Plans to build several hydro-electric dams in Patagonia, one of the world’s most pristine wilderness frontiers, are meeting with both domestic and international resistance. If executed, the dams would result in the flooding of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat and transmission lines cutting across five national parks. Those lines — a 3,000 km chain — will carry energy to the north, marring picturesque landscapes in the process.

Though the project is moving ahead as planned, organizations like CODEFF, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the International Rivers Network and Patagonia are pressuring the Chilean government to halt development, using a variety of tactics in the process.

The least altruistic and therefore most convincing argument may be that marring Patagonia’s beauty will result in a substantial loss of tourism revenues, both present and future. In light of the alternative sources of energy available to the Chilean government, this monstrous project, estimated to cost over 4 billion dollars, is unnecessary at best.

Help protect one of the world’s last virgin territories by urging Chilean president Michelle Bachelet to do exactly that.

Send a letter to:
Your Excellency
Ms. Michelle Bachelet
Presidenta
República de Chile
Palacio de la Moneda
Santiago - Chile

Or if you’re the faxing type, send it to:
011-56-2-6904958

Or if you’re the online form letter type, follow this link.

A Chilean report on the effort (en espanol):

A minor flap Thursday and Friday is providing a window onto the kind of man John McCain is and the kind of President he would be.

On Thursday at a town hall event in Wisconsin, McCain said:

“I can tell you it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it is succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet.”

Never mind the fact that on that day there were three suicide bombings in and around Mosul. McCain was emphatically wrong when he said our troop numbers are down to “pre-surge levels.” There were 130,000 troops in Iraq before the surge. After scheduled troop reductions, there will be 140,000 left.

Now, this inaccuracy really isn’t a huge deal by itself. McCain may have simply got his numbers wrong - it’s easy enough to do. Or he may have misspoke. It’s the way the campaign has dealt with the resulting fallout that calls McCain’s character into question.

On May 15, a campaign was launched by the Christian Right called “We Get It.”  Endorsed by notables such as James Dobson, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, and Pat Boone, the campaign tries to convince us that it’s a bad idea to fight global warming by trying to control carbon emissions.  They claim that such measures are based on “unproven” science and that they would make life much more difficult for the world’s poor.

As I perused the “We Get It” website, I came across a list of supporting organizations.  I decided, just for fun, to see how long it would take for me to make a direct connect to a major oil company.  In less than three minutes, I had found two such connections:

1) One of the supporting groups is the Acton Institute, which receives regular donations from none other than ExxonMobil.

2) Another of the supporting groups is The Cornwall Alliance, which was founded by the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, which also receives funding from none other than ExxonMobil.

With some actual time spent researching, I wonder how many of the other backers of “We Get It” have ties to Big Oil? 

For years, certain business interests have been spending a lot of time and money trying to debunk global warming concerns.  This seems to be a new angle, though - and a rather offensive one to this Presbyterian pastor who knows a thing or two about poverty and the environment.  Their claims are absurd, and to make them sound like mandates from God is blasphemy. 

Global warming, with its rising sea levels, changing precipation patterns, and potentially more violent storms, will have a much more negative effect on the world’s poor people than any efforts to burn less fossil fuels ever could.  And as for the idea that people driving less and finding more renewable sources of energy will be worse for the poor - that’s just laugable.  What do the folks at “We Get It” think will happen when the oil starts running out? 

Any clergy person (or anybody, period) who signs onto “We Get It” clearly doesn’t “get it.”   For those who do ”get it” and who see this as the reprehensible manipulation that it is - we need to counter it with a steady barrage of facts and reality. 

Bob Dole has self-righteously denounced Scott McClellan as “a miserable creature.”  I don’t want to pay too much attention to this attempt to shift the focus from the Bush administration’s incompetence and malfeasance to the distracting inquiry into McClellan’s inner life, but it’s worth noting that Bob Dole did some pretty miserable things himself at a critical juncture in the nation’s history, using essentially the same tactics he is using now –smear the messenger.

In 1972, when the Washington Post broke the Watergate story, Dole was a first-term senator and chair of the RNC.  Dole was working to get Nixon re-elected and responded to the Post’s reporting by claiming Woodward and Bernstein were mudslingers helping McGovern’s campaign against Nixon.    Dole groundlessly charged that the Post was writing stories about Watergate because publisher Katharine Graham hated Nixon.  Dole later explained to Graham that “during a campaign they put these things in your hands, and you just read them.”

Nearly 40 years later, Dole is once again playing the familiar role of attack dog, happy to smear the messenger, now McClellan instead of the Post. 

Note: Bob Dole sank to perhaps even greater depths in 2004, when he questioned the legitimacy of John Kerry’s war wounds, suggesting Kerry “never bled”.  Yes, Bob Dole knows something about what it means to be miserable–doesn’t get much worse than falsely questioning the legitimacy of someone’s war wounds.

Q.) What does the curriculum include at a “School of the Americas”?

A.) Murder, torture and counter-insurgency tactics.

After being booted from Panama, Ft. Benning, GA became the home of the School of the Americas, later renamed the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation. Recruits from all over Latin America were sent to the School of the Americas to receive the sort of training deemed necessary in the era of Cold War paranoia. That included tactics that were later used to terrorize civilian populations in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Panama, among others.

Naturally, the school has its fair share of critics. Most notable is a group called the SOA (School of the Americas) Watch, which has been working hard to close the school for decades. In 2007 they came tantalizingly close; the McGovern/Lewis amendment to shut off funding for the school failed by just six votes. The SOA Watch persists, however, and was recently given cause to celebrate.

From their website:

the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding Defense Department policies suffered a severe blow today when the U.S. House of Representatives approved the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop (GA) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2009. The amendment forces the public release of names, rank, country of origin, courses and dates of attendance of WHINSEC’s graduates and instructors to the public.

Baby steps towards a more just Western hemisphere, but steps all the same. Click here to see how your representative voted (summary, nearly all Democrats voted for making the information public (217-8), and all Republicans against (181-3).

As the Council on Hemispheric Affairs said, the school is “a black eye,” and the sooner we close it the better off the world will be. The sooner Washington is in the hands of Democrats the sooner that can take place.

If elected, and if true to words uttered during his recent speech concerning American foreign policy on Latin America, Barack Obama will usher in a new era in US inter-hemispheric relations. It will be a long overdue step towards realizing the ideals the stars and stripes ostensibly represent.

Speaking before a Miami crowd, Obama admitted that “If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that at times we’ve failed to engage the people of the region with the respect owed to a partner.”

In truth, we have failed to engage the people of Latin America with even the respect owed to fellow human beings. From the rape and devastation of land and peoples by American corporations, to the training and funding of Latin American tyrants by our military, to the at times violent at times condescending but always opportunistic policies employed by our government, the history of US action in the region is a shameful aspect of the American legacy.

Since the end of the Cold War our actions have become less bellicose, but no more praiseworthy. From the New York Times:

There are several articles posted recently that discuss the Obama Electoral Map — What states need to fall into place for Obama to win small, or win big. All of the scenarios assume that Obama wins all of the states that Kerry won — and right now that seems likely, with only New Hampshire and Michigan in any way up for grabs. So lets take that assumption that Obama wins every Kerry state but not Ohio or Florida — what is the path? TPM Election Central has the critical states being Virginia and Colorado. If Obama does not win Ohio or Florida, then he can win by winning Virginia AND Colorado, or either of those states plus add Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada if he wins Virginia, and two of them if he wins Colorado. Missouri is viewed as a tough state but also could substitute for either state in this scenario. What I like about the TPM analysis is that is shows that Obama’s electoral map is different, not harder. And when you add the fact that he will probably keep all of the Kerry states, and considering the low approval numbers for Bush specifically and for the Republicans in general, other possibilities open up.

Over at Real Clear Politics, staunch Democrat Bob Beckel takes a very optimistic, yet still reasonable, view as to how Obama will win in a blowoutthis November, with a blowout being defined as a victory by more than 50 electoral votes. First he takes on those who believe that McCain has the electoral advantage:

The foundation of the McCain “blowout” scenario rests on the 286 electoral votes George Bush received in 2004. It assumes McCain would win New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota - all states won by John Kerry in 2004. I’ll concede the possibility of New Hampshire going red this year. John McCain has a unique relationship with the Granite State which has given him two sizable primary victories in 2000 and 2008. But, at best, McCain’s chances there are 51-49.

Beckel goes state-by-state to show just how different 2008 is from 2004, and how Obama is different from Kerry in attracting voters. his analysis of Ohio is especially interesting:

Ohio: In 2006, amid rampant Republican state corruption, Ohio elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic senator. Home foreclosures are equally as rampant and Ohio is bleeding good paying jobs daily. Ohio had a massive Democratic primary turnout, which is the strongest predictor of general election results. It has a large college population and 1.38 million blacks of which 300,000 are unregistered. Expect 225,000 new black voters in November. Over 600,000 Ohio residents have turned 18 since 2004. They are registering in record numbers and are overwhelmingly for Obama.

For a state Kerry lost by only 117,000 votes, I’d say Ohio leans strongly Obama in 2008. The RCP Average currently has Obama leading McCain in Ohio by 1.8%.

Beckel’s analysis of new voters in his state-by-state run-down is especially revealing.

Chris Cilizza, of the Washington Post’s The Fix, has one of his lists that he calls “The Friday Line.” In this one he orders states in terms of which ones are most likely to flip from the party they supported in 2004 to the one they will support in November, 2008. Of the 10 states listed, 6 went for Bush in 2004, and the top 4 are all potential flips from the GOP: Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Cilizza’s lists are often more Conventional Wisdom than deeper analysis, but it still shows that Obama is stronger out West than any Democratic candidate was expected to be.

So Obama has many potential pick-ups for his campaign. McCain is not expecting to hold all of the Bush states, with Iowa already expected to be conceded to Obama. McCain is looking to pick up Michigan and Pennsylvania, but with the economy in the state it is in, and with new voters favoring Obama, McCain will probably be playing defense as Obama plays offense in electoral calculus. And previous elections have taught us that it is always better to be on offense.

As has been discussed, the Bush administration is trying to dismiss Scott McClellan as a “disgruntled” ex-employee, rather than dealing with the substance of what he has to say.  The administration’s disgraceful, but not surprising, attempt to change the subject got me thinking about who else is fed up with the administration’s “permanent campaign” approach to governing, its decision to lead us into war in Iraq on the wings of a lie, its disgusting attempt to discredit a critic by exposing his wife’s identity as a CIA operative.  Here’s a partial list of people who I guess the Bush administration would write off as “disgruntled”:

• Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has rejected the Bush/McCain war in Iraq for three years
• Republican Rep. Walter Jones, who coined the term “freedom fries”, but changed his view and has also been opposing the Bush/McCain war for the past three years
• Former Reagan Justice Dept. official Bruce Fein, who voted for Bush in 2004, but was disgusted by the illegal warrantless spying program and became a critic of the administration
• Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to Bush I, a long-time critic of the Bush/McCain war
• Former Bush II Treasury Secy. Paul O’Neill, who condemns the administration’s secrecy and says, like McClellan and others, that Bush made up his mind right after 9/11 to attack Iraq
• Former counterrorism chief Richard Clarke who, like O’Neill and McClellan, says the administration was set on attacking Iraq, no matter what, and also says Bush ignored threats by Al Qaeda in 2001
• UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter (also a Marine and long-time Republican), who said before the Iraq war started that the case for war was bogus
• The majority of Democrats in Congress who voted against the Iraq war
• The 2/3 of Americans who oppose the Iraq war and think it was a mistake

Not all critics of the Bush administration are disgruntled, vengeful, or even liberal.  The broad array of Americans, right and left, Democrats and Republicans, who have had enough of this administration and its manufactured war in Iraq are far to many to be dismissed.  We will keep speaking up, and perhaps the media will hear us, if not the bubble-enveloped, hunkered down, bunkered in Bush administration.

As I remarked in a couple of posts last week, I often find attempts to limn Republican presidential wannabe John McCain’s motivations to be overly complex. Most notably was Matt Bai’s NYT Magazine piece that tried to somehow link McCain’s experience as a POW with his ridiculous embrace of Bush’s war in Iraq. My response was that there really is no complex worldview when it comes to McSame, no nuanced position on the use of American military might, and certainly no sense of honor bound duty to his fellow fighters.

Rather, McCain’s “positions”—if you can dignify his empty posturing as such—are the result of political expedience. John McCain, though touted as a maverick, just put his “Straight Talk Express” on what he thought was the straightest road to the White House—if he wanted the Republican nomination, he had to go along not just to get along, but to get the financing he needed, too. What motivates this third generation Navy man to embrace a “strategy” that continues to send his brothers and sisters to their needless deaths? Naked ambition, pure and simple.

Many who have crossed paths with McCain in the last few decades have observed as much, though some try to put in nicer terms. Now, writing in the New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick has given us more evidence of McCain’s lust for power. . . not to mention his penchant for hypocrisy.

Mr. McCain has often said he decided to run for office because he felt his war injuries would make attaining the same rank as his father and grandfather “impossible.” But Mr. Lehman, now an adviser to the McCain campaign, and two other top Navy officers familiar with Mr. McCain’s file insist that was not the case.

Instead, many who knew him say, Mr. McCain seemed bored by Navy life. “Sitting down with Anwar Sadat or Deng Xiaoping and being treated as an equal — that is pretty heady stuff,” said Rhett Dawson, a former aide to Mr. Tower who is now president of an electronics trade group. “It had opened his eyes to a much broader world.”

Mr. McCain was captivated, recalled Jeffrey Record, then an aide to former Senator Sam Nunn, the hawkish Georgia Democrat. “He thrives on competition, and he thrives on political combat,” Mr. Record said. “He saw the glamour of it. I think he really got smitten with the celebrity of power.”