27 May 2006

Digby: Cultural ID

Chris Bowers writes about one of my favorite subjects today: American tribal identity.
Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else--something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the "battle of civilizations," but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.

The Suburban Fantasy

James Howard Kunstler
May 26, 2006

James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency, just released in paperback by The Atlantic Monthly Press.

It’s actually kind of funny to hear Americans complain these days about the cost of gasoline and how it is affecting their lives. What did they expect after setting up an easy-motoring utopia of suburban metroplexes that make incessant driving inevitable? And how did they fail to register the basic facts of the world oil situation, which have been available to us for decades?

Those facts are as follows: oil fields follow a simple pattern of production and depletion along a bell curve. Universally, when an oil field gets close to half the amount of oil it originally possessed, production peaks and then declines. This is true for all oil fields in the aggregate, for a nation and even the world.

In the United States, oil production peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since. We extracted about 10 million barrels a day in 1970 and just under 5 million barrels a day now. Because our consumption has only increased steadily, we’ve made up for the shortfall by importing oil from other countries.

Political Amnesia Is the Enemy

By Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org. Posted May 27, 2006.

No wonder some studies find that news viewers rapidly forget what they have just seen -- that's the intention.

We all know, all of us in America anyway, that Memorial Day weekend marks the start of summer. It's about the downtime ahead, the vacation that's coming, the shutting down of the serious in anticipation of fun in the sun.

Officially, it is also about honoring the dead, and there will be parades by veterans and flags flying on TV newscasts. Most of it is set in the present with little referencing of the past or memory itself.

26 May 2006

GAO Report Faults Voluntary Programs To Cut Air Pollution

Study Says Administration Has Not Ensured That Firms Set, Meet Goals

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A03

The Bush administration's voluntary programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by industry have yet to deliver promised results, according to a report issued yesterday by the Government Accountability Office.

The 51-page report, which was requested by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), highlights shortcomings in two projects aimed at encouraging the private sector to cut emissions linked to global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency sponsors "Climate Leaders," while the Energy Department oversees "Climate VISION."

John F. Kennedy: Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to state my views.

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 campaign; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only 90 miles from the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms -- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues -- for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier.

O'Reilly: Young Americans "have no idea what's going on" because they "get their news from Jon Stewart"

Summary: Bill O'Reilly asserted that "[m]any Americans ages 18 to 24 have no idea what's going on," stating that they "get their news from [Comedy Central host] Jon Stewart and their point of view from bomb-throwing entertainers." In fact, studies have shown that viewers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are consistently better informed about current events than consumers of other media, and Daily Show viewers are significantly better educated than viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. Further, consumers of Fox News in general have been found to be significantly more misinformed about current events than consumers of other mainstream media.

During the May 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly asserted that "[m]any Americans ages 18 to 24 have no idea what's going on," stating that they "get their news from [Comedy Central host] Jon Stewart and their point of view from bomb-throwing entertainers."

Rove-Novak Call Was Concern To Leak Investigators

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, May 25, 2006

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men.

Suspicious that Rove and Novak might have devised a cover story during that conversation to protect Rove, federal investigators briefed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the matter in the early stages of the investigation in fall 2003, according to officials with direct knowledge of those briefings.

The Burial of the 9/11 Story that Got Away

Time to shop for a tinfoil hat?--Dictynna


The Bombshell That No One is Pursuing Except Rory O'Connor: "senior White House official leaked top-secret NSA intelligence in 2001 to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller...that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack on the United States." This was before 9/11. If Judith Miller knew from a White House source in advance, it begs the earth-shattering question: Why did the Bush administration do nothing to prevent it? And the New York Times let the story drop, to boot.--BUZZFLASH

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted May 25, 2006.

The Times' then managing editor, Bill Keller, was never told about a potential story predicting 9/11 attacks.

Last week, William Scott Malone and I broke the story of how a still anonymous, senior White House official leaked top-secret NSA intelligence in 2001 to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller. The intelligence indicated that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack on the United States. But the "The 9/11 Story That Got Away" never made it into the paper.

It never made it to the attention of top Times executive Bill Keller either. Keller, now executive editor of the paper, was managing editor in July 2001. But he was kept in the dark when Miller's "impeccable" source first revealed details of highly classified signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an impending Al Qaeda attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States. The NSA had been listening in on a conversation between two members of Osama bin Laden's terror network. One was overheard saying to the other, "Don't worry, we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond."

The Guiltiest Guys In the Room

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted May 26, 2006.

The Enron verdict is a heartening chapter, but it provides the beginning, rather than an end of reckoning with a culture of blame-dodging that bleeds far beyond Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.

After enduring four months of testy and often sensational testimony, jurors finally reached a verdict yesterday in the case against former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and founder Ken Lay. Found guilty of both fraud and conspiracy, Skilling and Lay each face a minimum of 25 years in prison.

Sift through the headlines on the Enron verdict, and you're likely to be left with the sense that the American public has emerged victorious, in the process establishing a zero-tolerance policy of fraud in business. While the verdict will certainly serve as a cautionary tale to future corporate leaders, it would be misleading to assume that the chapter on the culture of corporate corruption has been closed.

25 May 2006

Top FDA staff say left out of contraceptive ruling

By Lisa Richwine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief shut out two senior agency officials from a decision to indefinitely postpone action on Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s "morning-after" contraceptive, the officials said in legal depositions released this week.

Transcripts of the sworn statements were released by the non-profit Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued the FDA, claiming that the agency allowed political opposition to the Plan B contraceptive to interfere with science.

Dr. Steven Galson, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, testified that around January 2005 he was leaning toward approving Barr's plan to sell Plan B over the counter.

WP Editorial: Official Secrets

Be careful what you read.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006; Page A16

ATTORNEY General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked this weekend whether he believes he can prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, made a statement that should chill the bones of every American who values a vigorous press: "It depends on the circumstances." Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Mr. Gonzales explained, "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility. That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation. We have an obligation to enforce those laws." But presenting the administration's radical new strategy as mere deference to Congress is profoundly dishonest.

Democrats must confront GOP strategy

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2006

So here’s the big Republican agenda for the 2006 elections: Other people’s sex lives (a. k. a. gay marriage ), flag-burning, illegal Mexican immigrants, tax cuts and Chicken Little. There’s no surprise about the first few. A GOP campaign resembles a traveling tent show. White House sideshow barker Karl Rove expects that the rubes who line up every two years to see the twoheaded calf and the bearded lady will fall for flag-burning again. Never mind that Republicans have done nothing about it since President Bush’s father visited a flag factory during his 1988 campaign. Flag burning as a protest all but disappeared after 9 / 11. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N. Y., also has joined this crusade, the surest sign that she’s contemplating running for president in 2008.

Amending the Constitution to forbid gay marriage is another election-year shell game. Finessing it shouldn’t be too hard for Democrats. If your church refuses to solemnize same-sex marriages, that’s its undeniable First Amendment right. Forbidding people to enter into domestic partnership contracts due to sexual orientation, however, would be un-American.

A dozen Marines may face courts-martial for alleged Iraq massacre

By Gayle S. Putrich
TIMES STAFF WRITER

A key member of Congress said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if a dozen Marines faced courts-martial for allegedly killing Iraqi civilians Nov. 19. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told Marine Corps Times that the number of dead Iraqis, first reported to be 15, was actually 24. He based that number on a briefing from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee on Wednesday.

Hagee visited Capitol Hill in anticipation of the release of two investigation reports, which are expected to show that among the 24 dead civilians, five of the alleged victims, all unarmed, were shot in a car with no warning, Murtha said. The killings took place in Hadithah, 125 miles northwest of Baghdad.

24 May 2006

House prices threaten stability

By Chris Giles and Scheherazade Daneshkhu in London
Published: May 23 2006 20:24 | Last updated: May 23 2006 20:24

Overvalued housing markets and rising long-term interest rates represent one of the greatest combined risks to advanced economies, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Tuesday.

The housing markets of the US, Spain, France, Ireland and Sweden were most at risk, with a greater than 50 per cent chance of seeing a drop in real prices if prices continued to rise this year and long-term interest rates went up.

Whose Missile Shield Is It, Anyway?

Now we're talking about putting expensive, useless interceptors in Europe.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, May 23, 2006, at 5:48 PM ET

The Bush administration's ballistic-missile-defense program—wildly expensive and no less ineffective—has a new mission, it seems. Monday's New York Times reports that the Pentagon plans to build a new site of interceptors in Europe, probably in Poland or the Czech Republic, for the purpose of shooting down nuclear missiles launched by Iran.

At the moment Iran has neither nuclear weapons nor long-range missiles, but the U.S. anti-missile missiles—a battery of 10—won't be in place until 2011, so that's not an issue. Two critical points are worth making, though:

ACLU launches 20 state campaign to end NSA call data program

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday May 24, 2006

Responding to reports that phone companies are turning over records relating to Americans' telephone calls to the National Security Agency, the American Civil Liberties Union today launched a 20-state "Don't Spy on Me" campaign to end government surveillance programs they claim are illegal, RAW STORY has learned.

ACLU affiliates in 20 states today filed complaints with Public Utility Commissions or sent letters to state Attorneys General and other officials demanding investigations into whether local telecommunications companies allowed the NSA to spy on their customers.

Lieberman withdraws from MoveOn.org 'primary'

05/23/2006 @ 3:20 pm Filed by RAW STORY

Lieberman Declines Invitation—Stand-in Sought / MoveOn.org Statement on Connecticut Online Primary for U.S. Senate

From a MoveOn.org press release to RAW STORY.

#

After initially agreeing, Senator Lieberman has declined our invitation to participate in the MoveOn.org Political Action online primary for U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

We invited both candidates to send an e-mail to MoveOn members in Connecticut as part of our endorsement process. When we spoke last Thursday, the Lieberman campaign agreed to submit an e-mail from the Senator or a surrogate as they did during our 2004 online presidential primary. We received notice after 5:00 PM last night that they would not submit an e-mail to MoveOn members for the primary.

$1 Million For Your Vote?

I can't believe I like this idea !--Dictynna

Arizona Ballot Measure Would Give Prize To One Voter After Each Election
PHOENIX, May 23, 2006

(AP) An Arizona political activist is placing his bets that a proposal to pay one lucky voter $1 million will drive people to the polls.

Dr. Mark Osterloh, an ophthalmologist who has run unsuccessfully for governor and the Legislature, filed paperwork Monday to put the idea before state voters on the 2006 ballot.

TPM: How Often Did Abramoff Visit? The White House Won't Tell

You knew this was coming.

Last week we found out why the Secret Service had turned over visitor records to Judicial Watch showing only two visits by Jack Abramoff when we knew there were more. The White House, not the Secret Service, has the more comprehensive records.

Well, now it appears doubtful that the White House will ever turn those records over. We may never know how many times Abramoff really visited the White House... or who Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, the male prostitute and White House correspondent, met with there. The White House has records that would show all that. But in a departure from the policy of the Clinton White House, the Bush administration seems determined to keep them forever out of public view.

Media Reports Gonzales’ Misleading Legal Analysis on NSA Program, Ignores All Opposing Views

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales won’t confirm that the federal government collected the phone records of millions of Americans, as reported on May 11 in USA Today. But yesterday, Gonzales claimed that doing so was perfectly legal. From the Washington Post:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that the government can obtain domestic telephone records without court approval under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that authorized the collection of business records…Gonzales told reporters that, under the Smith v. Maryland ruling, “those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records.”

This is a classic case of misdirection. The issue isn’t simply whether or not collecting domestic phone records is constitutional. The issue is whether it’s legal. If the USA Today story is accurate, the NSA program appears to be illegal, not because it violates the fourth amendment, but because it violates two statutes.

Winter Soldier (DVD) Originally Released in 1972, Released on DVD in May of 2006.

This documentary, famous among dissenters of the Vietnam War, was long out of circulation. It is being made available again to the American public for the first time in nearly 25 years through release in DVD format, with many additional features.

This is a powerful, necessary and often painful film to watch. It will confirm that the Vietnam War was a failed atrocity, fought by soldiers who daily were involved with the most gruesome of actions against the Vietnamese. It will leave you feeling strongly that the soldiers were as much victims as perpetrators of heinous and unspeakable acts.

Privacy worries over web's future

By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh

The next phase of the web could face "big privacy" issues, a senior UK academic has warned.

Hugh Glaser of the University of Southampton made the comments at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh.

He was describing the semantic web, an attempt to make the web more intelligent.

Privacy problems could occur, he said, because the semantic web deliberately combines multiple sources of information about people and places.

(Introduced) Bullfrog linked to fungus spread

Don't mess with Mother Nature...it can be very costly.--Dictynna

By Rebecca Morelle
BBC News science reporter

An invasive frog species may be implicated in the spread of a fungus linked to global amphibian decline, research indicates.

Scientists writing in the journal Biology Letters found that non-native North American bullfrog populations routinely carry the chytrid fungus.

The deadly fungus has been implicated in many amphibian extinctions.

23 May 2006

The Snooping Goes Beyond Phone Calls

How the government sidesteps the Privacy Act by purchasing commercial data

Furor and confusion over allegations that major phone companies have surrendered customer calling records to the National Security Agency continue to roil Washington. But if AT&T Inc. (T ) and possibly others have turned over records to the NSA, the phone giants represent only one of many commercial sources of personal data that the government seeks to "mine" for evidence of terrorist plots and other threats.

The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans' finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don't ensure the data's accuracy, the GAO found.

Cheney's Guy

He's barely known outside Washington's corridors of power, but David Addington is the most powerful man you've never heard of. Here's why:

By Chitra Ragavan

5/29/06

One week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush briefly turned his gaze away from the unfolding crisis to an important but far less pressing moment in the nation's history. The president signed legislation creating a commission to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling desegregating public schools. In a brief statement, Bush invited the various educational groups listed in the legislation to suggest the names of potential commissioners and also urged members of Congress to weigh in, as a "matter of comity." But in a little-noted aside, Bush said that any such suggestions would be just that--because under the appointments clause of the Constitution, it was his job, and his alone, to make those kinds of decisions.

Frank Rich: The Rove Da Vinci Code

--The New York Times, May 21, 2006

If we're to believe the reviews, "The Da Vinci Code" is the most exciting summer blockbuster since, well, "Poseidon." But the "Da Vinci Code" marketing strategy is a masterpiece: a perfect Hollywood metaphor for the American political culture of our day.

The Machiavellian mission for the hit-deprived Sony studio was to co-opt conservative religious critics who might depress turnout for a $125-million-plus thriller portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a fraud.

To this end, as The New Yorker reported, Sony hired a bevy of P.R. consultants, including a faith-based flack whose Christian Rolodex previously helped sell such inspirational testaments to Hollywood spirituality as "Bruce Almighty" and "Christmas With the Kranks."

Web inventor warns of 'dark' net

By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh

The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.

Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.

He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".

Life's harsh lessons 'make you more gullible'-study

Can this explain "What's the matter with Kansas"?--Dictynna

People who have suffered life's hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, startling new findings from the University of Leicester reveal.

A six-month study in the University's School of Psychology found that rather than 'toughening up' individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead.

22 May 2006

Digby: Sigh-Ops

I'm sure most of you have heard this bizarre story about Iran forcing Jews and other religious minorities to wear badges. (In a nice touch of historical color, the Jewish badges are allegedly yellow.) Well, it turns out this was simply made up out of whole cloth and filtered into the media through an affiliate of the Benador Group which include such credible wingnuts as Laurie "Saddam is comin' ta git yah" Mylroie and Michael "let's invade France" Ledeen. You have to wonder what they thought they would accomplish by putting out something so falsifiable. I think Jim Henley has it right:
Why? So that months from now, someone hearing about plans to bomb Iran, or seeing footage of bombing on TV, will say to themselves, “Didn’t I read that Iran was going to round up all the Jews and make them wear yellow stars like the Nazis? Something like that. Well, good riddance.” All the story had to do was live long enough to get into circulation.

Digby: You Oughta Know

Poor, poor Republicans. They are reduced to dragging out that poor old fossilized 90s retread Drudge to falsely smear Democrats again. (Geez, next they'll be starting flame wars on usenet!) That's a sad comment on the rightwing blogosphere if you ask me.

Old Drudge has found out today, however, that things don't work quite the same way as they did back in the good old days of "Mad About You" and the screeching harpies of the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors. Drudge got a letter this morning from the DNC's lawyer for libeling Howard Dean yesterday and took down his false story.

Digby: Holy Hell

Ok. we are getting into some seriously weird territory now. This diary over at Kos about the Christian youth "Battle Cry" rally sounds so dangerous and creepy that I think we need to call in Dave Niewert to translate it for us:
BattleCry Philadelphia was more than just a vulgar carnival designed to suck donations into the coffers of Ron Luce's corporation "Teen Mania". Indeed, it had a point, to recruit the future elite "warriors" in the coming battle against the separation of church and state. It turned dark and frightening on Saturday afternoon. After Franklin "Islam is a Wicked Religion" Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s. They were hunting us, the future Christian leaders of America. Two teenage girls next to me burst into tears and even I, a jaded middle-aged male, almost jumped out of my skin. I imagined for that moment what it must have felt like to have been a teacher at Columbine high school. 10 seconds later they rushed out onstage and pointed their guns in our direction firing blanks spitting flames. About 1000 shots and bang, we were all dead.

Billmon: Cooking With Gas

We are confident that building democratic societies is the only way to a better future that we seek.

Hosni Mubarak
Remarks to the World Economic Forum
May 20, 2006

Brian Whitaker of The Guardian has an appropriately scathing take on the Egyptian president's commitment to democracy -- and the Cheney Administration's commitment to propping up his regime at all costs:

Despite all the hoo-ha from President Bush about promoting democracy, the deal -- at least where Egypt is concerned -- is to criticise the Mubarak regime (politely) in public while fending off any threats of more serious action from Congress.

On the one hand, this placates Americans who are concerned about the recent turn of events in Cairo; on the other, it reassures the aged pharaoh that nothing untoward will happen if he carries on arresting, beating up and torturing people as usual.

Sections of the American media seem to be falling into line, too. I love the delicate way the Houston Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury and other subscribers to the Knight Ridder news service began their reports today: "Egypt's uneasy path to democratic reform received more setbacks Thursday ..."

Poor Mr Mubarak: he is trying to so hard to reform, but after 24 years it's not getting any easier.

Whitaker's piece (posted on The Guardian's blog, Comment is Free) is entitled "Teflon Pharoah." Which is cute, but I can testify that the teflon is backed by a pretty thick wall of steel, much of which is currently wrapped around the Sharm El-Sheikh Convention Center.

With All This Horseshit

“If someone is calling al Qaeda, we want to know about it.”

Yes, sir, you bet. Alright, General Hayden, you’ve been in charge of finding out if anyone is calling al Qaeda. You’ve spent hundreds of millions, maybe billions. You’ve built a data base to see if anyone is calling anyone who calls in a pattern that an al Qaeda member would call if he were making calls.

More gargantuan sums of money, time and effort.

Krugman: Talk Show Joe

Friday was a bad day for Senator Joseph Lieberman. The Connecticut Democratic Party's nominating convention endorsed him, but that was a given for an incumbent with a lot of political chips to cash in. The real news was that Ned Lamont, an almost unknown challenger, received a third of the votes. This gave Mr. Lamont the right to run against Mr. Lieberman in a primary, and suggests that Mr. Lamont may even win.

What happened to Mr. Lieberman? Some news reports may lead you to believe that he is in trouble solely because of his support for the Iraq war. But there's much more to it than that. Mr. Lieberman has consistently supported Republican talking points. This has made him a lion of the Sunday talk shows, but has put him out of touch with his constituents — and with reality.

Media Research Center takes on 'The West Wing'

Conservative Philanthropy supported group claims show had liberal bias

The 2,195th CyberAlert, issued on Friday May 12, 2006 is a gift to both current and former fans of "The West Wing," from the resolute media watchers at the Media Research Center. When the series premiered on NBC in September 1999 -- toward the end of the Clinton years -- it started off by immediately pressing a political hot button: President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, told a group of conservative religious leaders to "get your fat asses out of my White House."

"The West Wing"--which ended its seven-year run on Sunday, May 14 -- was smart television; it won scads of Emmys. Critics raved about its fast-paced and intelligent dialogue, its willingness to take on tough political issues, and its magnificent ensemble cast. The show captured the imagination of television viewers across the country, and it soon became a top rated program.

The Eternal Value of Privacy

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Important New Book: Before The Storm by Rick Perlstein

I'll definitely have to buy this one...--Dictynna

FDL Book Salon: Before the Storm, Pt. 1

beforethestormcov2.jpg

(Today we’ll be discussing Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein. We’ll be reading Part 2 for the following week when Rick himself will be joining us — JH)

I grew up in a very rightwing household. My father was born in 1922 and has never voted for a Democrat, including Roosevelt in 1944 at the height of WWII. I recently came across a letter from my mother to her parents in 1960 in which she lamented about "that Mr Kennedy" stealing the election. Although we lived in many places, they were California Republicans — the home of both Nixon and Reagan. (Both of those presidents used the Southern Strategy to get elected, but they weren’t of the southern hierarchy that makes up the GOP today.) This was arch-conservatism of the old school.

Of all the politicians my Dad admired over the years (and there were actually precious few — he’s got a good radar for phonies) there was only one he truly respected: Barry Goldwater. This was his kind of guy — a straight talker, completely open about his beliefs, unsanctimonious, a man’s man without unnecessary polish or attitude. And he was as conservative as they came, just like my dad — an anti-communist to the core, a strong believer in the use of military power and a fundamental belief in self-reliance (even if he, like my father, fudged the details.) These were people who never signed on to the New Deal and at the time Goldwater ran for president, there were very few liberal establishment types who believed such people even existed.


FDL Book Salon — Before the Storm, Pt. 2

(Today’s guest poster is Henry Farrell from Crooked Timber. Rick Perlstein will also be joining us in the comments. You can read last week’s Pt. 1 of the discussion here.)

"Before the Storm” is an important work of American history. It captures what it was like to be an angry right-winger in the 1960s, and has been praised by rightwingers like William Kristol and William F. Buckley for telling it as it was. But if it was just a piece of political history, it wouldn’t have been as influential as it’s been. It’s also an argument about politics, and a gameplan for pissed-off Democrats who feel (as Goldwater’s conservatives felt) that they’re badly served by a complaisant party hierarchy. In Kos’s words:

The parallels to today are startling, a sort of Dean bizarro world stuck on opposite day — a Republican Party that was trying to be "Democrat-lite" and an establishment hostile to "outsider" forces. With Goldwater railing against his party’s establishment and the special interests that controlled it. Throw in innovative use of tactics and technology (Goldwater pioneered the use of direct mail) and a crushing defeat, and you’ve got the Dean phenomenon.

This is right, but it’s only part of Perlstein’s story. Before the Storm does have a lot to say about movement politics. It’s not Goldwater who’s the main protagonist in Perlstein’s account; it’s the conservative activists who used his candidacy to rebuild American politics from the grassroots. But Perlstein also is interested in ideas – as the subtitle says, the book is about the “Unmaking of the American Consensus.” Perlstein wants to know how the smug liberal consensus underlying the Affluent Society of 1960s America was shattered, and replaced by a new, conservative-friendly, set of received wisdoms. “Before the Storm” only begins to describe how this happened, but suggests that it surely had its origins with Goldwater’s supporters. In short, Perlstein tells us that you have to understand both movement politics and ideas if you want to understand why the conservatives won.

Seymour M. Hersh: Listening In

Issue of 2006-05-29
Posted 2006-05-22

A few days before the start of the confirmation hearings for General Michael Hayden, who has been nominated by President Bush to be the head of the C.I.A., I spoke to an official of the National Security Agency who recently retired. The official joined the N.S.A. in the mid-nineteen-seventies, soon after contentious congressional hearings that redefined the relationship between national security and the public’s right to privacy. The hearings, which revealed that, among other abuses, the N.S.A. had illegally intercepted telegrams to and from the United States, led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to protect citizens from unlawful surveillance. “When I first came in, I heard from all my elders that ‘we’ll never be able to collect intelligence again,’” the former official said. “They’d whine, ‘Why do we have to report to oversight committees?’ ” But, over the next few years, he told me, the agency did find a way to operate within the law. “We built a system that protected national security and left people able to go home at night without worrying whether what they did that day was appropriate or legal.”

Air pollution increases death risk in people with certain diseases

SAN DIEGO--People with diabetes, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis are at increased risk of death when they are exposed to particulate air pollution, or soot, for one or more years, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 22nd.

The study looked at hospital discharges for people with these four types of diseases living in 34 cities between 1985 and 1999. The researchers compared this information with 12-month averages of PM10, a type of particulate matter air pollution that includes particles with a diameter of 10 micrometers or less than 0.0004 inches or one-seventh the width of a human hair.

Greenhouse gas/temperature feedback mechanism may raise warming beyond previous estimates

WASHINGTON - A team of European scientists reports that climate change estimates for the next century may have substantially underestimated the potential magnitude of global warming. They say that actual warming due to human fossil fuel emissions may be 15-to-78 percent higher than warming estimates that do not take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide and Earth's temperature.

In a paper to be published on 26 May in Geophysical Research Letters, Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom use newly acquired ancient climate data to quantify the two-way phenomenon by which greenhouse gases not only contribute to higher temperatures, but are themselves increased by the higher temperatures. This higher concentration leads to still higher temperatures, in what scientists call a positive feedback loop.

21 May 2006

Ted Rall: Who Will Inherit the NSA?

NEW YORK--Several months ago employees of Verizon, the company that enjoys a monopoly on local telephone service where I live, confirmed that my telephone has been tapped by the government. (Note to government: No, I won't reveal their names. No, not even if you throw me in jail. Unlike The New York Times, I protect my sources. Let's just say they're people in a position to know and leave it at that.)

"I don't mind that Bush is listening to my calls," I told the security department representative who took one of my several requests to replace the bug with a new-and-improved eavesdropping device that wouldn't generate a roar of static. "It's not like I'm calling al Qaeda. And if they called me, I wouldn't be able to hear them because of the noise on the line."

Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police

As chaos swept Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, the Pentagon began its effort to rebuild the Iraqi police with a mere dozen advisers. Overmatched from the start, one was sent to train a 4,000-officer unit to guard power plants and other utilities. A second to advise 500 commanders in Baghdad. Another to organize a border patrol for the entire country.

Three years later, the police are a battered and dysfunctional force that has helped bring Iraq to the brink of civil war. Police units stand accused of operating death squads for powerful political groups or simple profit. Citizens, deeply distrustful of the force, are setting up their own neighborhood security squads. Killings of police officers are rampant, with at least 547 slain this year, roughly as many as Iraqi and American soldiers combined, records show.

100 Years in the Back Door, Out the Front

THE Texas cotton lobbyist tried to reassure Congress that the tens of thousands of Mexicans who labored in the fields of the Southwest were not a threat to national security. There "never was a more docile animal in the world than the Mexican," he told the Senate committee.

Then he offered a way around the political problem the congressmen faced in extending the program that had let the workers in.

A Change of Subject

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, May 19, 2006; 1:00 PM

This was the week President Bush changed the subject.

With a rare primetime speech from the Oval Office and ensuing PR campaign, Bush pulled the press and the public away from their growing obsession with his sinking approval ratings, the carnage in Iraq, his domestic snooping, and other stories over which he had little control.

The new subject, of course, is immigration. It's not a sure-fire winner for Bush, sparking as it does virulent opposition from within his own party, and putting him in the unusual position of trying to build a coalition around a "rational middle ground," which is not his strong suit.

Supreme Court Officially Emasculates Taxpayers

By David Sirota
Working For Change

Tuesday 16 May 2006

In a unanimous decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling that would have invalidated massive taxpayer giveaways to Corporate America. The Supreme Court has long been the victim of a hostile takeover by Big Money interests. It is a court now headed by a corporate lawyer that has repeatedly gone out of its way to protect Corporate America's ability to bleed the middle class dry. Today's ruling, though, is particularly egregious. Not only did the court strike down an important ruling, but it essentially emasculated taxpayers' ability to bring any such lawsuits against their own government in the future.

The details are as shocking as they are disgusting. As the Associated Press reports, "two years ago, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Ohio's tax credit on new equipment, saying the practice hinders interstate commerce because the incentives are available only to businesses that invest in Ohio." In other words, plaintiffs correctly noted the credits are creating a race to the bottom that violate interstate commerce laws by forcing states and cities to compete with each other to give away more and more taxpayer cash to Big Business. In the Ohio case, the tax credit was used to give DaimlerChrysler roughly $300 million in taxpayer cash - cash that Toledo's county auditor says was siphoned away from local schools, forcing the city to close up to nine schools or fire 380 school workers.

What Is the Real Purpose of Bush's NSA Surveillance?

Patriot Daily | Editorial

Thursday 18 May 2006

The Baltimore Sun reported today that Bush rejected President Clinton's effective, legal surveillance program that did not invade privacy to adopt the current NSA spying program, which is ineffective, illegal and invasive of citizens' privacy rights. So, the question jumping off the page may be: Why would Bush use a program that does not actually assist the finding of terrorists, yet also has the disadvantage of invading Americans' privacy rights?

The Clinton surveillance program, called ThinThread, was created during the late 1990s to "gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws." Several bloggers provide excellent posts on the components and nature of the program.

Markets ‘are like 1987 crash’

CONDITIONS in the financial markets are eerily similar to those that precipitated the “Black Monday” stock market crash of October 1987, according to leading City analysts.

A report by Barclays Capital says the run-up to the 1987 crash was characterised by a widening US current-account deficit, weak dollar, fears of rising inflation, a fading boom in American house prices, and the appointment of a new chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

All have been happening in recent months, with market nerves on edge last week over fears of higher inflation and a tumbling dollar, and the perception of mixed messages on interest rates from Ben Bernanke, the new Fed chairman.