tingilinde

energy and election year politics

I finally listened to Obama's energy speech and tried to sort things out. The pressure of November and the success McCain is having with off-shore drilling have forced some changes.

Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to deal with a long term issue like oil prices is dumb. There will be short term depression of prices, but the SPR is finite and the recognition the holiday is coming to an end combined with the need to refill the SPR to handle real disasters is just foolish.

Likewise off-shore drilling will not have a significant impact for a decade and it will amount to only a few percent of oil production worldwide. Any impact on prices will be tiny if world supplies remain constrained. I think Obama is bright enough to realize there is no such animal as an isolated US market, but the rhetoric doesn't so it (same for McCain).

Energy independence is possible with electricity (although not in the decade Gore wants), but not for oil. The US imports 12 million barrels a day (and increasing) - the few millions from Alaska and off-shore are not enough. First generation biofuels aren't enough and second generation probably aren't either - plus they won't be ready. One can use oil shales and I was unhappy to see shale mentioned in the speech.

Even with tax credits for cars won't change the fleet quickly - that will take a couple of decades.

There are no real specifics, no real vision and a hodgepodge of quick fixes for the short term to keep voters and some of the special interests happy.

He could have done much better.

A voice that moves is needed. I once had hopes his might be the one, but now he is worried about November and is an pander mode.

But - his is much better than the McCain energy train wreck.

___

Bob Herbert comments on the short term low hanging fruit ... a common theme here

sorting out drilling strategies

Why aren't the oil companies drilling where they have permission and why are they asking for new areas?

Its economics ...

In this week's Science Friday Ira Flatow interviews Robert Kaufman, Director of BU's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.

worth listening to

pushing a car centric lifestyle

Some people have large vehicles and long commutes. A few are moving to sleeping in their vehicles (a SUV or truck has lots of room for sleeping) for portions of the week. If you have a 60 mile plus commute each way there aren't many alternatives other than to cut the number of commutes.

I was just exchanging email with someone in the Bay Area who is 72 miles from his job. He drives a Ford Expedition and his wife has a sub compact. Their strategy was to have him get a four day work week and only 144 miles commuting per week in the SUV. It gets parked next to a co-worker's house he gets electricity. A few all-night stores are within walking distance and his office is a two mile bike ride and has showers. He reports "more people than you would think" are doing this sort of thing and notes some people have traded to roomier SUVs that are a bit more comfortable. The prices have fallen so much that - "why not?"

A new meaning to the phrase "mobile home"

wwwd?

Bob Herbert offers his commentary on Gore and America's "can't do" attitude.

Perhaps, but one of the best lessons I learned in physics is that you should pick hard problems - but they have to be problems that have a hope of being solvable.  Gore could have offered challenges that are still on the scale of dozens moon shots (the moon shot was a solvable problem - von Braun and his team were convinced of that a few years before Kennedy's speech), but stand a chance.  He could also offer immediate challenges in conservation - but he doesn't have the trust and respect of the mass of American citizens.

Gore is too bound up in sexy energy production and his tax restructuring schemes.  He isn't strongly in the conservation camp as he pushes carbon offsets and lives a very energy intensive life himself.  He did a good job publicizing the work of the IPCC, but he never went beyond that. 

We need to rethink this.

       what would wall-e do?

gas prices around the world

The LA Times notes current gas prices ranging from $9.85/gal in Oslo to $0.12/gal in Caracas. Taxes and subsidies.

And speculation on the impact of $200/bbl oil in the US.

american attitudes on production v conservation...

a move towards dig and drill ... from a new Pew Research survey.

Other than helping one of the political parties, this is not a viable solution. There is probably little in the way of "cheap" liquid hydrocarbons remaining to be discovered. Even if we found them, the supply would have to be enormous given the demand and it can take a decade to reach reasonable production levels. But politicians have long specialized in myth and fantasy, so one party may find this a viable approach.

a booming us city

Houston (via Slate)

and you are probably helping fuel it

(thanks for the link Thom)

lara logan's jon stewart visit

well worth the watch

(snip)

Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier. What does that look like? Who in American knows what that looks like? Because I know what that looks like, and I feel responsible for the fact that no one else does. ... And the soldiers do feel forgotten, they do. No doubt. From Afghanistan to Iraq, they absolutely feel -- you know, we may be tired of hearing about this five years later, they still have to go out and do the same job.

bill moyers on media reform

David mentioned an interesting Bill Moyers exchange where a Bill O'Reilly producer...

an outstanding talk by Bill Moyers on media reform

another fuel price survey

Who will change their driving habits? An Ipsos survey. Interesting stuff, but these tend not to accurately reflect actual behavior. The bottom line is there doesn't seem to be much perceived pain. It will be interesting to see surveys when gas is $6 a gallon...

the details (pdf)

pulling out the lower rungs

Some banks are closing loan opportunities for students at community colleges and less tony four year institutions - even though the govt is guaranteeing the loans at the 95% level.

Insuring inequality and perhaps a good reason to not to business with Citibank and a few others

(thanks for the link Jim)

oil and money

liabilities

Someone I know has been trying to sell a 2000 Ford Expedition for the past few months. The blue book on it was $9300 and they started out at $9500 because it is in good shape. They kept lowering the price and he told me he finally has a buyer -- at $3900 after three months on the market. The Ford dealer offered $6500 if he agreed to trade for a new SUV that was already on the lot (a large selection btw)

Perhaps we will soon be at the point where a Hummer with a full tank is worth twice as much as one with a half tank of gas.

assets

But your money for oil is going somewhere and there is a new market - it seems there just aren't enough of those fun private jets in Russia and the Mideast.

gas pains

The current state by state averages for gas prices from the AAA.

This one is prettier, but the raw listings are useful too.

So Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York and West Virginia are now into $4 territory.

silent keys

China's moment of silence for the earthquake dead Google China's search log - among other things clocks are synchronized

the big elephant in the room

It is great when bigots are directly confronted - the John and Ellen show.

(thanks for the link Sara)

pandering politicians

Now two presidential candidates are taking about a Summer suspension of the federal excise tax on gas - an amazingly stupid act aimed at pandering to voters.

Revenue from the gas tax is about a fifth what we spend on the Iraq War. It is used for road and bridge construction and maintenance - something that has fallen to dangerous levels in the last decade as costs go up, but revenues are relatively flat.

There should be a recognition that fuel prices are likely to rise. Bringing on new capacity is expensive and demand is exploding. The increases have been much larger than the gas tax (which amounts to about $10 a month for the average driver) and many feel they will increase.

Perhaps a better message would be to encourage easy alternatives. The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents a gallon - about five percent of what a driver is paying for a gallon of regular at this point. By changing driving habits it is easy to get a five percent improvement in economy. Proper inflation of tires gives most people a two to three percent improvement. Cutting back speeds and avoiding heavy pressure on the accelerator and break pedals is a big thing. Consolidating trips to cut mileage as well as make sure the engine is warm ... the list goes on. I was able to cut gas use by about twenty percent without much difficulty.

The middenheap has a video with a few recommendations from Motorweek.(windows media file)

for the grace of china ...

The economic woes of Iceland as told by James Surowiecki at The New Yorker (thanks for the link Steve)

snip

Iceland is now a hot topic of discussion for a different reason: many people suggest that it could become the “first national casualty” of the ongoing credit crunch. Until last year, Iceland’s economic track record in this decade had been phenomenal—its annual growth rate averaged close to four per cent over the past decade, and its per-capita gross national income is now higher than that of the U.S. This year, though, the country’s currency, the króna, has fallen twenty-two per cent against the euro; the economy has stagnated; and a global rating agency has put the nation’s three major banks on a credit watch. Now analysts are wondering whether the new Nordic Tiger will end up, instead, as “the Bear Stearns of the North Atlantic.”

the games and the branding of countries and companies

An interesting piece on holding a country's feet to the fire as the Olympics approach.

There are those that would argue that the US has done some pretty bad things and such efforts have a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but it is reasonable for individual citizens to act and hold countries as well as the companies involved to a standard.

Traction is sometimes found in unlikely places.

the fisa roll call in the house

This one was super important and the President lost this round. Here is the roll call vote if you consider this important information for your voting decision in 08.

The Democrats who were pro state spying are:

Brown OK
Carney PA
Cooper TN
Davis TN
Holden PA
Schuler NC

The Republicans hung together except for 13 who didn't vote.

I'm sure people are checking into their campaign contributions at the moment.

olbermann on the clinton campaign

I just want to make sure McCain doesn't get in the White House.

Sadly I think Keith Olbermann may be at least partly correct. I have a strong sense that the liberal portion of the Democratic Party, the portion who do the legwork at elections, is giving up, or has given up, on Clinton. It is less Obama's flash (which may only be flash), but rather a growing disgust with Hillary. In the meantime millions and millions are being spent, and images being destroyed. A gift to the Republicans, but the Democrats have this way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

and w says were should say thank you

amazing

branding the candidates

Salon on re-branding America

A humorous feature equates various candidates with popular brands. The choices for Clinton, Huckabee and Obama are cute, but McCain is inspired.

but that's how we did things back then ...

thsirt of the day (hat tip to Sara)

down memory lane

With John McCain dominating the next few news cycles, I wonder if people will remember the Keating Five -- I don't think McCain is telling the truth when he says he has never violated the public trust.

I can't wait for McCain to go on The Daily Show:-)

If any of the allegations are real (and Keating was - there were lots of smoking guns) and a telecom lobbyist takes down McCain, it makes for excellent viewing entertainment from the right. Perhaps Mitt n.0?...

the subprime mess explained

great slideshow

(a tip of the hat to Jim)

silvestre reyes on fisa

Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas sent a letter to President Bush on FISA

excellent and required reading!

I sometimes think Bush/Cheney and their minions are a type heat engine that runs on fear.

conyers on fisa

A statement by Chairman Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee (my emphasis)

(Washington, DC)- House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. released the following statement to President Bush’s commitment to work on foreign surveillance legislation through the recess:

“The President’s efforts to cast blame on FISA, echoed by his allies in Congress, show an appalling disregard for the facts. He threatened to veto any extension of the Protect America Act and, following his lead, every single Republican in the House voted against the 21 day extension I sponsored in the House. The President and House Republicans cannot have it both ways, simultaneously arguing that the PAA is essential to national security and also engineering the defeat of an extension of it. The consequences for inaction are their responsibility.

“Unfortunately, it is the same old tired rhetoric of fear that the country overwhelmingly rejected in the 2006 elections.

“From what I have seen from the Justice Department documents so far, there is no need to provide amnesty to telecommunication companies who are protected under current law, as long as they and the government are acting accordingly. I have not seen anything that leads me to believe, as the President seems to believe, that providing amnesty to these companies is a more compelling public interest than our Constitutionally protected right to privacy. We must maintain our civil liberties and give the government the tools it needs to collect intelligence information, but I do not believe telecom amnesty is necessary in order to accomplish that goal.

“I have told my colleagues in the House that I am committed to working through this recess and will be discussing this legislation with Chairman Reyes and Senators Leahy and Rockefeller. I appreciate the President’s dedication to seeing this through and hope that he will join me in putting Americans before corporate interests.”

a tip of the hat to David for noting this...

chris dodd on fisa

required viewing

Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither.
  Ben Franklin

so depressing

McCain voted with all of the Republicans to weaken the Constitution, Obama voted against the majority and Clinton seems to have been too busy to show up.

Jim adds Scott Horton's article in Harpers

amerika - deny, admit, codify, immunize

Nothing new here, but Dahlia Lithwick puts it well.

snip

...

Charting that progression is almost not worth doing anymore, so familiar are the various feints and steps. First, the administration breaks the law in secret. Then it denies breaking the law. Then it admits to the conduct but asserts that settled law is not in fact settled anymore because some lawyer was willing to unsettle it. Then the administration insists that the basis for unsettling the law is secret but that there are now two equally valid sides to the question. And then the administration gets Congress to rewrite the old law by insisting it prevents the president from thwarting terror attacks and warning that terrorists will strike tomorrow unless Congress ratifies the new law. Then it immunizes the law breakers from prosecution.

That's how Americans have come to reconcile themselves to illegal warrantless eavesdropping and to prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay. It's why we're no longer bothered in the least by the abuse of national-security letters or extraordinary rendition or by presidential signing statements. Deny, admit, codify, then immunize. The law as quickstep.

...

This is not simply the theory of a unitary executive at work; this isn't the notion that the president makes the law, and acts of Congress are legal elevator music. This vision of executive power is that the law not only emanates from the president but also ebbs and flows with his hunches, hopes, and speculations, on a moment-to-moment basis. What we are hearing now from senior Bush administration officials is that if the president thinks someone looks kinda like a terrorist and the information sought from him seems kinda worth getting, it will be legal to torture him. And it's legal no matter who justified it, regardless of the supporting legal doctrine, because, well, the president just had a feeling that the information would prove valuable.

That's not an imperial presidency. That's the kind of presidency Yahweh might establish. I'm sure there's some law professor out there who can make the legal argument that executive power in wartime encompasses even the reckless guesses and impressionistic whims of a single man, as they arise. At which point, that too will become an "open question" on which "reasonable people will differ." And the dance will begin again.

cute video

It will be a lot of fun the next time he is on The Daily Show

who they are looking for,,,

Roger notes this unscientific result. Also fun with the various combinations ... clinton, obama, romney, mccain is interesting.

missing mitt

The lowest point of last week was watching Mitt withdraw.

Such a complete joke of a candidate. His presence was a drain on his party and great amusement to so many of us -- entitled, pandering, air brushed, and politically autistic --- we weren't even to the point where his company would come under scrutiny about its role in outsourcing jobs and downsizing companies...

sigh...

It would have been so much fun

Gail Collins adds her two bits

snip

...

And what will we remember about Mitt? His perfect grooming? His granola addiction? The day he equated his son’s campaign work in the Mittmobile to military service? That YouTube tape of him being asked to name his worst fault and telling a story about going to the hospital every Saturday to read to the sick children?

All I know is somewhere in doggie heaven, an Irish setter is laughing.

passports for americans traveling within us borders?

perhaps -- much is possible in the emerging police state.

a meaningless surge

Jim notes a piece by war historian Andrew Bacevich

snip

...

But how exactly do these sacrifices serve the national interest? What has the loss of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and the commitment of about $1 trillion -- with more to come -- actually gained the United States?

Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

but the Republican faithful are operating in delusionland anyway ... (another tip of the hat to Jim) Not that Democrats don't have their own issues (I'm not a Republican or Democrat), but they are much more rational than the right.

republican theocracies

I continue to be drawn to Dylan's With God on our Side.

It came up on random play as I walked by the VA Hospital today. There are many good version, but I'm partial to the spartan version by Judy Collins (a purist might go for the Bob Dylan/Joan Baez performance from Newport)

missing wh email

It is really hard to get rid of all traces of email .. it would take a very very serious effort

remember they got Al Capone on tax evasion... perhaps this can be the trigger

(thanks for the link and comment Jim)

not exactly america...

The Huckster is way off the rails...

America is not a christian nation ..

snip

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

disgusting

thanks for the link Jim

the power of nightmares

Excellent stuff (thanks for the link Jim) ... the manipulation of fear

part 1

part 2

part 3

getting what we deserve

What happens when a weak society gives in to fear and the politicians who love to exploit it. (via the NY Times)

when nowhere goes out of business

The first act of the December 7 This American Life is on Nauru.

great stuff - listen!

a sane and reasoned conversation

Rather than the blather we are getting from politicians and the press lately...

A two hour unmoderated chat among Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitches. Great stuff if you are taken with intellectual conversations among rational people.

part 1

part 2

I think many people consider these guys "shrill" because they talk about a social taboo ... it is somehow improper to have a logical discussion about the dominant religion.

gore's nobel speech

Worth the read

Some of the best is at the end (emphasis added)

...

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?"

Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act."

with god on our side

I was extremely offended by Romney's speech the other day. Invoking an ugly nationality and Laced with intellectual and logical dishonesty it panders to the Khristian right. Hopefully Mitt will burn out quickly now, but we will see. (aside - is there anyone on the far right who understands the difference between deism and theism?) Hitchens, sometimes a bit strident, nails it in Slate.

Two things bring me to comment. One is Tim Rutten's piece in the LA Times. (thanks for the link Fernando)

The other was listening to Dylan's With God on Our Side (the wonderful Judy Colllins version (iTMS link)) on this morning's walk. A piece of enormous power and grace.

dick v darth

someone sent this...

Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military.

Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.

a sour pickle

This American Life on a very evil man and his company

And also on the goodness of people

a must listen

rudy was laid, new york paid

any better ideas for cute one liners?

extra points for getting 911 into it

er ... the feed is live

whoops (thanks Nancy)

waiting for the full version on youtube

mr expediency

The October 29, 2007 issue of The New Yorker (with a most excellent cover) has a nice piece on Mitt Romney by Ryan Lizza.

Available online here

All of the candidates are flawed in one way or another -- Romney has the flaw of non-authenticity (among other things)

a failed smear campaign

Paul Krugman on the right wing reaction to Al Gore's Nobel Prize.

They have invested so much in smearing global warming and the people who have been attempting to raise awareness. But ultimately faery tales and lies just don't work. It is upsetting that this smear campaign works to decrease American competitiveness in the long term. But these guys usually never worry about anything other than their own enrichment.

(in fairness it should be pointed out that McCain has been suggesting this is real and there are great business opportunities for US companies ... but that is a minority view on the right)

reverse invasions

time and money involved in dealing with the Bush disaster...

just leaving is non-trivial

wrong metric

So Sec Gates wants $190B to continue the occupation.

The figure is large and really needs to be quoted in terms of lost opportunity costs - as well as long term debt payments. Perhaps the expected casualty toll should be calculated and voted on ... probably a few thousand deaths and 10,000 serious injuries. Maybe the headline should be "Gates asks for 2000 souls and 10,000 broken bodies..."

review of "the stillfborn god"

Laura Miller has some interesting comments of Mark Lilla's new book on the history of the separation of church and state. Clearly a topic of critical importance and it looks like something that will provoke discussion (I've been mostly an observer in a discussion on morality, ethics and religion that has consumed a good deal of bandwidth considering that only a half dozen people are involved)

snip

Small wonder, then, that we also have a hard time remembering the religious fanaticism in our own history. Westerners now talk blithely about the need for a "reformation" in Islam, apparently oblivious to how bloody and traumatic the Christian Reformation actually was. Lilla finds this situation perilous. As long as we refuse to acknowledge the madness of the religious wars and persecutions of the 16th century, he argues, we remain in danger of loosening our grip on "the Great Separation" (of church and state) that resulted from it. By not understanding how easily any politics infused with any religion can drift in the direction of fanaticism and terror, we put ourselves at risk of drifting that way ourselves.

If we think the West is way beyond lapsing into that kind of insanity, Lilla (a professor of the humanities at Columbia University and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books) begs to differ. "Intellectual complacency," he writes, "nursed by an implicit faith in the inevitability of secularization, has blinded us to the persistence of political theology and its manifest power to shape human life at any moment." Political theology, what Lilla defines as "discourse about political authority based on a revealed divine nexus," takes its beliefs about how society should be run and how power should be distributed from what it considers to be the word of God -- the divine truth revealed to man through scripture.

This way of thinking about politics isn't merely a holdover from our evolutionary past, destined to dwindle away like the appendix. It is "a primordial form of human thought and for millennia has provided a deep well of ideas and symbols for organizing society and inspiring action, for good and ill."

republican biology

So we are "kicking ass" in Iraq (tip of the hat to Bjarne)

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.

Agreed ... but our own ass. These Republicans are good at difficult biomechanics .... very expensive, but they are astonishingly capable.

the british surge

from iraq...

British troops will withdraw to the last military stronghold in Iraq imminently, and will not be "swayed by domestic political considerations" – including relations with the US – senior government sources said yesterday.

Defence ministry insiders confirmed last night that Britain plans to stick to its timetable to pull out of its stronghold at Basra Palace "within days or weeks", despite misgivings from US military and government figures that local Iraqi forces are not ready to take control.

US commanders in Baghdad want Britain to delay the pull-out of 500 British troops, fearing the Iraqi security services are not sufficiently well trained or equipped to control lawlessness.

Bush has lost his poodle.

invertebrate democrates

the onion nails it once again...

how true

(thanks for the link Bjarne)

the wounded

From Nina Berman's Purple Hearts via the NY Times.

Also in the paper is an essay by Bob Herbert on the reality of War (sadly behind the paywall). A fine piece but I quibble with him when he describes something as neither pro or anti-war. Pro-war is a position only held by the naive or mentally ill.

rudy and priorities

In the wake of Giuliani's claim that he was at Ground Zero more than most 9/11 rescue workers (a claim not backed up by record checking that shows him logging 29 hours in three months when many workers were pulling 16 hour days), comes this piece suggesting how important Yankee baseball was to the mayor..

snip

On Friday, a New York Times story examined Rudy Giuliani's schedule in the months after 9/11 to verify his controversial claim that, like rescue workers, he'd spent long hours at ground zero, and so was "in that sense ... one of them." In fact, the Times found, he only spent 29 hours at the terror site between Sept. 17 and Dec. 16.

What was he doing instead? Giuliani's beloved New York Yankees made it to the World Series in 2001. We decided to compare the time he spent on baseball to the time he spent at the ruins of the World Trade Center.

The results were, considering the mayor's long-standing devotion to the Bronx Bombers, unsurprising. By our count, Giuliani spent about 58 hours at Yankees games or flying to them in the 40 days between Sept. 25 and Nov. 4, roughly twice as long as he spent at ground zero in the 60 days between Sept. 17 and Dec. 16. By his own standard, Giuliani was one of the Yankees more than he was one of the rescue workers.

ed brayton on running for your local school board

From the science session at yearlykos ... good stuff.

dumb foreign policy - from rudy

A critique of Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs

snip

Rudy Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I've ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president—and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat "better than anyone else running"—is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country.

The article contains so many bizarre statements, it's hard to know where to start, so let's begin at the beginning and go from there.

not surprising from the party of fear and faery tales -- giving equal time the Democrats are the invertebrate party.

jon stewart attacks the republican reality distortion field

A fine performance with his Stephen Hayes interview

suggested tshirt

A suggested sound bite to focus campus conversations...

when america came off the rails and became amerika

I manage to talk with quite a few people from around the world and have noted the generally positive disposition towards country and its people (not the leaders) quickly eroded a few years ago and many no longer consider America a place of law and morality. When you probe more deeply, it usually comes down to Guantanamo. Independent of the President's policy being right or wrong, it has cost billions and billions in trust and good will - perhaps the good will of an entire generation around the world. A cost that may come to haunt us in many subtle ways...

On tonight's walk I listened to the podcast of the current NOW, which focused o Charles Swift, who basically challenged a king.

Extremely important stuff. You can find video and mp3s here

It is remarkable that by lying and invoking fear a large segment of the population of a democracy can be talked into trading really fundamental freedoms. It isn't surprising - we've seen it have throughout history, but it is chilling nonetheless.

___

There is am interesting piece (behind the NY Times paywall) by Frank Rich that has the wrong title .. Patriots Who Love the Troops to Death. These people are only self described patriots. Perhaps a better title would be: Warped Logic and the Resulting Reckless Endangerment of America and its Armed Forces...

boo!

Bush and his supporters love the concept of a nation under fear...

Josh Marshall on the Bush Administration's misappropriation of the label Al-Qaeda ... nothing new, but very nicely put.

landover baptist on harry potter

always amusing:-)

The frightening thing is sometimes this parody site seems to bit to real

free speech not ok in amerika

Fortunately this is America

A depressing letter from Eric Edelman of the Pentagon to Clinton... (Edelman is a former Cheney aide for those keeping score)

Having lost an occupation (that they were probably destined to lose given their approach and resources), they now want to cut off public commentary by candidates.

dissent is anti-American to these clowns:

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,"

.. "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

The Clinton people responded nicely:

"Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better," said Reines, who said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than "a political plan to attack those who question them."

The country Eric Edelman describes is not worth defending... fortunately the country he describes is not the US.

a modern king george's hessians

Several sources (LA Times etc) have reported the US has hired more mercenaries and that the number of mercenaries in Iraq now outnumbers the number of US troops.

How very convenient ... the important body bag numbers reported to the US press are clearly much lower as a result. But there are issues - here is a on these "workers" from Chile

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Oh - and to make matters stranger, it seems that a large piece of the foreign insurgency in Iraq is from that friendly nation Saudi Arabia (which also supplied almost all of the 9/11 attackers)

another hypocrite

It is amusing when super moral politician types turn out to have problems ... Sen David Vittner in this case.

the most amusing quote is this:

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse reporter: If her husband were as unfaithful as Livingston or former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”

bush and cheney vs climate change science

A piece running in the current Rolling Stone and also online (thanks Ron)

excerpts:

Earlier this year, the world's top climate scientists released a definitive report on global warming. It is now "unequivocal," they concluded, that the planet is heating up. Humans are directly responsible for the planetary heat wave, and only by taking immediate action can the world avert a climate catastrophe. Megadroughts, raging wildfires, decimated forests, dengue fever, legions of Katrinas - unless humans act now to curb our climate-warming pollution, warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "we are in deep trouble."

You would think, in the wake of such stark and conclusive findings, that the White House would at least offer some small gesture to signal its concern about the impending crisis. It's not every day, after all, that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell. But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science - especially when it comes from international experts. So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming.

"We're going to see a big debate on it going forward," Cheney told ABC News, about "the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it's caused by man." What we know today, he added, is "not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that's going to 'solve' the problem."

Even former White House insiders were shocked by the vice president's see-no-evil performance. "I don't see how he can say that with a straight face anymore," Christine Todd Whitman, who clashed privately with Cheney over climate policy during her tenure as the administration's first chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, tells Rolling Stone. "The consequences of climate change are very real and very negative, but Cheney is not convinced of that. He believes - not quite as much as Senator James Inhofe, that this is a 'hoax' - but that the Earth has been changing since it was formed and to say that climate change is caused by humans is incorrect."

Cheney's statements were the latest move in the Bush administration's ongoing strategy to block federal action on global warming. It is no secret that industry-connected appointees within the White House have worked actively to distort the findings of federal climate scientists, playing down the threat of climate change. But a new investigation by Rolling Stone reveals that those distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, in a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove. An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act - as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration scientists and climate-policy officials - confirms that the White House has implemented an industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters.

and

Even when Bush proposes what looks like a plan, it's designed to stall real progress on global warming. In May, America's allies in the G8 unveiled an ambitious proposal: Member nations would cut planet-warming pollution in half by 2050, accepting mandatory caps on carbon emissions. But the administration flatly rejected the plan, which it called "fundamentally incompatible with the president's approach to climate change."

Instead, at the G8 summit on June 6th, Bush pushed what he touted as his "new initiative" for combating climate change. For the first time, the president acknowledged that "long-term goals for reducing greenhouse gases" are needed. But his solution, in essence, is to take his do-nothing strategy global, turning our allies into a Coalition of the Warming. Under his proposal, mandatory caps on emissions would be replaced with "aspirational goals" to be met through voluntary cuts and futuristic technology. Countries would work independently for the next "ten to twenty years" to develop strategies to "improve energy security, reduce air pollution and also reduce greenhouse gases" - apparently in that order.

And when will the United States and other polluting nations be expected to meet the nonbinding targets they set for themselves under Bush's plan? Not until as late as 2075 - well past the point that global warming will have superheated the planet.

Many approaches to deal with climate change are of such scale and the policies of a nation and groups of nations need to change. The Bush Administration, by ignoring this, is ultimately damaging American competitiveness.