His approval ratings aren't anything to brag about either. Just days after having five polyps removed from his colon, ARG revealed that Bush's approval rating had dropped 2 points from 27% in June down to a miserable 25%.
Kind of makes you wonder if the colonic polyps might not have been more popular than the rest of him.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Six Months
By VictorM: In George Bush’s America, everything is possible six months* from now.So, six months* from now…
- I will win the Mister Universe contest.
- I will set a world record in the Ironman race.
- My ankle will be more talked about than David Beckham’s.
- DailyKos and Atrios will be begging me to add them to my Blogroll (not realizing they already are)
Why the fear to provide health insurance to children
By VictorM: I'm not going to use an actual number because any number can be disputed, but there is no doubt that America has millions of children without health coverage. Could the richest nation on Earth do something about it? Of course. Why we don't do it is open to interpretation, but Paul Krugman's take makes sense to me:The only thing I would add is that this isn't a Bush only issue. The view that Krugman expresses applies equally to the Republican party.[W]hy should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Obama: Faith got hijacked by the Christian Right
By Barack Obama, explaining the statement he had made that "Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us."My intention was to contrast the heated partisan rhetoric of a distinct minority of Christian leaders with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians - conservatives included - who believe that hate has no place in our politics. When you have pastors and television pundits who appear to explicitly coordinate with one political party; when you're implying that your fellow Americans are traitors, terrorist sympathizers or akin to the devil himself; then I think you're attempting to hijack the faith of those who follow you for your own personal or political ends.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Iraq wins Asian cup
By VictorM: The Iraq national soccer team, against enormous odds, beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 to with the Asian Cup final. A truly remarkable sporting achievement under any circumstances, but more so given their present conditions.Here are some comments that provide a striking reminder of what the Iraqi people have to endure:
Iraq were forced to train and play qualifiers in neutral countries and [Brazilian coach Jorvan] Vieira... only had two months to mould a team that included Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish players. 'I have learnt a lot from this last two months,' Vieira said. 'We all know the problems in Iraq but I have learnt that they are a fantastic people."
None of the Iraqi players have been untouched by the war and although they have tried to mask their grief, there were constant reminders of the sectarian violence at home. At least three players in the squad have lost relatives in the past two months and the players wore black armbands during the final in memory of the 50 people killed by suicide bombers after Wednesday's semi-final win over South Korea.
Mahmoud, who was named best player of the tournament, said one of the tragedies of the war was that the team would not even be able to return to Iraq with the trophy. 'I wish we could go, but you just don't know who will kill you,' he said.
For-profit health care: how it hurts you
By nyceve: The for-profit insurance industry serves investors--not you and not me. That's why it's called for-profit. Investors pay money to buy their stock. Investors invest to make money. Last time I checked, the way a company makes investors happy is to increase earnings and control costs. Think of our monthly premiums as earnings or revenue. Our bodies are costs. When our bodies get sick they become big costs.
Costs are bad. Costs must be crushed and defeated.
Here's the ugly story. The financial success of the for-profit insurance industry is due to their business model that must limit their medical losses. We, that means you and I, are medical losses.
My children, this is called the medical loss ratio. You and I (and our health needs) are known in insurance lingo as "losses".
Every dollar they spend our our healthcare needs goes against the bottom line.
That said, these are good day$ for the in$urance indu$try. The market is performing, profits are up. Champagne is flowing. The Street is pleased.
Who has the bigger boobs, Hillary or the Post?
By VictorM: Last week there was quite a bit written about an article in the Washington Post about Senator Hillary Clinton's cleavage. We posted about it. Now, a Post ombudsman adds her take to the story, adding more context from the author of the article's point of view.Whether you agree or not, this Post article about Hillary's cleavage as news is worth a read. I don't mean to debate that whole issue -- frankly, it shouldn't be such a big deal anyway -- but a few statements in the article stood out to me:
[W]omen couldn't wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993 -- not exactly an environment where modern attire is robustly welcomed...I have seen Hillary Clinton's cleavage. With all due respect, it's not worth all the hoopla. How about we talk about her health care plan and Iraq war stance? Wouldn't it be great if that became the biggest story?Readers said that Clinton's cleavage isn't news. [The original article's author, Robin] Givhan disagrees. "It is news because it is out of the ordinary and says something about clothing and sexuality in our culture and the way that we perceive people and the way that people want to be perceived."
There's a bigger issue about her Clinton piece: Does this have anything to do with whether Clinton should be president? Not a thing. But do we want to read the column about her cleavage? Yes indeed. It was the most viewed story on the Web site all day.
Tags: hillary clinton, cleavage, boobs, washington post
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Labels aren't just for soup cans
By VictorM: In response to a question during the YouTube debates, Hillary Clinton said that she doesn't consider herself a liberal; she said she prefers the term "progressive." This is one of the many signs of how successful the political right has been at soiling that word "liberal." So much so that a mostly liberal nation has ran away from that term. But, for right wingers, this is like playing whack-a-mole -- you whack one word, another one rears it's ugly head:Progressives... liberals... fucking hippies... pinko commies... whatever you call us, it doesn't matter, we're still beating back the massive effort by conservative groups to turn us back into feudal England. It ain't going to happen.Rasmussen Reports had an interesting survey this week, which showed that when "liberal" is replaced with "progressive," the broader dynamic changes significantly. According to the poll, 35% consider "progressive" a positive description of a candidate, whereas 32% consider "conservative" a positive label. In other words, the left's label is now more popular than the right's.
Rudy, why do you deserve their vote?
By New Pairodimes, on why most Republicans are avoiding the YouTube debates:People like Giuliani are terrified that a YouTube questioner will ask something such as "Why does a thrice married (once to his cousin) cross dressing, abortion loving, gun grabbing, homosexual tolerating, east coast mayor deserve our vote.
I doubt Britt Hume would ask him that question on Faux News.
Young People: They hate George Bush
By Kevin Drum: This is about what you'd expect, but Democracy Corps has released yet another survey demonstrating that the Republican Party is losing young people in droves... There are plenty of reasons for this, but basically they hate George Bush, they hate the Iraq war, and they hate religious conservatives. The good news, of course, is that people are brand loyal. Once they make up their minds in their twenties which party they like better, they generally stick with it for the rest of their lives. So the Republican Party's deal with the devil to embrace the Christian Right might have helped them out for a while, but in the long term it's a disaster.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Mitt's all about more, more, more
By John Edwards, on Mitt Romney:Romney, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, should be ashamed for attacking my economic plan, but it's not surprising he is. I want to rewrite our tax code to make it fair and help hard-working Americans save some money to give them a better shot at the American Dream. Mitt wants to make sure that the wealthiest Americans just keep getting wealthier and let everyone else pick up the scraps. Mitt's all about more, more, more for the people who already have the most - and that's just wrong.
“The truth is Mitt Romney shouldn't pay lower taxes on the money he makes from his money than middle-class families pay on the money they make from hard work. Neither should I. We're both incredibly fortunate and we should pay our fair share.
War: a bloody, horrible mess
By Digby, commenting on right wingers reaction to a soldier who dared to write about his behavior during the Iraq war:[Right wingers] are working their way into a complete frenzy going after this soldier as if he were al Qaeda and acting as though the hawkish New Republic has just endorsed Cindy Sheehan for president. It's like watching a bunch of piranhas attack some kids who accidentally fell into the water... They want to destroy this soldier for describing things that have been described in war reporting since Homer so they can worship "the troops" without having to admit that the whole endeavor is a bloody, horrible mess...
Thursday, July 26, 2007
If... If... If
By VictorM: It doesn't bother me that some folks still think we can "win" (whatever that means) in Iraq. It bothers me that they base their assertion purely on either repeating the Bush administration talking points and/or because it's purely wishful thinking.So many lives are at risk that to use either of the two reasons to support the Iraq invasion and occupation is vulgar and insane. The sane reality is best expressed in this statement by Fred Kaplan:
If the U.S. military had, say, 100,000 more troops to send and another 10 years to keep them there; if the Iraqi security forces (especially the Iraqi police) were as skilled and, more important, as loyal to the Iraqi nation (as opposed to their ethnic sects) as many had hoped they would be by now; if the Iraqi government were a governing entity, as opposed to a ramshackle assemblage that can barely form a quorum—then maybe, maybe, this plan might have a chance.There are no magic wands. The disaster will just linger until the next president decides to do something different. That's a lot of time, lots of lives, and lots of lies until that time.
Obesity is contagious
By VictorM: Is it time to ditch your fat friends?One person's obesity can significantly increase the chance that his or her friends, siblings and spouse also will become heavy, according to the first study done on how weight gain spreads through social networks. And if a person slims down, the people around him or her also may lose weight.
FOX Nutwork: In the business of electing Republicans
By Rick Perlstein: Ann Coulter's latest column claims that ...'Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday's Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign,' because the only people it could possibly convince to vote for a Democrat are 'losers blogging from their mother's basements.'Now why ever would Fox care about electing Republicans, given that they're a news organization in the business of 'fair and balanced'?"
Obama's foreign policy judgment
By Atrios, commenting on Barack's Obama statement that he is confident about his foreign policy judgment :I'm not saying Obama's judgment about his judgment is necessarily correct, just that the very serious foreign policy people in Washington keep, you know, getting it wrong. The foreign policy establishment has its own arbitrary parameters of debate which it imposes on political candidates, a sort of legacy of decades of debates piled on other debates, which often have little relationship to reality. It tries to impose those rules onto candidates, declaring this or that a "foreign policy gaffe," even though it's often only a gaffe to the very serious people who brought us George Bush's excellent Iraqi adventure.
Tags: barack obama, atrios, foreign policy
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Republicans ode to chutzpah
By Kevin Drum, commenting on Republican plans to blame Harry Reid for causing paralysis in the Senate:You have to give Republicans points for consistency. They bring the Senate to a halt and then blame Democrats for not getting anything done. They destroy FEMA's ability to respond to natural disasters and then hold it up as an example of why you can't trust government to do anything right. They lose a war via unparalleled military incompetence and then claim that liberals are defeatists for pointing it out. They spend 20 years claiming that Social Security is going bankrupt and then use the resulting public insecurity about Social Security as an explanation for why the whole system needs to be privatized.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The question is, will the press help them pass along their latest ode to chutzpah or will they instead give it the mockery it deserves? Unfortunately, I think we know where the smart money is.
Bush: his colonic polyps are more popular than he is
By VictorM: The abysmal poll numbers for George Bush continue. His approval ratings haven't dipped below 20% yet, as I suspect they will, but they're heading in that direction:The latest Washington Post-ABC News survey shows that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance, matching his all-time low... In polls conducted by The Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only once has a president exceeded that level of public animosity -- and that was Richard M. Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before he resigned.Chesire111 has this to say:
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Appalling lack of competence, courage and credibility
By Andrew Cohen: No reasonable person watching Gonzales' tragically comedic performance Tuesday's on Capitol Hill... can any longer defend his appalling lack of competence, courage and credibility. And no one who hears him say that he is what's best for the Department right now should forget that on the eve of his testimony (and a few days after he urged his subordinates to work diligently to regain their morale) the nation's top law enforcement official reportedly left work early to go for a bike ride Monday afternoon-- at about 3:50 p.m.I am running out of words to describe how inept this public servant is and how awful is the message our government sends to the nation and to the world by allowing him to continue to represent us.
Republicans Low Expectations Being Met
By VictorM: Only in Republican circles would this decision by Alberto Gonzales make sense:The House Judiciary Committee announced yesterday that it will press toward a constitutional showdown with the Bush administration over the U.S. attorney firings scandal, even as embattled Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales vowed to stay on and "fix the problems" that have damaged the reputation and morale of the Justice Department.So the man who didn't have the skills/desire/integrity to have things run well in the first place is all of a sudden capable of doing what's right? Isn't this, in fact, the perfect time to bring someone else in?
It would be, in a world of sensible people who respect government, but it's not for a political party that disdains honest government. In a Republican view of the world they must stay with this bozo because he lives up to their very low expectations of what public service in general and federal government in particular, is all about.
Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life
By Juan Cole: In the past week, worrying signs of a resurgence of al-Qaida surfaced in cyberspace, in Pakistan and in Washington, D.C... A new National Intelligence Estimate warned that al-Qaida was reconstituting itself... A U.S. threat to send Special Forces into Pakistan in search of al-Qaida roiled relations with the weakened Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. And a new videotape of Osama bin Laden surfaced...[T]he very fact that bin Laden could still deliver his poisonous message to the Muslim world six years after his attack on New York and Washington killed some 3,000 people is first and foremost a remarkable testament to the incompetence and fecklessness of the Bush administration.
Monday, July 23, 2007
They did have sex with all those women
By Frank Rich, commenting on the indiscretions of former GOP "family values" poster boy Sen. David Vitter and the latest examples of Republican sexual and moral hypocrisy:Mr. Vitter first went to Washington as a young congressman in 1999, to replace Robert Livingston, the Republican leader who had been anointed to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House. Mr. Livingston's seat had abruptly become vacant after none other than Mr. Flynt outed him for committing adultery. Since we now know that Mr. Gingrich was also practicing infidelity back then... the Vitter scandal can be seen as the culmination of an inexorable sea change in his party...
The one federal official caught on the D.C. Madam's phone logs ahead of Mr. Vitter, Randall Tobias, was a Bush State Department official whose tasks had included enforcing a prostitution ban on countries receiving AIDS aid...
The G.O.P. that began the century in the thrall of Rick Santorum, Bill Frist and George Allen has become the brand of Mark Foley and Mr. Vitter.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Iraq War suporters: wrong every step of the way
By VictorM: All the people we now hear saying the surge is the right thing, or this or that strategy is now the right one, are the same people who were wrong all along. They have no credibility now. And their predications about the consequences of leaving or staying and what might happen to Iraq are thrown away ideas because if there's one thing they have proven over the last 5 years is that they where wrong every step of the way.As Glenn Greenwald points out:
[A]according to [Senator Kit] Bond, we (by the way) had the "wrong plan" for the last three years as we waged war in Iraq. That's all -- we just spent the last three years waging war with the "wrong plan." But no worries, because now -- Bond assures us -- we have the right plan.Anything these people say, let's do the opposite. Really, we'd be so much better off.
That being the case, one would expect that Kit Bond spent the last three years protesting our war strategy, lamenting our lack of progress, and demanding that we change course. Needless to say, he did exactly the opposite. While he now claims that the last three years were a failure because we had the wrong strategy, Bond -- like the vast, vast majority of the Republican Party and war supporters generally -- spent the last three years telling Americans that we had the right strategy and were winning in Iraq, while attacking and demonizing those who suggested otherwise.
Chicks dig the sexy players
By VictorM: So... David Beckham finally arrived and played his first game, even if only for about 16 minutes. The buzz and excitement about his debut as a player of the LA Galaxy team was above what I expected, and his performance, even if much shorter than hoped for due to his bum ankle, still was enough to illustrate how good a player he is.Some soccer fans worry that non-soccer followers who see him play will be disappointed that he isn't going to score loads of goals and be flashy enough. But this poster in bigsoccer boards disagrees:
New fans seeing MLS are going to get hooked. Shiny new stadiums, packed with people, lightning-fast soccer, adrenaline-pumping, sweat and exhilaration and rage. Especially the chicks will dig it. Soccer players are fit and wear short clothes - they're not buried beneath pads and helmets. Chicks dig the sexy players. And it's a simple sport. Any non-sports-following female can follow it. My cat practically plays the sport. It has some level of universal appeal, hence the bazillions who watch it all around the world, even in places where rugby and cricket have co-exited for generations. It's a keeper. Bring the audiences.So, come on, you "chicks", get with the program -- start following soccer.
Tags: david beckham, mls, la galaxy, soccer, sexy players
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Clinton will win the Democratic nomination
By Tracy Clark-Flory: [T]he New York Times ran a story headlined "For Clinton, Wooing Women Requires a Careful Balance." Nothing illustrates that more clearly than the Times/CBS News poll also released today. It reveals that Clinton is most popular with female voters (46 percent view her favorably), but she hardly has all of us lady folk won over (33 percent view her negatively)...The Times/CBS poll throws yet more stats on the pile that Clinton's campaign strategists are already sorting through. But the respondents were utterly clear on one thing: The majority believe Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and will, once again, call 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. home. One question, though: Will Clinton's newly discovered cleavage hurt or help her campaign? It certainly isn't hurting her online presence -- "hillary clinton cleavage" is (I'm not kidding) currently the third most Googled phrase of the day.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Idiot of the Day: Aurora
By VictorM: Right-wingers in general think the world is against them. But I suspect even most right-wingers will admit that this one idiot is just going too far. In fact, the reaction by the visitors point out just how idiot this comment is:It's no secret that the Left hates the west, but did you know they'd like us all out of the picture? Yes, the entire human race. The ultimate moonbat fantasy has emerged in the form of a new book, entitled 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman, of Arizona University. So what's the fantasy? You guessed it; the demise of the species they hate the most, humans.... If you've ever wondered exactly where liberal pipedreams are taking us, look no further. Human extinction is their dream come true.Someone is seeing too many monsters under her bed. Boo!
Senators are not the enemy
By Andrew Sullivan: The conflict is heating up. [Hillary] Clinton is now calling the Pentagon's dismissal of her request for plans for withdrawal "outrageous and offensive." Money quote: "I deeply resent the administration's continuing effort to impugn the patriotism of those of us who are asking hard questions." ... It was, in my view, a grotesque over-reach from a Cheney protege at the Pentagon. Here's the dumb-ass, offensive letter. Memo to the Pentagon: senators are not the enemy, and asking for accountability is not treason.
Just how stupid our media really is
By Geekesque: Just in case anyone thought that the media was done with its thoroughly noxious, sexist, and misogynistic coverage of Hillary Clinton, the Washington Post delivers another reminder of just how stupid our media really is. And that the media hates Democrats in general, not just individual Democrats. And that they really hate women.In today's Washington Post, Robin Givhan provides this striking insight into Senator Clinton's work in the Senate: Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory
Just fucking shoot me. If you thought the Edwards haircut story was trivial . . .
She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
English and Spanish is a must!
By VictorM: In a thread in our forum titled English and Spanish is a must! we are discussing the implications of a job posting that required the candidate to be fluent in Spanish. Does anyone feel that this is discrimination against anyone who does not?Come join us and share your opinion.
Immigrants less criminal than native-born Americans
By Bryan Caplan:A high fraction of immigrants are young, low-skilled, Hispanic males. Given these demographics, I long assumed that immigrants would have relatively high crime rates. While I kept this problem in perspective, I took it for granted that increased crime was a genuine drawback of immigration.
I was wrong... despite their demographics, immigrants are drastically less criminal than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants have one-fifth the incarceration rate of natives. Yes, natives are incarcerated at five times the rate of the foreign-born.
Health Care in the US: Let Them Eat Cake
By VictorM: As long as we have a for profit health care insurance system in this country we will not see any significant improvements in this area. Blog4Brains has an excellent article on this topic titled Profit Versus Health Care in the US. Go read it. It's good stuff.
To cut or not to cut
By VictorM: Via this Feministing.com post on male circumcision and female pleasure I stumbled upon this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. I personally found the content of both pieces as useless as a penis in a lesbian orgy, but I was surprised to find out a few things. Did you know that...- "The Book of the Penis," is a frisky almanac of all things phallic?
- "Sex as Nature Intended It" (2002), is a book that claims women are more likely to enjoy intercourse if their male partner is uncircumcised?
- someone made "Dick," a short documentary about women's thoughts about penises?
- there's a Foreskin Quarterly magazine devoted to the appreciation of uncut men? (I'm not kidding!)
- they do foreskin restorations?
Best line in the article? This one:
"Most women, unfortunately, do not pay a lot of attention to a man's penis."Oh really? What a relief!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Beckham: He is what most sports writers are not
Note by VictorM: I transcribed this from a YouTube video of Bryant Gumbel addressing the arrival of David Beckham to play for the LA Galaxy or MLS.By Bryant Gumbel: It’s been fascinating, and somewhat disturbing, to watch the self-styled arbiters of American sport rip Beckham, his game, his salary, and his future.
Now, I suspect that much of that is simple envy. The guy is, after all, enormously good looking, wealthy, famous, stylish, and just about everything that most sports writers, and sports fans, are not.
But the antipathy seems to run deeper that that, with many venting unreasonable levels of disregard for the man and disgust for his game. And that’s the part I don’t get.
Have we become so xenophobic that we can’t cheer outsiders? Are we as people so arrogant as to think that only real “American sports” deserve our applause? Can anyone truly be fretting that Beckham may be taking attention away from home grown guys…? I truly hope that’s not the case, because ours is a big tent. Or at least it should be.
In an age when Americans are watching poker games, eating contests, and Rock, Paper, Scissors tournaments on TV, there’s gotta be room in our sporting landscape for a better brand of soccer.
So welcome, David. I doubt you’ll ever convince many of the colonists here that there are actually two kinds of football worth watching, but here’s wishing you all the best.
The Iraq War is Lost
By Peter Galbraith: The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the president nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.
The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."
Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today -- a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.
In laying out his dark vision of an American failure, Bush never discusses Iran's domination of Iraq even though this is a far more likely consequence of American defeat than an al-Qaida victory. Bush's reticence is understandable, since it was his miscalculations and incompetent management of the postwar occupation that gave Iran its opportunity.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
USA versus al Qeada: We have lost ground
By VictorM: So, the US Government released the 2007 Declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Nothing major was reported. Oh yeah, they did say there's a bunch of guys out there wanting to do us harm, in case you didn't already know that. The relatively short document reveals nothing we didn't already know.But, people who know more than me about these matters, like for example, Richard Clark, were smart enough to read what was not in the report:
Ahhh, so what they don't say is that we've gone backwards. Sneaky bastards."What is left out of the version released publicly is the explicit statement that al Qaeda is back and has operations underway," Clarke says.
The 2006 version of the National Intelligence Estimate claimed U.S. efforts had "seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa'ida and disrupted its operations."
"That's no longer the case in 2007, and you have to read between the lines to understand how we have lost ground," Clarke says.
There's another example of the kind of double sneak you get from people in those circles. For example:
The current White House counterterrorism official, Fran Townsend, the assistant to the president for homeland security, told reporters today, "Al Qaeda is weaker today than if we had not taken strong action against them."Sure, they are weaker than if we had done nothing. No kidding! But this fails to say that we have made any progress. In fact, that they couldn't point to any progress is a clear indication that there was none.
Of course, we could argue that if we had not invaded a foreign country where al Qaeda didn't exist that they would have a lot fewer members today and we could have focused on hunting the real terrorists.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Opponents of universal health care
By jurassicpork: Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” ... O.K., it’s not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and large, opponents of universal health care paint a glowing portrait of the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada... The bottom line is that the opponents of universal health care appear to have run out of honest arguments. All they have left are fantasies: horror fiction about health care in other countries, and fairy tales about health care here in America.
Republican Party: The party of the Iraq war
By Glenn Greenwald, disputing the notion that John McCain's collapsing presidential candidacy is coming about because he supports the Iraq War:The war in Iraq remains popular with the GOP base. They want to stay and keep waging war. They would immediately turn against anyone who advocated withdrawal or even questioned the wisdom of staying. The Republican Party continues to be the Party of the Iraq War, and -- directly contrary to the conventional wisdom that is arising -- loyal support for the Iraq War is an absolute pre-requisite for winning the nomination.
The Republican Party is still wedded -- they are irreversibly wedded -- to the Iraq War, and it is ill-advised to help them shield themselves from its fallout by claiming that leading GOP presidential candidates are suffering due to their support for that war. That claim is simply false.
Global Warming: Skeptics are the losers
By VictorM: Salon.com has an interview with author Chris Mooney about Global Warming. There are quite a few interesting points made by Mr. Mooney. He's "less concerned with the political distortion of scientific findings, and more fascinated by the findings themselves, and the methodologies behind them."The bold below is Salon's question, followed by Mr. Mooney's answer:
It seems to me that he's right. Luckily for all of us, the skeptics are the losers. Let's see if we can make progress and start coming up with some common sense solutions.Between Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," Hurricane Katrina, and the change in the House and Senate, has the influence of the global warming skeptics waned? Are they just less important than they once were?
A lot of things have beaten them back, including the passage of time. The issue has turned on them. They're the losers now. They put on a great holding action for a really long time. And, they delayed us from solving the problem.Now, it's turned against them. News articles are much less likely to be "balanced" between the skeptics and the scientific consensus than they once were. The media tells a lot of different narratives about how Christians are coming around to wanting to save the environment because of the stewardship imperative that they feel, or industry is coming around. All of these things helped bury the skeptics. The skeptics seem sort of irrelevant the more everyone turns toward doing something.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Bush: Mister Contradiction
By JM, via Talking Points Memo: I may have missed any commentary on this, but no one seems to be pointing out that Bush spent the whole press conference say we are fighting Al Queda, then concluded by disagreeing that Al Queda is stronger then it was in 2001. In 2001, they highjacked four airliners using box cutters and today, according to administration spin, they have the entire United States Army bogged down! How do people sit there and not start laughing, I don't know.
Now is much better than then
By VictorM: Much is being written about David Beckham's arrival. Most of it nonsense about his impact on the sport in the USA. During all this nuttiness, it's easy to forget just how far the sport has come in this country. This quote from Clive Toye, one of the true heroes of the sport's advancement in this country and the man most responsible for bringing Pele to the NY Cosmos, makes the point so eloquently (emphasis mine):Back in the seventies, there was an Americanization rule in the NASL in which teams had to play at least one American. Honest.This is so true. I had seasons tickets for the Cosmos and followed the league back then closely, and save for a handful of American players, they were mostly mediocre at best. Not so today. We haven't produced a world-class star yet, but we do have quite a few quality players in the world scene now.
Today, a maximum of four foreign players can be on an MLS team's roster.
There are more American players of quality playing in Europe right now than in the entire years of the North American Soccer League.
Tags: soccer, mls, cosmos, pele, david beckham
Friday, July 13, 2007
Republicans Don't Care for Civil Rights
By Jeffrey Feldman: The one photo the GOP does not want anyone to see was snapped at yesterday's NAACP GOP Presidential Candidate Forum. The NAACP invited all 9 Republican candidates to the forum, but only one showed up: Tom Tancredo. All the Democratic Presidential hopefuls showed up for their forum.
[This] photo of Tancredo--standing on a stage of empty podiums--sums up the Republican party's commitment to civil rights in America: the only Republican interested is the guy running to deny immigrant workers their rights.
Update: skiddlybop has this to say about this picture:If Republicans cannot face the NAACP,then they cannot possibly face down Al Qaeda.
NOT ONE of them is qualified to be President.