Going, going ......

Kevin Drum has completed a five part series on peak oil, available at the Washington Monthly online. Links to each part, and a sentence or two summary, are here. The series is an excellent look at the problem. His prognosis is rosier than the facts warrant, in my opinion, and certainly far more optimistic than the pictures James Kunstler paints on his blog and in his new book, The Long Emergency. However, both Kunstler and Drum pretty much agree on the diagnosis.

(Don't worry. Thanks largely to working class soldiers and the prerogatives of wealth, there will always be enough oil for Bush and the 145,000 ultra rich. We’ll make do with what trickles down.)

Most of us are livestock

You don't know whether to laugh, cry or spit when you know, and even like, working people who voted for Bush.

From the New York Times

...The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. ...

...The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers. ...

To those 145,000 hyper rich we are livestock raised to fight their wars, provide cheap labor and healthy organs for transplants.

What a country.

Aluminum siding

Wolcott opens with these paragraphs

Donald Rumsfeld, whose Steely Resolve more and more resembles aluminum siding, is a man unafraid of confronting the full spectrum of America's enemies from Al Qaeda to Amnesty International. Some say he is too zealous in defending our freedom. Too candid. Too cocksure. Too unwilling to accept counsel and criticism. Too wedded to his overriding vision of military transformation.

Those some sayers are right.

And then quotes from this article that begins with these paragraphs

Wreck It and Run
by William S. Lind
Among the many unhappy developments in American industry in recent decades has been the advent of "wreck it and run" management. A small coterie of senior managers takes over a company and makes a brilliant show of short-term profits while actually driving the business into the ground. They bail out just before it crashes, cashing in their stock options as they go, and leave the employees, ordinary stockholders, and customers holding an empty bag.

It is increasingly clear that under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. armed forces have also been taken over by "wreck it and run" management. When Rumsfeld leaves office, what will his successor inherit?

The Rumsfeld wreckage listed in the Lind article is impressive.

What a mess these guys are making.

Green tea?

Without medication my cholesterol runs from 240 to 270. With medication, Lescol, it comes down to 185 or so.

Yesterday I got back the results from a Quest Diagnostics battery of tests (I get a copy sent to me) and total cholesterol was 147. Lowest ever.

I can’t account for the drop except to consider green tea. Last winter I had a case of flu and while sick I couldn’t stand the smell or taste of coffee. I gave it up. As I recovered I started drinking green tea and stuck with it. Could it be that replacing a pot or more of coffee with five or six mugs of tea lowered the cholesterol 20 points or more?

Flowers for the liberators

Suicide bombings have surged to become the Iraqi insurgency's weapon of choice, with a staggering 90 attacks accounting for most of last month's 750 deaths at the militants' hands.

Suicide attacks outpaced car bombings almost 2-to-1 in May, according to figures compiled by the U.S. military, The Times and other media outlets. In April, there were 69 suicide attacks, more than in the entire year preceding the June 28, 2004, hand-over of sovereignty.

The frequency of suicide bombings here is unprecedented, exceeding that of Palestinian attacks against Israel and of other militant insurgencies, such as the Chechen rebellion in Russia. Baghdad saw five suicide bombings in a six-hour span Sunday. ...

From the LA Times

Classy

Here’s another reason to laugh your ass off at working people who voted for Bush.

…At some of the busiest airports in the country, including ones in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles, passengers with premium-class tickets or upper-level memberships in airline clubs are now able to cut the line.

When they show their boarding passes and identification these passengers are directed into a separate luxury lane to be screened by Transportation Security Administration employees. …

…At Los Angeles International Airport for example, Transportation Security Administration representatives say that if an airline requests, the agency will provide a dedicated security checkpoint for its luxury lane, or allow them to escort those passengers to the front of the line while economy class passengers creep along behind them. …

From The New York Times via Noutopia

Maybe when you’re standing in a long security check line with your kids in tow, sweating out making a flight, you should just show your “Sportsmen for Bush” bumper sticker (if you can peel it off your rusting truck) and a tax paid security guard will wave you right on through to the front.

Not likely.

Three Dreams

Dream one

I am on a balcony inside a huge hall. The colors are hues of brown. The floor level which stretches to the horizon is crowded with bearded men wearing brimmed black hats and skull caps walking around, apparently aimlessly.

I leave the balcony and enter a small conference room. Inside there are ten, maybe fifteen bearded men, some old, some middle-aged, also wearing skull caps or hats. They are seated on folding chairs, not in rows. Some have pulled their chairs close to each other and are engaged in conversation. They are apparently discussing who is going to be assigned to me. I notice one man, younger than most, balding, with a friendly smile. I hope it is him, I think.

The friendly man gets up from his chair and comes over to me. We speak but I don’t remember what either of us said. We go to a door, walk out into a huge green grassy area. First, the friendly man says, we are going to work on your golf swing.

Dream two

I am in a small room that is apparently a staging area with a small group, ten or twenty others. We are all in military style camouflage clothing. There are small packs on the floor and assault rifles. We put on our packs pick up the rifles and head out the door into a tunnel. The tunnel walls, floor and ceiling are a transparent white fabric. We break into a run. I am in the front running effortlessly. Outside the tunnel, but in another interior, we can see others, apparently friendly, doing things. The actions appear to be some sort of manufacturing but is also military. Some are armed.

The tunnel takes a very sharp turn to the left. I am pleased at the turn. Now they won’t be able to shoot into the tunnel and get us from behind, I think.

As we spill out of the tunnel into a warehouse we are met by Che Guevara. This time Che is being played by Duncan Renaldo who was once the Cisco Kid. Che tells us to get ready. The train will be coming shortly. Sure enough when I look through a crack in the metal warehouse wall I see a train coming. The train arrives and we all begin shooting. Armed men jump off the train and shoot at us and charge the warehouse. People are running and shooting all around. I keep firing and firing, frustrated because I’m not hitting anyone. Then I am alone but for one armed man charging me. I shoot him several times. When the bullets hit they cause little puffs of dust. The man falls. I approach and look at his face. It is grey with grey parchment skin peeling, almost like a mummy’s.

Dream three

In most tug boat dreams the tug leaves the water and climbs through an intricate erector set like structure (or maybe a frame work like a roller coaster’s) that towers above New York Harbor and stretches on into Brooklyn. Or, the tug leaves the harbor and we power through lower Manhattan traffic of both boats and cars. Usually we have some close calls but continue unscathed.

This time the tug stays on the water. I am a deckhand and the captain is a twelve or thirteen year old boy with thick curly brown hair. We are preparing to pick up a large flat decked barge which for some reason is very difficult to handle. Someone from the office is standing on the dock. He is dressed in a suit. I refuse to speak with him. I continue moving lines around making the barge secure to the tug. You’re doing a good job, he says to me.

After a short time underway we enter a huge covered docking area, an interior with calm water. Some ships are in there also, but mostly it is an empty area with wide slips and long, low concrete piers. On one pier a formally dressed singing group, both men and women (like the Manhattan Transfer, only there are more of them) beckons us to come to their pier. We know that is not where we belong and continue on. In a short time we come to another slip. On this dock there is a group of Korean singers dressed in reds and blacks, in clothing cut in the style of Flamenco singers. We know this is where we belong and with a great deal of effort, backing and filling, the captain gets the barge to the dock. The Korean singers and dancers clap their hands, smile and otherwise welcome us joyously.

Insider Self Portrait

Read here Atrios' stunning revisit of the historic Sally Quinn article on the Clinton White House. A self indictment of Washington insiders.

Sensible simplicity

Go to noutopia to read a reminder of how simple and sensible the Scientific Method is; a reminder you can remember and use to head off creationist and intelligent design nonsense.

Also, right below that, on the same page, you can read a sweet little poem by Lew Welch, a beat poet friend of Gary Snyder’s who finally drank too much, got too sad and wandered off into the deep woods and was never found.

Here's the suicide note he left which was found by Gary Snyder:

"I never could make anything work out right and now I'm betraying my friends. I can't make anything out of it - never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It's all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor- use MSS at Gary's and at Grove Press. I have $2,000 in Nevada City Bank of America - use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don't owe Allen G. anything yet nor my Mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch."

From this page on the American Museum of Beat Art web page. http://www.beatmuseum.org/index.html

Alterman hits it out of the park

Eric Alterman gets very close to calling the Bush administration by its rightful names.

These same people, acting with unprecedented centralization of power, and secrecy, have taken it upon themselves to suspend the most basic rights enumerated in our constitution, and are carrying out the functional equivalent of a police state on Guantanamo Bay, and at various prisons around the world. It is a police state in which torture is condoned and prisoners are, on occasion, murdered. According to Amnesty International, the United States is operating a “gulag” that “has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding 'ghost detainees' (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the 'rendering' or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practice torture,” More here.

You really need to go to Alterman's Altercation and read today's entire post, How to lose a country in seven easy steps.

Root rot

Here in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, we have a State Senator who is thinking, out loud, about switching parties with an election coming up next year.

State Sen. Lisa Boscola has publicly entertained the idea of switching party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in recent weeks, but she says any decision on her political future is a ways off. …

…The senator said her ties to Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell are a big reason why she remains in the Democratic fold. …

…Boscola and her mother Anna go way back with the governor. They are among a coterie of Democrats who supported Rendell in his first unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1986 against the late Robert P. Casey...

Closing out the same article (and sticking to the “with friends like these who needs enemies” theme) PA Senator O'Pake, the Senate minority whip, chimes in with this gem.

…"We represent what we feel is the core of the Democratic party base — the blue collar working family, conservative on social issues that are now in swing districts," he said. "We just have to work a little harder. Much of our base is leaving because of positions taken by the national party."

Senators, why wait. Get off the fence and get moving.

All the nuttiness is right here in the Pocono Record

I live in a dirty house

Google (the company that owns Blogger, where this site lives) has named Dan Senor, the company's new Global Communications and Strategy VP.

A former Senior Associate at the Carlyle Group, Senor was briefly Scott McLellan's deputy as White House spokesman before becoming head of the the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq's information department. The White House web site bills him as Senior Advisor to Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III. Fox News hired Senor as a panelist in February. While in Iraq Senor showed his loyalty by going jogging in a Bush-Cheney '04 tracksuit.
Not everyone is impressed.

"I have come to associate his triangular, brush-cut head with an unceasing stream of bullshit. He's Ari Fleischer without the charm," writes one grump. "Hiring this guy is a repulsive move."

link via The Raw Story

Joker

Once again McCain is receiving lots of good press, this time for helping put together the compromise on the “nuclear option.” The compromise will not work unless in practice it means a complete surrender by Democrats.

As for McCain, let’s not forget how low the man can go.

McCain, reveling in adoration Republican fund-raiser and sure his joke would go no further, said: "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."

From here. But if you google "McCain Chelsea Reno joke" it comes up all over the place.

We are what we do

From Hendrik Hertzberg in the current New Yorker.

The most heartrending passages of Golden’s story, which was drawn from a two-thousand-page confidential Army file provided by an anonymous source, describe the death by torture of a slight, shy, illiterate young Afghan villager who was shackled by the wrists to the wire ceiling of his cell for days, struck more than a hundred times in one day for the amusement of captors who found his agonized screams of “Allah!” funny, and beaten on the legs until the tissue, in a coroner’s words, “had basically been pulpified.” By the time he died, most of his interrogators had concluded that he was guiltless. In common with the Abu Ghraib case and others, only a few lower-ranking officers and (especially) enlisted soldiers have been disciplined in connection with this and other abuses at Bagram.

The indulgence of this sort of depravity goes to, and comes from, the top. President Bush pushed aside the Geneva Conventions. A memo prepared on the order of his White House counsel, now Attorney General, suggested limiting the definition of torture to acts that bring on “organ failure.”

The people that do these things did not come from outer space. They came from next door. They are us and we have become torturers.

Read the whole column.

Hertzberg points out that arguing about the reliability of Newsweek sources, when we know it is a fact that we are torturing people, is nonsensical. Bush and his foot soldiers are astonishingly adept at fogging the lenses. We wander bamboozled again in never never land.

Business is booming

Could be we’ll also become a nation divided between buyers and sellers. Walmart can’t employ all of us.

…."I abandoned my taxi driving job because of the security situation," Mr Hameed, 22, told The Sunday Telegraph. "I thought about joining the police or the army, but that is even more dangerous. There were no more options, so I decided to sell my kidney. I am still a young man, so I want to marry and begin a business."

Mr Hameed received a good price for his kidney. Would-be buyers with an eye for a bargain can now pick up a new kidney for as little as $700, given the desperation of fit and healthy Iraqis for money.

Young men like Mr Hameed can be seen loitering around many big hospitals in Baghdad these days, open to bids passed on via networks of shadowy middlemen who lurk in nearby cafés….

…As news of the black market trade has spread, however, wealthier transplant "tourists" from around the Arab world have started flocking to Baghdad, attracted by the rock-bottom prices.

If car bombs, kidnappings and robberies are a deterrent, the price compares favourably to the $5,000 cost of a kidney on the black market in Turkey, or $3,000 in India. In Iraq, the operation itself typically costs $2,000. Even so, the risks are considerable. Baghdad's hospitals are filthy and under-resourced. …

"Black market organ trade is Baghdad's new growth industry"

Via the Raw Story

Kristof today

All this underscores how the Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West.

This line in today's Kristof NY Times column is a joke, right?

Even more Galloway

The paragraphs quoted below are from Counter Punch, "An Open Letter to Democrats Listen to Galloway and Learn Something" By Stan Goff. (which I found via Wolcott's link)

George Galloway did that for which you (Democratic elected officials) have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be ­ a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths ­ I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman ­ though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

There's more and it's really good and nasty.

Filibuster falsehoods

Media Matters "The top ten filibuster falsehoods" has been posted and linked to far and wide. Essentially Media Matters points out that every stated reason to eliminate filibusters is a lie. Media Matters provides ample support for each of the ten. But in case you missed them, they are here.

Galloway, one more time

Few speak publicly about what's "going on" and fewer still have the courage to speak truthfully to American power. That's what makes Galloway's Wednesday tongue-lashing of the Senators, Coleman in particular, so special. I can only imagine how dumbfounded Senator Coleman must have been. I've been savoring it for days. I found a transcript here and quote the paragraphs from the site linked.

Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

Lost but not found

I found these quotes in an Al Franken column, here, by way of Atrios.

Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

At the end of the column Franken asks “What in God’s name is going on?” Indeed.

The Franken column is linked to and backed up by this January AP story posted on the Forbes page:

Audit: $9 Billion Unaccounted for in Iraq
01.30.2005, 07:41 PM

The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found.