Neanderthals were cannibals

New research shows that when times got tough, cannibals would attempt to survive by eating their own.

Kind of like Republicans. Read the rest of this post...

Cell phone privacy bill expected to pass Congress this week

That's pretty cool. You'll recall this is the legislation that became news after we purchased Wesley Clark's phone records. Let's hope the Congress doesn't let anyone tack on any freebies for the telcoms, like they tried to do a few months ago - the telcoms tried to get language added to the bill that would make it impossible for you to sue them for just handing your private phone records to any Joe Blow who calls them. These would be the same phone companies who gladly helped the Bush administration illegally spy on you. As I said, let's hope there are some watchful eyes in Congress making sure that little amendment, nor any others, slip in at the last minute. Read the rest of this post...

The election is this Saturday in Louisiana's Second District. Jefferson has to go.

It's bad enough that William Jefferson has no ethics and somehow ended up with $90,000 in his freezer. He's taken to gay-baiting to defeat Karen Carter -- and, Jefferson is attacking her for positions he's already taken. The man really is disgusting:

Two of Jefferson's associates pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges; one, a Kentucky businessman, admitted paying more than $400,000 in bribes to a phony company headed by Jefferson's wife and family to obtain favors from the congressman.

Jefferson has denied any wrongdoing, and said he would explain his side in due course. So far he has not done that.

Jefferson, 59, has tried to soften voters' opinions of his legal troubles, invoking stories about how he has turned to God in these "difficult times." He has also cast Carter in attack ads as a socially liberal Democrat who supports same-sex marriages and late-term abortions.

Carter's spokeswoman, Cheron Brylski, said he had distorted her record and his own record of support for same-sex marriages and some forms of abortion.

For her part, Carter has hammered away at Jefferson, calling him a "hypocrite" and "unscrupulous" in a series of ads depicting children at a spelling bee who correctly spell the words used to denigrate Jefferson.

If Jefferson wins, we'll be following the drama around his indictment and whether or not he should leave Congress. He is in serious legal trouble. That will do wonders for the Democratic majority.

You can help Karen Carter here. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Buried with a donkey
He's my favorite honky.
Born in Arizona,
Moved to Babylonia.

Who am I? Read the rest of this post...

Something changed last week regarding Iraq

This past week marked a tremendous shift in the public perception of Iraq. A series of significant events combined to make it clear that the situation not only continues to worsen, but that even "serious" establishment types know it and are saying so very openly.

There were several influences, and just a quick recap, in no particular order: Leaks of the Iraq Study Group findings (suggesting a partial withdrawal may be recommended); Bush administration infighting and leaking, including the anti-Maliki memo and the Rumsfeld "we're not winning" memo; Iraqis burned alive; major media outlets (finally!) decide to call Iraq a 'Civil War'; Maliki stands Bush up at summit dinner; Sadrists withdraw from Iraqi government.

Individually, each of these elements is sobering, but together they created perhaps the most significant shift in public thought since Congressman Murtha called for withdrawal.

I have long thought (and written) that Iraq is slowly deteriorating, that the situation moves along a sliding scale rather than getting drastically better or worse from any one event. Recent events have moved the sliding scale towards "total anarchy" faster than usual, but they also had a huge effect on the dialogue in the U.S. A vast majority of the country wants to begin redeployment, and calls for withdrawal are no longer greeted with disdain from the pundit class. Additionally, the Bush administration is quite clearly in the middle of internecine bureaucratic warfare, and plans appear to range from stay the course to let loose the Shia to increasing troops.

So . . . what happens now? What will the President actually do in the face of establishment pressure to change? Based on past evidence, the answer appears likely to be: not very much. He has consistently said the only way to lose is to withdraw, which means, to him, staying equals winning. With Secretary Rumsfeld out, I'm not sure who other than Cheney shares that view, but if President Bush does, it's the only opinion that really matters. President Bush never again has to answer to voters, and he is the Commander in Chief. In terms of political pressures, he is nearly immune, and even within his party, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Senator McCain, advocates an increase in troops, which does nothing to push the President to do the right thing.

Perhaps other Republicans will impress upon him the strategic and political necessity of getting our forces out of Iraq. Perhaps Secretary Rice or (soon-to-be) Defense Secretary Gates will guide a return to sanity. On the other hand, I think it's just as likely, perhaps more so, that the influence of the Vice President will remain primary and/or that President Bush will ignore people who no longer matter to him politically or personally and keep at his disastrous war. Remember, this is a man who sees himself as a modern day Truman -- a president who was deeply unpopular but largely vindicated by history (by, I should note, setting up institutions and international relationships that eventually allowed his strategies to succeed -- the exact kind of things our current President not only neglects, but disdains).

President Bush has never shown that he is willing to change, so reality-based observers have a moral obligation to keep treating him accordingly. I strongly believe that when people act, they compel from society the logical response to that action, and the President's continued obstinacy demands opposition, not capitulation. He deserves not faith or trust, but, as he has earned, distrust and constant oversight. And patriotic Americans of both parties owe it to the country to keep the pressure on him. Read the rest of this post...

When did the Bible become "America's holiest book"?

Some very good questions from David Kuo, via the Huffington Post (Kuo was the guy who wrote the recent book about Bush's failed Faith-based Initiatives office):

So, a Muslim is coming to the United States House of Representatives and he wants to be sworn into office with his hand on a Koran and not on a Holy Bible. Some conservatives have decided this may well be the end of American civilization. One columnist writes, "He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization." Some people's election loss grief counseling isn't going well.

The writer, Dennis Prager, goes on to argue that this all comes down to "multicultural hubris." After all, "What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book."

So the Bible is America's holiest book? Was there a vote? Did Oprah decide? Was it Jefferson? And if so was it his version of the Bible? Does that mean it is true of every American citizen? Even Kevin Federline? And if it is true then America, with its indifference to the poor and lust for money and power, would be seriously backsliding and in need of spiritual counseling.

No, the BIble isn't Ameirca' holiest book. America doesn't have a holy book. It does have two holy documents, however. One is called the Constitution. The other is known as the Declaration of Independence. That's it. Book study finished.

Read the rest of this post...

US military lies about and covers-up yet another death of an American soldier

It's amazing that people who don't give a damn about our soldiers when they're alive would then mistreat them and their families when they're dead.

Republicans don't give a damn about our service members in harm's way. The Pentagon and the Bush administration over and over again keep abusing our soldiers, sending them into a war that's a joke and now a quagmire, not giving them the equipment and manpower they need, not giving them the services and support they need when they come back home, and then outright lying about their deaths and/or "heroic" feats in order to propagandize the American public into support Bush's Vietnam.

It's pathetic, disgusting, and un-American. It's how Republicans really feel about our military. Think that's harsh? Then consider who's been in charge of our military for the past 5 years - Republicans - and who's been complaining about the mistreatment of our servicemembers for five years - Democrats. Republicans have only themselves to blame - this is what they voted for, and this is what they got.

Lies. Read the rest of this post...

The Bully's Pulpit

From Krugman:

We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.

You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating....

Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?

No, I don't understand how the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Bush. I understand for Democrats how, during the first year, maybe two, after September 11, it was difficult publicly challenging Bush on foreign policy issues because of the 9/11 effect. But for the media? Come on. What price would the media have paid for doing their job? Not getting re-elected? I don't forgive much of anybody for not taking on Bush since 2003, when the 9/11 effect was starting to wane, but pre-03, the media had ample opportunity to do their job and tell the public the truth, and they didn't. Read the rest of this post...

US helicopter down in Iraq

UPDATE: 4 Marines are dead.

Good thing Bush is against a "graceful exit" in Iraq, because he isn't going to get one. Read the rest of this post...

Is the President not only losing Iraq, but losing his grip on reality?

Anyone who has watched George Bush over the past weeks must wonder if the President of the U.S. has any semblance of sanity left. Frank Rich, in that brilliant way that of his, asks and answers the question of whether our President is losing it. This is a serious piece and must be read. These are frightening times and our leader is delusional:

IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.

The most startling example was his insistence that Al Qaeda is primarily responsible for the country’s spiraling violence. Only a week before Mr. Bush said this, the American military spokesman on the scene, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, called Al Qaeda “extremely disorganized” in Iraq, adding that “I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level.” Military intelligence estimates that Al Qaeda makes up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq, according to Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News. The bottom line: America has a commander in chief who can’t even identify some 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than our involvement in World War II.

But that’s not the half of it. Mr. Bush relentlessly refers to Iraq’s “unity government” though it is not unified and can only nominally govern. (In Henry Kissinger’s accurate recent formulation, Iraq is not even a nation “in the historic sense.”) After that pseudo-government’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, brushed him off in Amman, the president nonetheless declared him “the right guy for Iraq” the morning after. This came only a day after The Times’s revelation of a secret memo by Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, judging Mr. Maliki either “ignorant of what is going on” in his own country or disingenuous or insufficiently capable of running a government. Not that it matters what Mr. Hadley writes when his boss is impervious to facts.

Bush is impervious to reality. Unforunately, he is still the leader of the United States. These are dangerous times and it's starting to feel like Bush is leading the nation of a cliff. Read the rest of this post...

White House finally accepts defeat on John Bolton

CNN is reporting that Bolton is toast. Finally.

AP confirms:

Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his recess appointment expires soon, the White House said Monday.

Bolton's nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans.

Read the rest of this post...

Another failed and expensive police training program under Bush

How is it possible to spend $1.1 billion of taxpayer money and cough up another failure like this? Only in the Bush administration can you string together so many failures at such great expense. Why not just give out another gold medal or important sounding award to someone because that seems to be the plan with this team?

Maybe the incoming Democrats in Congress can take a deeper look into the contractors such as DynCorp who are enjoying healthy contracts but showing limited results. With this administration it is always the same story of talking the talk, throwing out obscene amounts of money (often to well connected contractors) and just hoping it will all work out, somehow. Predictably the results always seem to be the same.

Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.

In fact, most police units had less than 50 percent of their authorized equipment on hand as of June, says the report, which was issued two weeks ago but is only now circulating among members of relevant Congressional committees.

In its most significant finding, the report said that no effective field training program had been established in Afghanistan, at least in part because of a slow, ineffectual start and understaffing.

Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

This will be an interesting week. The members of Iraq Study Group officially release their long awaited report on Wednesday. The consensus is growing for change. There is only one holdout and that would be the President. He's delusional. This is his war and he wants a victory. But no one knows what that means besides him. Our President is losing it.

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Read the rest of this post...

Typhoon kills at least 1000 in Philippines

Entire villages were swept away in mud slides after the typhoon and the death toll is likely to increase. This season has been brutal for the Philippines, with this most recent typhoon being the worst.

The storm destroyed 28,119 houses and damaged 91,430 in eight provinces, a government agency said. The typhoon affected 832,549 people and led to the evacuation of more than 44,000 in 12 provinces.

Read the rest of this post...

Our new 2007 Orchid Calendars

I just created a new 2007 calendar of my orchid photography for the AMERICAblog shop. Check it out. More coming. Read the rest of this post...