Dictionary.com "Word of the Day": Quagmire

You can't make this stuff up.

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Bush official who promoted abstinence and denounced condoms resigns -- after admitting he used "D.C. Madam's" escort service

In April of 2004, Kaiser Networks Daily AIDS/HIV Report noted that Randall Tobias, serving as the Bush Administration AIDS Czar, was promoting abstinence and denigrating condoms:

Tobias, who was in Berlin for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS' 2004 Awards for Business Excellence, said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are "far more effective" than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. "Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective," Tobias said, adding, "It's been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what's happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working." PEPFAR has been criticized by AIDS advocates for placing "false hopes" on abstinence and monogamy prevention programs, according to Agence France-Presse.

That outrageous view held by the Bush administration was widely criticized by thinking people.

Today, ABC News reported that the married Mr. Tobias resigned from his post as Deputy Secretary of State after admitting he was a customer of a DC escort service

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation. Tobias, 65, Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the Ambassador for the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

In a Ted Haggard-like admission, Tobias said he only got "massages."

Abstinence is for the little people, not the loyal Bushies. They don't have to practice what they preach. Read More......

Unusual charges against former U.S. prison chief in Iraq

Finally, an office in charge of prison operations in Iraq is being held accountable for his conduct in dealing with detainees. At long last, we are punishing someone who handles prisoners, after years of reported abuse and mismanagement. This is a vindication for those of us who --

Wait, what's that? This commander has been criminally indicted for being too nice to his prisoners? For allegedly "aiding the enemy" in the camp? Whoa.

The charges against LTC William Steele, who commanded Camp Cropper, which houses thousands of detainees and many high profile prisoners, are serious. They include: giving a cell phone to a detainee ("aiding the enemy"), possessing pornography, possessing and mishandling classified information, disobeying an order, and improperly fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee. Much of this sounds pretty bad, but I'm very skeptical, and it reeks of politics. Of those accusations, all except the first and last are charges that virtually anyone who has served in Iraq could conceivably be charged with. Rules on classified information are so byzantine that virtually everyone who deals with intel "breaks" them at some point, usually in a minor, irrelevant, and widely accepted way. Possessing pornography? For real?? We might as well arrest the entire military. Disobeying an order is a serious charge, but also one that's easily trumped up.

There are no specifics on the nature of the "improper fraternization", but it could be anything from really bad to overblown. As for the cell phone, it's to imagine legitimate scenarios in which a prison supervisor would give a cell phone to a detainee -- an an intelligence operation, as a reward, etc. It's much harder to imagine that a U.S. LTC would purposefully put himself and his men in danger by attempting to aid the detainees under his supervision.

He may, in fact, be guilty of these charges, and they may be more serious and significant than the vague accusations initially seem, but the whole thing is pretty weird. Especially after the James Yee debacle in Gauntanamo (long story short: Yee, a Muslim chaplain in Guantanamo, was charged with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order; every single charge was eventually dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to "mishandling" classified information -- see above for the reality on that -- and, wait for it, adultery).

And either way it's a joke to have the first serious prosecution of a (regular Army) prison supervisor be for aiding the enemy. The story bears watching. Read More......

YouTube suspends account of white supremacist video maker promoted by Concerned Women for America spokesman

YouTube has suspended the account of the white supremacist filmmaker whose work was promoted earlier this week by a spokesman for the Concerned Women for America. The racist film maker's works included such titles as "Black Intelligence," "Keep America White," and an ode to Hitler in honor of his birthday. Unfortunately, the Concerned Women for America continues to promote on its Web site a known "hate group" whose bigoted "'science' echoes Nazi Germany," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, America's foremost civil rights organization tracking hate groups. The Family Research Council and the American Family Association also promote the "echoes [of] Nazi Germany" science of the same hate group. Read More......

Pro-tolerance article gets teacher fired from school

What kind of country do we live in where teachers let high school kids write articles about tolerance in the school papers? Next thing you know, we're going to be teaching children about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yes, better our high school kids be writing essays about velvet dogs playing poker. Read More......

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 4/27/07

Another Week. More preposterousness to report.

Well, it's been a very enlightening week for me, as I have again become more erudite in the ways of the wily Republican. When one oberves them in their natural habitat of Washington--or at least their secondary one outside Attica--it is quite impossible not to come to a few general conclusions:

1) Being a Republican means blaming all of society's ills on liberalism, when most of them from IEDs to STDs can actually be be blamed on your political philosphy and/or Lucky Luciano-like personal life.

2) Being a Republican means having to get the Brinks Bonus Plan to protect your house and business from the inevitable raid the FBI will be conducting on your property in the next week (perhaps Reps Renzi and Doolittle can start a consulting firm to advise other "victims" of the media).

3) Being a Republican means the Big Pharma's your daddy, and ordinary people without healthcare are to be crushed like they're an unlucky varmint that has wandered into the path of Mitt The Destroyer (unless you're the world's most sought after terrorist, then Mitt's ready to swap theocracy tales).

4) Being a Republican means being so unbelievably stupid as to put your counterterrorism center in the only location to have been attacked by terrorists already, in one of the largest cities in the world with endless choices for your HQ, and then inevitably watching it end up like every one of your marriages or our health care system. Oh yeah, and then it means you have the gall to question the other side on terrorist-prevention.

5) Being a Republican means you actually take five-deferment, drunk-driving, war-profiteering, serially-lying, cholesterol-snorting, Gorgon Dick Cheney seriously, even though he's about as coherent these days as a lobotomized Dan Quayle.

6) Being a Republican means having a kickin' case of priapism (see ED commericals if clarification is necessary) for endless war and cronyism while anyone lacking Haliburton stock options or a sweet pad in Kennebunkport is the equivalent of a "historical document" on an impending attack to Condi, to be ignored at all costs.

I'm not sure how they'll continue to up the ante on crazy, but who knows, maybe necrophilia or preemptive war against family-planning clinics is in their future.

For more on this and other stories, go to cliffschecter.com. Read More......

Bush is feeling awfully desperate

He's at Camp David today. The presidential retreat. Bush HATES Camp David. Doesn't go there. He goes instead to Crawford. The only time Bush goes to Camp David is if he's forced to, and usually that means he's going to Camp David because it's where "presidents" go - i.e., if you want to look presidential, and you can't quite cut it by being presidential, you go to presidential-looking places, like Camp David. The man is pathetic. But at least we can see his hand, and it's a lousy one. He's desperate. One might even call it his last throes. Read More......

Economic growth weaker than expected. Weakest since 2003.

Bush keeps telling us that the economy is strong, but why would we believe anything he says? The latest economic growth numbers aren't good:

Weaker exports and a steady slide in spending on homebuilding helped slow U.S. economic growth to its softest pace in four years during the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported on Friday.

Gross domestic product or GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, increased at a weaker-than-expected 1.3 percent annual rate in the three months from January through March.

That was a little more than half the fourth quarter's 2.5 percent rate and well below the 1.8 percent rate that Wall Street analysts had forecast GDP would expand. The last quarter when growth was weaker was in the first three months of 2003, when GDP expanded at a 1.2 percent rate.

Growth has been slowing since late last year under the impact of a hard-hit housing sector where rising defaults are taking a toll on the subprime lending sector and causing builders to scale back until inventories of completed but unsold homes are reduced.

It doesn't sound encouraging. To figure out what this really means, I turned to Bonddad who explains:

This report is terrible. Growth slowed more than forecast and inflation increased more than expected and well beyond the Fed's comfort zone.

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Rudy Giuliani, "notorious adulterer," now wants to defend marriage

Rudy Giuliani, one of the most pro-gay politicians in America, is now pulling a Mitt Romney and trying to pretend that he's really not THAT pro-gay. You see, like John McCain and Mitt Romney before him, Giuliani is busy re-inventing himself for the Republican presidential primary - an event in which only Neanderthals pass the virtues test put forward by the extreme right that now controls the Republican party. So Giuliani, a staunch defender of gay rights, is now suddenly against civil unions for gays - even though he's been for them, forever.

Sorry, Rudy. You're an adulterer. You cheated on your wife - which wife was that? - blatantly, flagrantly, publicly. And now you want us to believe that you're the great defender of marriage. You don't get the right to defend other people's marriages when you can't defend your own. How serious a moral crime is adultery, Rudy? Well, since you're doing this flip-flop in order to curry favor with America's Taliban, let's check the Bible, the King James version, to be precise (it's the version my people use), and see what God has to say about adultery:

Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Hmmm... surely put to death - now, no one is suggesting that you and your lover need to be put to death, Rudy, but the Bible makes it pretty clear that adultery is a big no-no. The kind of no-no that disqualifies you from suddenly, a few years after that adultery, becoming the great moral defender of marriage.

Let me quote that Biblical passage again, Rudy, just to get it straight:

the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death

Yeah, no ambiguity there, Rudy.

In the secular world, I did a little Google search on "Giuliani" and "adultery." It turned up 125,000 results.



No ambiguity there, either.

You committed a moral crime that the Bible says is worthy of death. And now you want to turn around and sell yourself as the great purveyor of moral virtue in the very area, marriage, where you committed such a grievous offense.

It doesn't work that way, Rudy. You don't get to judge other people's marriages when you can't keep your own zipper zipped. You cheated on your wife, paraded your mistress in public, and now have the audacity to pass judgment on other people's affairs.

You're an adulterer, Rudy. You don't get that right. Read More......

Active duty Lt. Colonel blasts Bush & generals over Iraq

Read between the lines. The generals are responsible for letting Bush screw up the entire war effort. I've been writing this for years. Now we have active duty members saying the same. Bottom line: The author argues that Bush screwed up, and the generals didn't have the balls to call him on it. They sent their troops into battle unprepared and destined for failure.

From Armed Forces Journal (below are my titles, and then quotes from the article indented).

THE GENERALS REFUSED TO STAND UP TO BUSH

If the policymaker desires ends for which the means he provides are insufficient, the general is responsible for advising the statesman of this incongruence. The statesman must then scale back the ends of policy or mobilize popular passions to provide greater means. If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results....

THE GENERALS LIED TO THE THE PUBLIC

America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq.... America's generals did not provide Congress and the public with an accurate assessment of the conflict in Iraq....

After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

BUSH AND THE GENERALS DIDN'T SEND ENOUGH TROOPS TO IRAQ, AND THEY KNEW IT

The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq's population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America's generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.

Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle.

TYING UP SO MUCH OF OUR MILITARY IN IRAQ PUTS AMERICA AT RISK

Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations.

CONGRESS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE US (I.E., NOT BUSH)

We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress.

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Tell George Bush: Sign the bill. Bring our troops home.

Americans United for Change is running a new ad with a message for the George Bush: Sign the bill. Bring the troops home. Also, has one of the best lines in an recent ad: "It's the will of one nation....versus the stubbornness of one man." That's exactly what it is.
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Entire Senate Democratic Caucus rebut Broder's attack on Harry Reid

Yesterday, David Broder launched a bizarre, bitter, partisan attack on Harry Reid about which John wrote:

David Broder, like much of Washington journalism, and much of the country, fell for the Republicans' lies over the past six-plus years. Broder drank the Kool-Aid, kicked Lucy's football, and came running when George Bush cried "wolf." And now, rather than slinking away with a terminal case of professional humiliation, Broder is still fighting the last war. No, not the war in Iraq. George Bush's other war. The war against the truth.

Today, every single Democratic Senator signed a letter to the editor of the Washington Post rebutting Broder and praising their leader:

We, the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, contest the attack on Sen. Harry Reid's leadership by David S. Broder in his April 26 column, "The Democrats' Gonzales."

In contrast to Mr. Broder's insinuations, we believe Mr. Reid is an extraordinary leader who has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb.

The Democratic caucus is diverse, and Mr. Reid has worked tirelessly to make sure that the views of each member are heard and represented. No one ideology dominates the caucus, so that a consensus can be reached and unity achieved. It is hard to imagine a better model for leadership.

Because Mr. Reid has the support of members of the caucus, is a good listener and has an amazing ability to synthesize views and bring people together, the Senate has accomplished a great deal during his time as majority leader. Armed with his years of service in the Senate and with a mastery of procedure, Mr. Reid has led the chamber with a slim majority and a minority that is, at times, determined to stop legislation with which it disagrees.

In the first 100 days alone, we made great strides under his leadership on long-neglected legislation concerning stem cell research, the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations and the minimum wage, to name three. In addition, under Mr. Reid's leadership, we have fulfilled our obligation, left uncompleted by last year's Republican-led Senate, to fund the federal government. He has accomplished all of this in the face of stiff opposition and with a commitment to giving ideas full opportunity for debate.

Finally, in this age of scripted politicians speaking only to their base or claiming that they "don't recall" anything, the fact that Mr. Reid speaks his mind should be applauded, not derided. His brand of straight talk is honest, comes from the heart and speaks directly to the people.

THE MEMBERS

OF THE SENATE

DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS

Washington

This letter was signed by Sen. Reid's 50 colleagues in the caucus.

The Washington press corps hasn't heard straight talk for years. They've been lied to and spun by the Bush team for so long that they can't handle the truth. Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Long, productive week. Next week, Bush will veto the Iraq bill. Next week also marks four years since his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. Thanks, Think Progress for the photo. Read More......

Holland looks at big picture with biofuels

Glad to see some are being sensible about this important and serious issue.

More than a year in the making, the report reflects a heightened awareness of the risks and complexity in efforts to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.

Among the criteria in a draft obtained by The Associated Press: Production of biomass cannot contribute to deforestation, deplete reservoirs of carbon captured in the earth, compete with food crops, degrade soil or water supplies, upset biodiversity, or displace local populations,

The report is by the Cramer Commission, named for its former chairwoman, Jacqueline Cramer, who in February became environment minister.

Without going into specifics, it suggests developing a track-and-trace system to follow a product from plantation to power plant, like an express delivery package.

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China to assist FDA investigation into tainted food

OK, fine. Now the Republicans can stop hyperventilating over China and get back to focusing on the problems they created at the FDA. China has food safety issues, for sure, but by and large that is a problem that China needs to address. If they want to export food to other countries, their standards will have to improve though the US FDA should not make Americans guinea pigs for food testing from anywhere in the world, the US included. Other countries have banned specific products from China, just as many countries have banned US beef.

Let the Chamber of Commerce or other pro-business groups focus on business but that is not the mission of the FDA. This always boils down to the US FDA getting back to its mission of safeguarding the US food and drug system. At the moment, the FDA has a long way to go. Read More......

Shocking revelation - tainted pigs entered human food supply

Who didn't see this one coming? The FDA "was not sure" if the pigs had been sold and eaten by humans but just as they knew about the E. Coli spinach years ago, just as they knew about the peanut butter problems well before they went public, they probably knew about this as well. It's impossible to have any confidence at all with the FDA since decisions are made for political reasons instead of safety reasons. Let the GOP goons who created this monster be the food testers for the country and then let's see how fast the system changes.

Several hundred of the 6,000 hogs that may have eaten contaminated pet food are believed to have entered the food supply for humans, the government said Thursday. The potential risk to human health was said to be very low.

Let's see how much they downplay the human risk just as they downplayed the risk to pets. Remember, according to the FDA - even today - melamine is not supposed to cause health problems or death with pets so they're simply recycling the lines from the pet food scandal. I used to think that death might bring change to this GOP-run FDA but it's increasingly clear that death is just a speed bump for Republicans. As long as business moves, they just look the other way. Read More......