Evolution foe doesn't know if the world is round or flat

This is the level of discourse, and intelligence, that mainstream conservative thought is offering America in 2007. Read the rest of this post...

Graham takes a trip to 2003

The obstruction of the Webb amendment is incredibly frustrating and sad. As a commented noted yesterday, "You don't support the troops if you don't give them adequate time home. You don't support families that way either."

Sadly, Republicans even understand that they're working against the will of the American people in service of Bush's misbegotten war . . . but they still seem to be just a little deluded. To wit, the last paragraph of the NYTimes story on the vote on Webb's amendment:

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who worked to defeat the Webb plan, said the Republican support for the war could have a political cost. "The Republicans own this war," he said. "If it goes bad, the nation loses and the Republican Party loses disproportionately compared to the Democratic Party."

If it goes bad? If it goes bad??

What exactly is it now, if not "bad"? Read the rest of this post...

Tiimmmbbbbbeeeeerrrrrr

The dollar is collapsing again, breaking an important support level against the euro and now equal to the Canadian dollar for the first time since 1976. Ouch. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator Larry Craig's toilet paper hits eBay

It's understandable why the Republican party is focusing the nation's attention on the imminent danger to our troops posed by newspaper ads. Just look at what the GOP wants you to forget.

Read the rest of this post...

If General Petraeus can't handle being called a name, how's he going to handle Al Qaeda?

By now everyone knows that our top general in Iraq, David Petraeus, has been personally devastated by an ad MoveOn published last week asking if Petraeus had "Betray[ed] Us" (a play on his name) by cooking the books on Iraq. (Petraeus has cooked the books before, most recently when he was in charge of training the still-non-existent Iraqi security forces and repeatedly lied about how well it was going, and got chewed out by Ambassador Negroponte as a result). To hear the Republicans talk (President Bush attacked MoveOn today in a press conference and the House and Senate Republicans want to pass legislation decrying MoveOn), Petraeus has been sitting in a tent in the desert crying his eyes out, unable to engage the enemy for an entire week.

Which leads me to ask a very serious and troubling question: If David Petraeus can't handle being called a name, how is he going to handle Al Qaeda?

PS The Senate just passed its legislation, with Hillary and the other Dem presidential contenders voting against it (hear hear) - well, that is, everyone except Obama, who voted for the Democratic alternative and then was a no-show for the vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing bill.



UPDATE: Obama has released a statement about why he didn't vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing amendment

"The focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements. This amendment was a stunt designed only to score cheap political points while what we should be doing is focusing on the deadly serious challenge we face in Iraq. It's precisely this kind of political game-playing that makes most Americans cynical about Washington's ability to solve America's problems. By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against this empty politics. I registered my views on the ad itself the day it appeared.

"All of us respect the service of General Petraeus and all of our brave men and women in uniform. The way to honor that service is to give them a mission that is responsible, not to vote on amendments like the Cornyn amendment while we continue to pursue the wrong policy in Iraq."

Read the rest of this post...

The psychology of the escalation

This is an interesting exploration of the lessons (and motivations) of the "surge" in Iraq by way of a classic econ experiment. The Econ 101 game is simple, the lessons readily apparent:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a "dollar auction." The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Although it's not quite the limited, objective, painless experiment of academia when lives -- thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- are the stakes. Spiraling disaster indeed. The author makes the comparison explicit with a further examination of how the war continues to develop:

America is long past the possibility of some kind of profitable outcome in Iraq. Neo-con dreams of a quick, cheap victory, delivering democracy and peace and self-financed from Iraq's own oil revenue, got us started on this misadventure. Like the students, the early bidding seemed like a fun adventure to the boys in the Bush administration. "Bring 'em on," the chief boy said about the other bidders. And like the economics class, suddenly we were in the thing up to our necks, with only bad choices available at an ever-escalating cost.

The administration's goal is keeping the electorate pacified and the game in motion. Emphasize the cost already paid and the further cost of throwing in the towel. Promise that the other side is showing signs of exhaustion — remember Dick Cheney and the few "dead-enders?" Like the man riding the tiger, Bush and company believe they are OK so long as they don't fall off. If the regular dollar auction is irrationality in action, U.S. politics make our Iraq policy irrationality on steroids.

A combination of willful ignorance, escalating costs, and no accountability to voters (or anyone else, it seems) have converged in the Bush administration's Iraq policy. It' really quite horrifying. Read the rest of this post...

Iraq return to local control delayed because Petraeus' security force training is behind schedule, again

Tell me again how well things are going. From AP:

In another sign of U.S. struggles in Iraq, the target date for putting Iraqi authorities in charge of security in all 18 provinces has slipped yet again, to at least July.

The delay, noted in a Pentagon report to Congress on progress and problems in Iraq, highlights the difficulties in developing Iraqi police forces and the slow pace of economic and political progress in some areas.

It is the second time this year the target date for completing what is known as “Provincial Iraqi Control” has been pushed back.

General Petraeus was in charge of training these police and security forces. And he lied about how well it was going, and got scolded by Ambassador Negroponte privately for his lies. Tell me again what a great guy Petraeus is, when he's the one who got us into this mess. Then again, the best way to get promoted in Bush-land is to be an abysmal failure. Read the rest of this post...

Giuliani brags to reporters that he's super-duper famous. Really.

From AP:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani bragged about his international celebrity Wednesday on a trans-Atlantic campaign trip in which he schmoozed with conservative idol Margaret Thatcher.

"I'm probably one of the four or five best known Americans in the world," Giuliani told a small group of reporters at a posh London hotel as onlookers gathered in the lobby to gawk at actor Dustin Hoffman who was on a separate visit.

You're famous because 3,000 people were murdered, you jerk. Read the rest of this post...

IT'S A MIRACLE!!! Iraq has SUDDENLY gotten MUCH BETTER in the past 24 hours!!! Praise Jesus, it's a freaking MIRACLE!!!

That headline is never going to get old. Well, the latest miracle in Iraq: Baghdad is now MUCH MUCH MUCH safer!

That's why land travel for US government employees has been banned everywhere in Iraq, including Baghdad (other than the Green Zone) - because Baghdad is now a LOT safer than it was when we COULD travel by land safely. That's also why George Bush couldn't visit Baghdad only two weeks ago - because it's a LOT safer than it was the last time he was ABLE to visit.

You can spin a lot of things. A dead body isn't one of them. Read the rest of this post...

Morning Open Thread

You know it's a weird day when I'm posting the morning open thread.

What does everybody need to know today? Read the rest of this post...

2 million Iraqi refugees - in Iraq

So this is the success that Bush and Petraeus were talking about? No wonder we're losing the war if the GOP is blind to such realities.

Nearly two million Iraqis have become refugees in their own land in the past year, redrawing the ethnic and sectarian map of Baghdad and other cities, a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent said yesterday.

In Baghdad alone, nearly a million people have fled their homes.

Last month saw the sharpest rise so far in the numbers of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes - 71.1%.

The forced migration raises questions about claims from the Bush administration that the civilian protection plan at the core of its war strategy is making Iraq safer for Iraqis.

Instead, data compiled by Red Crescent staff and volunteers in Iraq's 18 provinces suggests many Iraqis have failed to find real safety or sustainable living conditions after being forced to leave their homes. Some families have been uprooted twice or even three times in search of safety, affordable housing, functioning water and electricity, adequate schools, and jobs.

Read the rest of this post...

Self regulation fails again, Consumer Product Safety Commission requests funding

Listening to Mattel CEO Robert A. Eckert cry about his problems and the problems his company has inflicted on small children would almost be amusing if the problems were not so serious. While it's nice to see business think about consumers instead of their profits and luxurious compensation plans, the greed factor is why we are here in the first place. China deserves plenty of blame for selling tainted products but let's not kid ourselves and pile on China because the businesses who were purchasing this rubbish should have had quality systems in place and the government could have also shown a little interest in refusing tainted products. Even though this should have been in place - industry regulating itself, for example - it wasn't. Heavens, it might have added a few pennies to the cost.

Mattel has fired several manufacturers and is beginning to inspect toys before, during and after paint applications, Eckert said. He said he plans to visit China soon to check on the inspections. [Note from Chris - how nice that such programs are only now being reviewed.]

One of the agency's commissioners said "we are all to blame" for a system that allowed children to be exposed to lead-tainted toys. That includes "those who stood by and quietly acquiesced while the commission was being reduced to a weakened regulator," said Thomas H. Moore, in the first of two days of hearings before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

Moore thanked lawmakers for rejecting a Bush administration budget proposal that would have required cutting full-time staff by 19 people. He urged Congress to pass legislation that would give the agency better tools to protect consumers from product safety hazards.

Read the rest of this post...