The More Things Change...
Representative government? Not In Florida. All over again. I'm out of town, and not able to blog much, but you have to read this Andrew Gumbel story in The Independent, "Something's Rotten In The State Of Florida," about the election horrors again in store.
Security First, Journalism Second
An inside look at writing the news from Baghdad, from Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi. Job number one? Staying alive:
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like beingİunder virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me toİthis job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet newİpeople in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason toİ and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and neverİ walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eatİin restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't lookİfor stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can'tİspeak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about whatİpeople are saying, doing, feeling.İAnd can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so nearİour house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressingİconcern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay aliveİand make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am aİsecurity personnel first, a reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was itİ April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military?Was itİwhen Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgencyİbegan spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remainsİa disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Read the rest at the Romenesko link above.
E.L. Doctorow On George Bush
"The Unfeeling President," Doctorow calls Bush.
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
(via Metafilter)
Under Construction
Gregg is upgrading my site to Movable Type 3.11, and the new software is causing a delay in comments actually going up on the site. This will probably continue for a few days. No, this isn't a sign that I've lost my fervor for freedom of speech. The software especially designed to deal with the huge volume of spam my site and all MT sites get. This comments reg issue that's causing the delay in comments actually going up after you click "post" (and other issues) will be corrected very soon. If you've already upgraded a site to MT 3.11, your observations would be appreciated.
What Would George Washington Do?
What this blog is NOT is an attack on Christians in general. What it IS is an attack on the attempt of some Christians to codify their subjective morality into the laws which govern us all, the wanton blurring of the line separating church and state by the religious right, and the marginalization of LGBT Americans and non-Christians due to the religious right's agenda of imperialism, hatred, bigotry, and misogynism.
And now, those founding father quotes, plus one from Abe Lincoln:
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." -George Washington, First Treaty of Tripoli, 1797"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-Thomas Jefferson, writing to the Danbury Baptist Association on 1 January 1802"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-James Madison"A just government has no need for the clergy or the church. The fruits of Christianity are pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; and, in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
-James Madison"The Doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
-John Adams"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."
-Thomas Jefferson"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams"The God of Christianity is a being of terrific character---cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust. The Christian God is a hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerebus, with one body and three heads."
-Thomas Jefferson"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion."
-Abraham Lincoln"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"
-John Adams
Smart guys, these founding fathers. Highly rational, even 200-plus years ago. How far backward we've gone. These days, more often than not, it seems modernity has been wasted on the primitive.
"The Worst Things In Life Are Free"
Sebastian Horsley on the joys of paying for sex.
Flip-Flopper-In-Chief
The site that shows what George Bush is really made of. Thanks, Patrick.
Everything In Its Place
Corner of Melrose and Edinburgh, Los Angeles. Photo stolen from Gregg Sutter.
The Regulated Get To Write The Regulations
Surprise, surprise. Once again, the language in EPA pollution regulations mirrors that found in industry memos. Julie Eilperin writes in The Washington Post:
Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the senators who called for the probe last spring, said the revelation that the EPA adopted the same wording as an industry source "no longer comes as much of a surprise.""The Bush administration continues to let industry write the rules on pollution, and this is just one more example of how they abuse the public trust," he said.
Yes, it seems the fox has turned the henhouse into a condominium.
"I'm In A New York State Of Mind"
I'm in New York for the publication of (and book party for) The Experts' Guide To 100 Things Everybody Should Know How To Do, for which I wrote a chapter.
Interestingly, I did not write love advice (those topics were already taken when, believe it or not, Heloise [as in "Hints From"] recommended me to Samantha Ettus, who put the book together). My chapter was "How To Be A Good Houseguest." That said, I realized, on my way to the party, that my houseguest advice dovetails quite nicely with my love advice. It's based on the principle that all people are annoying and smell bad. Operate accordingly as a houseguest and in your relationships and you're less likely to be evicted.
Here's a quote from the chapter I wrote: "A polite guest reciprocates by becoming a host. That said, if the person who just hosted you lives in Paris and you live in Akron, an invitation to be a guest at your place probably isn't the sincerest form of reciprocity."
Dinner For Five (Thousand)
Thatís probably a close estimate of the number of Sunday dinner guests American expat-in-Paris Jim Haynes has every year.
Every Sunday night, he serves dinner in his 14th arrondissement loft for over 50 people. Each dinner is a mixed bag of Americans and Europeans; my guess is about 60 percent American, 40 percent French and other. Dinner is 20 euros, and worth every penny; although, if you're a poor little church-mouse, I think he might toss you some chow for free.
Haynes left America to serve in the army, got posted to Edinburgh, and went to college there ñ- and subsequently started the Edinburgh film festival. He knows everybody ñ- rock stars, poets, scientists, and fascinating nobodies ñ- but heís one of the most friendly, welcoming, and unpretentious people you'll ever meet.
If you go to dinner there, chances are youíll run into people you havenít seen for 10 or 20 years. I saw docu filmmaker Maxie Cohen, enroute to the south of France for the opening of her exhibition of photos of ladies rooms around Europe. Last I talked with Maxie was in the early 90s, at a party at her Soho, NY, loft. Also at Haynes', I met French actor Georges Corraface, whom I last saw on stage at Brooklyn Academy Of Music when he starred in Peter Brookís Mahabharata.
Met some pretty interesting new people, too, like Duc, a young American photographer, just out of photo school. Duc hitchhiked the entire route of Lance Armstrongís race, and shot the whole thing, spending the night in wheat fields in his sleeping bag, and getting taken in by kindly strangers in the French countryside more often than not.
Surrounding Duc, it's (from left) my friends, Paris blogger Jason Stone, Eric Wahlgren, Nancy Rommelmann, her daughter, and Boubeker.
Major Comments Spam Attack!
If you have an MT Blog, and you're using MT Blacklist, do yourself a major favor, and put in these words right away: ifreepages and hap.heydo.com
I just looked at my MT log, and there were probably 1,000 comments denials (spam that couldn't get through) in the past four hours. Unfortunately, 200 did sneak through.
Pass this on to ANYBODY with an MT blog with comments enabled. PS I've also found it helpful to blacklist words like "poker," "pills," and the like. Sometimes, it might prohibit a comment from a legit URL, unfortunately. But the savings in agony for me...priceless.
Oh yeah -- and the next MT (3.1.1, I believe it is), allows for batch deleting of comments, making it easy to get rid of the bastards in one fell swoop.
The Experts' Guide To 100 Things Everybody Should Know How To Do
A book, in stores on Friday, September 24, with a chapter by yours truly -- on "How To Be A Good Houseguest." At this very moment, I'm a houseguest in NYC, staying with the producer of my Biography TV spots. And, yes, I'm told I get high marks!
Big Brother-Cam
No more public sex in Chicago. Hmm, or perhaps MORE public sex in Chicago! Because Big Brother (and a bunch of his colleagues) are watching you. Stephen Kinzer writes in The New York Times:
Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately.
Officials here designed the system after studying the video surveillance network in London, which became a world leader in this technology during the period when Irish terrorists were active. The Chicago officials also studied systems used in Las Vegas casinos, as well as those used by Army combat units. The system they have devised, they say, will be the most sophisticated in the United States and perhaps the world.
"What we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman, executive director of the city's office of emergency management and communications. "This is a very innovative way to harness the power of cameras. It's going to take us to a whole new level."
Yeah, a level where civil liberties are a thing of the past.
Shopasaurus
Show Tunes Me The Way
A girl gives the gay-hating religious nutbags on the train what they've got coming. Then again, it would have been even more perfect if she'd made them all spend the night in bed with human plastic surgery practice doll and Liza-leech, David Gest...but I guess you can't have it all.
The Difference Between Scientists And Fundamentalists
Scientists admit when they're wrong. Religious fanatics are completely convinced they have all the answers, and refuse to even consider the prospect that they might not -- all the while entirely lacking in any evidence whatsoever for what they believe. Umberto Eco has their number...and perhaps, yours?
According to these people, all that there is to understand has already been understood by long-vanished ancient civilisations and it is only by humbly returning to that traditional and immutable treasure that we may reconcile ourselves with ourselves and with our destiny.In the most overtly occultist versions of this school of thought, the truth was cultivated by civilisations we have lost touch with: Atlantis engulfed by the ocean, the Hyperboreans, 100% pure Aryans who lived on an eternally temperate polar icecap, the sages of ancient India and other amusing yarns that, being indemonstrable, allow third-rate philosophers and writers of potboilers to keep on churning out warmed-over versions of the same old hermetic hogwash for the amusement of summer vacationers.
Modern science does not hold that what is new is always right. On the contrary, it is based on the principle of "fallibilism" (enunciated by the American philosopher Charles Peirce, elaborated upon by Popper and many other theorists, and put into practice by scientists themselves) according to which science progresses by continually correcting itself, falsifying its hypotheses by trial and error, admitting its own mistakes - and by considering that an experiment that doesn't work out is not a failure but is worth as much as a successful one because it proves that a certain line of research was mistaken and it is necessary either to change direction or even to start over from scratch.
And this is what was proposed centuries ago in Italy by an institute of learning known as the Accademia del Cimento, whose motto was " provando e riprovando ". This would normally translate into English as "to try and try again", but here there is a subtle distinction. Whereas in Italian " riprovare " normally means to try again, here it means to "reprove" or "reject" that which cannot be maintained in the light of reason and experience.
This way of thinking is opposed, as I said before, to all forms of fundamentalism, to all literal interpretations of holy writ - which are also open to continuous reinterpretation - and to all dogmatic certainty in one's own ideas. This is that good "philosophy," in the everyday and Socratic sense of the term, which ought to be taught in schools.
What does the growth of fundamentalism (and all belief in god) say about our country? That, just as Europeans are becoming less and less religious, Americans are jumping at the opportunity to be intellectual sheep? If you believe in god, come on, show me actual proof that there is one -- and I don't mean "it says so in the bible," or "the man in the long black robe swears god's up there!"
If you, like the rest of the world, have no proof, well, maybe you could just adopt my religion: "Be kind, be ethical, live a rational life, and 'leave the campground better than you found it.'" Unlike standard religions, which make you all sorts of promises (all that salvation hoo-hah, for example) that they are unlikely to deliver on, my religion comes with a (no) money-back guarantee: I solemnly pledge, if you give me your money, I'll have a better life! First class plane tickets, champagne and caviar, and filet mignon, just for starters. Come on, isn't it time you converted to Amyism?!
Construction Issues For People On Safari Browser
New blog entries for Monday are up, but my site menu (apparently, just for people on Safari) has dropped to the bottom of the page. If you're on Safari, scroll all the way down to the very bottom to access column links, front page, book links, etc. Please let me know if the left-side links are still there on your browser. Thanks...-Amy
Starbucks - Not Just For Blogging Anymore
This woman actually brought a mannequin and a bunch of clothes to photograph to the Main Street, Santa Monica Starbucks. When I left, she was laying a pair of women's pants on the floor so she could shoot them flat! Perhaps she posted her photos to eBay after I left -- a site that's apparently a source of great wealth for many Americans (those who aren't buying mansions with their take from bake sales and lemonade stands).
Yes, the era of the office-free empire is upon us! Unfortunately, it seems the vast majority of the new Wi-Fi-connected, latte-lapping magnates lack a battery of secretaries to hold their calls. Somebody at Starbucks is always shouting something really inane into their cell phone, like "Buy low! Sell high!" (Um, yeah...we all know you're dialing your answering machine and talking to your cat.)
Sing Along With Bush
He's not just The War President. He's a rock idol, too.
Chickens Are The New Ferrets
But it's probably a bad idea to get a rooster as a pet if you live within five miles of other human beings.
Real Pretentious On Real Time
Princeton prof and author Cornel West was violently pretentious last night on Real Time With Bill Maher; actually decrying Oprah's all-audience car giveaway to people in need as a..."fetishizing of commodities"!
He also had the nerve -- and what a vulgar, pretentious snob! -- to denigrate those in Oprah's audience who cried when they learned they'd gotten a free vehicle. Hmm, let's say you're a single mother who's fallen on hard times, and somebody gives you bright, shiny, new, free transportation, meaning you don't have to drag your ass to the bus stop in the freezing cold at 5am. "Fetishizing of commodities"? Damn straight. Lucky for him, I wasn't near the keyboard earlier, when he mumbled some mumbo-jumbo about assault weapons as a signifier of our cultural "phallo-centricism." I kid you not.
You know, at around age 21, I stopped feeling the need to be multi-syllabically obtuse in hopes of impressing people with my grand vocabulary and searching intellect. These days, I'm thrilled when I use my grammar-check on my computer, and the stats say I'm communicating for people who read at a 6th grade level (not often enough...but I'm working on the simplicity and clarity thing). And lucky me, I've topped my self-esteem off with enough psychological spinach that my favorite reader letters now are the ones that start "Dear Dumb Bitch," or with something equally respectful and laudatory.
How old, exactly, is Cornell Woolrich? When, exactly, will he start feeling secure enough to start actually communicating? Cast your prediction below!
The Poet Laureate Of Pessimism
In honor of Leonard Cohen's 70th birthday, 70 things you may or may not know about him.
The Case Against The Bush Administration
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice. Hold them accountable, says a Fight Back Campaign-sponsored site:
...For the disastrous situation facing the United States in Iraq, which has already led to the tragic deaths of over a thousand U.S. soldiers, civilian contractors, and support staff.By politicizing their decision-making, selectively presenting evidence for the war, ignoring the counsel of experts, attacking their critics as unpatriotic, making claims about the success of the war that do not appear to coincide with the facts on the ground, and -- most shamefully -- by exploiting the memory of the September 11th attacks for political gain, the President and the Bush Administration have done a grave disservice to America.
And -- the Administration's claims to the contrary notwithstanding -- there is broad and growing consensus among professional foreign policy experts that the choices President Bush and his advisors made about how to respond to Saddam Hussein, and the disastrous consequences, have left the United States more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, not safer.
Fight Back Campaign lays out the case here.
Doesn't Anybody In The Government Read?!!
It seems a bookmark is a foreign object to those "protecting" the annoying and unfriendly skies. The very pretty, very sweet-looking special-ed teacher, Kathryn Harrington, 52, was arrested for trying to carry an ordinary monogrammed leather bookmark through airport security, writes Jay Cridlin, in the St. Pete Times:
For the past month, Kathryn Harrington has stared down the possibility of a criminal trial, a $10,000 fine and the stigma of being deemed a security risk at Tampa International Airport.The reason? She had a bookmark with her as she passed through airport security screening.
"It was a bookmark," Harrington said. "It's not a weapon. I could not understand why I was being handcuffed and put into a police car. I cried for hours."
See the photos within the link -- of Harrington and her "weapon." Apparently, even items that "could be considered dangerous" are illegal to bring on a plane. Hello? I could put your eye out with the heels of many of my boots. Should I go barefoot on the plane? Do you feel safer now?
Hippie-crite On Pico Blvd
"No War For Oil." Yes, that is, indeed, what the bumper sticker on this nice new Ford Explorer says. Good morning, genius! What do you think your vehicle runs on, purple Kool Aid?
Regarding the bumper sticker on the other side, "Let Peace Begin With Me"...yeah...let it begin with you getting an Insight or a Prius, or at least a Jetta diesel station wagon or Ford Focus gas-powered station wagon. For those who are interested in doing as much as possible to drive something that doesn't ruin children's lungs, endanger everyone else on the road, and lead to needless deaths of American boys and girls, locate your hybrid here, at Dealernet.com. (Use "Advanced Search" so you can select your specific car.)
I can already tell you there isn't an Insight in all of California, but there are a whole bunch in New Jersey, and I know a great car salesman, Gil Tutone (I call him Gil Two-Tone, which he puts up with in pretty good humor), at Power Honda, Valencia, who can make the deal for you. Regarding any bright ideas you might have about buying an Insight out of state and driving it to California, there's an enormous cost to re-registering it in California. Best to find one as close as possible, so your shipping charges are lower, then make a deal to have a dealer here buy it from the other dealership so you can buy it from them as a California car.
Oh yeah, and on a small penis note, this this 7mpg monstrosity makes the Hummer look like a Tonka. (How long, do you think, before they're in the garage at CAA?)
Gay Marriage Legalized
In yet another province in Canada. America used to be revolutionary. Now we're the backward empire run by fundamentalists. Sad, huh?
My Baby's Coming
No, I haven't lost my mind and decided to have a child. But, like adoptive parents who mail-order a child from China, mine's coming from Texas, and it's just daaaarling, and I know many people will breathe a lot easier once it's here. ETA for my little bundle of joy? September 21. Feel free to help me name my baby.
Who's The Boss?
"I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," he wrote. "The policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live were an anti-democratic disgrace." --Colin Powell, My American Journey.
Indeed.
(via Robert Sam Anson, NY Observer)
14 Hours In Hell
Sitting next to somebody blathering away on a cell phone on a plane. Soon to be a reality? Hmm, how many hours do you think it would take me to swim from New York to Paris?
(via bilingual blogger Emmanuelle Richard)
Memo To The Publicly Under-Attired
No, flip-flops do not count as shoes! Not for anybody not still glistening with pool-water. While they are usually an unattractive addition to any woman's outfit, I am especially uninterested in getting an involuntary peek at some man's hairy toes while I am eating in a restaurant or shopping for produce at Whole Foods. Surely, if you can afford to buy groceries there, you can afford a nice pair of loafers. At the moment, Mr. Flip-Flops, your feet are a powerful emetic, and I'd really like to keep my dinner, thank you!
Who's The Big-Spending Big Democrat?
Wrong! It's the guy who accepted the nomination at the Republican convention, writes Mike Allen in the Washington Post:
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.
The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans.
As somebody TV showrunner Scott Kaufer jokingly called "to the right of Genghis Khan," thanks to my reply (to his hypocrisy-catcher question) that the government shouldn't pay for NPR, my contention that anybody middle-class and up should pay for their own damn kids' schooling (but we should all chip in for poor kids'), and more, I feel especially entitled to say: True conservatives don't vote for Bush!
P.S. In case you were wondering, I'm also for legalizing pot, prostitution, and nudity and profanity on the airwaves, and for keeping god out of government!
Who's The Flip-Flopper?
Too busy swallowing Republican spin to think for yourself? Perhaps you haven't noticed how busy Bush has been...flip-flopping. Tom Raum writes, for the Associated Press that, if Kerry is a flip-flopper, he has company...with the initials GWB:
-In 2000, Bush argued against new military entanglements and nation building. He's done both in Iraq.-He opposed a Homeland Security Department, then embraced it.
-He opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.
-Bush argued for free trade, then imposed three-year tariffs on steel imports in 2002, only to withdraw them after 21 months.
-Last month, he said he doubted the war on terror could be won, then reversed himself to say it could and would.
-A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive.'' But he told reporters six months later, "I truly am not that concerned about him.'' He did not mention bin Laden in his hour-long convention acceptance speech.
"I'm a war president,'' Bush told NBC's "Meet the Press'' on Feb. 8. But in a July 20 speech in Iowa, he said: "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president.''
Bush keeps revising his Iraq war rationale: The need to seize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction until none were found; liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator; fighting terrorists in Iraq not at home; spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it's a safer America and a safer world.
"No matter how many times Senator Kerry flip-flops, we were right to make America safer by removing Saddam Hussein from power,'' he said last week in Missouri.
Bush has changed his positions on new Clean Air Act restrictions, protecting the Social Security surplus, tobacco subsidies, the level of assistance to help combat AIDs in Africa, campaign finance overhaul and whether to negotiate with North Korean officials.
But while Bush's policy shifts have been numerous and notable, Democrats haven't succeeded yet in tarring him as a flip flopper, said American University political scientist James Thurber.
"Kerry has made some statements about it, but he doesn't have a clear strategy for hammering back at the flip flops of the president,'' Thurber said.
Doggie Dearest
photo stolen from Gregg Sutter
Kitty Kelly Book Out Today
And posting this a little after 5am PST, Salon has the most info on it I've seen yet. Like this little tidbit you probably won't read on the left and right shriek sites:
New Yorker writer Brendan Gill recalls roaming the Kennebunkport compound one night while staying there looking for a book to read -- the only title he could find was "The Fart Book."
Is there even a die-hard Bush defender out there who finds this a surprise?
What If Bush Wins?
Sixteen writers predict the outcomes of a second term for President Bush.
Choices, Choices...
Big sale come November --
too bad there's nobody worth buying.
Mark Helprin paints a bleak electoral picture in The Wall Street Journal:
We have watched the division of the country into two ineffective camps, something that is especially apparent in an electoral season. On the one hand is John Kerry, a humorless Boston scold, in appearance the love child of Abraham Lincoln and Bette Midler, who recites slogans that he understands but does not believe. And on the other is the president, proud of his aversion to making an argument for his own case, in appearance a denizen of the Pleistocene, who recites slogans that he believes but does not understand.
Which empty suit are you voting for?
(WSJ link via Reason's blog)
Jeff Jarvis Was There
Jeff Jarvis arrived on the PATH train just after the first tower of the WTC was attacked on 9-11. Here's his audio account of that day.
Conservatives Against Bush
Reaganite Doug Bandow votes no on Bush:
Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism -- a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle. As Chris Vance, chairman of Washington state's Republican Party, told the Economist: "George Bush's record is not that conservative ... There's something there for everyone."Even Bush's conservative sycophants have trouble finding policies to praise. Certainly it cannot be federal spending. In 2000 candidate Bush complained that Al Gore would "throw the budget out of balance." But the big-spending Bush administration and GOP Congress have turned a 10-year budget surplus once estimated at $5.6 trillion into an estimated $5 trillion flood of red ink. This year's deficit will run about $445 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II." There are few programs at which the president has not thrown money; he has supported massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork barrel projects, dubious homeland security grants, an expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, and new foreign aid programs. What's more, says former conservative Republican Rep. Bob Barr, "in the midst of the war on terror and $500 billion deficits, [Bush] proposes sending spaceships to Mars."
Unfortunately, even the official spending numbers understate the problem. The Bush administration is pushing military proposals that may understate defense costs by $500 billion over the coming decade. The administration lied about the likely cost of the Medicare drug benefit, which added $8 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Moreover, it declined to include in budget proposals any numbers for maintaining the occupation of Iraq or underwriting the war on terrorism. Those funds will come through supplemental appropriation bills. Never mind that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had promised that reconstruction of Iraq could be paid for with Iraqi resources. (Yet, despite the Bush administration's generosity, it could not find the money to expeditiously equip U.S. soldiers in Iraq with body armor.)
Nor would a second Bush term likely be different. Nothing in his convention speech suggested a new willingness by Bush to make tough choices. Indeed, when discussing their domestic agenda, administration officials complained that the media had ignored their proposals, such as $250 million in aid to community colleges for job training. Not mentioned was that Washington runs a plethora of job training programs, few of which have demonstrated lasting benefits. This is the hallmark of a limited-government conservative?
Jonah Goldberg, a regular contributor to NRO, one of Bush's strongest bastions, complains that the president has "asked for a major new commitment by the federal government to insert itself into everything from religious charities to marriage counseling." Indeed, Bush seems to aspire to be America's moralizer in chief. He would use the federal government to micromanage education, combat the scourge of steroid use, push drug testing of high school kids, encourage character education, promote marriage, hire mentors for children of prisoners and provide coaches for ex-cons.
Conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan worries that Bush "is fusing Big Government liberalism with religious right moralism. It's the nanny state with more cash."
Bandow's essay is anything but love letter to Kerry, whom Bandow calls "bad for the cause of individual liberty and limited government." But, a Bush victory, based on the results of his presidency? "Catastrophic."
Dear Idiot (aka Jeanne Phillips)
Yesterday, Dear Abby (aka Jeanne Phillips) ran a letter from a distraught girl who'd discovered evidence her stepfather was a peeping pedophile:
GIRL FINDS STEPDAD'S CAMERA IN A PLACE IT DOESN'T BELONGDEAR ABBY: A few years ago, I noticed some porn in my mom and stepdad's room. I didn't mention it to anyone. Later, my older sister accused my stepdad of window-peeping, but no one believed her. Last summer, I noticed him outside my window when I woke up one morning. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to cause a problem.
I have never liked my stepdad. He is verbally abusive. You wouldn't believe what I hear every single day.
I share a bathroom with one of my sisters. Last year when it was remodeled, we noticed a gap between the floor and the basement. (We covered it with towels when we were in there.)
Last week, I noticed what looked like a piece of wood in the gap, so I decided to give it a closer look. It looked like the lens of a camera. When I took a flashlight into the basement and checked it out, I found a cable running through the room and got close enough to see it said "camera" on the back. It faced the toilet.
I don't know who to tell, or if I should. My sister deserves the right to know -- but who else would believe me? I'm just a stupid 14-year-old girl. If I tell my mom, she will kick my stepdad out, and I'll have to go and live with my dad. I'll have to change schools. I'll lose my boyfriend, my friends, my life. Mom could lose the house because my stepdad mainly brings in all the money.
I should have said something when I saw the porn. I feel like this is all my fault. If I don't say anything and it keeps on, it could get worse -- and I'd probably commit suicide from the stress. And what if my friends come over? Please help me -- this is so important. -- DESPERATE IN INDIANA
Did Dear Abby advise her to call the police, pronto? Nope! She actually advised the girl to go out and buy a disposable camera!...photograph the video camera behind the toilet...wait to get the pictures developed...and be sure to get several sets of prints! After she gets the prints back, she's supposed to hand one copy to the dimwit mother who put her in danger in the first place, and refused to believe the girl's sister when she told her she caught the stepfather peeping. That should be highly effective! The girl's also supposed to drop another set in the mail to her father! (Let's hope she can get her hands on a Priority Mail stamp.) Next, she's supposed to cross her fingers that mom will leap into action to protect her -- and not simply ask step-pervo to please remove the photographic equipment behind the peephole in the girl and her sister's bathroom before he sits down to dinner! (And that's probably the best case scenario, judging from the girl's description of enabler-mom.) If mom does nothing, the girl is supposed to go give another set of prints to a "trusted teacher"! Phillips does add: "Your stepfather is sick and does not belong in a house with young women."
Oh, and by the way: "Ideally, the police should be notified."
Yeah! Like the moment you got that letter. As an advice columnist, there are certain letters you get that you don't let sit around in the mail Matterhorn with all the mail from horny convicts; for example, those from people who seem seriously suicidal and those from distraught young girls living with pedophile stepfathers. If at all possible, (if you're me) you get that girl on the phone (surreptitiously, of course), and get her to call the cops immediately. What you don't do is make her wait three weeks for your lame-ass, wrong advice to run in the paper. Now, maybe Phillips did take steps to contact the girl. Where would you place your bet on that?
I was so disturbed after reading this column of hers, I came home from lunch and e-mailed the head of sales at her syndicator. Since I've heard nothing back from him -- not even a "got your note" -- I'm posting this here. If you're as disturbed as I am by this, and your local newspaper runs Dear Abby, please write and let them know how you feel. Here's my take on it:
Dear John, I know this is very out of the ordinary, but I've been disturbed about this since I read Dear Abby in the paper at lunch. I'm writing to you because I don't have Jeanne Phillips' e-mail or office address, but the advice of hers that ran in the LA Times today (about the pedophile peeping stepfather) was seriously, dangerously wrong. The girl needs to call the police IMMEDIATELY, not play girl detective and wait to do something "when the pictures are developed"! I hope you'll forward this to Jeanne Phillips -- who would, I hope, track the girl down and tell her to call the cops. I often disagree with Phillips' advice, and typically just roll my eyes and close the paper without another thought -- but advising a young girl to take matters into her own hands in a case like this...! Dangerously, irresponsibly wrong. -Amy Alkon
Ce N'est Pas Une Pipe
This little rue St. Denis supermarchÈ probably isn't the best place to shop for salade machÈ.
LA Times travel writer Susan Spano muses that the prostitutes by rue St. Martin and Boulevard Sebastopol are puzzlingly large and fleshy, but she can't manage to work her feeble brain around why that might be!
Still, Paris can surprise me. The other day I was walking from a yoga class in the northern part of the Marais to Art Deco Rex Cinema on the Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle. (I especially like the intersection of Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle and Rue Poissoniere, though I can't exactly say why.) Anyway, I veered onto Rue Blondel, a little street that runs east to west between Boulevard Sebastopol and Rue St.-Martin, just like any other really, with storefront shops selling cheap clothes. In almost every doorway was a prostitute talking to a man or silently smoking, in a skin-tight skirt, halter top, high heels, flashy jewelry. Of course I've seen hookers before, but the thing about the ones on Rue Blondel is that they're all gigantic and fleshy, like something out of a Fellini movie. I exchanged a polite bon jour with one of them, trying not to gawk, wondering what to think of her and what she thought of me.
Umm...she was probably wondering if you were staring at her gigantic Adam's apple.
These prositutes are MEN! They're MEN! They're MEN! Note the nearby rue St. Denis -- the homo porn capital of Paris! Look at the "girls'" big, ham-hock-like knuckles! The faint five o'clock shadow under the caked-on foundation! The manly thighs!
How the LA Times can send such a lamebrain to write about Paris is beyond me. (At least this time, she left out the breaking news from inside her refrigerator)!
What I Love About Cathy Seipp
But, first, the context. Cathy writes in National Review about her "testy relationship" with columnist Nikki Finke, whom she described as "semi-sane" in the media column she wrote for LA's old Buzz magazine in the early 90s:
She complained to my editor that she was offended because she'd written serious articles about the serious problem of schizophrenia, so as I recall we had to run an apology.Now for the record, if anyone called me semi-sane in print, I wouldn't send a letter like that. I'd send a jagged piece of broken mirror in an envelope with "I AM NOT SEMI-SANE" scrawled on it in lipstick or blood, but I guess we all have our own style when it comes to handling these things.
Yes, and like Cathy, I happen to favor psycho-chic. I also like to put my hate mail in my promo pieces (to sell my column). We're doing a new one now, and one dissatisfied reader's "I'd like to shove a stiletto heel up your ass" will be right at the top.
What Is The Advice Columnist Drinking?
What else?
The War Against People In Pain
Millions of Americans are being undertreated for pain, writes Maia Szalavitz, in Reason, thanks to prescription painkillers becoming the new frontline in the drug war. Doctors are being treated as suspected drug dealers -- simply for treating their patients in pain as their training has them see medically fit:
Frank Fisher seems to have been targeted based on just this sort of suspicion. At his Northern California clinic, the Harvard Medical School graduate accepted patients on Medicaid and Medi-Cal (California's health insurance for the poor) that most other physicians refused, and he tried to treat their pain as aggressively as he would treat anyone else's. In February 1999 state law enforcement agents raided Fisher's clinic and arrested him for drug dealing, fraud and murder. His bail was set at $15 million. State prosecutors accused him of "creating a public health epidemic" of OxyContin abuse and death. They implied that he must be a drug dealer because he was the largest prescriber of the drug under Medi-Cal.But in a context where fear of prosecution leads most doctors to under-prescribe, anyone who prescribes what is necessary for severe pain will be a top prescriber. Even Burke admits that prosecuting doctors has a chilling effect on their colleagues' treatment decisions.
"I know from lecturing thousands of physicians that there is no question but that it does," he says. "The thing we don't want to happen is that physicians don't prescribe appropriately because of these cases, but I know that it happens. I have to be honest." Burke also recognizes that there is no ceiling on opioid doses: When patients develop tolerance, they may need massive doses that would kill someone who had never taken the drug. "Physicians should not be targeted simply on volume," he says. "That can be a huge mistake."
The DEA insists physicians aren't targeted based on volume alone. But Fisher believes he was. While patients with moderate pain can be treated effectively with low doses of opioids, he explains, severe pain requires that the dose be adjusted ("titrated") to a level that maximizes pain relief and minimizes side effects. "To get a sense," he says, "I titrated about two dozen patients, and they ended up taking almost half of the OxyContin 80-milligram pills prescribed in California in 1998. What that tells you is that nobody else titrated."
Fisher was jailed for five months, during which time the prosecution's case began to evaporate. First, the murder charges were reduced to manslaughter by the judge, who saw no proof of intent. Then the truth about these "killings" came out. One death involved a passenger who died when her spine was severed in a van accident. Fisher was charged with her "murder" because she had high levels of OxyContin in her blood. Another "victim" had taken drugs stolen from a patient, while a third died of a self-administered overdose two weeks after Fisher was incarcerated.
During cross-examination in pretrial hearings, it was revealed that seven attempts by undercover agents to get drugs from Fisher had been rebuffed. "I had a screening process for those who tried to get controlled substances," he says. "I screened out 60 percent of those, and apparently the agents were amongst them."
In January 2003, four years after Fisher's arrest, a state judge dismissed all the charges against him because prosecutors had tried repeatedly to delay the trial. But this year prosecutors decided to pursue another set of charges against him. Instead of homicide, drug dealing, and felony fraud involving $2 million in Medi-Cal reimbursements, they charged him with eight misdemeanor counts of fraud. Prosecutors would not put a dollar value on the offenses, but Fisher said they added up to $150. The jury agreed with Fisher's expert, who said the billings in question didn't warrant civil penalties, let alone criminal charges, and he was acquitted of all counts in May. He still faces possible disciplinary action by the state medical board as well as civil suits by patients' relatives.
Fisher forwarded an e-mail message from a juror who wrote: "Now that I am home and can read about you on the Internet, my heart really goes out to you...I was upset that the prosecutor wasted my time and the court's time on such a weak case. But now that I know what you have really been through I feel embarrassed and selfish to be thinking about my own time. I hope you can reopen your clinic some day and get back to practicing medicine...Thanks for doing the job most doctors won't."
Typical to the current administration (Cheney takes babysteps to pay lip service to gay rights because he has a gay daughter), only when somebody in the immediate Bush/Cheney families suffers pain might others also have their suffering alleviated. Maybe then they'll let the doctors out of jail. Next on the agenda...the pot-heads! Excuse me, but it makes about as much sense to have a law against smoking pot as it would to have a law against drinking martinis. Oh wait...we did have a law against drinking martinis. And look how far we haven't come! Come on, it's been a few hundred years since the Puritans docked here...can't we move on?
It's A Bird, It's A Plane...
It's Super-Rude! My sentiments, exactly, about in-store cell-phoning:
Underground Cinema
Literally. Beneath the streets of Paris, no less!
What Would Jesus Do?
Well, I don't really know, because, well, I KILLED JESUS. I know this because all these really nice Christian kids screamed that at me when I was six. But, Alan Keyes feels pretty sure Jesus would give Obama the big (stigmata-handed) thumbs down.
According to a list of quotes put out by the Democratic candidate, Keyes said in a radio interview at the Republican National Convention that Jesus would not vote for Obama. The quote was part of a list Obama sent reporters of Keyes' accusations and epithets about him since Keyes became a candidate, NBC5 political editor Dick Kay said.Kay also reported that Keyes called Obama a "socialist and a liar" on a cable access news show on Monday. Obama said he wants to win big to give Keyes a spanking because Keyes wages a scorched earth campaign. Keyes then went into a very long analysis of the word "spanking" and suggested it might be related to slavery and insulting to African- Americans. He would not answer when asked directly if he was insulted.
Reporters also pointed out that Obama had said Bobby Rush had spanked Obama in the Congressional race when Obama ran against Rush in 2000. Obama said Tuesday night it was tongue-in-cheek and that everyone knows he wants to win the race for working people. He also said no one has run a more positive campaign than he.
Keyes, who has focused his campaign on abortion, said that his statement about whom Jesus would vote for was based on Obama's pro-choice votes in the Illinois Senate.
What's scary is how the world, in 2004, has suddenly started foaming with fundamentalism. We're back in the middle ages, with people running their lives, and this country, on belief in god. Oh, are we a secular country? Oh, please. With faith-based initiatives, prayer circles in the White House, Bush and company governing based on WWJD and being vocal about it, the fight to use stem cells without impediment from the fundamentalist fruitcakes (including the one in the Oval Office), and more?
If you don't think Bush will take this country even further away from separation of church and state than he already has -- like, by appointing Dr. David Hager to a reproductive health policy team (a doctor! who wrongly thinks the pill is an abortifacient) -- you're deluding yourself.
Quite frankly, I'm not a Kerry fan, nor am I a Democrat, but I'm for anybody but Bush, or any other religious fanatics. It's simply too dangerous to vote for them, no matter what your pocketbook-based argument might be, or how you rationalize responding to an attack by Osama by going after Saddam.
This race is not one between Republicans and Democrats, it's literally a fight for modernism against primitivism. What do you wanna bet Osama wants Bush in the White House -- with lots more of that crusade and god rhetoric to stir up the "infidels"?
(link via David "Tell Me Everything" Rensin)
Venice As Usual
Roger Webster stops by to borrow a nail file.
Friends In High Places
That's what two of the 9-11 hijackers had, according to a new book by Senator Bob Graham. Frank Davies writes about it in the Miami Herald:
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
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Continue reading Friends In High Places.
Luckily, It's Only Hurricane Season
In Florida these days.
photo by Gregg Sutter
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Who Pays, Who Profits?
Reading a fantastic book, The Ecology Of Commerce, by Paul Hawken. Here are a few quotes:Gasoline is cheap in the United States because its price does not reflect the cost of smog, acid rain, and their subsequent effects on health and the environment.As a capitalist Advice Goddess, I object to subsidizing the gas companies with what amounts to involuntary socialism. The same goes for cigarette manufacturers.
...In an economic study of the costs associated with cigarette smoking borne by Californians, the University Of California at San Francisco identified $7.6 billion in yearly expenses, mainly in lost wages and higher health care costs. This was equivalent to $3.43 for every pack of cigarettes sold in the state. Even though individuals smoke, society shares the cost.Thanks, but no thanks.
The problem is that these costs are shared unevenly, just as the profits from selling them are garnered disproportionately.Harken points to a solution in the work of the late English economist A.C. Pigou:
Pigous argued that competitive marketplaces would not work if producers did not bear the full costs of production, including whatever pollution, sickness, or environmental damage they caused. Pigou's solution was to impose a "tax to correct maladjustments" on producers, a tax that would be comparable to the avoided cost or unborne expense. Pigou cited prematurely peeling paint on a house near a cole-fired mill as an example of an external cost that should be paid by the producer. He theorized that when the producer was forced to bear full costs, it would have incentives to reduce its negative impact, thus lowering those costs.It comes down to this:
The measures we use to determine which companies get our money is completely removed from how those companies affect human and natural life. In fact, if there is a connection, it may be inverse. The more able a company is to externalize its cost of doing business and be ruthless in its practices, the greater return on capital it may achieve in the short term.That's not capitalism. It's free-ride-ism.
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Romenesko On Drugs
Okay, okay, it's just caffeine. The man who brought us MediaGossip-turned-MediaNews (now Romenesko), and Obscure Store And Reading Room, is now blogging about Starbucks.*
High-Definition TV
Liked this quote from Real Time last night, preceded by Bill Maher's observation that FDR didn't run on a Pearl Harbor platform, nor was Abraham Lincoln's presidency defined by theater security:"9-11 wasn't a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuckup of a guy on vacation." -Bill Maher*
The Vast Right-Wing Con-Seipp-acy
There are frequent complaints about an alleged "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the LA Press Club. Sadly, the entire vast right wing seems to be comprised of one person: my friend Cathy Seipp. As Emmanuelle Richard and I are Cathy's monthly cohostesses for book parties, we are frequently lumped in as fellow vast right-wing conspirators -- despite the fact that we cheerfully consider Cathy politically, well, wrong!Likewise, although Cathy says she doesn't remember this, she once referred to me (politically speaking) as "a wingnut." Despite our political differences, we always manage to find fun common ground -- hence, this month's writergirl breakfast at Hugo's (a restaurant my boyfriend likes to refer to as "Homo's" due to its smack-dab-in-West-Hollywood location).
Here's Cathy (with Harlow-hair), dangerously close to self-proclaimed liberals (novelist Ellen Slezak across the table from her), and liberaltarians (me, not pictured), and an emissary from afar: charming, raspberry-shirted Swiss journo Claudia Laffranchi. Heather King (in the back on the left) and Kerry Madden-Lunsford (back right) were undeclared at breakfast, but I'd guess they aren't exactly crowding Cathy's vast, one-woman right wing. Politics as usual. Guess which person whose last name is Seipp put her .02 in in the form of two crossed fingers?*
Bush By Numbers
Graydon Carter counts the double standards. For example:1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as a gift.2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Laden was a suspect in the 11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to "hit" Iraq.
237 Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by top Bush administration officials between 2002 and January 2004, according to the California Representative Henry Waxman.
10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets on 21 February 2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest simultaneous protest in world history.
$2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq projected by the White House in April 2003.
$4bn Actual monthly cost of the US military presence in Iraq according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in 2004.
$15m Amount of a contract awarded to an American firm to build a cement factory in Iraq.
$80,000 Amount an Iraqi firm spent (using Saddam's confiscated funds) to build the same factory, after delays prevented the American firm from starting it.
2000 Year that Cheney said his policy as CEO of Halliburton oil services company was "we wouldn't do anything in Iraq".
$4.7bn Total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$680m Estimated value of Iraq reconstruction contracts awarded to Bechtel.
$2.8bnValue of Bechtel Corp contracts in Iraq.
$120bn Amount the war and its aftermath are projected to cost for the 2004 fiscal year.
35 Number of countries to which the United States suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court.
92 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water in late 2002.
60 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water in late 2003.
55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.
80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the war.
0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945.
37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat operations "officially" ended.
0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.
0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.
And the list goes on, and on, and on.
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Andrew Sullivan Returns
Back from his blog-vacation hiatus, and well worth a read. For example:THE END OF CONSERVATISM: But conservatism as we have known it is now over. People like me who became conservatives because of the appeal of smaller government and more domestic freedom are now marginalized in a big-government party, bent on using the power of the state to direct people's lives, give them meaning and protect them from all dangers. Just remember all that Bush promised last night: an astonishingly expensive bid to spend much more money to help people in ways that conservatives once abjured. He pledged to provide record levels of education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more Pell grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system. I look forward to someone adding it all up, but it's easily in the trillions. And Bush's astonishing achievement is to make the case for all this new spending, at a time of chronic debt (created in large part by his profligate party), while pegging his opponent as the "tax-and-spend" candidate. The chutzpah is amazing. At this point, however, it isn't just chutzpah. It's deception. To propose all this knowing full well that we cannot even begin to afford it is irresponsible in the deepest degree. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only difference between Republicans and Democrats now is that the Bush Republicans believe in Big Insolvent Government and the Kerry Democrats believe in Big Solvent Government. By any measure, that makes Kerry - especially as he has endorsed the critical pay-as-you-go rule on domestic spending - easily the choice for fiscal conservatives. It was also jaw-dropping to hear this president speak about tax reform. Bush? He has done more to lard up the tax code with special breaks and new loopholes than any recent president. On this issue - on which I couldn't agree more - I have to say I don't believe him. Tax reform goes against the grain of everything this president has done so far. Why would he change now?*
Ask The Atheist
When will I believe in god? When I can get the guy on the phone. The same goes for Santa and the Easter Bunny.
I'm going on TV as the "Ask The Atheist" guest on a show that's taping today, airing in December, called Faith Under Fire. In that spirit, I'll recommend (again), a FANTASTIC book, The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, And The Future Of Reason, by Sam Harris. Also, here are two Web sites for the rational, skeptic.com and the-brights.net. And here is a thematic little joke:One day, the zookeeper noticed that the orangutan was reading two books - the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. Surprised, he asked the ape, "Why are you reading both those books?""Well," said the orangutan, "I just wanted to know if
I was my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother."And here's a quote from Harris' book:
Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him for all eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.And a question: Can any god-believers really say, as Harris puts it, that "religious faith is anything more sublime than a desperate marriage of hope and ignorance"?
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Amy Goes Head To Head With The Ape
Well, I must say my appearance on Faith Under Fire did not go well. The guest I was debating, via satellite hookup, was a guy named Frank Pastore, a former pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds, who apparently decided god exists because he experienced people praying for him in great earnestness.What a rude man! In fact, he was so rude to me on the show that the host, Lee Strobel, and the exec producer, along with a gaggle of producers and other crew, all gathered around me after the show and repeatedly apologized for how he behaved.
The show started with Lee asking me a question: why I don't believe in god. "For the same reason I don't believe in Santa or the Easter bunny," I responded, "Because there's no proof any of them exist." Strobel then asked Pastore a question. Pastore responded -- uninterrupted by me, of course, since it would have been RUDE to break in. Strobel asked me a question. I began to answer when Pastore interrupted me and started talking over me. I politely asked that he let me talk. Again and again. He interrupted me again, and again, and again. And he just kept repeating the same long barrage about proof there is a god -- without ever actually offering any -- then berated me about what kind of proof I'd need, yet never let me respond. Every time Strobel would ask me a question, I could barely get a few words out when Pastore would cut in. What a bully. Equally disturbing, while I addressed my remarks to the topic of belief or lack of belief in god, Pastore made it personal, attacking me repeatedly -- down to sneering about my column name, The Advice Goddess. (It's a joke, dude.)
Twice, I said I was about to unhook my mic and walk out, and Strobel did his best to try to civilize the discussion each time -- but to no avail. Pastore's rudeness was really unfortunate, because this could have been an interesting discussion -- but there was no discussion whatsover -- just a bully shouting over me and making derogatory remarks about me instead of sticking to the topic.
Here's a copy of the e-mail I got from one of the producers after the show:
Thank you and...I apologize again that the other guest was so aggressive and obnoxious. We had no idea that that was the way it was going to go down.
Meanwhile, you were able to maintain your composure with dignity and femininity in stark contrast to Frankís demeanor during this segment.
I really appreciate you being such a good sport under the circumstances.
All the best,
CarolineAnd here's my response:
Thanks -- I really appreciate that. You guys were all very nice and professional. Thanks for having me on. I'd be happy to come back some time for some intelligent debate -- with somebody capable of having one. Sadly, I could have had a very intelligent conversation, I think, with Lee -- who has a similar point of view as Frank, but was very gentile in his manner of disagreeing with me. All the best, -Amy*
The Politics Of Internet Chain Letters
Apparently, part of Zell Miller's anti-Kerry rant was lifted from an Internet chain letter, debunked on Snopes.(via Kevin Roderick/LAObserved, who should turn his comments back on!)
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Swift Boat On Venice Boulevard
photo by Gregg Sutter
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Joe Klein On Dirty Politics
Joe Klein seeks the truth and finds:...Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have turned out to be anything butóthe only "lies" they've turned up are a mistaken date or a mild Kerry exaggeration about operating in Cambodia and a Purple Heart received for a minor woundówe are told their real gripe is that Kerry protested the war after he came home and sullied their service by testifying to atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam.These are heartfelt gripes, perhaps, but wrong on the merits. Kerry's protest was not only honorable, it was accurate. The war in Vietnam was an unnecessary disaster, entered into under false pretensesóthe fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incidentóand fought because of a mistaken intellectual theory: that the Vietnamese national liberation movement was part of an international communist conspiracy to overwhelm Asia. (The subsequent war between Vietnam and China put a crimp in that one.) And, yes, there were atrocities aplenty. I spent three years in the 1980s writing about a platoon of former Marines, men I consider heroes, and several unburdened themselves of awful memories before we were done: tossing a Vietnamese prisoner out of a helicopter, shooting an obviously innocent woman civilian in the back, collecting the ears of enemy dead. It was a meaningless, despicable war, and insane brutality was not an uncommon reaction.
But we're not really talking about Vietnam here, are we? We are talking about the politics of misdirection, about keeping John Kerry on the defensive by raising spurious questions about his "character."
We may also be talking about Iraqóand limiting Kerry's ability to question the President's decision to go to war. If so, the Swifties need not have bothered. Kerry hasn't shown much inclination to raise the real question about Iraq: Was it the right thing to do? And Bush hasn't shown much inclination to talk about the mixed, confusing effects of globalization on people like Elba Nieves. Which means there are nondebates on the two most important issues facing the nation. Not-So-Swift Columnists for Truth is appalled.
So are a few swift boat vets who had their names forged on the document decrying Kerry, writes Linda Halstead-Acharya:
Swift boat veteran Bob Anderson of Columbus is ticked.It bothers him that Sen. John Kerry's swift boat history has become such a political hot potato. But he's even more irritated that his name was included - without his permission - on a letter used to discredit Kerry.
"I'm pretty nonpolitical," the 56-year-old Anderson said Tuesday. So, when he found out last week that his name was one of about 300 signed on a letter questioning Kerry's service, he was "flabbergasted."
"It's kind of like stealing my identity," said Anderson, who spent a year on a swift boat as an engine man and gunner.
Speaking of faking it, check out our award-wearing commander-in-chief. Only, it seems he didn't actually earn one of the military awards he's wearing.
Yoo-hoo, Swift Boat Veterans? Anybody home?
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Seen and Herd At The Convention
Hordes of Republicans were chanting "Four More Years! Four More Years!" And Michael Moore:"Two More Months! Two More Months!"And from Democracy Now:
Peace activist and Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin was kicked off the floor of the Republican convention after she unfurled a pink banner that read Pro-Life: Stop the Killing in Iraq.Silly Medea. Don't you know fundamentalists are only pro-life before the baby is born?
Here's Nick Gillespie on Dick Cheney:
...Cheney's speech--like much of the RNC--pivots on a highly debatable, indeed, the highly debatable point that "we're in a war we didn't start." That's only partly true: Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. and deserves to be killed to the last man for that; they started things. Yet no one--certainly no one in mainstream politics--is against blowing Al Qaeda to kingdom come. The questions most Americans have relate to the war in Iraq, a battle whose timing and shape was very much dictated by the White House.Bracketing for the moment the large question of how the economy will affect votes, if the GOP is able to define the War on Terror and the war in Iraq as coterminous, they'll win in a walkover. If the Dems somehow manage to separate the two, it'll still be competitive.
New Yorkers Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle write, in a letter to The New York Times:
As single mothers left to raise children whose fathers were killed on 9/11, we do not relish the thought of handing our daughters a future of never-ending war. Especially if that war has no credible link to 9/11 or to any real threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.*