mentally insane. Consider the following essay written by one Philip Atkinson, writing for the Family Security Foundation, which sponsors a wingnut Islamophobic website called Family Security Matters. Mr. Atkinson espouses the nuclear annihilation of the Iraqi people and the dictatorship ("President-for-Life") of George Bush. I'm only a little surprised that this essay was pulled from the FSM website - (What's the matter, guys? Can't walk the talk? No courage of your convictions?) - although not before Google made a copy for its cache. (Ain't technology wonderful?' ;) ) More on this at Digby, Free Democracy, Ether Zone (essay by Justin Raimondo) and Dirt Rhodes Scholar. My comments below are in blue, and I've emphasized certain portions of the essay in bold.

Exclusive: Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
Philip Atkinson
The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
August 3, 2007

While democratic government is better than dictatorships and theocracies, it has its pitfalls. FSM Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson describes some of the difficulties facing President Bush today.


President George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005 after being chosen by the majority of citizens in America to be president.

Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.

The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

"Kill 'em all; let God sort 'em out?" Is that what you're trying to say? Bush's "demands" had no basis in reality in the first place but, "dammit, you're gonna give me that there oil or I'm gonna kill you all!"

The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation's powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

Or you can use diplomacy and try to live in peace with your neighbors, but I guess you've never thought of that. Guess who said: "We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace."

As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.

Oh, dear! Bush is a "victim" of Democracy. I guess he'll have to give up his Presidency; after all, it was "Democracy" that gave him the job in the first place.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.

"They hate us for our freedoms!" So we'll give them democracy in the middle east; after all, You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box..

However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.

When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.

Actually, Caesar was proconsul at the time, the provincial governor of Gaul, not consul.

Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.

Ended the personal threat to Caesar? You seem to forget that he was assassinated shortly thereafter. And the Roman civil war raged on for another fourteen years...

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege [sic] while terrifying American enemies.

C'mon, folks! Move to Iraq. It's just like Arizona. Don't worry about the heat...it's a dry heat!

He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

Hmmm, too bad Caesar forgot to take seriously the fortune-teller's warning of "Beware the Ides of March!" The Romans of that era didn't take too kindly to permanent dictatorships.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Is that crack you're smokin'? Or were you just born that way?

Update: I came across the following at Crimes and Corruption of the New World Order:

Meanwhile, the blogger Gonzo Muckraker got in touch with Philip Atkinson by e-mail, and their exchange demostrates [sic] all too well that the author’s delusions are sincere. When GM first writes Atkinson, he replies:

The article…was aimed at finding a defence [sic] against the awful threat of anonymous nuclear attacks upon the USA. A solution must be found to this catastrophic probability if humanity is not to be plunged into a dreadful dark age, and if that solution is to slaughter whole nations, then it must be better than allowing the destruction of humanity.

Paradoxical, yes? A second exchange results in Atkinson, advocate of genocide, accusing GM of being a “madman” and a “beast.”

What separates humanity from beasts is the ability to recognise right from wrong independently of our feelings: by use of a moral code. You tell me what moral code you use to understand right from wrong or stand condemned as just another madman.

But isn’t Atkinson a right-wing nutcase who represents no one but himself? To the contrary, he is listed as “FSM Contributing Editor” on the original version of the article. Links are given to seven other articles he has written for FSM, and his personal biography. However, since the controversy has erupted, all trace of him has disappeared from the FSM website. Such a rapid and complete scrubbing looks like the work of someone with a guilty conscience, does it not?

They hate us for our...?

...human brains? Damn f***ing zombies! Wait! There's one now in the Rose Garden!


http://view.break.com/345028 - Watch more free videos

Third World America and the Boogying of the President

I'm not a terribly big fan of American Idol (although Milady is), but as we watched the "results show" last night, I was struck by one scene. Idol judge Randy Jackson had gone home to New Orleans to visit with some of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and, here, 600+ days after the tragedy, people are still homeless, living in trailer camps set up by FEMA amid the drugs and violence. In fact, what American Idol didn't mention is that officials in New Orleans are still recovering bodies and expect to find more corpses because some houses there have yet to be touched.

In all this time.

And I turned to Milady last night and said, "Only a third world country isn't able to recover after a natural disaster after two years."

In other news, President Bush gets down, gets funky at the White House:

But Does Cheney Know?

My impression of George Bush has gone up just the tiniest fraction (not that that's saying much):

At a farewell reception at Blair House for the retiring chief of protocol, Don Ensenat, who was President Bush's Yale roommate, the president shook hands with Washington Life Magazine's Soroush Shehabi. "I'm the grandson of one of the late Shah's ministers," said Soroush, "and I simply want to say one U.S. bomb on Iran and the regime we all despise will remain in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians will become radicalized."

"I know," President Bush answered.

"But does Vice President Cheney know?" asked Soroush.

President Bush chuckled and walked away.

(Source; hat tip)

Bush's Crusade

There's an interesting guest post over at Jesus' General that argues that President Bush's various references to religion regarding the so-called "war on terror" indicates a semi-conscious but real belief in Bush's mind that America is actually waging a war on Islam (not that that's any real surprise to most Muslims, I'm sure). An excerpt:

So if terrorism isn’t a real target in this war, nor is the ideology behind those who engage in terrorism, what’s left? Apparently, Islam and Muslims are what’s left — after all, non-Muslim terrorists aren’t pursued with the same zeal and rhetoric as the administration and its Christian supporters use against Muslims. Perhaps the more extreme versions of Islam and their Muslim practitioners will always be primary focus, but Islam as a whole and Muslims in general seem to be the principle targets of the Republican Party’s self-fulfilling War on Terror.

Given how much prejudice there is in America towards Muslims, and how much support has been expressed for imposing a subordinate standard of civil rights on Muslims, this doesn’t seem like an entirely implausible option. I’m sure that there are other possibilities, but given the facts on the ground it would be difficult to successfully argue for them.

The religion of those targeted by the Bush administration is not the only issue — the religion of those pursuing their war of aggression is an important factor as well. For many Americans, religion is political and politics is religious. They recognize no valid distinction between True Patriotism and True Religion, between the best political policies for America and the only valid religion for all human beings. Because of this, religious language will necessarily creep into political discourse — preventing it would require erecting a wall between religious theology and political ideology which simply cannot exist for them.

Theological beliefs structure, inform, and determine the course of political decision-making which can be difficult for more secularly-minded people to fully comprehend (even those who are themselves religious on a personal level). Thus any discussion of the War on Terror will necessarily include references to religion and religious terminology — not simply because religion is a motivating factor, but because these people cannot think in categories and concepts that are not religious in nature. Enemies are demonic, not simply mistaken or misguided. Wars are crusades because rather than having merely political causes, they are part of God’s agenda for humanity.

When Bush speaks about the War on Terror as a “Crusade,” he may be doing so because he really is targeting Islam and because he simply can’t avoid religious terminology. It appears, then, that we are being given a glimpse into the true workings of such people’s minds and we should not dismiss such evidence as irrelevant, unimportant, or “much ado about nothing.”

Juan Cole on the Misnomer of "Islamic Fascism"

Juan Cole, whom you should read if you don't already, has been on a roll since the crisis in Lebanon began. His latest post, Bush, Islamic Fascism and the Christians of Jounieh, has a very good passage about how Bush's reference to "Islamic fascism" is both incorrect and offensive. First, some background:

Bush is on vacation, his favorite place to be during a major crisis. The August retreat is the only open admission he makes that Cheney and Rumsfeld are actually running the country, and he just doesn't need to be in his office. The only difference between his stonewalling of Lebanon and the way he let New Orleans drown is that he has put away the banjo this summer, at least in public view. He had someone tie a necktie on him and stopped manically clearing brush for long enough to come out with Condi and hold a press conference. He lied, saying that no one wants to see the violence continue. He wants to see the violence continue. Otherwise he would insist on a ceasefire. You see, if you don't have a ceasefire, the violence continues. If you oppose a ceasefire, you are saying you want the violence to continue. He does.

Then he tried to explain the war in Lebanon by saying this,

'They try to spread their jihadist message -- a message I call, it's totalitarian in nature -- Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, they try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom.'

...

...[T]here are other problems with what Bush said. He contrasted "Islamic fascism" to "democracy," presumably a reference to the Lebanese Hizbullah.

This point is incorrect and offensive for many reasons.

It is a misuse of the word "Islamic." "Islamic" has to do with the ideals and achievements of the Muslims and the Muslim religion. Thus, we speak of Islamic art. We speak of Islamic ethics.

There can be Muslim fascists, just as there can be Christian fascists (and were, in Spain, Italy and Germany, and parts of Central and South America; the Spanish fascists and the Argentinian ones, e.g., were adopted by the United States government as close allies.)

But there cannot be "Islamic" fascists, because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism.

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself.

Another excellent post by Dr. Cole is One Ring to Rule Them All, in which he speculates that the US-Israeli war on Lebanon is merely phase I of a larger strategy to deprive Asian economies (China and India in particular) of access to middle eastern oil in favor of the American economy:

Destroy Lebanon, and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.

This one little paragraph is only a tiny bit of the larger argument; I suggest you read the entire post. (The whole post has created 81 comments to date - some of which have their own excellent analyses - which is about 3-4 times the number that Dr. Cole normally receives on any given post that he writes.)

It's the End of the World as We Know It...

And I feel fine.

Milady and I had a good laugh over the following Daily Show clip on the apocalypse (run time: 5:15):



This clip made me wonder, the American news industry has been stupid for a long time, sure, but just how completely retarded has it gotten since I left home? Then again, when I read about what's going on at the White House...

Asked what "types of people" have offered the White House advice on the Middle East, [White House Press Secretary Tony] Snow said, "Again, at this point, I really don't want to do it." Asked if "religious leaders" have been part of these meetings, Snow said, "Again, I'm just not going to go any further."

Why all the secrecy? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that White House recently invited a Christian apocalyptic fiction writer to chat about biblical prophecy.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin spoke with Joel C. Rosenberg — who recently told CNN that the rapture may be near and it'd be a good idea for people to start taking care of unfinished business — who explained that he was invited last year to "speak to a 'couple dozen' White House aides in the Old Executive Office Building — and has stayed in touch with several of them since."

And who is Joel Rosenberg?

Rosenberg — like Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the authors of the phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series — writes fiction inspired by biblical prophecy about the apocalypse. The consistent theme is that certain current events presage the end times, the Rapture, and the return of Jesus Christ. Rosenberg's particular pitch to journalists is that his books come true. ...

Rosenberg told Froomkin that a White House staffer contacted him and said, "A lot of people over here [in the White House] are reading your novels, and they're intrigued that these things keep on happening…. Your novels keep foreshadowing actual coming events…. And so we're curious, how are you doing it? What's the secret? Why don't you come over and walk us through the story behind these novels?"

So, why should I be surprised that this particular administration has an interest in the apocalypse? After all, there's little understanding at the very top about certain critical distinctions. You know, like the evil "Moozlems" are all the same, right?

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq...

Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith reported that he and an (unnamed) Iraqi American "...spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam — to which the President allegedly responded, 'I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!'"

Now I know where the news industry's getting their cue from.