Open thread

Any news? Read the rest of this post...

Massive privacy violation in NY state affects over half a million people

I'm not gonna say it. Read the rest of this post...

Religious right describes Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as man "who was born into a Jewish family"

And let me be the first to ask, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

As someone who isn't Jewish, but who since college has been on the receiving end of a good deal of anti-Semitism since a lot of folks think I'm Jewish, I like to think I've developed a bit of a sixth sense for identifying anti-Semitism. With that in mind, it's always troubled me how the religious right always seems to find a way to maneuver a nice Jewish-named Senator into far-too-many of their ongoing attacks on Democrats. It's almost as if they like having a nice big Jewish-sounding name in the mix in order to scare all the good Christians that the horned-people are coming to drink the blood of their children.

With that in mind, I was a bit troubled by the religious right's use of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as their foil in their latest "if you don't like me, then you hate all Christians" diatribe. It's bad enough they chose Schumer to be the Christian-hater, but then they describe him thusly:

Schumer, who was born into a Jewish family, chastised people of all faiths who opposed embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR), calling them "theocrats" and saying it is un-American to try and push their views on the issue.

Born into a Jewish family? Why did they feel obliged to mention that? We don't know that Schumer is a Jewish name? Or even if we didn't know, why do we need to know the guy is Jewish? Or are they trying to say that Schumer was BORN into a Jewish family, but he's not a REAL Jew?

It's not clear what the religious right is up to here, whether they're Jew-baiting or what, but it doesn't sound good.

Then again, anti-Semitism never does. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Well, I'm fortunate enough to be invited back to apartment-sit and cat-sit for Chris in Paris and his lovely wife while they're off on their own personal tour de France this August. I'm really looking forward to it - those of you who have been here a while may recall I got to cat/house-sit for Chris last August as well.



I'll be heading over on Wednesday and staying until just before Labor Day. As Chris has wi-fi, and Joe in DC would kill me if I didn't, I'll still be blogging over there every day, and will continue working on the final beta of AMERICAblog 2.0 - we hope to have the final site launched in a few weeks. This of course means that Friday Orchid Blogging may again turn into Friday Cat Blogging (they have two, Nasdaq and Sushi), and possibly even daily cat-blogging, provided the cats consent.



I also hope to try, perhaps, a bit of video blogging (and audio blogging) while there - I want to get the hang of the various software on my Mac, and at the same time find out if there's really any use for such new-fangled blogging methods - we shall find out.

I'd also like to plan a little coffee or drinks with the readers in Paris while I'm there, though I'm not sure how many we have (I only know of two, not counting Chris and his wife). So if anybody's in the area, let me know and maybe we can set something up as early as next week, to avoid the mad vacation rush.



A tout a l'heure.

JOHN

PS I know Paris is quite well-wired for free wi-fi, but is that just in coffee shops and stuff, or is there any outdoor free wi-fi, like in parks or anything? Anybody have suggestions for popular wi-fi hang-outs during the day or evening? I'll be staying in the 14th, but can obviously visit places other neighborhoods as well. (Might make an interesting video blog entry, wi-fi cafes in Paris - or not.) Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator Inhofe compares global warming science to Hitler propaganda

And this freak of a Republican Senator runs the Senate Environment Committee.

Global warming is considered a fact by pretty much every credible scientist. It's not longer even debatable. And I quote ABC News just a few weeks ago, commenting on George Bush saying that we don't know if Global Warming is manmade or not:

The President -- as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find -- is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -- as he also did a few weeks ago -- that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" ... well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society level."

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence -- gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world -- that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

And we've got the Republican in charge of the environment for all of the US Senate comparing this fact to Nazi propaganda.

Had enough of the Republicans? Read the rest of this post...

Zombie fact of the day: lefties won't talk about Israel/Lebanon

The meme that liberals are unserious about foreign policy is extraordinarily irritating to me, which is why I want to briefly address charges that the "liberal blogosphere" is reticent on recent international issues. Usually this charge comes from conservatives, though it's especially frustrating when made by self-appointed "responsible" Democrats, particularly when the blogs of those doing the accusing have criticisms of Israel that closely match postings on many liberal blogs.

The fact is that there is a vibrant and diverse debate on Israel/Lebanon on the left. Yes, some high-profile blogs have refrained from in-depth commentary, but they've largely acknowledged their reasons for doing so, including the fact that it's complicated. Some people find this explanation unpersuasive, but those who have cited complexity as a reason for avoiding the topic aren't saying that they're dumb, but rather that it's not their area of expertise. If high-profile bloggers wrote extensively on the issue without experience or background on the issue, I can only imagine the criticism that would rain down. But just because Kos and Drum and others don't want to write about it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of lefties trying to make sense of a difficult -- and yes, complex -- situation. Sure, it's an intense subject and tends to evoke passionate comments (something many conservative sites avoid by, y'know, not having comment sections) but that's part of exchanging ideas and having a debate. Further, many lefty bloggers focus primarily on domestic issues, and obviously the war in Iraq is a significant domestic issue. Who the hell expects sites mostly devoted to domestic political movement and organization to weigh in on the intricacies of the Levant?

But plenty of lefty/liberal blogs are weighing in, and with a variety of perspectives, including many supportive of Israel.

So please, let's dispense with the myth of liberal blogger silence and instead acknowledge that while much of the right views the latest conflict as an opportunity for the U.S. to go to war with more Middle East nations ("Iran: like Iraq but better!"), the left continues to be the more vibrant place for foreign policy discussion and thought. Read the rest of this post...

Still interfering with intelligence here, still getting bad results there

In my constant effort to find new and insightful information about Iraq, I recently stumbled across another journalist who clearly knows his stuff and is reporting on important issues. As I struggle to keep informed, I'm finding it's often easier to track specific reporters rather than general news outlets, so I've added Ken Silverstein to my list, and you should too.

Here's a discussion of how Bush administration officials continue to interfere with reality-based intelligence assessments of the situation in Iraq. I guess if you don't allow analysts to use the words "civil war" then it must not exist -- and when I was at DoD, I took part in meetings that devolved from discussions about the realities on the ground into fights over whether analysts would be "allowed" to use the phrase "civil war" in our analysis.

What do you call the situation in Iraq right now? asked one person familiar with the situation. The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters. Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.

One can see the results of this kind of brilliant approach by reading about Bayan Jabr, a profoundly bad guy who was until recently the head of Iraq's much-maligned Ministry of Interior and is now Finance Minister. The U.S. essentially has two broad avenues: we can either embrace the Shia groups in all their (deadly, militia-focused) glory and let them subdue the insurgency however they can and hope that it doesn't provoke an all-out war, or we can really push to have the militias disbanded and a responsible police force created. We can debate which is better, or more likely, or whatever, but right now we're kinda sorta doing both (or neither, depending on how you look at it), and the results speak for themselves.

Interviews and internal documents show that a number of senior CPA officials, as well as the local CIA station, became convinced that Jabr was unusually corrupt and thuggish, even by the dismal standards of postwar Iraq. [...] The story of Jabr's role in postwar Iraq reveals how American blindness, incompetence, and cynicism allowed religious sectarianism to thrive after the downfall of Saddam. Indeed, Jabr appears to be merely the most ruthless of a class of Shiite leaders who have sought to engineer Shiite dominance behind the scenes, at times with direct U.S. sponsorship.

Yikes. But at least Silverstein is reporting these issues, and reporting them right. Read the rest of this post...

At least buy me dinner first...

A new ad being run on AOL by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA). I'm not too sure I want to "roll over" to learn more about the man with an obsession for man-dog sex. (Click the image below to see a larger version.)



(Major kudos to reader Bill for catching this.) Read the rest of this post...

Bush undermining constitution according to ABA report

More confirmation that Bush is basically destroying the constitution and the rule of law:

The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed.

In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

The amazing thing is that Congress just sits back and lets this happen. Bush has emasculated the House and Senate -- and they've let him do it. Read the rest of this post...

Pakistan begins massive expansion of its nuclear weapons program

Add this to the list of growing crises Bush ignored for the past 6 years while hunting Moby Dick. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Here we go. Should be another wild week. Read the rest of this post...

"Surprise Visit" Foreign Policy

NBC News reports that Condi is on a "surprise visit" to Lebanon. It's very "dramatic." The Bush administration really gets off on these surprise visits. Makes great t.v. for them. How many "surprise visits" have we seen to Iraq? That strategy didn't exactly work there.... Read the rest of this post...

"Iraq as a political project is finished"

The neocon vision, which dragged everyone into their theory, is now officially dead. Iraq as we know it will cease to exist and the deadly experiment on the lives of others is concluding. Even the top ranking Iraqi government officials are publicly preparing everyone for the next step. Maybe now is a good time to begin dragging out all of the wingnuts who sold the US public on this and make them explain themselves in TV. In the old days we could have expected public apologies and people might resign in embarrassment but something tells me the arrogance of this lot would never dream of such a thing. It was all so easy when they were selling the war but where are they today to accept the realities on the ground?

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Independent in an interview, before joining Mr Maliki to fly to London and then Washington, that in theory the government should be able to solve the crisis because Shia, Kurd and Sunni were elected members of it.

But he painted a picture of a deeply divided administration in which senior Sunni members praised anti-government insurgents as "the heroic resistance".

Read the rest of this post...

Gas prices over $3/gallon in US

Just in time for peak vacation season. Over here we're well over $5/gallon.

I'm suddenly having flashbacks to a vacation a few years ago when I filled the tank of a borrowed Citroen (XM Turbo) that guzzled like I have never seen guzzling before. It was 120 euro to fill the tank and on the autoroute the beast would inhale so quickly that I could watch the tank dial drain as I hit the gas pedal. Ugh. The next year I opted to borrow the a/c free windup-toy Fiat Uno that was a bargain at 38 euro per tank and a longer range between fillups. It barely makes it to the speed limit (130K/hr) but it's a great bargain at the pump. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

I really think Iraq may shock the hell out of everyone come this November, in terms of just how massive an impact it could have on the election. As in, massive Democratic victory in both houses. I could be wrong, but something is brewing with the public, they're finally fed up, and Iraq is going to be a disaster from now until election day. And with Bush and Cheney trying to force Congress to run on Iraq, the daily carnage is going to force Republicans to run from the issue, and run from Bush, which is going to cause even more of a mess.

Again, anything can happen. But I think things are going to get very messy for the GOP in the next 3 months. Read the rest of this post...