Category: Politics

Ta dah……… another stunning assessment of George W. Bush, his policies, and what a real president would do from Thomas Friedman in today’s New York Time’s column. Yeah, the inescapable Tom Friedman: a cheerleader of the war in Iraq. A public intellectual and New York Times Columnist… part of that liberal media about which we hear so much.

You do remember Thomas Friedman? The man who brought us such great catch-phrases as the Arab street and Generation Q? Yes. It’s the same one. The exact same one who made the Iraq war sound grand in a 2005 talk:

This is not about oil. This is about something really noble, crazy noble. It is the first attempt in the modern history of the Arab world for Arabs in their own country to forge their own social contract, their own constitution.

Not only would democracy become rampant in the Middle East, but “a successful Iraq is our Iran reform policy.” In his droning, self-assured, and utterly annoying manner, he  told his audience that “The Shi’ite Muslims who will assume the majority of Iraq’s government posts are the same Shi’ites who live in Iran.” According to the newspaper account of the speech, Friedman said if Iraq succeeds it will ratchet up the pressure for democratic reform in Iran.

Well, today’s column is really a gas. And what I really loved about it, Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave (besides the side-splittingly funny lede), is it’s real he-man muscular language. Here’s  a sample…

What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines . . . without subsidies.

That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans – sorry to say, with the help of John McCain – have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.

Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer – for geopolitical reasons – that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy – particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.

I loved how he slipped in the for geopolitical reasons that we get as much as possible from domestic wells while encouraging Bush, if Bush wanted to be a real president, to tell the country larger truths.

From what fucking planet is Thomas Friedman? Talking about George Bush telling truth to anybody is ridiculous. To try to appear like you’re a cool environmentally friendly liberal columnist guy and set us up for drilling the arctic is going a tad too far. And oh my god, you’re sorry to say John McCain is leading Republicans in defeating incentives for renewable energy.

A man writes a book. About a culture of deception. And those enshrined in that culture wonder how that man, Scott McClellan, could go from . . .

“. . . a loyal and trusted staff member to an embittered person who makes biting accusations.”

Yesterday, in McClellan’s rather limp Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment on Capitol Hill, the New York Times writes,

…the book, with Mr. McClellan’s lacerating criticism of his former colleagues, has generated a rich discussion about the obligations of political loyalty… The man who once regularly and seemingly by rote defended Mr. Bush in the White House press room was attacked by the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who grilled Mr. McClellan as ferociously as any reporter had in his three years as press secretary.

I got a good laugh at that part… hahahahahahahahaha… the idea… bwahahahahahahahaha… that reporters had grilled anybody ferociously in… snort snort laughinginginginginging…. in seven plus years. To whom does the New York Times refer?  One can only… chortle giggle gha giggle… wonder.

Let me wipe the tears from my eyes… further, according to the New York Times…

…Committee Democrats, on the other hand, were much gentler, treating Mr. McClellan as if he were an author promoting a book in an interview.

Makes one dizzy doesn’t it? But this is what blew me away…

Rep. Smith said, “Scott McClellan alone will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the president and his friends for a few pieces of silver.”

“What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” was written by Scott McClellan for money. Huh. Now that is rich. Isn’t it??? Rep. Smith, a money grubbing, power mongering, lying, despicable Washington politician who shills ONLY for the interests of the monied and powerful deplores the greed of Scott McClellan. And double huh.

Thanks to the goddamn motherfucking Congress of the United States of America, I feel like one of the safest fucking people in the world right now.  And thanks to that motherfucker George W. Bush as well.  I’m going to go take a safe fucking walk around my neighborhood in celebration of just how goddamn safe from terrorists I feel after today’s vote.  I don’t need not stinking laws, I have those Congressional shitheads and that asswipe W to look after me.

I usually avoid swearing on line, but words are failing me in attempting to express just how fucking angry grateful I feel.

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Wonderful rant from our Managing Editor that ties McCain to Big Oil:

In a campaign year where John McCain is seemingly doing everything he can to publicly distance himself from George W. Bush, he’s also been emulating the historically unpopular president by walking in lock-step with him along the path to Texas oil.

While Barack Obama was in Illinois shoveling sand in bags to hold back the Bush-neglected infrastructure crumbling around him — resulting in a multi-state version of Katrina with both an oblivious Republican president and Republican presidential candidate — John McCain just happened to be on his way to Texas to accept the whoops and cheers (and money) from oil industry insiders for his proclaimed flip-flop on offshore drilling as the answer to America’s oil-supply woes.

Want something worse? Aside from the fact that he did it while Senator Obama was showing empathy to those impacted by an unstable climate and deteriorating infrastructure, it turns out that John McCain gave his oil pandering speech CONCURRENT to the release of his new ad-buy proclaiming his independence from the Bush Administration on global warming.

The entire article here.

Linda Hirshman, not everybody’s favorite feminist made an interesting and provocative state during an on line interview about the Democratic party in general and by inference, progressive men. The on line conversation talked essentially about the future and challenges of “feminism.”

As my young friend Jill Filipovic put it in her interview, the progressive white men who run the Democratic Party do not have to pay attention to women, because they know we always will come back to them. And we lower our value even further by adopting their causes — civil rights, the environment, etc. — as our own, whole cloth, without any trade off.

Oddly enough, I both agree and disagree with her. She welcomes ire and controversy and has established a career out of it.

I disagree that issues like civil rights and the environment are “their” issues, clearly they belong to all of us. But I do wonder about the first part of her statement.

Is that accurate? Nobody in this campaign has mentioned for example that affordable day care for families who have two working parents is rarely discussed. For good reason. Mention the words “daycare” in this country and critics on the left and the right will jump in with a haughty opinion about “who should be raising children”. Mention the pay gap that exists and pundits will blah blah on about how women leave the work force to have children and that explains it quite nicely than you. HRC is being touted as “proof” that the ceiling has cracks in it and several self described feminists have actively supported Barack Obama.

In many ways there is not an actual feminist movement in this country in the same way that a progressive movement does not actually exist. The feminist movement has largely been castigated as a group of middle class white women who have not been attuned to issues of class or race or particularly respectful to women who actively chose more traditional roles. Feminism has been blamed for making women unhappy and alienating men in much the same way that people who discuss class have been accused of fueling “class hatred and resentment.”

Last month, to far (FAR) less attention than it merited, the House of Representatives (facing an Administration veto threat) passed the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act with $20 billion for greening public schools across the nation.

Taking aggressive action to green schools is about one of the smartest steps the nation can take, action that should go beyond bipartisanship to true unity of action as it is a win-win-win-win strategy along so many paths:

And, well, other benefits. In the face of these benefits, “The White House threatened a veto, saying it was wrong for the federal government to launch a costly new school-building program.”

Editor and Publisher gave note to a study recently by sociologist Andrew M Lindner about the impact of how embedded reporters framed the initial invasion and ultimately provided significant positive angles for the public to consume.

The study analyzed content from articles written by both embedded reporters and other sources ( ie reporters who were independent from the process) and found this direct conclusion.

Lidner found that journalists embedded with American troops emphasized military successes more often than they covered consequences for Iraqi citizens

I would argue that this initial framework has continued to influence coverage to this day. While the struggles and horrors Iraqi citizens face do get coverage, even much of the moderate anti war sentiment in this country tends to focus on getting our troops home ( and rightly so ) and their ongoing struggles with getting appropriate health care for physical and emotional damage. We still don’t talk much about how badly we fucked up the daily lives of citizens there. Even if we packed up and left today, the humanitarian crisis would spiral for years to come, an argument often manipulated by hawks to justify staying in a military role. Instead of a Marshall Plan, we got a nice big trough for contractors. And we haven’t been very generous with offering a place for refugees.

Few western countries have accepted Iraqis. Sweden has been the most welcoming, granting asylum to almost 9,000 Iraqis in 2006, almost 20 times more than the United States and about half the total for all of Europe that year

According to the Center For American Progress there have been

More than 4 million: Estimated number of Iraqis displaced since the 2003 invasion

Many have been displaced in their own country.

Since the start of the war…. the United States has admitted

5,742: Total number of Iraqis resettled to the United States as of January 24 (2008)

Our lofty goal for 2008?

12,000: Target for Iraqi refugee admittance in 2008 fiscal year. A goal that will be impossible to meet at the current admittance levels.

Imagine a brave and foolish political candidate trying to campaign on the issue of trying to admit more than the target number during these tenuous economic times. Of course that would speak to our desire as a nation for accountability and we don’t want to talk about that.

Imagine what would have happened if reporters got embedded with Iraqi citizens or humanitarian organizations. How many reporters, or for that matter any of us could tolerate the conditions necessary to do that? But we couldn’t have that. Too many perspectives add complexities. Complexities could undermine victories. For whom I am not certain.  

Thanks to Dennis Kucinich and his submission of 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush, impeachment talk is once again in the air!

Although, there are not many polling companies who have asked the question, “Should George W. Bush be impeached?”, there have been a few. And, it’s time to catalog those in one place and take a close look at what they tell us.

With impeachment diaries once again popping up and heated discussions on whether or not impeachment is warranted, popular or stands a chance of succeeding, are regular topics again. And many in the blogisphere seem to have some misconceptions. I’m going to focus on public perception here.

Here’s what we know…