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The other shrill Right

By Ron Beasley

When it comes to being critical of the Bush administration it wasn't the left that first called for the impeachment of George W. Bush.  It wasn't the left that first compared the Bush administration to the Nazi regime.  It was Libertarian Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.  His response to Bush's Knesset speech was as shrill as anything from the left.

On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.

Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting-duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.

It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush’s American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view: "what’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them."

It is the US that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing here.

It is members of the Bush Regime and US generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign.

It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression.

All the war crimes that are being planned are being planned by Bush and Olmert.

What would George Orwell make of the Bush Regime’s position that anything less than a direct act of naked aggression is appeasement?

This is why many if not most of the Libertarians will not vote for Bush clone, John McCain.  Dr Roberts used to be the darling of the right wing talk shows until about six years ago when he started speaking out against the Bush/Cheney/neocon cabal. 

Iran Accuses Blogger Over Shiraz Explosion

By Cernig

Iran has accused a Germany-based monarchist weblog of being the middle man for payments to alleged bombers at the Shiraz mosque and indicated it believes Britain and the US provided the funding.

Six suspects among the 15 people detained over the explosion in Shiraz are linked to a German-based monarchist weblog, a report says, PressTV reported.

The six agents, two of them chemistry students, were in contact with a blogger, belonging to the German-based Rahe Azadi (Way of Freedom) weblog, via email, JAHAN reported.

Earlier, they had detonated bombs in Fars Province sabotaging the Sivand and another Dam in return for a sum of over $20,000 from the blogger.

The blogger then requested the 'facilitators' to target two public places, promising each bomber a $100,000 reward.

A crowded mosque in Shiraz was the site of the first blast, which left 14 people killed and some 200 others injured on April 12.

The explosives used in the blast were described as two containers of chemical material.

The bombers were next assigned to target Tehran's International Book Fair, May 1-11, at the city's congregational prayer venue.

Iran has accused the United States, Britain and Israel of funding the suspects and providing them with necessary expertise to make bombs.

Iran's intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i earlier ruled out any links between the Shiraz bombers and the Mujahedeen Khalq terrorist organization (MKO).

Credible? Maybe not. For me at least, the very fact that the Iranians are specifically exonerating their perrenial bugbear, the MeK, gives that added whiff of authenticity. Certainly, there are more evidentiary details here than in a month of ex-White House military press flack Gen. Bergner's pronouncements about Iran meddling in Iraqi affairs. But just like Bergner's claims what is lacking is proof of national complicity. The Iraqi monarchist movement in exile is a well-funded one and wouldn't have any trouble finding a few 100k if it wanted to without asking the US or UK governments for it.

Bush "manifesting the Zionist vision"

By Cernig

Yesterday, I wrote that while a by-blow of Bush's Knesset speech may well have been to attack Obama and other Democratic rivals, the main purpose was to give a "wink and a nod" to Israeli hardliners that in the closing days of his presidency they can do no wrong - including attack Iran, should Israel wish to, or scuppering any chance of a Palestinian peace process.

Reports in the Israeli media say that Israel got Bush's message, loud and clear.

"We are on the same page. We both see the threat ... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said.

Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive", but added: "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken".

Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said: "Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."

Senior officials in Jerusalem said Thursday that Israel is fully satisfied with the results of Bush's visit, including policy on Iran's nuclear program.

"In talks with the president of the United States during his visit it was made clear that Bush's statements on the subject of Iran's nuclear program are fully backed in practice," a senior official said.

One Zionist member of the Knesset even suggested Bush's next job should be to replace Olmert as Israeli PM.

As a former Knesset speaker, MK Reuven Rivlin, put it Thursday, "I wish our leaders would make speeches like this." Rivlin described Bush as "manifesting the Zionist vision."

Contrary to the applause Bush received for his address, the speech by Prime Minister Olmert was less popular and stirred considerable controversy.

Olmert promised that when there is a peace agreement it "will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and it will be supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public."

Two MKs from the National Union, Zvi Hendel and Uri Ariel, left the plenum in protest, complaining that the event was "used to promote a political agenda that is opposed by most of the Israeli public."
Hendel issued a statement calling on Olmert "to learn from the president of the United States what Zionism is."

MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called out during Olmert's speech, "in your dreams."

He later proposed that Bush should replace Olmert.

Olmert mainly drew criticism for parts of his speech concerning the Palestinian peace process, saying that "we will bring before the Knesset an agreement that is based on the vision of two states for two peoples. This agreement will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and the entire nation." That's when Hendel and Ariel walked out.

Perhaps they should have been more patient. Today Olmert made it clear he wanted no peace process at all, as he denied to Palestinians what Israeli Jews have held themselves had all these years - a right of return.

Six months into negotiations sponsored by Bush in the hope of a deal before he leaves the White House, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman used some of the toughest Israeli language yet to insist that President Mahmoud Abbas abandon 60-year-old refugee claims if he wants to establish a Palestinian state.

"This demand, which does not exist under international law, for right of return, is the ultimate deal breaker. You cannot have peace and this demand at the same time," Mark Regev said.

Some 700,000 people, half the Arab population of Palestine in May 1948, fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created. Letting them and their families live in Israel now would undermine its nature as a Jewish state, Israel argues.

It also disputes the legal basis of the right of the return first set out in a United Nations resolution of December 1948.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bush's speech - which described Israel "the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses, and David - a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael," has given Olmert all the political cover he needs to torpedo the Bush administration's own hopes for a deal. Needless to say, Palestinians are not happy.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters: "He should have told the Israelis that, 1 mile from where he was speaking, there is a nation that has lived in disaster for 60 years. He should have told the Israelis no one can be free at the expense of others. He missed this opportunity and we are disappointed."

...In the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, columnist Samih Shabib wrote: "Bush is blind to the right of return.

"The U.S. administration's attitude towards Israel inherently promotes hostility and deepens hatred towards the United States and its policy. Is this hostility, and its consequences, in America's interest? I don't think so."

You can see why Bush likes to think that diplomacy and negotiation are weak and "appeasing" - he's so bloody bad at them. He's much better at bringing violence and war through tough talk and ill-judged adventures.

The war is over

By Libby

Well, not really over, although that's what Jesse Jackson was shouting on the House floor yesterday in the aftermath of this vote.

The House failed to pass a measure funding the war in Iraq on Thursday afternoon by a vote of 141 to 149, with 132 Republicans voting “present” to protest what they see as unfair treatment by the Democratic majority. [...]

The House did approve two other war-related measures, one that included nonbinding language to remove troops from Iraq and another that included an expansion of veterans' education benefits and other domestic spending initiatives.

Neither of the last two votes are veto proof and the non-binding withdrawal language is the usual meaningless theater of course. The whole thing now moves to the Senate where no doubt the funding will be restored, but still, it's the most action we've seen from the Dems in a long time and Matt Stoller unearths this gem from the proceedings.

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs.

That's rather phenonmenal in an election year and one hopes it indicates that the Beltway is finally wising up to the temperment among the masses. Meanwhile, this could really complicate matters.

The so-called Ag-Jobs amendment, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would create a process that allows undocumented workers to continue to work on farms. Without the amendment, Feinstein warned that the U.S. would lose $5-9 billion to foreign competition, tens of thousands of farms would shut down and 80,000 workers would be transferred to Mexico. The bill would sunset in five years.

"Agriculture needs a consistent workforce," Feinstein said. "Without it, they can't plant, they can't prune, they can't pick and they can't pack.

She's right of course. With food prices skyrocketing already, the farmers need the immigrants, legal or not to get in the crops but the anti-immigrant crowd, which is large and somewhat bi-partisan within the public, is going to raise a ruckus and it could well delay the funding for a long time.

In any event, I think Jesse is right that this is beginning of the end of the 'war.' As Matt notes, we've reached a tipping point and continuing the occupation is becoming politically unsustainable. Our next job in Blogtopia will be to fight against leaving residual troops beyond those absolutely necessary to protect the boondoggle otherwise known as the US embassy.

More of this please

By BJ

I can't really add much to what's being said about Bush's "appeasement" comments in Israel, but I will note that to some degree, I like that he said it.

Why? Because McCain was willing to jump in and agree "wholeheartedly" with Bush. The more Americans see McCain jumping up to enthusiastically embrace Bush's positions the more likely they are to realize that, well, he enthusiastically embraces Bush's positions. There is a reason Bush is the most unpopular US president in modern history. His foreign policy is a big chunk of it, and the more McCain shows people that he shares Bush's vision, the more likely it is that America winds up with a Democratic president.

So, carry on. Let your true colours come out for all to see.

And while we're on the topic, I wanted to point to this excellent post at Rational International:

I would like to respectfully request that statesmen, political scientists, pundits and analysts the world over stop making historical analogies to the Munich conference, and to the supposed universal folly of "appeasement." Any benefits of Munich as an instructive historical precedent are now far outweighed by the analogy's power as an intellectually lazy rhetorical cudgel that is too often used to bludgeon any diplomatic initiatives that are, well, diplomatic. Not every autocratic country is Nazi Germany. Not every foreign dictator we don't like is Hitler. Not every threatening situation is most appropriately handled by eschewing diplomacy in favor of a "firm stance."

There's more worth reading there, but I have to end with Chris Matthews doing a wonderful, painful, job of showing just how much of a "lazy rhetorial cudgel" Chanberlain and Munich has become for the Republican base.

Awesome. The guy clearly doesn't even know what he's talking about, and Matthews hammered him for it, even brought up "the press secretary who does not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was." More of this would be nice too.

Bring back the 80s

By Fester:

The Republican Party is in disarray and it is operating in a severe electoral environment.  I am enjoying the show as a partisan liberal and Democrat right now.  Paul Krugman is running the Abramowitz Presidential 2 party vote prediction model the results are startling:

So it ought to be a smashing Democratic victory. When I plug current numbers into the Abramowitz model (making a guess about 1st-half GDP and assuming that Bush approval in June will be about where it is today), it says 57-43 Democrats.

He asks the perpetual question of Red Sox fans and Democrats of "How can/will they screw this up" but the fundamentals are good for Democrats and horrendous for Republicans.  The Politco is running an article on how the GOP can save itself as the disorder and chaos that has been sown by their loss in MS-1 earlier this week, and the only thing that sprang to mind is that this article sounds a whole lot like some of the intra-party fights the Democrats had in the mid-80s --- all one has to do is remove party labels and change names and the article could have been written in 1982 or 1986:

We talked to some of the smartest minds in Republican politics, and their prognosis is pretty grim. They think it will take pretty big changes — and possibly many, many years — to repair a Republican brand sullied by excessive spending, an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president....

They [voters] think reckless spenders, misguided war and hypocrisy. Republicans “don’t have a vision,” says former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). “Their behavior is being governed by a bad political model, and we’re losing races.”

The Republican infrastructure is crumbling. Making matters worse, Democrats are erecting a pretty impressive network of donors, think tanks and activist groups that is exploiting the GOP’s structural weakness.

I am not predicting 1984 will be the inverse of 2008.  However the language and the complaints are the same including the unexcerpted complaints that the other side has built a better infrastructure funded by ideological rich guys.  If 2008 is the GOP's 1986, expect the circular firing squad to continue.  Democrats were able to maintain a hold on Congressional power because they had larger reserves to squander than the Republicans ever did in their twelve years in the majority.  The GOP always operated on a thinner institutional and numerical margin.

The intra-party clash to redefine the dominant coalition partners will be brutal as creative pragmatists will be more dispersed and less able to access conventional sources of GOP supports than what AJ Strata dismissively (and correctly) calls the purity trolls and 'Amnesty Hypochondriacs.' They are more organized and familiar with conventional levers of power and can play spoiler and political hostage taker:

The poison spewed by the crowd who called President Bush “El Presidente Bustrada” and who called those who supported the comprehensive immigration bill traitors, quislings, anti-Americans (whatever, the list is endless and repulsive) sent a signal to everyone else in the party. You are with us or we stab you in the back.

Well, the good news is Americans know exactly how to deal with people like that - don’t elect them. I am not surprised to see a conservative democrat pick off the far right conservatives when a firebrand like Davis does his Malkin routine. It is poison! How many lost elections and seats will it take to get the message? I guess it depends on how wedded the zealots are to a bad cause.

So pass the popcorn as the 1980s strike back....

Republican "Funding Father" Calls On Leadership To Resign

By Cernig

Via BradBlog, conservative direct mail fundraising supremo Richard Viguerie has used the platform of the Ultimate John McCain website to call for mass resignations of the GOP leadership.

Republican leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed – or outright betrayed – the conservative voters who put them in their positions.

The result is that the party’s “brand” has become a negative, to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover.

...The hard work of the last 50 years by millions of conservative campaign workers, donors, candidates, writers, intellectuals, and activists has been trashed. The conservative movement has been set back 10-20 years – possibly even permanently – by politicians consumed by power, including but certainly not limited to Denny Hastert, Tom DeLay, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, party chairman Mike Duncan, and their friends.

Some deserve more of the blame than others, but they are all part of a party Establishment that has brought the party down.

For things to change, for conservatives to be justified in giving our contributions, our volunteer efforts, our energy, and votes to the GOP, the party must clean house. The party leadership should resign immediately.

...The Democrats have firm principled beliefs. What motivates most Republican leaders? Nothing except a craving for power. What do Republicans offer voters? Nothing except “Elect us because we’re not Democrats.”

To Republican leaders, I say: You turned against the principles you once espoused – conservative principles – and, in turn, conservatives and the American people have turned against you. Things will not get better until you accept responsibility, and resign.

You have stayed too long. For the future of the Republican Party, for America and the cause of freedom: Go!

Brad has awarded Viguerie his coveted "Intellectually Honest Conservative Award."

Heh. Indeedy.

Someone's got to kick his....

By Libby

Whoa baby. This is the best rumor I've heard for a long time.

Just off the House floor today, the Crypt overheard House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers tell two other people: “We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.”

Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn’t, said Conyers, “We’ll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We’d hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested.”

Conyers said the committee wants Rove to testify about his role in the imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, among other things.

“We want him for so many things, it’s hard to keep track,” Conyers said.

And dreams of a frog march dance in my head.

A Wink And A Nod

By Cernig

Today I read Bush's speech at the Knesset and thought "Aye, there's yet another another 'wink and a nod' to Israel for an attack, if they want it."

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

...America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. And America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Most American pundits want to see Bush's remarks as an attack on Barrack Obama but folks - it's not always about your country and your political races. For one thing, as Brian Katulis adroitly notes, if negotiating is appeasement then the Bush administration has done an awful lot of appeasement itself over the last seven years. And Brian doesn't even mention working with Sunni Awakening members in Iraq who not too long ago were terrorists attacking US forces! For another, if Bush's remarks were really intended to help John McCain, the latter wouldn't go shooting himself in the foot like this:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Need I say that "Iran-Contra" and "appeasement" really do belong in the same sentence together?

No, (probably) even Bush's speechwriters aren't so crass as to make such a blindingly partisan move in the American electoral race when their dummy is acting as Head of State of both Democratic and Republican Americans at a major international event. We need to look beyond purely domestic motivations - and we'll find them in the aspirations and dreams of the neoconservative lobby and their Very Serious Person enablers in the media.

Yesterday, University of Columbia journalsim Professor Todd Gitlin had a very timely post at Talking Points Memo which, I think, points to Bush's real agenda.

I'm attending Shimon Peres' President's Conference on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel... for two days now, so many speakers have been preoccupied with Iran, and talking rather casually about the prospect of a preventive strike.

The sense of threat here is vivid, it is deeply felt, it is completely comprehensible, and it rises occasionally, or more than occasionally, to a well-nigh hysterical pitch--so much so that the Amerian strategist Edward Luttwak arose Monday night at a banquet at Peres' house to warn assembled luminaries against fearing annihilation at the hands of an Ahmadinejad who, after all, was not Hitler but Mussolini, and an inept one at that. It is not lost on any Israeli that Ahmadinejad, in his usual delicate manner, last week called Israel a "stinking corpse."

Weirdly, at a Wednesday afternoon workshop, the selfsame Luttwak declared that Iran's reformers would actually welcome a sharp outsider's attack on their nuclear facilities. No other panelist disputed his suggestion, which was greeted with much applause from a largely Israeli audience.

Which explains Bush's thinly-veiled threats of regime change in his speech.

After Luttwak's proclamation, and a game but much less applauded attempt by UCLA Professor Steven L. Spiegel to speak up for an alliance-negotiation approach to Iran instead of a mlitary attack, the session moderator, Israel's former ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovitch, somehow intimated--I'm sorry I didn't take down his exact words--that Israel's government would put it to Bush that if he didn't take action, Israel would.

Just outside the hall, I ran into a friend, also a liberal Jew, who had attended the same session, wasn't sitting with me but heard the same implicit threat. Alarmed (can one be too alarmed about such matters?), and assuming that Rabinovitch would be well informed, we checked out our dire impression with a sober, well-connected European official. This person isn't quite sure what's up against Iran but also worries that such an attack might be in the offing even if no government in Europe would be onboard.

And veteran British political reform campaigner Anthony Barnett adds in comments to Gitlin's post:

I have heard the same concerns in London. The 'urgency' is that the Russians are providing significant ground-to-air systems which apparently are likely to be operational by September and could be relatively effective given the distances and the need for more than one strike and therefore the lack of surprise. It seems that the Bush administration is regarded as too weak and the US military too opposed for an American strike to be considered - so it has to be an Israeli one permitted by Washington over the summer.

Bush, in his speech to the Knesset, signalled clearly that his administration will quietly support Israel if it decided to take direct action against Iran - as it did recently against Syria. It's worth noting that any Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly have to transit Iraqi airspace.

Maybe they should invade themselves?

By BJ

The Bush administration likes to go on about how they keep finding Iranian weapons in Iraq, and how this proves malicious intent on the part of the Iranians. Of course, if the fact that military equipment from a certain country finds its way to the Iraqi insurgents is proof of intent, the US has a problem:

Thefts and illegal exports of advanced military night-vision gear are rising sharply, and U.S. officials say some of the devices have reached enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they could erode the edge U.S. troops have in after-dark combat.

The government has prosecuted more than two dozen businesses and individuals over the past 18 months for stealing night-vision gear or skirting prohibitions on foreign sales, according to a USA TODAY review of federal documents and public records.

In at least five cases, prosecutors linked shipments to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. A few others were headed to Iran and Taliban forces in Afghanistan, court records show; several were destined for China and Japan.

. . .

"If you look at cases where groups like the Taliban are trying to get this stuff, that's how they want to use it, for night operations to kill our troops," Pelak says.

Lower-grade night-vision devices are sold commercially, but military versions are far more sensitive and can include features that identify U.S. troops by infrared tabs on their uniforms. Sales and exports of that equipment are restricted by law.

As Cernig has noted repeatedly, weapons travel, and there is a large and lucrative black market in all sorts of military technology. Something to keep in mind the next time the warfloggers cite the finding of Iranian weapons as proof of their meddling.

The Waterboys

By Cernig

Glenn Greenwald has been doing great work this last week or so on the story the mainstream media wish would go away - their bending over and saying "Please, Sir, may I have another?" for water-carrying military analysts primed to pump out Pentagon propaganda.

Today, he cites an email from veteran journalist Joe Galloway which pours scorn on the Pentagon's claim that they included critics of the administration's policies - former Pentagon hack Larry Di Rita had specifically mentioned Galloway as one of those critics invoilved and Galloway says that's just laughable.

He also notes that White House denials of knowledge about the Pentagon's law-breaking program are flat lies.

Go read.

Let's just call it a war tax

By Libby

I keep hearing these arguments that the oil corporations shouldn't be penalized for making a profit but I'm with Skimble on this. Even if we acknowledge that the profits are partly, or even largely, a result of supply and demand, the fact remains that there's a correlation between the rising price of oil and the mess Bush created in Mesopotamia. Skimble is right in that the corporations profit from the war without having to lift a finger to support it. And the profits have been huge.

Today's WSJ shows quarterly net income (i.e., profit) for Shell of $9.08 billion. For BP it's $7.62 billion. Those profits are billions, not millions, for three months of income.

That's almost $17 billion of profit for just two companies, excluding ExxonMobil, in this quarter alone. At this rate, the combined profits of the industry for the year will exceed $100 billion.

Even in rapidly decaying US dollars, that's a f*ckload of money. [...] On the other hand, we the American taxpayers are not volunteers. Indiana's middle class is paying more for the war than the oil conglomerates. It is only fitting that BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil be harshly taxed to help pay for the war that makes them so f*cking profitable.

Skimble is right on and spare me the free market arguments. Between futures trading and supply machinations, the oil market is one of the most manipulated marketplaces we have and fuel is not a commodity that's particularly discretionary. For millions of Americans, not driving is not an option and the handful of megacorps essentially have a monolopy on the product.

But let's not look at a windfall tax as a punishment, but rather a patriotic contribution from the megacorps to the overall wellbeing of the nation. They've made a fortune from this war and really they should be voluntarily tithing some portion of those obscene profits to paying for it in order to take some burden off the working class. But since we can't count on their altruism, then a war tax seems fair to me. [via]

Oh yes, we have no inflation Part Deux

By Fester

The story of the economy is that the hard to avoid or substitute away from items are massively increasing in price while everything else is holding steady or dropping a little bit.  The basic problem is that incomes are flat and the hard to substitute items constitute a significant portion of personal expenditures. This means people are getting squeezed and squeezed hard as they have to downshift on anything that is remotely discretionary in the short term. 

I'm shameless stealing a chart from Barry Ritzholtz at the Big Picture which shows where the inflation in the economy is:

The red line is the 2.0% per year target inflation rate.  Medicine, Food and Transportion (which includes fuel costs) are significantly above the all items rate.  Housing is above the target level but below the weighted average but due to how housing is constructed it is probably overstating inflation as it measures rent equivilants and not actual housing costs for home owners. 

People have to move, people have to eat and people have to go to the doctors --- everything else is somewhat flexible.  This is most pronounced in the recreational and apparrel sectors as fun is a discretionary activity and a new pair of jeans can be delayed for another month.   

I Need An Intervention, Right Now!

By Cernig

Ross Douthat picked up on something Matt Yglesias wrote today and I ended up reading some of the best sense I've seen in a blog post in ages - liberal interventionists are basically impatient.

It's all very well to say that the United States should be trying to build a world order in which great powers like Russia and China are willing to sign on whatever sort of Burmese intervention might theoretically be sanctioned under the "Responsibility to Protect" umbrella, but even if you're optimistic that such a world order is attainable - which Matt is, and I'm not - it's still far enough off that we can expect many more Burma-style (or Darfur-style, or Kosovo-style, or Rwanda-style) quandaries in the meantime. And answering the "what is to be done?" question that invariably accompanies these crises by saying that "American officials ...should keep pushing the international community to move to a world where something like the Responsibility to Protect has some force in the real world" amounts to answering it by saying "in the short term, nothing."

Now, that may be the right answer, but it's an answer that's more likely to appeal to realists and non-interventionists of the left and right than to the liberal internationalists to whom Matt's addressing himself. Basically, it amounts to telling people who are ideologically invested in the idea of interventions to halt wars, genocides, famines and so forth that they need to accept today's famine, and tomorrow's genocide, and the day after that's bloody civil war ... and someday, if the U.S. plays its cards right and invests heavily enough in a multilateral framework for international relations, the other great powers will come around to "rules of the road" under which it's plausible to imagine the UN conducting humanitarian interventions inside the borders of its more misgoverned member states. And while the Iraq invasion has made this Yglesian, "choose the UN, and patience" approach to world affairs much more appealing to the liberal-internationalist set than it was in, say, 1999 or 2002, as time goes by and more Burmese-style crises pass without an international response, I expect that most liberal hawks will default back toward the more aggressive and UN-skeptical approach to the world's troubles that at present is defended primarily by neoconservatives.

...From JFK down to Bill Clinton and the liberals who agitated for the invasion of Iraq, it's hard to find all that many prominent liberal internationalists (at least within the Democratic Party) who resisted the temptation, when it presented itself, to choose interventionist ends even when the multilateral means that liberal internationalism is theoretically committed to weren't available.

As Douthat writes, that impatience stems from a need to "do something", and when you possess the world's biggest hammer - the US military - everything looks like a nail. But you can only hammer so many nails at one time which means there are always going to be humanitarian crises you cannot intervene in. As some pretty wise folk have pointed out down the ages, the poor will always be with us.

And then there's the blowback problem, as expertly explained in a piece for the Small Wars Journal by by ex-special forces commander, retired General Geoffrey C. Lambert (hat tip - Attackerman):

The dictators we supported grasped our instruction and went into action with total freedom of action, unfettered by moral or legal limitations. As a result, counterinsurgency turned ugly as anti-communist zeal led to the imprisonment, torture or death of innocents among the thousands that perished in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and throughout the region. Sadly, it wasn’t until the Carter Administration and the War in El Salvador that human rights became a cornerstone of U.S. counterinsurgency planning and execution.

Today, we see the Children of the Left, now adults, (whose parents were disenfranchised or worse) finding their voices in Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and elsewhere. As a result, Latin America is increasingly drifting towards building new economic, diplomatic and military relationships, diminishing US influence in the region.

As we continue our struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, expanding the effort to our allies and coalition partners, we need to remember the Children of the Left. Our 20,000+ prisoners in Iraq, the death of innocent civilians, the loss of face of the many men now unemployed in a culture that values the man’s role as bread-winner more that we can understand, and our status as occupiers and Crusaders collectively may result in conditions far worse than the situation in Latin America today.

As we begin our exit from Iraq and begin focusing on building host nation counterinsurgency capability in Iraq and other countries, analysis of long term implications of seeking only short-term gain may provide insight to allow us to match word and deed in the upcoming decades to minimize long-term blowback – blowback from the Children of the Crusade.

Put blowback to unilateral interventions into the equation and you see very quickly how there is a curve of diminishing returns from such military adventures. And no matter how hard we intervene, someone somewhere will still suffer - we can't intervene everywhere and everywhen. So, for liberals motivated by humanitarian good wishes, it makes more sense to wait, to let the wheels of international consensus grind slowly on, to build up a non-military intervention force as an option and only intervene multilaterally with as near to dammit full international support. Otherwise you're just creating new Children of new Crusades who will, by conflict with their "rescuers", create even more humanitarian disasters. At least by doing things the patient way some problems might get solved definitively instead of spawing new ones.

The Latest Reason To Stay In Iraq...

By Cernig

The Bush administration has a new reason for staying in Iraq - to prevent a Vietnam-like crash in military morale.

I kid you not. SecDef Gates, at the end of a speech mostly about buying equipment to fight the war you have, not the war you'd like to have, told a crowd of Heritage Foundation war-partiers "That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win."

But there is a more fundamental point that I will close with – and again historical perspective is important. It is impossible to separate discussions of the “broken” Army following Vietnam – a conscription army – from the ultimate result of that conflict. At a congressional hearing last year, General Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, recounted the profound damage done to the Service’s “fiber and soul” by the reality of defeat in that war.
        The risk of overextending the Army is real. But I believe the risk is far greater – to that institution, as well as to our country – if we were to fail in Iraq. That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win.

So we must continue to hollow out the military on a mission that never made sense so that we don't risk hollowing out the military due to dejection at failing in a mission that never made sense...

Just...wow.

Republican swiftboating Republican or.....

.....another case of Republican hypocrisy?

By Ron Beasley

Here in my home state of Oregon the Republican race for Oregon's 5th Congressional district has gotten interesting.

The 5th District Bombshell

Ugly developments in Oregon's 5th Congressional District race make it clear that one of the leading Republican contenders should drop out.

If reports about past conduct by Mike Erickson can be substantiated, he's the one who should beat a hasty exit for the sake of his party. His opponent, Kevin Mannix, in an 11th-hour direct mail appeal to 60,000 GOP voters, raised allegations that Erickson got a woman pregnant eight years ago, gave her money to have an abortion and callously dropped her off at the door of a clinic where she had the procedure.

Erickson says the story isn't true, but if it holds up, it could doom his candidacy in November should he become the Republican nominee. His party's anti-abortion constituency would not be alone in seeing hypocrisy in his claim to be a "pro-life, pro-family" candidate.

However, if the story proves untrue, Mannix would become the poisoned candidate. He would be guilty of spreading a falsehood so reckless that it would leave him unfit for office.

So far the only evidence is the testimony of two women.  Now both Mike Erickson and Kevin Mannix are pretty sleazy characters.  Erickson has a history of lying and Mannix has some questionable associations including a large contributor who is a sexual therapist in Las Vegas. 

Oregon's 5th Congrssional district is a reddish purple district that has been held by a Democrat for 12 years.  The incumbent has retired and it might have been a rare Republican pick up.  This won't help.

Microsoft and the Bush Administration

By Ron Beasley

I explained below how my AMD based computer crashed when I attempted to install Windows XP Service Pack 3.  I found out I was far from alone.  All HP and Compaq desktop computers suffered the same fate.  The problem is that during installation an Intel power management driver is installed which is not compatible with the AMD chip set.  There is an easy fix although many users  may find the white on black DOS screen and DOS commands intimidating.  XP SP3 is now installed and running. 

This is not a new problem, it was also seen when Microsoft introduced XP SP2.  I read the "what you should know" from Microsoft before beginning the installation and it was not mentioned and as of this morning is still not mentioned.  Microsoft either knew this was going to be a problem and simply didn't care if 15% of the world's computers were going to crash or they didn't know meaning they had done a half ass-ed job of testing.  Neither one of those is acceptable.  The Microsoft corporation blends hubris and incompetence in a way that rivals the last six and a half years of the Bush administration.

Update - Finger Pointing

Microsoft is blaming HP:

According to Johansson and others, Hewlett-Packard used the same Windows XP disk image to factory install the OS on AMD-based systems as they used for PCs running Intel processors. That's a mistake, Microsoft contends.

"Under this configuration, after the computer is upgraded to Windows XP SP2 or SP3, the Intel processor driver (intelppm.sys) may try to load because an orphaned registry key remains," Microsoft said in a support document first released in 2004, after the company issued XP SP2.

The presence of the unnecessary driver, said Microsoft, may crash the machine, causing it to reboot. If the PC is set to automatically reboot on a start failure -- as most are by default -- it reboots endlessly, often so quickly that the user can't interrupt the process and enter what's called "Safe Mode" in Windows, a last-ditch way to sidestep the normal boot process for troubleshooting purposes.

But HP strikes back:

"After installing the initial release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP an error condition can occur," the HP document reads. "The Service Pack 3 update copies an Intel power management driver to the computer that was not on the computer before the update. During Windows startup, computers with AMD processors may experience a blue screen error."

Computerworld has not been able to confirm that the errant driver is, as HP claims, added by XP SP3 to AMD-based PCs. If that is, in fact, the case, the endless rebooting is Microsoft's fault, not HP's.

Now I really don't care who's fault it is but if Microsoft knew about it, which apparently they did, they should have given some notification on the upload screen.

Markets coincide with boogeymen

By Fester:

Poliblogger is looking at FARC, the leftist insurgency/cog of multiple drug cartels, while also looking at a stupid question from someone who is either naive or trying to score some cheap political points.  The good doctor outlines some brief history and explains that markets work --- when groups have money and seek reasonably common and available goods, they tend to get those goods:

Here’s the deal: the FARC became an active guerrilla group in Colombia in the 1960s. Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1998. As such, the FARC were able to get guns for over three decades before Tirofijo³ and friends had ever heard of Hugo.

The sad fact of the matter is, the FARC can easily obtain weapons these days via the profits they make over their involvement in the drug trade, as well as via kidnapping. While it would not surprise me to find that they have found aid from Venezuelan quarters in their weapon-gathering activities, it is also the case that Hugo Chávez could be beamed into space tomorrow and the FARC would still be able to get their weapons.

There is a global arms market and it services consumers who are not always nice or honest or friendly to the United States.  And it is global and pervasive with one significant constraint.  Its customers better have cash.  And given that the international drug trade is predominately a cash and carry business, FARC does not face that constraint. 

And this is common.  I believe that the same type of relationship networks exist between many of the Shi'ite militias and elements of the Iranian government but even if the Iranian government was replaced wholesale with US bureaucrats tomorrow morning, the Shi'ite militias (JAM, Badr et al) would still be heavily armed and have reasonably flexible and resilient arms acquisition networks as there is too much money to be made selling them weapons. 

Markets exist and they flow to where the money is and sometimes that is next to the daily boogeyman. 

Obama's strength with white voters

By Fester

A central tenet of the Emerging Democratic Majority theory is demographics favor Democrats. The voting population is becoming less white, less Christian of all sorts, less native born and bred for multiple generations and less rural. This has been playing out for a couple of cylces now and I think we should remember these broad trends when looking at electoral claims in 2008. Specifically I want to focus on the claim that Obama is unelectable because he is having signficant problems in capturing whtie votes in Appalachia.  Instead due to current polling performance AND the changing composition of the electorate, white voters may be a comparative strength for Obama and a problem spot for McCain. 

The Jed Report has the proportion of the white vote that Democrats have won since 1992. In all cases the white proportion is less than the overall proportion of the votes that the Democratic Presidential candidate won.

I neglected to make the point that that Obama's 43% support among white voters is actually strong -- especially in the wake of Wright. In 1992, Bill Clinton won 39% of white voters. In 1996, he won 43%. In 2000, Gore won 42%. In 2004, Kerry won 41%. So 43% is a pretty good starting point, especially with 7% undecided. (Obama currently trails McCain by 7%, while Gore lost by 12% and Kerry lost by 17%.)

This is not surprising as the Democratic Party is a pan-racial coalition party and minority groups vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. But winning the white vote is neither neccessary nor sufficient for a Democrat to win the White House. Instead Democrats can win the popular vote by keeping it close. And Obama can keep it sufficiently close as the available evidence supports the conclusion that Obama will be able to pick up roughly the same percentage of white voters as the previous Democrats. 2004 CNN exit polls showed 77% of the Presidential electorate was white. The 2000 CNN exit polls shows the white proportion of the electorate was 81% of all voters. The 1996 CNN exist polls showed that whites made up 83% of the electorate.

We are seeing confirmation that the white electorate share is shrinking and being replaced by non-white voters. I project that the 2008 white share is smaller than the 2004 share which was smaller than the 2000 share, and that was smaller than the 1996 share.

Right now the evidence shows Obama is doing as well as his peer group of Democrats in his proportional margin. More importantly, the relative importance and therefore the subgroup net margin is shrinking.

IF we project that Obama win's 41% of the White vote (same as Kerry) and that the white vote only constitutes 75% of the electorate instead of the 77% of the 2004 electorate, Obama picks up a one point on McCain compared to Kerry's net margin against Bush in 2004. This does not account for the fact that non-white voters break heavily for Democrats. Including that factor and Obama, assuming same exact demographic performance profile of John Kerry, will pick up an additional 1.5 to 1.6% of the vote, which breaks a 3 point Bush win to break even. I would posit that any Democrat believes that 2008 is a more favorable generic year than 2004. The basic takeaway of this post is that Obama, for a Democratic presumptive nominee, is doing fine with the white vote as the white vote is shrinking in comparative importance.

Good Job Ohio Dems

By Fester:

Ohio Democrats are sending a real and differentiating signal that should reflect strongly on them when compared to Ohio Republicans.  Ohio Democrats recognize a massive ethics/impropriety situation and are doing something about it by drawing up articles of impeachment against the Democratic state Attorney General:

                House Democrats filed articles of impeachment this morning against Attorney General Marc Dann, charging him with nine counts relating to a sexual harassment scandal that has led to widespread calls for him to resign.

The articles, sponsored by 42 of 45 House Democrats, contend that Dann warrants impeachment for "misconduct in office rising to the level of malfeasance, neglect, nonfeasance, gross neglect of duty, improper exercise of authority and gross immorality."

A pattern is emerging at the state level.  State Democrats are looking at impropriety, corruption and scandals and not trying to defend it.  We saw this with Eliot Spitzer, we saw it in North Carolina and we are seeing this in Ohio.  As I wrote in regards to North Carolina these actions are strong contrasting actions, good politics and good policy:

This is good government, good sense and good politics as almost everyone involved can point out a concrete action that they took against self-dealing.  It also serves as a deterrent to anyone who is interested in self-dealing.  Good job North Carolina, and I wish Congress would take similiar actions against multiple members (from each party) as that would help restore some public trust in the institution.

Keep this up and credibility on good governance will increase and voter cynicism will decrease thus blurring strategies will be less effective.