G. Palast: the Iraq Operation was accomplished!

Greg Palast is back as The Guardian columnist, hillariously.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq’s border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don’t kid yourself — [Bush and Cheney] accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you’ve forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher’s original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

Operation
Iraqi
Liberation.”

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute.

Right, soon Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to “OIF” — Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the objective was OIL, Oil, oil…

“It’s about oil,” Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA’s top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam’s former oil minister to finalize the plans for “liberating” Iraq’s oil industry […]

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq’s oil? [The answer] is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq’s oil secretly drafted by the State Department. [The] key thing is what’s inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will “enhance its relationship with OPEC.”

[How] strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

[There] you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil — not to get more of Iraq’s oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

[It’s] Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an “oligopoly” — a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there’s less oil, not more of it. So, every time the “insurgents” blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.

[As per Plan Bush,] the conquered nation “enhanced its relationship with OPEC;” and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

[On] the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn’t America’s mission, nor the Iraqis’. It was a Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

Got enough oil?

[Crossposted at European Tribune and Daily Kos .]

Bloggers beware

New Jersey may prohibit anonymous posting on forums:

A bill introduced in the New Jersey Assembly would require websites to collect and make available the legal names and physical addresses of anyone posting on an Internet forum.

The law aims to prevent “false or defamatory messages” from being protected by anonymity.

Specifically, it requires that the legal names and addresses of anyone posting a defamatory message must be made available to any parties who claim to have been damaged.

Here is the text of the proposed bill:

ASSEMBLY, No. 1327
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
212th LEGISLATURE

PRE-FILED FOR INTRODUCTION IN THE 2006 SESSION

Sponsored by:
Assemblyman PETER J. BIONDI
District 16 (Morris and Somerset)

SYNOPSIS
Makes certain operators of interactive computer services and Internet service providers liable to persons injured by false or defamatory messages posted on public forum websites.

CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
As introduced.

An Act concerning the posting of certain Internet messages and supplementing chapter 38A of Title 2A of the New Jersey Statutes.

Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

1.  As used in this act:

“Information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.

“Interactive computer service” means any information system, service, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides service to the Internet.

“Internet” means the international computer network of both federal and non-federal interoperable packet switched data networks.

“Internet service provider” or “provider” means any person, business or organization qualified to do business in this State that provides individuals, corporations, or other entities with the ability to connect to the Internet through equipment that is located in this State.

“Operator” means any person, business or organization qualified to do business in this State that operates an interactive computer service.

  1. The operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish, maintain and enforce a policy to require any information content provider who posts written messages on a public forum website either to be identified by a legal name and address, or to register a legal name and address with the operator of the interactive computer service or the Internet service provider through which the information content provider gains access to the interactive computer service or Internet, as appropriate.
  2. An operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.
  3. Any person who is damaged by false or defamatory written messages that originate from an information content provider who posts such messages on a public forum website may file suit in Superior Court against an operator or provider that fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required pursuant to section 2 of P.L.    , c.    (C.) (pending before the Legislature as this bill), and may recover compensatory and punitive damages and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, cost of investigation and litigation from such operator or provider.
  4. This act shall take effect on the 90th day following enactment.

STATEMENT: This bill would require an operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish, maintain and enforce a policy requiring an information content provider who posts messages on a public forum website either to be identified by legal name and address or to register a legal name and address with the operator or provider prior to posting messages on a public forum website.

The bill requires an operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.

In addition, the bill makes any operator or Internet service provider liable for compensatory and punitive damages as well as costs of a law suit filed by a person damaged by the posting of such messages if the operator or Internet service provider fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required by section 2 of the bill.

That would be one big step for totalitarism. A nice excuse for Big Brother and other controllers.

Oops, dirty oil…

Tanker runs aground in Alaska, spills oil products

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 2 (Reuters) – An oil tanker carrying nearly 5 million gallons of oil and gasoline was struck by an ice floe and ran aground while loading oil products at an Alaska refinery on Thursday, causing a spill, a state official and the refining company said.

“At this time we do not have an estimate as to the amount of product released,” refinery owner Tesoro Corp. said in a statement.

The Tesoro-chartered double-hulled tanker, the Seabulk Pride, was loading heavy vacuum gas oil and unleaded gasoline from the refinery in Nikiski, Alaska, on the Cook Inlet, the company said.

It said the ice floe parted the mooring line and sent the 600-foot (183-meter) tanker adrift before it went aground about half a mile (800 metres) north of the dock, and that the vessel’s tanks were secure.

Is Alaska a good recipe for the American oil addiction?

Here are my two cents for the general discussion on oil.

Whether Bush meant something serious with his proclamation “America is addicted to oil” (most likely not), many neo-conservative hearts must have gotten nervous by those words. Here is some discussion of non-speachless NRO pundits. Bold emphasis mine:

“ADDICTED TO OIL” [Jonathan H. Adler]
Yes, the United States uses lots of oil. Given that it is far cheaper to produce oil overseas, the vast majority of oil comes from overseas. It’s all well and good to talk about alternative forms of energy, but most of those the President touts – renewable fuels, no-emission coal, etc. – will do nothing to reduce oil imports. Most oil goes into our automobiles, not power plants. The President may get lots of applause for promoting ethanol fuel, but it’s hardly sound economic or environmental policy. Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of clearing the way for alternative energy sources. I just lack confidence in the government’s ability to pick the winners and losers in energy markets and steer the way toward an oil-free future.

ENERGY [Cliff May]
Solar and wind? C’mon.

And nuclear is great but it will only cut our dependence on oil when we have plug-in hybrids cars that can run primarily on electricity.

ADDICTED TO OIL [Rick Brookhiser]
Does this mean nuclear power? (Subject of a special issue of NR I edited in 1979, just one month before Three Mile Island!)

MORE ON ENERGY [Jonathan H. Adler]
Reviewing the text, it is interesting that the President’s energy comments stressed alternatives to oil (though not alternatives to all fossil fuels, insofar as he mentioned coal). Unfortunately, the President did not talk about policies to free up market-driven innovation in the neergy sector, instead stressing the government’s role as the subsidizer of favored technologies.

Yeah, Adler, government is not 100% effective, but is it the worst thing to spend some 40% above optimum? Is the free market more effective and timely, really?

SOTU BEST & WORST [John J. Miller]
A so-so speech. […]

Worst metaphor: “America is addicted to oil.” I eat food every day. Am I addicted to it, like a junkie, or do I merely need it to stay healthy?

ADDICTED TO CONFUSION? [ Iain Murray]
never watch the SOTU, believing that Jefferson had the right idea in delivering it by letter, but my colleague Myron Ebell has the following to say on the energy segment:

In his State of the Union address this evening, President Bush took a big step toward returning the United States to the disastrous energy policies of the Nixon and Carter years. The president’s hackneyed and dangerous rhetoric that we are addicted to oil is an indication that the administration is addicted to confused thinking about energy policies. The goals and methods the president announced tonight will be hindrances and obstacles to creating a bright energy future for American consumers. They will interfere with the working of the market that provides incentives for increasing supplies and for technological innovations. In taking these steps in the wrong direction, President Bush also seems to have forgotten the positive energy policies that he has promoted in the past. These include removing the political and legal obstacles to exploiting America’s vast conventional energy resources, including opening ANWR and OCS areas to oil and gas development.

Yea, verily. The current anti-energy feeling will probably go down as one of the greatest cases of groundless mass hysteria in the history of mankind. Sad to see the President has been infected.

“I’M THE PRESIDENT, AND I’M AN OIL ADDICT” [Iain Murray]
As an indication of what the rest of the world thought was important about the SOTU speech, here’s the BBC’s headline: “Bush urges end to oil addiction.” That one, silly, inaccurate metaphor has attracted more press around the world than anything about Iraq, Iran, cloning, spending cuts or globalization. Le Monde called it his “principal announcement” and even translated the phrase as saying oil is like a drug to America. The lesson for Europe is that America will cave on something fundamental to its economy if you harp on about it long enough.

MORE ENERGY REALISM [Iain Murray]
It’s worth looking at just who supplies the US with its oil. Of the top suppliers of oil to us, we presumably are seriously worried about the stability of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Nigeria, Angola, Colombia and Algeria presumably fall into a middle ground where we are trying to support the governments against potential destabilizers. We are presumably happy with Canada, Mexico, Iraq, Kuwait, Ecuador, the United Kingdom (!), Equatorial Guinea, Norway and Trinidad & Tobago (although some may fall in the middle ground). Reducing US energy use generally hurts all of these trading partners; unless we’re advocating a Cuba-style boycott of Saudi (but not, according to the President, Venezuelan) oil that would simply increase the pain felt by American consumers at the gas pump, because the price of oil is set in a global market. The oil addiction message makes less and less sense the more you look at it.

SPECTER JUMPS ON THE OIL ADDICTION BANDWAGON [Iain Murray]
Presumably cashing in on the President’s anti-oil rhetoric last night, Sen. Specter has said it’s time to legislate on oil prices, although how artificially lowering prices will cure an addiction, I don’t know. For a great, comprehensive essay on just why windfall taxes and anti-gouging laws are a really, really bad idea, see Marlo Lewis’ treatment here.

Reducing energy consumption will hurt some, and will please some. Just like global warming. Why would you care, Murray?

Max Schulz

President Bush said the United States is “addicted to oil.” What a poor choice of words. It’s like saying humans are “addicted” to oxygen. The simple fact is that our modern-day economy could not exist without the inexpensive and abundant supplies of petroleum that drove the dynamism of the previous century. Oil has — quite literally — fueled our economy and provided Americans unparalleled standards of living. Oil has delivered levels of sustained economic production unimaginable a century ago. And it has helped advance the concept of personal automobility that is so much a feature of present-day America. Those are all good things.

So why did the president’s speech make it seem like using oil is, well, so dirty and wrong?

Certainly no one is happy with the wealth transfers to kleptocrats in Riyadh or agitators in Caracas. But bashing foreign oil overlooks the fact that the main supplier of crude oil to the United States is not Saudi Arabia or any other OPEC nation. It’s Canada. We should obviously look for ways to lessen our dependence on supplies from unstable parts of the world. That’s why the development of Canadian oil sands and the liberalization of Mexico’s energy sector (America’s number two supplier) are so crucial. Same with opening federal lands such as ANWR to new production. And we should look to new technologies for solutions to our most pressing energy challenges. But we shouldn’t condemn oil as some sort of narcotic or poison when it does so much to enrich our daily lives.

Perhaps Bush considered for the first time the possibility that the inexpensive and abundant supplies of petroleum will not be available at some time. Say, we have oil for 50 years. That’s maybe fantastic… But wouldn’t it be most sensible to make it available for 150 years instead, by conserving it somewhat? Can we be sure that the coming new technologies will provide just as abundant, cheap and effective sources of energy for keeping up a dynamic booming economy?

And here is how Detroit strikes back:

What Would George Drive?
Bush goes green at the State of the Union.

By Henry Payne

Detroit — In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, George Bush hit the rhetorical low of his presidency. By calling for an end to “America’s addiction to oil,” he not only embraced the radical, green vocabulary of Al Gore, but he undercut the principles of freedom, innovation, and anti-isolationism outlined elsewhere in the very same speech.

The president touted his commitment “to encourage innovation… and give our nation’s children a firm grounding in math and science.” But his oil-addiction comments were just the opposite, a prescription for ignorance. With his cynical pander to opinion polls and special interests, the president missed an opportunity to educate the nation on the essential role energy plays in our prosperity.

At least he didn’t ask: “What would Jesus drive?”

Bush promised that “we will change how we power our automobiles,” as if there is an alternative. There is not. Gasoline-powered engines are not dominant because oil company pushers have addicted us to the oil drug. Gas is simply the best energy source on the planet. At 18,700 BTU (British Thermal Unit) per pound, gasoline vastly outperforms ethanol — the president’s stated alternative — at just 11,500 BTU/lb. That means a gallon of gas goes farther, cheaper.

Yeah, as long as there is some oil…

[Crossposted at Daily Kos.]

Why do liberals love America?

Some say you can’t make the world better than it is. They say you ought to be sceptical about human nature, yet they urge you not to question potentially abusive conduct of the powerful. They say you hate America if you want to give extra opportunities to the less fortunate. Conservativism is bigotry of low expectations.

But what drives us, liberals, to care not only about own well being, but about quality of life of others as well? Are we personally hurt by seeing injustice by abuse of political or economic power? Is it very satisfying to seek optimal social gains by collaboration? Are we concerned that uncurbed greed will have catastrophic consequences to everyone?

Do we think that America is the foremost developer of achievements of the Western Enlightenment? Are we certain that America’s success had been assured by an effective balance of civil powers?
I try to understand deep differences between liberals and conservatives. What conservatives like to say is that they are content (or even happy) with the things as they are, whereas liberals always have to protest. Well, can you genuinely always be happy with the things in this world?

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were not happy with certain things. The founding fathers of the US were not happy with the British authority. Jesus Christ was not exactly content with the Roman things. Were they wrong?

Rebellion is a subtle thing. In the essay “The Rebel”, Camus explains that a rebel is a man who says no, and this no means “there is a limit beyond which you [master] shall not go”. This means that a rebel can accept some level of mistreatment, but intrusion of the authority can possibly go beyond toleration. A rebel also feels right to oppose the oppression, to set the limit. He also implies some values that are so dear to him that he revolts no matter risks. As a last resort, he is willing to accept the final defeat, which is death, rather than be deprived of the personal sacrament which he would call, for example, freedom. Rebellion is not egoistic, contrarily to what is seems. The rebel prefers the risk of death because some values or rights are more important to him than own life. Rebellion may also arise not from own suffering but from observing oppression where someone else is a victim. The rebel defends what he is; he does not envy something he does not have.

He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious.

The rebel undoubtedly demands a certain degree of freedom for himself; but in no case, if he is consistent, does he demand the right to destroy the existence and the freedom of others. He humiliates no one. The freedom he claims, he claims for all; the freedom he refuses, he forbids everyone to enjoy. He is not only the slave against the master, but also man against the world of master and slave. Therefore, thanks to rebellion, there is something more in history than the relation between mastery and servitude. Unlimited power is not the only law.

Liberals are often associated with rebellion, and we can be proud of that. Rebellion itself has practical problems of limits. But denial of rebellion can be more pathological. No one has to be happy with whatever happens.

Conservatives have several “eternal” assumptions; one of them is that the world or human nature can never change. But did we have Islam 2000 years ago, for example? Things happen in the world, and those things have consequences, and everything evolves together: greed gradually increases until a crisis or revolts, new social systems develop or fail, people adopt. There might be things that hardly change, but we rather know better which things change or do not change before discussing what a man can or cannot do.

In particular, democracy as we know it is a very recent thing, just a couple of centuries old. Democracy developed because of rebellious people; conservative forces would have never come up with it. And some conservative forces can still curb democracy back. Are we crazy to think that there is no danger for democracy in the US today? Is it not time to be unhappy about the things? If we do not care, who does?

[Crossposted at European Tribune.]

The Dutch turned right?

One might say, The New Republic journal “the liberal counterpart” of the conservative National Review. If so, it is very Lieberman-lite liberalism at best.

The New Republic has this article now:

THE NETHERLANDS IS NO LONGER A PARAGON OF ALL THINGS LIBERAL
Right Turn
by Abigail R. Esman  

“Open” has long been a catchword for the Netherlands, referring to everything from the flat, low-lying fields of Zuid-Holland and the curtainless windows of Amsterdam and The Hague to the country’s liberal stances on marijuana and prostitution, both of which are enjoyed freely and legally in cheerful “coffee shops” and red-lighted bordellos throughout the country. To many, the country has long seemed the apotheosis of a free, liberal, and democratic state.  

But, these days, Filip Dewinter, leader of one of Europe’s most extreme far-right political parties, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), has had nothing but praise for his liberal neighbors to the north. In speech after speech over the past months, Dewinter has repeated the same refrain: “Once, Holland was the model country for everything left and progressive. Now, it is the model for the right and conservative powers.”

Having lived 7-8 years in the Netherlands, I am surprised and concerned. On the other hand, the 2002 election season saw special yet timely unrecognized circumstances, not completely unlike the 2000 Gore-Bush debacle. The consequences are not very logical yet rather daunting (for some).

During 1994-2002, the Netherlands lived through quite outstanding “years of peace of prosperity”, under governance of the Purple coalition lead by the social democratic PvdA and economically liberal VVD parties. The 2002 election campaign was expected to be a dull tussle between new leaders of PvdA and VVD (Melkert and Dijkstal) for larger control of the parliament. The Christian Democratic party CDA seemed to be in crisis; they had chosen young Balkenende to lead – they were hardly expecting immediate success.

But then along came Pim Fortuyn – a rather obscure right-wing columnist and former sociology professor. He was picked by a new Leefbaar Nederland party to lead their parliamentary list, and quickly gathered attention with his oratory style and controversial comments on immigration and  “subsidy socialism”. The Volkskrant interview of February 10, 2002 produced too much controversy for other Leefbaar Nederland leaders, and Pim Fortuyn was dismissed from the parliamentary list. Fortuyn then formed his own party, LPF. In early March 2002 he won local elections in Rotterdam, as a leader of Leefbaar Rotterdam. I think that success of local Leefbaar parties helped Pim Fortuyn enormously, directly or indirectly. But the developments were pitiful for the national Leefbaar party.

The weight of Pim Fortuyn became evident during the televised debates. The new leaders of PvdA and VVD appeared not only as dull figures compared with Fortuyn, they acted outright dismissively and arrogantly towards him. Suddenly prospects of the third “purple” coalition became bleak. The CDA leader Balkenende wisely (though not surprisingly) acted as a nice guy in the middle; that alone could bring CDA back to prominence.

The circumstances became especially singular when Pim Fortuyn was murdered on May 6, 2002, just nine days before the general election. The elections went on. The winner was CDA (43 seats out of 150), still surprisingly. In hindsight, that was a logical consequence of voter’s contempt towards PvdA, VVD, and their doubts about LPF inexperience or unpredictability. The LPF got 26 seats, VVD 24 seats, PvdA 23 seats, etc.

Balkenende became the prime minister, but his CDA/LPF/VVD cabinet lasted only three months. In January 2003 there were new general elections. The PvdA with a new charismatic leader made a comeback (42 seats), but the CDA still won (44 seats). The VVD got 28 seats, the LPF dropped to 8 seats. That meant the CDA/VVD dominated conservative cabinet.

I did not experience the Balkenende years closely, but friends’ political mood is not high. What is most frequently said about modern Holland, is not what they would firstly agree. It is indeed strange to read in the “liberal” US journal article this:

Increasingly – from a crackdown on immigration to a proposal to teach intelligent design to the censorship of a TV program satirizing the royal family (despite reports that the queen herself actually enjoyed the show) – Holland is, indeed, becoming a right-wing nation, in some ways an inversion of its former self.

What happened is that indeed xenophobic politics gained some ground, and conservatives gained some appeal. But a large portion of population cannot identify themselves with current government policies and emphatically stressed concerns. In particular, they certainly wouldn’t agree that the murder of film director Theo van Gogh changed the Dutch society far more profoundly than 9/11 changed the USA, as the article of Esman claims. Theo van Gogh was not a popular figure, personal sympathy was not great. The “profound” change and rightward shift is principally evidenced by government policies (tougher immigration laws, mandatory ID carrying, increased video surveillance on streets, approved government access to records of Internet surfing, book and video purchases or rentals, phone conversations and bank transactions). There is very little evidence that Holland wanted these changes, that national security is the primary issue, that people are willing to sacrifice liberties (as well as social benefits) out of fear of Islamic terrorism.

Political turbulence and violence do have consequences – the tension with Muslim emigrants rises, the media routinely reports the incidents and discusses immigration. But current government policies and induced distrust are seen as a critical part of the vicious cycle. When the former LPF member Nawijn joins up with Belgium’s Dewinter to create a think tank aimed at examining immigration, multiculturalism, and security, we should read it as creation of a political think tank for conservative dominance. It is very ironic that the American “liberal” journal takes their intentions at face value. And the following (closing) paragraph you expect to see only in American Enterprise type journals:

Now, a little more than a year after van Gogh’s murder, Holland finds itself in a kind of social quagmire: The more repressive the government and the more Muslim-unfriendly it is perceived to be, the more radicalized its Muslim youth become. The anger is palpable: Gone are the days of carefree strolls through Amsterdam streets or smiling nods to neighbors of another race. One looks twice now. The smiles are often false – a kind of armor people wear – to protect themselves from anger and from fear.

It is instructive to compare the American and Dutch policy shifts in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Militant media bias or electoral irregularities were not problems in the Dutch case. (Pim Fortuyn did complain about media bias against him, but that was more justified than GOP preventive-deceptive whining about “liberal media bias”.) The two examples show how easily a widely successful progressive government can be replaced by opposite conservative policies. Political elitism and slight dissatisfactions can have huge consequences. And of course, media performance of politicians is a tremendous factor, whether that media performance was indeed poor or just urgedly perceived as such.

If Esman’s article ought to be believed, the mood of Dutch progressives is just desperate:

Caught in the middle, Dutch moderates have started leaving – largely for Canada and New Zealand, according to one report – and net emigration in the first half of 2004 was the largest since the 1950s. More interestingly, many moderate Dutch Muslims – mostly Turks – have started making plans to leave as well. “It’s less radical there than here,” one aspiring émigré, who planned to move to Turkey, told a Dutch newspaper.

Is that really so bad?

[Crossposted at European Tribune and Daily Kos.]

Peak of conservativism

For one time, let us take Bob Novak seriously. (Despite easy ridicule and nomination for the Misinformer of the year title.) When he talks about conservative problems, he may be trustworthy. He writes in the last column:

Control of Senate may hinge on Lott

December 26, 2005

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Trent Lott within the next week plans to decide between seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi or retiring from public life. That could determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate in next year’s elections. For the longer range, Lott’s retirement and replacement could signal that Southern political realignment has peaked and now is receding.

Is it really so bad for the cons that their well being is dependant on retirement of a single Senator? Will we see the end of “moralize and moralize, scare and scare, elect and elect” conservativism soon?

Repubs seem to be desperate to keep Lott in the seat.

Mississippi, one of the reddest of the red Republican states, has not even been on the game board of the Washington analysis forecasting the 2006 Senate outcome. But in Mississippi, prominent Republicans are worried sick. They believe Lott will probably retire. If so, they expect the new senator will be a Democrat, former state Attorney General Mike Moore. Republican politicians in Mississippi believe Rep. Chip Pickering, the likely Republican nominee if Lott does not run, cannot defeat Moore.

Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman pleaded with Lott last week to run again. The senator was as blunt with this emissary from President Bush as he was with me. “Where is our vision and our agenda?” he asked. The malaise afflicting the Bush administration not only threatens a Senate seat in Mississippi but impacts Lott’s decision whether to retire.

Where is the vision and the agenda?! Remind me who told that conservatives are so full of ideas and vision… The corrupt corporate lobby is probably all the vision GOP has.

And then there are classical GOP dirty combinations that need to be rectified for electoral occasions:

A Bush entreaty now to Lott is ironic. Lott was driven out of the Senate majority leader’s chair after the 2002 elections when the president refused to defend him from calumnies that a harmless jocular remark on the late Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday was racist in nature. Lott’s recently published memoir, Herding Cats, reveals he was deeply hurt by Bush’s nonsupport.

Now Bush needs a ‘fantastic new house’ out of these rubbles…

But this is hardly a reason for Lott to leave conservative fellas in need. Rather seriously, his ‘personal financial condition has deteriorated’ since Hurricane Katrina.

“The hurricane is what has made this decision difficult for me,” Lott told me. On the one hand, the performance by the administration has been poor and the Congress has not been a lot better.” […]

Lott wonders what his senatorial role would be beginning his fourth term at age 65 without a leadership position or significant committee chairmanship. Sen. John McCain has urged Lott to return as leader of Senate Republicans (succeeding Bill Frist, who is leaving the Senate). But that would require an aggressive campaign against Majority Whip Mitch McConnell that Lott is not inclined to pursue.

Meanwhile, ‘Mississippi Republicans are anxious‘… Bob “Novakula” says that ‘the bedrock of [conservative] national election victories’ may be eroding. One of the things is

[The] performance by the Republican-controlled national government in coping with Katrina is no asset for Republican candidates in Mississippi.

Perhaps 2005 was a dramatic year for the Buckley-Reagan-Bushies line of conservativism, after all.

[Crossposted at Daily Kos.]

NRO admits the "culture of corruption"

This is something remarkable. The conservative NRO blog has an article which, up to a couple of sentences, would fit as a diary here at dKos. The author Rich Lowry, one of the National Review editors. Here is how the article goes:

Democrats complain of a “culture of corruption” in the Republican-controlled Congress, and they are right in one respect: The spending process has been so twisted by the Republican majority that it has become inherently dirty.

The instruments of this perversion are “earmarks,” special provisions attached to spending bills that direct federal money to specific projects. Earmarks are how Congress diverts spending to pork-barrel local priorities and to other special interests. This practice has long existed, but Republicans have made it part of the fabric of their governing.

The article gives numbers:

In 1994, there were 4,126 earmarks in the 13 appropriations bills. In 2004, there were 14,040. This year’s highway bill alone had 6,371 earmarks. An industry has grown up around this specially designated money.

The number of firms registered to lobby members on the appropriations committees increased from 1,865 to 3,523 between 2000 and 2004, according to Knight Ridder. For relatively small fees to lobbyists and donations to congressmen, corporations and localities can get a big payoff.

So conservatives were certain what corruption is in 1994. Little did they know… How the current state of affairs should be named, “supercorruption”?

Then a few examples are given, quite telling. As I said, you can just put that full article here as a diary. The only part where we would clearly dissagree is the penultimate paragraph:

It is hard to imagine a practice or culture more inimical to the spirit of the Republicans who took over Congress in 1994. A decade later, the GOP has embraced the tactics of the corrupt, free-spending Democrats they overthrew. Meet the new appropriator, same as the old appropriator.

Oh no… The difference between the new and old “appropriators” is like a difference between a porno star and a drunk slut. (Sorry, I am inspired by the Rude Pundit.) What is hard to imagine is a Republican congressman who would refuse a fat mutual “contribution”.

Rich Lowry even admits:

Cunningham might have been exceptional in his lack of subtlety, but other congressmen work much the same way. Last week, it was revealed that Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R., Mich.), inserted an earmark into a transportation bill that forced Amtrak to haul additional private freight cars or forgo $8.3 million in additional federal dollars. The freight cars in question belonged to ExpressTrak, a company whose owner is a big Knollenberg donor. Knollenberg now says he is going to rescind the earmark, showing that some members of Congress are still capable of being shamed.

Yeah, Cunningham got ashamed too. Not every congressman can be “subtle” for ever.

P.S. The sign off of the article is a stark contrast nevertheless:

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

Ah, those disastrous terrible Clinton years… What price will we pay for the Bushy “booming” years?

[ Crossposted at dKos. ]

Torture puzzle

Guess who wrote this:

I’m against torture.  [I’ll go] along with some clever manipulation of a suspect’s hopes and fears: But rubber truncheons? Electrodes? Pliers? Razor blades? Blocks of ice? Not in my name, no. Am I an absolutist on this? Yes, I am. Let’s say we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that a large thermonuclear bomb, disguised as a refrigerator, has been installed on a high floor in a high building in a U.S. city. We don’t know anything else – not even which city – but we have a guy in custody who could probably tell us all about it if he chose to. Why would we not use “extraordinary measures” to make him sing? On one side of the scales: a few hours of intense physical pain for a very evil person. On the other: millions of American lives. Why would we not torture the guy? Why is this not, for me, a no-brainer?

The answer: it is the eccentric NRO contributor John Derbyshire a few years ago. It is ironic that now the NRO Corner blog is favourably dicussing Krauthammer‘s similar scenario (with the opposite conclusion).

But the old Derbyshire’s piece is more interesting. What would Krauthammer say?

The first thing to be said about torture, as a means of discovering facts, was said by Aristotle in Book 1, Chapter 15 of Rhetorica: torture doesn’t work very well. Under physical torture, some people will lie; some will say anything to make the pain stop, even just for a while; and a surprising number will refuse to yield. Robert Conquest, in The Great Terror, gives a figure of “one in a hundred” for those who failed to confess under the methods used by Stalin’s secret police. However, most of those pulled in by the NKVD were ordinary people guilty of nothing at all. Dedicated resistance workers, fanatical terrorists, or revolutionaries would show better stats. In his memoir Nothing to Declare, Taki Theodoracopulos tells the story of a young WWII Greek resistance fighter named Perrikos, who blew up the German HQ building in Athens on orders from Taki’s father. Arrested and tortured to death by the Nazis, Perrikos revealed nothing, claiming to the end that he had acted alone, under no one’s orders. There were many such cases.

[A Chinese dissident Chia Thye Poh] was kept in solitary confinement for twenty-six years by the Singapore authorities for having resigned his seat in parliament to protest the policies of Lee Kuan Yew. In their attempts to get him to sign a confession that he was a Communist, which he wasn’t, Chia’s jailers inflicted on him such peculiarly modern tortures as forcing him to stand naked in a freezing room with the air-conditioning going full blast, and piping loud Muzak into his cell day and night. Chia never cracked. Why not? asked Buruma, at a meeting with Chia. “He was much too polite to say so, but it was clear my question had baffled him. I wished I hadn’t asked. ‘How could I have signed?’ he said, very softly. ‘It wasn’t true.'”

And then there is love. Above and beyond anything the torturer can inflict on your own poor body and mind, there are the things he can do to people you care about. [This] kind of thing doesn’t necessarily stop at threats, though. [The Old Bolshevik] S. V. Kossior stood up under everything Stalin’s men could do to him, but was broken at last when his 16-year-old daughter was brought in and raped in front of him. In another case of that time, a mother and son were separately interrogated and tortured. The son confessed, but the mother did not. She was then confronted with her broken son in a joint interrogation. (She still held out.)

This, gentle reader, is torture. Don’t let’s kid ourselves that we can pick and choose from the menu. “Yes, we’ll beat, but we won’t pull out fingernails.” … “Yes, OK, we’ll pull out fingernails, but we won’t rape your children in front of you.” Forget it — when you start on the road of torture, there is no end. We beat him: he doesn’t talk. We remove his fingernails, and then, for good measure, his toenails: Still he won’t talk. That nuke is ticking away in a high building, in some American city. The suspect has a 16-year-old daughter: Do we send for her?

My answer would be “No!” but I’m under no illusions that this is an easy call. A whole city — perhaps my city — full of American men, women and children, might be saved by one single act of barbarism by a salaried employee of the federal government. Why won’t I endorse this? I am willing to see the U.S. do things that, in the scale of human suffering, far exceed a rape — the bombing of enemy cities, for example. A U.S. bomber pilot is also a salaried employee of Uncle Sam — of me, as a taxpayer — isn’t he? If I am willing [to] let him incinerate the helpless citizens of Baghdad or Kabul with bombs, why do I balk at letting FBI agents apply electrodes to a terrorist’s eyeballs? [Why] won’t I sanction these extreme methods? Is it because I cling to some quaint vestige of medieval chivalry — “it’s not fair”? I don’t think so. What’s fair or chivalrous about dropping bombs on the schoolchildren of Baghdad?

I’m afraid I’m going to bail out right here. I don’t know the answers to the questions I’ve been posing. [I know] very well how I feel: Aerial bombing? — Yes, even if not very accurate. Torture of prisoners? — No, not even to save a million lives. Some things are just wrong, and the deliberate torture of suspects is wrong, wrong, wrong, in some way that the dropping of bombs on cities is not. [We shall] all die sooner or later. [While] we live, let’s live like human beings, with some dignity, some humanity, some pride, some things we will not do.

The Rich Dad and Real Estate bubble

Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series. He is also a very successful investor in real estate.

Last weekend Kiyosaki appeared on the Foxnews program of Neil Cavuto. Cavuto and his correspondents  were pushing the memo that despite a few strong hurricanes in the last years, people are still eagerly buying real estate along the Atlantic/Caribbean coast. Then Cavuto turned to his guest Kiyosaki. The interview was remarkable. I almost started to write down a transcript. But to save time, I waited for the official Foxnews transcript, which is apparently not coming… So I’m reproducing from memory.

Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series. He is also a very successful investor in real estate.

Last weekend Kiyosaki appeared on the Foxnews program of Neil Cavuto. Cavuto and his correspondents  were pushing the memo that despite a few strong hurricanes in the last years, people are still eagerly buying real estate along the Atlantic/Caribbean coast. Then Cavuto turned to his guest Kiyosaki. The interview was remarkable. I almost started to write down a transcript. But to save time, I waited for the official Foxnews transcript, which is apparently not coming… So I’m reproducing from memory.
Kiyosaki admitted outright that he is scared of the situation in real estate. He even said that he would like to sell his two beach homes in Caribbean and in Hawaii, “right now“, just because he does not like worrying about his properties. Hurricanes rarely hit Hawaii, so the worry is not only about Nature’s fury.

Kiyosaki stressed that this is not the time for amateurs to be jumping in. He said that there are already too many idiots in the market asking ridiculous prices, so that few good deals are possible. He clearly implied that the real estate bubble is big. In his words:

All booms bust. And the trouble with the real estate bust is that [the] recession lasts twice as long as a stock market bust.

And then he stressed again, that this is not the time to be jumping in and going for capital gains.

On the other hand, Kiyosaki confided that he feels sexually excited when bubble busts are coming, because after them it is the best time to buy. That’s kind from Kiyosaki, since purely financially he might be more interested in making the pool of “poor dad idiots” larger. Ok sorry, Kiyosaki must be a decent man. But Cavuto seems to like that “job” of encouraging fools.

I checked the official website of Kiyosaki. He has a series of articles All Booms Bust, which confirms the same disposition towards current real estate market. Here are some snips:

… this is the biggest real estate bubble I have ever lived through … people quickly forget how bad the market was …  this time, when the bubble bursts, I think it will be a monster … Never in my life have I seen so much money being made on such weak fundamentals … the best time to get rich is after a crash … Also, I am getting rid of my U.S. dollars …

Kiyosaki is not the only one capital insider who is expecting real estate bust. For example, I saw right-wing newsletters with the titles such as After Greenspan, a Major Recession, “Greatest Real Estate Investor [Tom Barrack]: Bust Warning”, and even “Restoring the American Dream” (right, Bush presidency was not great for the American Dream…)

[Crossposted at European Tribune and Daily Kos.]

Who wrote this?

[N]ot a single person who works for him seems to have the honor to leave himself.

[N]one of his staff, no member of his administration, and almost no…official seems to want to hold the president truly accountable for his actions.

[A]re there no honorable men around him? Can his staff and cabinet be lied to without consequence? Is there nothing that will impel them to depart? They need not become vociferous critics of the president. They need not denounce him. A quiet, principled leave-taking would suffice. But it would be refreshing if one of them refused to be complicit any longer in the ongoing lie that is the … White House. Apparently, not one of them is willing to do that.

Personal loyalty is an admirable trait, and so is political loyalty. Up to a point. Government officials work for the nation, not simply for the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. To remain loyal to a president who lies is to make oneself complicit in his lies. To remain loyal to a man who has brought shame to his office is to make oneself complicit in that shame. At some point, blind loyalty must yield to principled honor. When?

[N]ot a single person who works for him seems to have the honor to leave himself.

[N]one of his staff, no member of his administration, and almost no…official seems to want to hold the president truly accountable for his actions.

[A]re there no honorable men around him? Can his staff and cabinet be lied to without consequence? Is there nothing that will impel them to depart? They need not become vociferous critics of the president. They need not denounce him. A quiet, principled leave-taking would suffice. But it would be refreshing if one of them refused to be complicit any longer in the ongoing lie that is the … White House. Apparently, not one of them is willing to do that.

Personal loyalty is an admirable trait, and so is political loyalty. Up to a point. Government officials work for the nation, not simply for the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. To remain loyal to a president who lies is to make oneself complicit in his lies. To remain loyal to a man who has brought shame to his office is to make oneself complicit in that shame. At some point, blind loyalty must yield to principled honor. When?

The quotes are from the Weekly Standard editorial “Where Are the Resignations?” of August 31, 1998, written by the chief editor Bill Kristol.

I have to credit the Rude Pundit for this research. As he says, politics is criminalized when criminals get into politics.