'It's the kiss of death'

Last weekend, during a GOP debate in Iowa, George Stephanopoulos noted that Bush's alleged democracy-spreading foreign policy hasn't exactly worked out well: "There have been free elections in Gaza; they elected Hamas. There have been free elections in Lebanon; they empowered Hezbollah. There have been free elections in Iran; they elected President Ahmadinejad." Asked about the track record, former Gov. Mike Huckabee responded, "Sometimes when you get what you want, you don't want what you get."

With that background in mind, Hassan Fattah has a terrific report on how the U.S. government can promote elections, champion democracy, and stand behind like-minded international allies, but our support doesn't always translate well.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11

On the stump, Rudy can't help spreading smoke and ashes about his lousy record

by Wayne Barrett
with special research assistance by Alexandra Kahan

August 7th, 2007 9:44 PM

Nearly six years after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is still walking through the canyons of lower Manhattan, covered in soot, pointing north, and leading the nation out of danger's way. The Republican frontrunner is campaigning for president by evoking that visual at every campaign stop, and he apparently believes it's a picture worth thousands of nights in the White House.

Giuliani has been leading the Republican pack for seven months, and predictions that the party's evangelicals would turn on him have so far proven hollow. The religious right appears as gripped by the Giuliani story as the rest of the country.

Giuliani isn't shy about reminding audiences of those heady days. In fact he hyperventilates about them on the stump, making his credentials in the so-called war on terror the centerpiece of his campaign. His claims, meanwhile, have been met with a media deference so total that he's taken to complimenting "the good job it is doing covering the campaign." Opponents, too, haven't dared to question his terror credentials, as if doing so would be an unpatriotic bow to Osama bin Laden.

Who will be stuck with debt?

Markets worldwide are skittish over failing investments linked to U.S. subprime lending

By Mike Hughlett | Tribune staff reporter

August 11, 2007

From New York to Frankfurt to Singapore, the financial players who run, analyze and regulate the world's markets were scratching their heads in collective puzzlement and worry Friday, offering the same view: something's gone askew and everyone's worried about who's holding the bag -- in this case, of bad debt.

This state of agitation, which has roiled global markets for two days, can be explained in one phrase: fear of a credit crunch.

Movie Review: No End in Sight

by Roger Ebert

Remember the scene in "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex has his eyes clamped open and is forced to watch a movie? I imagine a similar experience for the architects of our catastrophe in Iraq. I would like them to see "No End in Sight," the story of how we were led into that war, and more than 3,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives were destroyed.

They might find the film of particular interest because they would know so many of the people appearing in it. This is not a documentary filled with anti-war activists or sitting ducks for Michael Moore. Most of the people in the film were important to the Bush administration. They had top government or military jobs, they had responsibility in Iraq or Washington, they implemented policy, they filed reports, they labored faithfully in service of U.S. foreign policy and then they left the government. Some jumped, some were pushed. They all feel disillusioned about the war and the way the White House refused to listen to them about it.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Very Scary Things

In September 1998, the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a giant hedge fund, led to a meltdown in the financial markets similar, in some ways, to what’s happening now. During the crisis in ’98, I attended a closed-door briefing given by a senior Federal Reserve official, who laid out the grim state of the markets. “What can we do about it?” asked one participant. “Pray,” replied the Fed official.

Our prayers were answered. The Fed coordinated a rescue for L.T.C.M., while Robert Rubin, the Treasury secretary at the time, and Alan Greenspan, who was the Fed chairman, assured investors that everything would be all right. And the panic subsided.

Are the Bees Dying off Because They're Too Busy?

By Susan Kuchinskas, East Bay Express
Posted on August 11, 2007, Printed on August 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59426/

All across America, a mysterious disease is wiping out bee colonies. This malady causes all the bees in a hive to seemingly vanish overnight, abandoning their brood in the nursery, as well as their stores of honey and pollen. Other bees and pests, which normally plunder deserted honey, shun these hives. This baffling die-off dealt a financial blow to commercial beekeepers this season and raised fears of environmental and economic disaster. For farmers, no bees means no pollination.

But pollination is happening like mad in Leah Fortin's tiny yard in North Oakland, Calif. Busy little bee bodies cover the clumps of lavender, salvia and roses that line her driveway. More bees work the malaleucas on the parking strip, those trees with shaggy bark that look like giant Q-tips when they're in bloom.

The Pentagon Sends Messengers of Apocalypse to Convert Soldiers in Iraq

By Max Blumenthal, TheNation.com
Posted on August 8, 2007, Printed on August 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59161/

Actor Stephen Baldwin, the youngest member of the famous Baldwin brothers, is no longer playing Pauly Shore's sidekick in comedy masterpieces like Biodome. He has a much more serious calling these days.

Baldwin became a right-wing, born-again Christian after the 9/11 attacks, and now is the star of Operation Straight Up (OSU), an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military. As an official arm of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, OSU plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a "Military Crusade in Iraq" in the near future.

"We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region," OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. "We'll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq."

Katha Pollitt: Who's Sorry Now?

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, there was no more effective intellectual spokesperson for war than then-Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff. Not for him the contemptuous brawling of Christopher Hitchens or the smooth triumphalism of William Kristol. Pained, sensitive, with the star professor's gift of seeming to wrestle with his thoughts right there in front of you, Ignatieff made the case for war as a humanitarian and human-rights mission: We had to save the Iraqis from Saddam. For supporters of democracy and idealists of all stripes, this was a very persuasive argument.

Four years, four months and seventeen days after bombs began falling on Baghdad, Ignatieff, who left Harvard to become deputy leader of Canada's Liberal Party, has finally joined the long parade of prowar commentators who've publicly acknowledged their mistake. On August 5 The New York Times Magazine carried his long, woolly, pompous pseudo-confession "Getting Iraq Wrong: What the War Has Taught Me About Political Judgment." Wandering among references to Isaiah Berlin, Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Beckett, Burke and Kant, Ignatieff distinguishes between the experimental, enthusiastic mindset natural to academics (himself then) and the "good judgment" and "prudence" required of political leaders (himself now). He thought politics was about all that high-minded stuff he taught at Harvard and let himself get carried away by his sympathy for Iraqi exiles. In other words, Michael Ignatieff supported the war because he was just too smart and too good for this fallen world.

Coconut Road

Here's a corruption case that raises an interesting constitutional question. Actually, the 'question' seems pretty open and shut to me. But it is apparently being treated as one of some ambiguity. So here goes.

In 2005, rapscallion Congressman Don Young (R) of Alaska snuck in a $10 million earmark for a highway interchange (the "Coconut Road" project) which stood to benefit real estate mini-mogul Daniel Aranoff. The earmark appeared just days after Aranoff raised 40 grand for Young at a fundraiser. Adding to the fun on this little escapade is that this was an earmark for a road building project in Florida, which -- unless my spatial reasoning is failing me -- must be about as far as you can get in the United States from Alaska, the state Young nominally represents.

What Does it All Mean?

By Jared Bernstein | bio

This morning’s papers are filled to the brim with informative reports on yesterday’s sharp drop in financial markets. Krugman explains the fundamentals with characteristic clarity, and both the Post and the Times lead with reports on what’s going on and why.

There is, however, an important economic question I haven’t seen addressed: what’s it all mean for the majority of us who don’t make a living off of the price fluctuations of mortgage backed securities?

Cities incite thunderstorms, researchers find

Summer thunderstorms become much more fierce when they collide with a city than they would otherwise be in the open countryside, according to research led by Princeton engineers.

Alexandros A. Ntelekos and James A. Smith of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science based their conclusion on computer models and detailed observations of an extreme thunderstorm that hit Baltimore in July of 2004.

Their modeling suggests that the city of Baltimore experienced about 30 percent more rainfall than the region it occupies would have experienced had there been no buildings where the city now sits.

The So-Called Protect America Act

Why Its Sweeping Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Pose Not Only a Civil Liberties Threat, But a Greater Danger As Well
By JOHN W. DEAN
----

Friday, Aug. 10, 2007

Congressional Democrats are getting a lot of well-earned heat from rank-and-file members of their party, not to mention editorial writers and bloggers, for their lack of spine in refusing to reject the Bush/Cheney Administration's sweeping amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Just before Congress departed for its August recess, the Administration jammed through in five days - from start to finish -- the dubiously titled Protect America Act (PAA) of 2007, over the protest of the Democratic leadership. The only thing good about the PAA is that it is temporary - with a six month expiration date (although surveillance programs authorized under it can operate for up to one year.)

On her Democracy NOW daily program, Amy Goodman's (streaming video) interviewed Salon.com's law blogger, Glenn Greenwald, and the president of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, about the PAA. The interview nicely sets forth what happened and its broad implications. Simply stated, Bush threatened to make a political issue of any effort by Congressional Democrats to protect the civil liberties of American. Bush surely succeeded beyond his most fervent hope in his intimidation of sixteen Democratic members in the Senate and forty-one Democratic members in the House, earning these members a place on "the roll of shame" in the blogosphere.

I.F. Stone's lessons for Internet journalism

COMMENTARY | July 09, 2007

Bloggers are taking up where the great rebel journalist left off, but if the news industry is to thrive on the Internet, reporters and editors shouldn't be far behind. Dan Froomkin writes that news organizations would do better online by replacing their bored monotone with a passionate adherence to traditional journalistic values.

By Dan Froomkin
froomkin@niemanwatchdog.org

The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81.

That's the conclusion I reached reading Myra MacPherson's wonderful biography of the great rebel journalist, I.F. Stone. The title of her book, "All Governments Lie!," is both a fitting summary of Stone's core philosophy and the organizing principle of many of the finest political bloggers on the Internet.

Although Stone worked for decades vigorously tweaking authority as a daily journalist, editorial writer and essayist, it was in 1953 that he created the perfect outlet for his extraordinary mind, starting I.F. Stone's Weekly, easily the scrappiest and most influential four-page newsletter ever sent through the U.S. mail. When Stone shut it down in 1971, the Weekly had 70,000 subscribers.

Credit fears hit global markets

David Teather and Andrew Clark in New York
Thursday August 9, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic pumped billions into the financial system to calm nerves over an impending credit crunch today - but their actions only served to heighten alarm, prompting a fresh plunge in global share prices.

The European Central Bank injected an emergency €95bn (£64.5bn) into the markets in its first intervention since the turmoil triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001.

In America, the Federal Reserve added $24bn (£12bn) in temporary reserves to the US banking system to shore up liquidity and bring down short-term interest rates, while the Bank of Canada mounted a similar operation.

Cheney urging strikes on Iran

Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 10, 2007 08:14:03 PM

WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

What Unites Iraqis: Blocking Western Petroleum Companies From Seizing Control of Their Oil

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 9, 2007, Printed on August 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59318/

If passed, the Bush administration's long-sought "hydrocarbons framework" law would give Big Oil access to Iraq's vast energy reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no regulation. Meanwhile, a parallel law carving up the country’s oil revenues threatens to set off a fresh wave of conflict in the shell-shocked country.

Subhi al-Badri, head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, said last month that the "law is a bomb that may kill everyone." Iraq's oil "does not belong to any certain side," he said, "it belongs to all future generations." But Washington continues to push that bomb onto the Iraqi people, calling it a vital benchmark on the road to a fully sovereign Iraq. Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio accused his own party of "promoting" President Bush's effort to privatize Iraq's oil "under the guise of a reconciliation program."

Pharmaceuticals in Our Water Supply Are Causing Bizarre Mutations to Wildlife

By Greg Peterson, E Magazine
Posted on August 9, 2007, Printed on August 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59305/

From inter-sex fish in the Potomac River to frog mutations in Wisconsin, federal officials are spending this summer studying the effects of pharmaceuticals such as pain killers and depression medicine on the environment, because the drugs have turned up in America's drinking water.

The cumulative effect of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in the water on humans isn't yet known, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking preventative measures. Pharmaceuticals have already been linked to behavioral and sexual mutations in fish, amphibians and birds, according to EPA studies.

Obama and Pakistan

By Josh Marshall

I'm always interested to try to tease apart and find the meta-debates operating beneath the surface of campaign debates. As I wrote a few years ago in what I called the bitch-slap theory of GOP electoral politics, the whole swift-boat saga was less about the specifics of Kerry's injuries forty years ago than whether he could defend himself from the charges today. Someone who can't defend himself is weak; and if a guy can't defend himself he can't defend you.

That's what that whole song-and-dance was about.

So what is this back and forth about Obama and Pakistan about?

The Failure of Antigovernment Conservatism

Issues like children's health insurance and maintaining our infrastructure offer progressives the opportunity to finally say, without fear of disastrous political consequences, that sometimes government is not the problem, it's the solution.

Paul Waldman | August 8, 2007

Visiting the site of the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Saturday, President Bush used the opportunity to get in a standard-issue Republican dig on government -- you know, the entity in charge of things like making sure bridges are safe. "There's a lot of paperwork involved with government," he said, promising to "cut through that paperwork, and to see if we can't get this bridge rebuilt in a way that not only expedites the flow of traffic, but in a way that can stand the test of time."

But don't expect too much. "I make no promises on the timetable," the president then said, bringing down the mood a bit. He did, though, go on to say that the tragedy might lead to something positive. A pledge from his administration to push for greater investment in infrastructure, perhaps? Or a promise to repair crumbling roads, bridges, and utilities? Fat chance.

Bush May Try to Cut Corporate Tax Rates

President Cites Need To Compete Globally

By Peter Baker

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2007; Page A01

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

Advisers presented Bush with a series of ideas to restructure corporate taxes, possibly eliminating narrowly targeted breaks to pay for a broader, across-the-board rate cut. In an interview with a small group of journalists afterward, Bush said he was "inclined" to send a corporate tax package to Congress, although he expressed uncertainty about its political viability.

How Bush Gained the Power to Spy on You without Security Justifications

By Aziz Huq, TheNation.com
Posted on August 9, 2007, Printed on August 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59190/

After enduring weeks of blistering criticism for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's inartful elisions about the National Security Agency (NSA) spying activities, the Bush Administration has successfully forced on Congress a law that largely authorizes open-ended surveillance of Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mails. How did they do it?

The Protect America Act of 2007 -- the title alone ought to be warning that unsavory motives are at work -- is the most recent example of the national security waltz, a three-step Administration maneuver for taking defeat and turning it into victory.

Camp Kirsanow

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on August 7, 2007 - 3:50pm.

I haven't seen this getting much attention. It should. On July 19, [ed.: July 19, 2002, I neglected to note originally] a man named Peter Kirsanow said that if Arabs staged another terrorist attack on American soil, the doors might swing open to new American concentration camps.

And who is Peter Kirsanow? A shrieking talk radio maniac? One of those right-wing bloggers who can't host comments on his site because the violent fantasies therein attract too much attention from the FBI?

No, he is a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. A Bush appointee.

Uglier and Uglier

By Josh Marshall

Earlier this month we brought you the on-going story of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a US Army private who published a series of 'Baghdad Diaries' in the New Republic under the name Scott Thomas.

Thomas told a dark story US soldiers in Iraq acting in various dishonorable and sadistic ways.

This brought forth a storm of charges from the right-wing blogs and the Weekly Standard claiming that the diaries were fabrications. Then TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out.

TPM Muckraker: Today's Must Read

By Spencer Ackerman - August 8, 2007, 10:01 AM

That was a short honeymoon for Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence. His nomination to the top intelligence job was viewed as a rare instance of Bush-administration maturity, as his tenure at the helm of the National Security Agency earned him a great deal of bipartisan respect. The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), greeted his confirmation the next month by beaming, "It is hard for me to imagine a better choice than Admiral McConnell."

But after last week's rapid, controversial revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in which McConnell played chief Congressional negotiator, lawmakers are wondering: Was McConnell set up by the Bush administration? Or is he a willing flunky?

China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Last Updated: 1:41am BST 09/08/2007

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Blog - Dollar to collapse?

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Coral reefs are vanishing faster than rainforests

12:52 08 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic

Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific are disappearing twice as fast as tropical rainforests, say researchers. They have completed the first comprehensive survey of coral reefs in this region, which is home to 75% of the world's reefs.

John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US compiled data from 6000 studies that between them tracked the fate of 2600 reefs in the Indo-Pacific between 1968 and 2004. They used the extent to which reefs were covered by live coral as an indication of their health.

Hedge funds may pose a risk to U.S. economy

Kevin G. Hall and Robert A. Rankin | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 07, 2007 03:14:27 PM

WASHINGTON — Wild mood swings on Wall Street are nothing new, but the recent quaking in financial markets has a worrisome new wrinkle: It's being driven more by what isn't known than by what is.

That's because a huge share of the money that's flowing through U.S. financial markets is being invested by giant "hedge funds" that aren't subject to much regulation. No one really knows what they own. And there's a chance that some of what they own is worthless.

The funds — managed pools of investors' money, often supplemented with huge borrowings from banks — often bet on highly speculative and exotic financial derivatives, such as "options," which more regulated mutual funds aren't allowed to buy, and that poses risks to all the U.S. financial institutions that are tied to them, as much of Wall Street is. It poses risks to the broader economy as well, and those risks are impossible to measure because no one knows how risky hedge fund assets are.

Voting with their hearts

What matters most in politics - facts and logic, or stories and feelings? Drew Westen says it's emotion that counts - and shows how Bill Clinton and George W Bush understood this, while John Kerry and Al Gore never got it. Here we print extracts from his new book, The Political Brain - which is essential summer reading from Washington to Westminster

· Do emotional politicians really hit home with voters? Watch the videos and have your say.

Wednesday August 8, 2007
The Guardian

The vision of the mind that has captured the imagination of philosophers, cognitive scientists, economists and political scientists since the 18th century - a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions - bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work.

A study of my own, and a growing body of research in psychology and political science, show that the political brain is an emotional brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures, and policies to make a reasoned decision. The reality is that our brains are vast networks of neurons (nerve cells) that work together to generate our experience of the world. Of particular importance are networks of associations, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images and ideas that have become connected over time.

Wealth gap is increasing, U-M study shows

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The rich really are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, a new University of Michigan study shows.

The study---the most recent available analysis of long-term wealth trends among U.S. households---is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) since 1968.

Over the last 20 years, the net worth of the top two percentile of American families nearly doubled, from $1,071,000 in 1984 to $2,100,500 in 2005. But the poorest quarter of American families lost ground over the same period, with their 2005 net worth below their 1984 net worth, measured in constant 2005 dollars.

Religious right lining up behind Fred Thompson

Despite their differences, social conservatives appear ready to give two thumbs up to the former Tennessee Senator, cum Hollywood actor, touted as the 'Ronald Reagan of the South,' when he finally tosses his hat into the ring

Despite Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson's well-publicized remarks a few months back questioning Fred Thompson's Christian credibility, and despite his anemic fundaising efforts -- in its first month his campaign raised only $3 million instead of a hoped for $5 million -- several religious right leaders appear to be gearing up to give the former Republican senator from Tennessee and television actor two thumbs up when he officially enters the GOP race for the presidency; expected to happen sometime shortly after Labor Day.

The Fallout From California's Ban on Electronic Voting Machines

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on August 8, 2007, Printed on August 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59077/

The decision by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to replace an estimated 33,000 electronic voting machines in 20 counties before the 2008 presidential primary wasn't that surprising because the machines' security flaws were known, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., the lead sponsor of the House's first bill to regulate the machines.

"It is not really new," said Holt, speaking of the design flaws that prompted California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, also a Democrat, to issue a series of directives ordering counties to replace most of the touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems by the Feb. 5, 2008, primary. Bowen acted after University of California computer security experts issued a detailed report finding the machines could not prevent people from altering vote counts.

Can State Governments Set Up Universal Health Care on Their Own?

By Ezra Klein, Washington Monthly
Posted on August 8, 2007, Printed on August 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59047/

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once mused, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Well, quite. These days we practically expect the states to try their hand at fixing tricky national problems before the federal government steps in. So to many observers, when several states recently turned their attention to providing health care for the uninsured -- one of the thorniest domestic problems of all -- it looked like cause for considerable optimism.

Why Millions of Women Don’t Vote

By Jacqueline Lee, Women's eNews
Posted on August 8, 2007, Printed on August 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59086/

In "Election Day," a documentary about the experiences of voters in the 2004 election, an Ohio woman is shown having trouble casting her ballot. She had moved, and despite re-registering, went to three different poll locations because her name didn't appear on the books.

"The woman in Shaker Heights is carrying her small child in the morning and she had been getting the runaround and go-around, going from one polling place to the next," said Maggie Bowman, producer of "Election Day," released in March. "A lot of the challenges faced by working people in general are more extreme for working women."

Enola Gay

A post elsewhere reminds me that this is a good time to post this, between the anniversaries of the two atomic bombings. Sorry you don't get the tune and the rich voice here, but even so you may think of this song whenever you see a warplane flying, as I do:

Enola Gay
from
Liner notes and songs from the U. Utah Phillips album El Capitan

Enola Gay
During the war years my father was stationed with the Army Air Corps at Wright- Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio. We lived in a co-op village called Greenmont. Our school was close to the field, where a great deal of research was done on experimental aircraft. As children we saw the first P-38s, B-29s and those abortive Flying Wings featured in Popular Mechanix during the late 1940s. When planes took off from Wright-Pat, they flew low over Greenmont, and the kids playing in the schoolyard would jump up and down and wave. If the pilot was looking down, he would dip his wing. What a feeling-to have a whole airplane dip its wing to you!
When we moved to Utah in 1947 I learned about another plane which flew its training missions over Salt Lake City. The plane was named Enola Gay and it was based at Wendover, Utah, a secret Air Force base on the Nevada line out in the Salt Flats. Enola Gay was commanded by Claude Tibbetts, who named the plane for his mother. Her sister ship was called Bock's Car and was flown, if my memory serves me correctly, by Kermit Behan. I often wondered if kids in the Salt Lake playgrounds used to wave at these planes the way that we did back in Dayton. With their training completed, the two aircraft, both B-29s, flew from Wendover to Tinian Island in the Marianas. On August 6,1945, Enola Gay took off from Tinian and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9th, Bock's Car dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. These recollections have come together to make this song.
As we strive to maintain the balance of terror in the world, it is useful to remember just who is afraid of whom. Through the cold war, the arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, one fact looms largest: there is only one country which has proven irrevocably that it has the will to use an atomic bomb in warfare. Guess who.

Enola Gay
Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up young children from your play,
Wave your hand at the shining airplane
Such a beautiful sight is Enola Gay.

It's many a mile from the Utah desert,
To Tinian Island far away,
Standing guard by the barbed wire fences
That hide the secret of Enola Gay.

High above the clouds in the sunlit silence,
So peaceful here, I'd like to stay,
But there's many a pilot who would swap his pension
For a chance to fly Enola Gay.

What is that sound high above my city?
I rush outside and search the sky.
Now we are running to find the shelter.
The air raid sirens start to cry.

What will I say when my children ask me
Where was I flying upon that day?
With trembling voice I gave the order
To the bombardier of Enola Gay.

Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up, young children from your play,
Your bright young eyes will turn to ashes
In the blinding light of Enola Gay.

I turn to see the fireball rising,
"My God, My God" all I can say,
I hear a voice within me crying,
My mother's name was Enola Gay.

Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up, young children from your play;
When you see those war planes flying,
Each one is named Enola Gay.

FISA: Communication Breakdown

By Spencer Ackerman - August 7, 2007, 10:30 AM

Taking advantage of the difficulty many experts have in understanding Sunday's revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Bush administration is pleading exasperation with misunderstandings of the law. Why can't people understand, asked two senior administration officials in a conference call with reporters yesterday, that the changes to FISA impact only a handful of people? Foreigners, at that! "We're really talking about targeting people, directed targeting at people overseas," assured one of them.

Ah, if only it were so.

Analysis: Who should control how we get political news?

Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 06, 2007 04:11:34 PM

CHICAGO — One of the biggest political battles this summer isn't over the message. It's over the messenger.

From a convention of liberal bloggers here to talk-radio studios to the halls of Congress, people are arguing over who should control the way Americans get information about politics.

Among the flash points: Should the government stop conservative Rupert Murdoch from buying The Wall Street Journal, should the government require that liberals get radio shows to counter the influence of conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and what role should new media such as bloggers and YouTube play in politics?

U of M report says early-childhood intervention improves well-being through young adulthood

Study is the first to show school programs have enduring impact

Minority preschoolers from low-income families who participated in a comprehensive school-based intervention fared better educationally, socially and economically as they moved into young adulthood, according to a report by University of Minnesota professors Arthur Reynolds and Judy Temple. The study is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Reynolds is a child development professor in the College of Education and Human Development and Judy Temple is a professor in the department of applied economics and in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

“This study is the first to show that large-scale established programs run by schools can have enduring effects into adulthood on general health and well-being,” Reynolds says. “Early childhood programs can promote not only educational success but health status and behavior.”

Experiment suggests limitations to carbon dioxide 'tree banking'

SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- While 10 years of bathing North Carolina pine tree stands with extra carbon dioxide did allow the trees to grow more tissue, only those pines receiving the most water and nutrients were able to store significant amounts of carbon that could offset the effects of global warming, scientists told a national meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

These results from the decade-long Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment in a Duke University forest suggest that proposals to bank extra CO2 from human activities in such trees may depend on the vagaries of the weather and large scale forest fertilization efforts, said Ram Oren, the FACE project director.

Community-supported agriculture serves as counterexample to market demands of globalization

A compelling new paper from the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research explores the community-supported agriculture movement and its survival in the face of economic globalization. Organic food was once an economic haven for small farms who distributed their goods predominantly through local channels such as farmers’ markets and food co-ops. In the contemporary marketplace, however, the vast majority of organic food production occurs on large-scale, industrial farms whose goods flow through global supply chains. In the United States, more than eighty percent of all sales in the organic category hail from brands owned by corporate conglomerates.

As Craig J. Thompson and Gokcen Coskuner-Balli (University of Wisconsin, Madison) explain: “A key premise of co-optation theory is that the capitalist marketplace transforms the symbols and practices of countercultural opposition into a constellation of trendy commodities and de-politicized fashion styles that are readily assimilated into the mainstream. Co-optation thesis is ultimately a tale of creeping commercialism that steadily erodes the socio-political force of a counterculture’s symbolic protests.”

O’Hanlon’s take on the “Extreme” Bloggers

By: John Amato on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:16 AM - PDT

FOX News really likes Glenn Greenwald and Logan Murphy of C&L lately. They quoted both of us twice this week. Why would they do that you ask? Because we had the audacity to question such serious men like Pollack and O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute about their new article “A War We Just Might Win.”

Unconfirmed After 11 Months, EEOC Nominee Says No Thanks

By Michael A. Fletcher

Monday, August 6, 2007; Page A15

D avid Palmer, whose nomination to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had languished for nearly a year, withdrew his name over the weekend, bitterly complaining that partisanship in the confirmation process has gotten out of control.

President Bush nominated the 19-year Justice Department employee last September to head the EEOC, tasked with policing employment discrimination. But Palmer's confirmation stalled amid allegations that he has been ineffective in his current job, as chief of the Employee Litigation Section of the department's Civil Rights Division.

Washington Post Hires ‘Party Of Death’ Author To Lead ‘Discussion Group’ On Morality

In 2006, National Review columnist Ramesh Ponnuru appeared on Fox News and claimed that the “journalistic elite was a functional ally of the party of death.”

This week, Ponnuru officially joins the “party of death” himself, signing on with the “journalistic elites” at the Washington Post.

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts

by Thom Hartmann

Our bridges are falling apart (among other things), and its Ronald Reagan’s fault.

A few hours before the bridge collapsed in Minnesota, a news release landed (among hundreds) in my email inbox. It was from the right-wing “Heartland Institute” and a Minnesota conservative group calling itself the “Taxpayers League of Minnesota.” It read:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) issued 20 full or partial vetoes of tax hikes and spending increases in May, giving taxpayers reason to smile. …

May 1, Pawlenty, in a move that took everyone by surprise, vetoed an entire $334 million “emergency” capital investment bill. Pawlenty said in his veto message the bill authorized “more than four times more spending on projects than I requested and is simply too large.”

New Evidence Challenges Pentagon Testimony In "Christian Embassy" Video Scandal

By Bruce Wilson
Mon Aug 06, 2007 at 11:05:45 PM EST

On Monday, researchers working for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation ( MRFF ) uncovered evidence calling into question the veracity of the testimony given to the Pentagon Inspector General in the investigation in the wake of MRFF's lawsuit concerning top Pentagon officials and US military officers who appeared in a promotional video, made for fund raising purposes, of an organization called "Christian Embassy", an offshoot of Campus Crusade For Christ, that evangelizes Pentagon members, foreign diplomats, and White House employees.

Baseball and bombs get the cash - bridges are just dull

By David Usborne

Published: 06 August 2007

It may be the wealthiest nation in the world but the US sure has odd priorities when it comes to spending all that cash. Bridges and roads at home are allowed to crumble until the worst happens, while wars and weapons are never too expensive.

Budget analysts in Congress last week reckoned the $500bn (£250bn) of taxpayers money allocated so far on wrecking and then rebuilding Iraq will double before it's all over to $1 trillion. The war now accounts for 10 per cent of everything the government spends.

The Fear of Fear Itself

It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at play was their job security.

There was plenty of bad behavior. Republicans marched in mindless lockstep with the president. There was double-dealing by the White House. The director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, crossed the line from being a steward of this nation’s security to acting as a White House political operative.

Iraq Is About to Become a Lot Worse

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on August 7, 2007, Printed on August 7, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58944/

The war in Iraq is about to get worse -- much worse. The Democrats' decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests.

Scientists Issue Warning About Chemical in Plastic

By Marla Cone
The Los Angeles Times

Thursday 02 August 2007

In an unusual effort targeting a single chemical, several dozen scientists on Thursday issued a strongly worded consensus statement warning that an estrogen-like compound in plastic is likely to be causing an array of serious reproductive disorders in people.

The compound, bisphenol A or BPA, is one of the highest-volume chemicals in the world and has found its way into the bodies of most human beings.

Frank Rich: Patriots Who Love the Troops to Death

The New York Times

Sunday 05 August 2007

Gerald Ford spoke the truth when he called Watergate "our long national nightmare," but even a nightmare can have its interludes of rib-splitting farce.

None were zanier than the antics of Baruch Korff, a small-town New England rabbi who became a full-time Richard Nixon sycophant as the walls closed in. Korff was ubiquitous in the press and on television, where he would lambaste Democrats and the media "lynch mob" for vilifying "the greatest president of the century." Despite Nixon's reflexive anti-Semitism, he returned the favor by granting the rabbi audiences and an interview that allowed the embattled president to soliloquize about how his own faith and serenity reinforced his conviction "deep inside" that everything he did was right.

Housing Market Meltdown: Who Is To Blame?

By Dean Baker | bio

Surprise, surprise, surprise, the havoc in the subprime mortgage market is spreading to the rest of the mortgage market. Credit is tightening up at the fastest pace in decades and some of the high flying hedge funds are now bankrupt. This has sent the stock market plunging and house prices are falling in large parts of the country. We may not have yet entered the full meltdown phase of the housing bubble; still it is a good time to start assigning blame.

TPM Muckraker: Today's Must Read

By Spencer Ackerman - August 6, 2007, 10:05 AM

Welcome to the black sites, the off-the-books detention facilities where the CIA subjected senior al-Qaeda captives to a methodically harsh regime of interrogation.

In this week's The New Yorker, Jane Mayer gives the first reportorial glimpse into the black sites after the Washington Post exposed their existence in 2005. She relies on new sources, including those with direct knowledge of the interrogations, as well as on the Council of Europe's investigation into European Union complicity with the CIA on terrorism detentions.

Forward Into Battle

With The Wall Street Journal and a new business network, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News chief Roger Ailes plan their next move: all-out war.

By Johnnie L. Roberts
Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Rupert Murdoch, owner-in-waiting of The Wall Street Journal, is taking the high road. After a bitter three-month battle to win approval from enough bickering Bancrofts to buy their Dow Jones & Co., the mogul struck a gracious tone with the family, whose century of control he was now bringing to an end. "Given the Bancrofts' long and distinguished history as custodians of Dow Jones, we appreciate how difficult this decision was for some family members," Murdoch said in a statement issued in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, after receiving enough votes from family members to ensure his $5.6 billion purchase of the company. "I want to offer the Bancrofts my thanks, and an assurance that our company and my family will be equally strong custodians." With that, the great battle for Dow Jones came to a close.

FBI raids DOJ attorney's home in search for warrantless wiretap information leaker

08/05/2007 @ 3:17 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

As Newsweek reports in its August 13 issue, the FBI has used a secret warrant to raid the home of former Justice Department lawyer Thomas M. Tamm, taking three computers and personal files.

The government is searching for the individual who leaked information about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program to the press, prompting a New York Times report in 2005. Mr. Tamm worked for the Justice Department during a period in 2004 when critics of the program included then Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller. Tamm is said to have shared concern, but whether or not he was actively protesting is unknown.

After wiretapping victory, Bush says he wants more authority from Congress

The day after President George W. Bush marshaled political forces in Congress to grant him greater authority to engage in counterterrorism-related spying, the president stated that he would seek greater changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when the legislative branch returns to work in September.

"While I appreciate the leadership it took to pass this bill, we must remember that our work is not done," the President said in his Sunday statement. "This bill is a temporary, narrowly focused statute to deal with the most immediate shortcomings in the law."

Pharmacists fear Medicaid changes

Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 06, 2007 06:42:52 AM

WASHINGTON — For Mark Williams, it's a simple business proposition: He can't afford to sell medicine for less than what he paid for it.

But he says that's what Washington expects him to do, come January.

"When I talk to other businesspeople and say that, they look at you cross-eyed, like, `No way,'" said Williams, the pharmacist-owner of the Medicine Shoppe in Kansas City, Kan., for the past 18 years. "But it's going to happen."

Huffington Post: Dubya's Dudes Dealing, Dodging, and Dancing in Dubai

I'm still waiting for Congressional investigations to begin into Halliburton's move to Dubai.

Six months ago Halliburton -- our leading military contractor in Iraq, thanks largely to no-bid no-look contracts -- announced that it was moving its main corporate headquarters and its chief executive from Houston to Dubai.

The Owl and the Forest

The spotted owl, once famously referred to by the first President Bush as “that little furry-feathery guy,” was not exactly a popular little guy among angry timber workers in the Pacific Northwest. Listed as an endangered species in 1990, the owl triggered a series of court cases that halted logging in millions of acres of old-growth forests and led President Clinton to put those acres permanently off limits. For a bird that few people have ever actually seen, the spotted owl has done as much as any other creature to save the American landscape.

Bush Gets a Spying Blank Check

By Robert Parry
August 5, 2007

Eager to leave for its August recess, Congress handed George W. Bush another blank check on executive power, letting him order up spying directives against a vast number of people, including Americans, if they are physically outside the United States.

The “Protect America Act of 2007” sets the standard for a surveillance order – which can last for up to one year – as simply that it be “directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”

The bill’s advocates claim it is intended to intercept communications when at least one party is linked to a terrorist group or a terrorist affiliate and is outside the United States. But the bill’s language doesn’t limit the surveillance to “terrorists” or “enemy combatants” – indeed those words are not mentioned in the legislation.

PAUL KRUGMAN: The Substance Thing

Two presidential elections ago, the conventional wisdom said that George W. Bush was a likable, honest fellow. But those of us who actually analyzed what he was saying about policy came to a different conclusion — namely, that he was irresponsible and deeply dishonest. His numbers didn’t add up, and in his speeches he simply lied about the content of his own proposals.

In the fifth year of the disastrous war Mr. Bush started on false pretenses, it’s clear who was right. What a candidate says about policy, not the supposedly revealing personal anecdotes political reporters love to dwell on, is the best way to judge his or her character.

US 'loses track' of Iraq weapons

The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.

The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures.

Environmentalism for Billionaires

By Glenn Hurowitz, The American Prospect
Posted on August 6, 2007, Printed on August 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58488/

This article is reprinted from The American Prospect website. The author of this article, Glenn Hurowitz, was former Deputy National Field Director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group where he fought to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and protect America's national forests.

Lately, I've been inundated with phone calls from venture capitalists, private equity guys, and hedge fundistas. They're coming to me because I'm their environmentalist friend and they all want to know one thing: how they can make a buck off the surge in interest in combating global warming.

In a way, that's a sign that the environmental movement has finally arrived. After decades of struggling to convince the titans of finance that protecting the planet and making money weren't mutually exclusive, the tycoons are now coming to us.