Russ McBee

A new Church Committee?

RussMcBee — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:29:00 GMT

Salon has obtained a confidential memo written for certain members of Congress that outlines a proposal for an inquiry modeled on the Church Committee; this modern version of Church would focus on the malfeasance of the Bush administration, and it hints at Constitutional and legal violations which go far beyond those already documented:

The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. (Pelosi's and Conyers' offices both declined to comment.) Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses -- and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.

While investigating the story, Salon also uncovered evidence of a warrantless domestic surveillance infrastructure much broader than previously disclosed. The story includes the PROMIS software program, originally written by Inslaw, Inc., back in the 1970's. For over two decades, Inslaw has been pursuing the government in court for misappropriating its software without paying any royalties. For most of that time, suggestions have swirled that PROMIS had been surreptitiously copied and modified specifically for use by the intelligence agencies, without any notice or royalties given to Inslaw.

The Inslaw/PROMIS story has taken some intriguing turns over the years; Salon's article adds a new chapter by suggesting that a derivative of PROMIS is being used right now to spy on Americans' financial transactions (and a whole raft of other data) without warrant or suspicion.

If this new Church-like investigation were to have both exhaustive scope and significant credibility, the inquiry would have to deal with many subjects, going back at least to the 1980's:

Getting a full picture on Bush's intelligence programs, however, will almost certainly require any sweeping new investigation to have a scope that would inoculate it against charges of partisanship. During one recent discussion on Capitol Hill, according to a participant, a senior aide to Speaker Pelosi was asked for Pelosi's views on a proposal to expand the investigation to past administrations, including those of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. "The question was, how far back in time would we have to go to make this credible?" the participant in the meeting recalled.

That question was answered in the seven-page memo. "The rise of the 'surveillance state' driven by new technologies and the demands of counter-terrorism did not begin with this Administration," the author wrote. Even though he acknowledged in interviews with Salon that the scope of abuse under George W. Bush would likely be an order of magnitude greater than under preceding presidents, he recommended in the memo that any new investigation follow the precedent of the Church Committee and investigate the origins of Bush's programs, going as far back as the Reagan administration.

An inquest such as this is the only way we can reclaim our (currently abrogated) right to protection from warrantless intrusion. A full accounting of Constitutional breaches by this and prior administrations would be merely the first step along the path toward Constitutional repair, but it would be the most important step.

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Another day, another papal apology

RussMcBee — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:48:00 GMT

A couple of days ago, the Pope apologized again, this time in Sydney, for the Catholic Church's global sex abuse scandal:

Speaking in Sydney, where he is participating in World Youth Day celebrations, the pontiff called the abuses 'a grave betrayal of trust' that deserved condemnation and called for the victims to receive 'care and compassion'.

Apparently, Mr. Ratzinger was oblivious to the irony of issuing his apology for child abuse on World Youth Day.

Meanwhile, that odious hypocrite in Prada shoes continues to harbor the criminal Bernard Cardinal Law in a cushy job in Rome, safe and far away from the prospect of extradition.

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The Sunday roundup for July 20, 2008

RussMcBee — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:05:00 GMT

This week's TennViews roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is here.

Topics cover Gore's speech, the dysfunctional TN GOP, assaults on abortion rights, dispatches from Netroots Nation, health care, bank stability, and the announcement of the new VW plant in Chattanooga.

We've been busy this week, so go check out what everyone's been saying.

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Feel Good Friday: "Mustang Sally"

RussMcBee — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:54:00 GMT

In the emerging tradition of Feel Good Friday, here's the Commitments' version of "Mustang Sally":

That ought to make the day right.

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Gore calls for totally clean electricity within 10 years

RussMcBee — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:50:00 GMT

Today, Al Gore gave a speech at George Washington University in which he called for a massive push to transform our energy economy; he audaciously suggested that we can and must convert 100 percent of our electricity generation to clean sources within a mere ten years.

By relying on solar, wind, and geothermal for all of our electricity, he said that we could solve several escalating issues at the same time: skyrocketing fuel costs, reliance upon dwindling hydrocarbon resources, the continuing export of a gigantic amount of wealth to oil-producing countries, job losses due to off-shoring, and carbon emissions.

Although I'm skeptical that this conversion could happen in a mere ten years, he's obviously right about the outcomes, especially if the automotive industry also transformed its product line to electric vehicles. We can and should break our dependence on foreign oil, if for no other reason than long-term national security. The transformation he's talking about would also create an enormous number of jobs in manufacturing, and it would eliminate the vast majority of our man-made carbon emissions (coal plants and vehicle exhaust).

None of this will happen without a serious change of the Washington mindset, toward a model of bold innovation and competent, sober leadership. Those are traits this country's leaders have been lacking for years, and if we are ever to regain our status as a (if not "the") leader of global thinking and progress, the very first transformation we'll have to make must be at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The second but equally radical transformation will have to occur a few blocks to the east, by installing leaders in Congress willing to act in the nation's best interests instead of their own. I don't know who those potential leaders might be, but their names certainly aren't Reid or Pelosi.

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Two quotes of the day, both by Angela Davis

RussMcBee — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:49:00 GMT

I ran across these two quotes from Angela Davis, both of which bear remembering:

First, on President Bush:

When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to.

Then, dear Angela pretty much sums up our shallow culture's obsession with style over substance:

It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo.

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EPA admits the problem, refuses to act

RussMcBee — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:03:00 GMT

A Supreme Court decision from 2007 (PDF here) mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency was required under the Clean Air Act to determine if anthropogenic carbon dioxide represents a threat to human health. In December, the EPA sent an email to the White House outlining its findings; the White House simply refused to open the email, childishly thinking that would make the problem go away.

Yesterday, the EPA finally released that report to the public:

US government scientists have warned of a rising death toll from heat waves, wildfires, disease and smog caused by global warming, in a study the White House repeatedly tried to bury to avoid regulating greenhouse emissions.

In a 149-page analysis released last night, experts for the first time laid out the grave risks that climate change poses to human health, and to the supplies of food, water and energy on which populations depend.

"Risk to human health, society and the environment increases with increases in both the rate and magnitude of climate change," scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency said. In a more absolute pronouncement on the science of climate change than the White House has so far been prepared to accept, they said that global warming was "unequivocal," and that humans were to blame.

Not surprisingly, the EPA intends to stonewall the issue long enough to avoid taking any action until after Bush leaves office; nevertheless, it's astonishing that the EPA has finally dropped its hostility to nearly universal scientific consensus. That counts for at least some progress, although the agency's hypocrisy on the matter is beyond ridiculous, given that they both acknowledge the threat and refuse to do anything about it.

January cannot come soon enough.

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The phantom promise of offshore drilling

RussMcBee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:17:00 GMT

Today, President Bush rescinded an executive order signed by his father which affirmed the ban on offshore oil drilling (with the exception of a small area off Southern California and a specific region of the Gulf of Mexico). The move was almost entirely symbolic (and political), since federal law also bans offshore drilling (except in those two areas). In order for offshore drilling to resume, Congress would have to pass a law permitting it. The President's executive order neither rescinds nor weakens the current ban.

On a superficial level, the entire endeavor smacks of one big charade, an election-year Kabuki meant to sway gullible voters.

On signing the order, Bush said this:

"Failure to act is unacceptable," the president said, asserting that obstructionists in the Democratic-controlled Congress have been blocking progress on energy exploration and that "now, Americans are paying at the pump."

Not surprisingly, that is complete nonsense. President Bush's very own Department of Energy says that drilling in those off-limits areas on the Outer Continental Shelf would have no significant effect on prices or supplies, and the very beginning of production of those reserves would be ten years away, at least. In the following quote, the "access case" means the opening of those areas now off-limits. The "reference case" means the status quo:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case.

So, production in the restricted area of the OCS is at least a decade away, and no significant production would occur until 2030. Even then, OCS oil would amount to no more than an extra 200,000 barrels per day. Given the fact that we consume over 21 million barrels per day just in this country (and 85 million barrels per day worldwide), that marginal 200,000 barrels per day is a trivial contribution. It would have no measurable effect on prices or supplies, and it would only serve to increase environmental risks.

Extended drilling in the OCS simply isn't worth it.

The point that the Republicans tend to gloss over is this (from that same DOE link):

Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Any oil drilled from the OCS (or ANWR) would be sold to the highest bidder, on the open market. Unless the Republicans are willing to support a ("socialist") law that requires OCS and ANWR oil to be sold only in the US, the oil from those regions would be sold on the international bourses, just like all the rest of the oil in the world. Since the US consumes about 25 percent of the world's production, that means 75 percent of all the oil from OCS and ANWR would be sold to India, China, Indonesia, and all the rest of the world.

That leaves one fourth of the OCS production (or a measly 50,000 barrels per day) for US consumption. That can hardly be said to fulfill the promise of "energy independence."

So, why the GOP push for drilling in OCS and ANWR all of a sudden?

Obviously, election-year politics accounts for a lot of it. With gasoline at $4 per gallon and rising, the GOP is desperate to change the subject away from the fact that they utterly failed to create a sound, sustainable, or meaningful energy policy when they were in control of all branches of government. They're desperate to keep the public from thinking too awfully long about the legacy of Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, and they certainly don't want people thinking too much about the relationships between Bush's economic policies, the declining value of the dollar, Bush's foreign policy, the war on Iraq, and the price of oil. It's much more expedient to distract the public with fantasies of exclusively American petroleum fueling our economy.

A couple of other motivations may be at work as well. First, President Bush may believe that the mere threat of increasing production (however small that increase may be) could serve to spook speculators away from investing in oil futures. He might think that if he can push production higher, even by a small amount decades into the future, the investors throwing billions into commodities futures might be scared away from that market and back into stocks. That effect, of course, would be minimal and short-lived, but it might be part of the equation.

On a more fundamental (and cynical) level, I think it's important to note that the single most significant line item on an oil company's balance sheet is the size of its proven petroleum reserves. As the oil companies face declining reserves without ongoing, large discoveries year after year, their assets will naturally decline over time. This would be catastrophic for their stock prices over the long haul. However, if the oil companies can book new reserves offshore, even if they have no intention of exploiting those reserves, their balance sheets would be propped up for several more years, and so would their stock prices.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that the GOP's push to drill in ANWR and offshore has little to do with the election, but instead has everything to do with the stock prices of their favorite companies in the hydrocarbon industries.

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The Sunday roundup for July 13, 2008

RussMcBee — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:25:00 GMT

R. Neal has this week's edition of the Tennessee liberal blog roundup here.

This week, it covers FISA, Phil Gramm, Fannie Mae, and most importantly, the Allman Brothers.

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Taking the FISA fight to the next level

RussMcBee — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:50:00 GMT

I've often thought that President Bush probably read "The Trial" and "1984" at some point and mistook them for how-to manuals. Today's signing of the FISA bill tends to support that theory. On the heels of yesterday's capitulation by the Senate on telecom immunity and warrantless spying, President Bush wasted no time in signing this abrogation of the Fourth Amendment into law.

Fortunately, the ACLU wasted no time in filing suit to have it declared unconstitutional:

President George W. Bush signed a law on Thursday overhauling the rules for eavesdropping on terrorism suspects but immediately met a civil liberties challenge calling it a threat to Americans' privacy.

[...]

The action was filed on behalf of human-rights groups, journalists, labor organizations and others who say they fear the law will allow the U.S. government to monitor their activities, including compiling of critical reports on the United States.

The press release summarizes the issue this way:

"Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power - and that's exactly what this law allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights. The new wiretapping law fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires."

More to the point, neither the President nor the Congress have the authority to annul our rights, whether those rights are implicit or explicit in the Constitution. This law must be overturned.

Since most Democrats (including Obama) cowered in fear of Republican name-calling, and since McCain supported the bill but didn't have the guts to vote for it on the record, the responsibility for righting this wrong now rests properly within the courts.

Supporters of the FISA bill have cast the issue as a root conflict of liberty vs. security, but that's wrong; the real issue is liberty vs. control. The existing FISA framework (which dates back to the 1970's) permitted emergency surveillance by a government agency of someone outside the US, with a requirement for a proper, judicially sanctioned search warrant to be issued up to three days later. If the current FISA "reform" bill had not been signed into law, those pre-existing requirements would have still held true. No useful surveillance tools would have been lost had this "reform" bill not been enacted. No terrorists would have gone unmonitored had this bill not been signed. National security would not have been hampered in any way if this law hadn't been signed, but the ability of the NSA (or some other agency) to conduct arbitrary dragnets and fishing expeditions certainly would have been.

Those aren't the tactics of valid government in a free society; those are the tools of a totalitarian state, and they have no place in our country.

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A silver lining?

RussMcBee — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:15:00 GMT

The Senate predictably caved today and passed the FISA reform bill, which included immunity for the telecommunications companies that had conspired with intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrant.

Bruce Afran, an attorney representing plaintiffs suing the telecom companies over their collaboration, described today's vote as "election-year cowardice." That's obviously true, and it's equally true that our civil liberties have suffered a non-trivial and probably long-lasting blow. The United States is a little less free today because of the spineless actions of Congress.

However, there may be one silver lining in all this: now that the telecommunications companies no longer face lawsuits for their (previously) illegal actions, they can be subpoenaed to testify before Congress in depth about their spying activities against Americans. Since they have immunity, they can no longer plead the Fifth when asked pointed, specific questions about their collusion.

The executives and technology specialists who implemented these illegal spying protocols need to be brought to some kind of public account for their despicable, un-American acts. With immunity, there's nothing stopping them from being forced to finally tell the truth.

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Cheney's office tampered with testimony

RussMcBee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:50:00 GMT

This is hardly shocking:

Members of Vice President Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney's office edited out six pages from the testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last October.

[...]

Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said the latest revelations confirm that the vice president has been steering the nation's environmental policy during President Bush's tenure.

"For years, we've suspected that Cheney was the puppeteer for administration policy on global warming," O'Donnell said. "This kiss-and-tell account appears to confirm the worst."

Of course it does, but no one should be the least bit surprised. Cheney's buddies in the oil and coal industries don't want to see consumption of their products curbed; the VP is merely doing the job he was hired to do.

Personally, I no longer feel either shock or outrage at any stunt the Bush junta decides to pull; they've proven their lawlessness so many times over the last seven years, stories like this seem almost redundant. Instead of shock or outrage, I merely feel embarrassed and saddened to realize that this once-great country has degenerated into an oligarchy of goons.

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The weekly roundup for July 6, 2008

RussMcBee — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:05:00 GMT

This week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is up. Check it out.

The sort-of weekly roundup is also featured in today's paper edition of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

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Quote of the week (on fireworks)

RussMcBee — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Last night, an electrical storm threatened to cancel my family's annual July 4th fireworks extravaganza. We had everything ready to go: the launchers were set on the ground, and six of us sat in two trucks on top of a hill with the fireworks in covered boxes in the truck beds. The storm came, the rain started, and lightning surrounded us. We decided to wait and see if the storm would pass around us.

As the storm grew in strength and the lightning grew closer and more violent, one of my cousins said, "We're sitting on one of the highest points of ground in this county, on top of a ton of explosives in an electrical storm. Is this smart?"

We thought about it for a minute, then went back to the house to wait out the storm.

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Quote of the day (on Jonah Goldberg)

RussMcBee — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:22:00 GMT

The Anonymous Liberal said this about Jonah Goldberg:

For reasons I cannot explain, big publications keep hiring Jonah Goldberg to write columns that make everyone dumber for having read them.

That pretty much sums it up.

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Byron Dorgan, oil speculators, and the supply question

RussMcBee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:25:00 GMT

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is pushing for tighter regulation on oil speculators:

Every day, 20 times more oil is traded than delivered. Because of the way energy trades are regulated (or not regulated), speculators control vast amounts of oil by putting down as little as 5% of the purchase cost.

In short, speculators use money they don't have to buy oil they'll never get. The market is treated like a 24-hour casino while the regulators are asleep.

Some say oil speculation isn't a problem, that it doesn't affect gas prices. But plenty of experts disagree. An international investment firm recently said, "We are seeing the classic ingredients of an asset bubble." They called it "oil dot-com." I agree.

[...]

My legislation, called the "End Oil Speculation Act," would shut down casino-like betting. It does not affect legitimate hedging, but it would require energy speculators to put 25% down on their trades, instead of just 5%, and would convene an international group to ensure speculators can't go offshore to hide their trading.

On balance, I think this legislation is commendable; tighter margin requirements and CFTC oversight of free-wheeling offshore commodities exchanges are long overdue. This legislation could bring down oil prices temporarily; however, I'm not sure it will do much good over the long term.

With the US economy spiraling downward, big institutional investors have been putting money into commodities at a record pace; since 2003, institutions like insurance companies and pension funds have increased their investments in commodities from $15 billion to $260 billion. They've been hedging against the declining dollar and the looming prospect of recession by investing in oil, crops, precious metals, and foreign currencies like never before. Obviously, speculation has played some part in the recent escalation of oil prices, but so have the declining dollar (since global oil markets conduct all transactions in dollars, a weaker dollar automatically means higher oil prices), increasing demand in India and China, and the lack of spare production capacity worldwide.

I think raw speculation has contributed at least somewhat to the recent rapid escalation of oil prices, but I believe a more subtle effect may be at play here (although I have no hard data to back this up): I believe market makers in the oil bourses may be seeing the prospect of peak oil looming close at hand and are investing early. I think a lot of them are anticipating a decline in supplies over the next few years, and they've sort of jumped the gun on the supply/demand curve. Right now, supply can more or less meet demand, but after global production has peaked, that will no longer be the case.

The speculators may simply be acting as canaries in the financial coal mine, sending a message that they expect supplies to decline (and prices to skyrocket) in the near future.

Oil futures contracts generally require the purchaser of the contract to agree on a settlement date a certain number of months into the future; whether it's three, or six, or eighteen months, the buyer agrees to take delivery of that commodity at the expiration of the contract. In the current situation, that isn't necessarily the case:

Even analysts who concede the laws of supply and demand are the most significant say that speculation can make price swings more volatile - and that's what's going on now, they say.

"The fundamentals have been fairly firm, but speculation exacerbates the trends," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service. "More and more money is going into buy-and-hold contracts that simply buy and roll into the next month."

If speculators simply buy and hold oil contracts, then they are not reflecting the current supply and demand.

This means that speculators are buying contracts and rolling them over, in anticipation of oil prices skyrocketing even further in the future.

The market isn't always right; I certainly don't buy into the idea of "perfect information" as a guiding market force. However, I think the big money is anticipating future oil prices that will make $140 a barrel look like a bargain.

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Three things that don't surprise me

RussMcBee — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:50:00 GMT

Three stories showed up today, and none of them should come as a surprise:

1) Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event; on this day in 1908, something (either a small asteroid or a small comet) exploded in the air over Siberia. Although it never impacted the ground, and the object itself was only a few meters across, the blast (measuring somewhere between 5 and 30 megatons) flattened 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles. The explosion of this small object was 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even though nearly 1,000 potentially hazardous asteroids are known to be in Earth-threatening orbits, we're not doing much to monitor or counteract the threat.

2) The Pentagon considers itself above the law and refuses to comply with EPA orders to clean up its thousands of polluted sites, including 129 Superfund sites. The Department of Defense just doesn't feel like cleaning up its contamination of our soil and drinking water, so that's that.

3) Our nation's only significant response to both climate change and the looming petroleum crisis involves the burning of corn. This policy turns out to be "economical nonsense, ecologically useless and ethically indefensible."

Surprise, surprise.

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The sorta weekly roundup

RussMcBee — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:45:00 GMT

R. Neal has this week's edition of the intermittent, kinda weekly roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers.

A lot happened this week, so go here to see what everyone's been talking about.

(Mr. Neal has also started yet another blog: SmartEnergyViews is dedicated to news and information on energy efficiency, conservation, and alternatives. I don't think he ever sleeps.)

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On the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

RussMcBee — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:24:00 GMT

This year is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Cold War, and today marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift. In recognition of that anniversary, Spiegel has published an interview with Helmut Schmidt, who was chancellor of West Germany from 1974-1982.

It's a fascinating interview, touching on everything from the birth of the Cold War in Germany to the collapse of the Soviet Union. On that topic, the interview includes this exchange:

SPIEGEL: The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of the era of East-West confrontation. In the end, did the Cold War affect the fall of the Soviet empire or accelerate it?

Schmidt: The fact of the matter is that up until the 1980s, the Soviet Union used its physical potential to fuel a military buildup to a greater degree than any other country. Without glasnost and perestroika this could have continued for a number of years. It was of course a rigid dictatorship. But it is another question as to whether the Cold War or a number of megalomaniacs in the Kremlin or perestroika and glasnost were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

SPIEGEL: The Soviet Union lost the Cold War. Did the West win it?

Schmidt: The Soviet Union imploded, but not as a result of the Cold War. Some Americans would like to believe that they ran the Russians into the ground with the arms race. That is an understandable exaggeration, but it is also absurd.

Consider Schmidt's comments in light of the fact that he was one of the primary actors who pushed for the NATO "double-track decision" in 1979, which in turn led to the deployment of Pershing II intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany. This deployment was seen by the Soviet Union, much of the German public, and most of the rest of the world as a deliberately provocative move on the part of the US and NATO. Many saw the move as a mirror image of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the West being the provocateur instead of the Soviets. Protests were staged across Europe, and the Pershing deployment derailed US/Soviet disarmament talks that had been underway for some time. It was one of the most destabilizing events of the post-war era.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, some wag (I don't remember who) said that the Cold War ended merely because the Soviets went bankrupt before we did. There's some truth to that, but Schmidt's statement is also an accurate part of the story. However, it's a bit of a surprise to see a former Cold Warrior such as Helmut Schmidt make such an admission.

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Quote of the day (on political courage)

RussMcBee — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:28:00 GMT

Jann Wenner interviews Barack Obama in this week's issue of "Rolling Stone." After Obama enumerated the contents of his iPod, he said this (via Blah3):

When Mr. Wenner asked how Mr. Obama might respond to harsh attacks from Republicans, suggesting that Democrats have "cowered" in the past, Mr. Obama replied, "Yeah, I don't do cowering."

I love that line.

Too bad Congressional Democrats won't follow his example.

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Feingold speaks on the FISA travesty

RussMcBee — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:50:00 GMT

In this interview with Amy Goodman, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) promises to filibuster the horrid FISA amnesty bill when it reaches the Senate.

First, he outlines the most potent objections to the bill:

Sen. Russ Feingold: Well, this is a great blow to the rights of the American people. And much of the publicity has been about a very important aspect: giving these telephone companies immunity that cooperated with the President's illegal program. We think that should be decided based on current law, not some kind of a retroactive immunity. But that's essentially what this bill does.

But you know what? Even worse are the provisions of the bill that will make it very easy for the government to essentially suck up the communications, all communications of Americans that go overseas, whether it's an email or a text message or a phone call to a daughter, junior year abroad, or a child who's in Iraq or a reporter or a business associate. This is one of the greatest intrusions, potentially, on the rights of Americans protected under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution in the history of our country.

And unfortunately, it's going to go through with the help of some Democrats. So this is a very, very sad day for our Constitution and for our rights, and it's not justified by the terrorism issue, because we do not have any problem at all with going after anybody that we have reasonable suspicions about. It has to do with sucking all this information into a huge database in a way that is very intrusive on the privacy of all Americans.

And the craven, cowardly politics of it all:

This is nothing but Democrats trying to pretend that they're doing something here. They are doing nothing. They're giving in. Senator Kit Bond, a Republican from Missouri, is basically giggling at the fact that the Republicans and the administration got essentially everything they want on this. It's sadly a great failure on the part of the Democratic majority that was elected in 2006 primarily to get us out of Iraq, but also significantly to protect the Constitution of the United States. This is not a proud moment.

And what he plans to do about it:

Amy Goodman: Senator Feingold, will you filibuster this bill?

Sen. Russ Feingold: We are going to resist this bill. We are going to make sure that the procedural votes are gone through. In other words, a filibuster is requiring sixty votes to proceed to the bill, sixty votes to get cloture on the legislation. We will also - Senator Dodd and I and others will be taking some time to talk about this on the floor. We're not just going to let it be rubberstamped.

Amy Goodman: Would you filibuster, though?

Sen. Russ Feingold: That's what I just described.

I have no doubt his filibuster will be stopped, but at least someone on Capitol Hill has the spine to stand up to the White House. It's just too bad the leadership of the House and Senate don't have the courage to do the same. It never ceases to amaze me that Reid and Pelosi lack the political will to take a stand against the discredited policies of a president whose popularity rating hovers somewhere around that of the plague.

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Playing political games with the US census

RussMcBee — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:25:00 GMT

The Bush administration's mismanagement of the Census Bureau is posing a threat to the integrity of the 2010 census. Among other problems, there's this:

Lawmakers must also ensure that the final census funding bill includes a provision from the House version that would require the bureau to spend $8 million to $10 million of its budget on the Census in Schools program. The program, which provides take-home materials to educate families about the census, proved effective in reaching hard-to-count populations during the 2000 census. But the House committee that oversees the bureau learned last spring that the Commerce Department planned to shrink the program.

[...]

The quality of the nation’s democracy depends on the census, because the numbers are used to decide the number of Congressional seats from each state and hence the number of votes each state has in the Electoral College. It’s hard to ignore the impression of partisan motives in policies that hobble the census, because an inaccurate census invariably undercounts out-of-the-mainstream groups not typically aligned with Republicans.

I suppose it's possible that the crippling of a census program which improves the accuracy of counting minorities is just a coincidence. Of course, it's also possible that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with the fact that Iraq's chief export is petroleum.

Both possibilities seem equally unlikely.

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The sporadic Sunday roundup

RussMcBee — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:33:00 GMT

R. Neal has this week's edition of the Tennessee liberal blog roundup.

Go here for this week's edition, including bonus roundups on the AP/blogger controversy and the Fred Hobbs smackdown.

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Hiatus "Lost" blogging: Hans van Eeghen and the number of days in March

RussMcBee — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:02:00 GMT

During this season's "Lost" finale, ABC ran a commercial for a company called "Octagon Global Recruiting." The commercial and the website seek volunteers to work on the DHARMA Initiative. Visitors to the site may register for email notifications of their recruitment drive, which will kick off at ComicCon in San Diego next month.

This morning, I received an email from Octagon Global Recruiting; an online copy of the email's text is here.

The message was CC'ed to someone named Hans van Eeghen. A friend and fellow "Lost" addict Googled that name and found this page, which lists a number of descendants of a man named Hugo de Groot; the list includes several van Eeghens.

Of course, my friend also pointed out that "Hans van Eeghen" is an anagram for "a hang seven hen." I don't think he's had enough coffee this morning.

I viewed the HTML source code behind the email message, and I saw this comment buried in the code:

Both the email and the page reproducing its content also contain this HTML tag in the source:

<meta name="Alert" content="March has 32 days" />

Developing ...

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If a general calls them war crimes ...

RussMcBee — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:38:00 GMT

Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted an extensive inquiry into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has spoken out again on the Bush regime's lawlessness. In his preface to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights, he says this:

In order for [detainees] to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Unfortunately, that won't happen until both Reid and Pelosi are replaced by Congressional leaders willing to stand up to criminals.

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GOP obstructionism and collapsing ice shelves

RussMcBee — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:32:00 GMT

Today, GOP obstructionists in the Senate filibustered a bill which would have provided tax incentives to build out renewable energy sources and which would have extended tax credits for individuals to purchase plug-in hybrid automobiles. The bill would have cost $17 billion over ten years, which is roughly the same amount the Pentagon wastes on the Iraq quagmire in 1.5 months.

Just like their recent obstruction of the carbon reduction bill, today's actions show that the GOP have no intention of doing anything meaningful about our most pressing environmental and energy issues. Alternative energy cannot be successful until it reaches large enough scales to realize significant economies; without a publicly funded boost, alternative energy will remain relegated to the fringes of our economy, which is precisely where the coal and oil lobbies want those technologies to stay. The coal and oil lobbyists' handmaidens in the GOP are doing precisely the job they're being paid to do.

Meanwhile, the Wilkins ice shelf is collapsing at an alarming rate. Today marks the first time the Antarctic ice sheet has been observed melting during the Antarctic winter. No matter, though; we should all rest secure in the knowledge that Senate Republicans are being so incredibly diligent about following the orders of their corporate masters.

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AP follows RIAA and MPAA into the gutter

RussMcBee — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:40:00 GMT

Last week, the Associated Press sent seven DMCA take-down notices to the Drudge Retort (a liberal counterpoint to that other Drudge) based solely on the fact that they had posted short excerpts of AP wire stories. After some pretty significant blowback (and a boycott of their content), the AP decided it might not be in their best interests to alienate a significant source of their traffic, so they've magnanimously decided to publish their very own interpretation of what "fair use" actually means for us simple-minded bloggers.

Someone needs to inform the AP that they don't get to decide what constitutes "fair use." That's up to the Supreme Court.

On a more practical and immediate level, Terry Heaton says this:

The real problem for the A.P. is that it can’t win this argument, and by pressing the issue, they’re very likely to end up with a business model that dies overnight. And I don’t think I’m overstating that. Links are the currency of the Web, and the A.P. hard line spits in the face of that, which is leading to boycotts like Arrington’s. The ~~monopoly~~ co-operative is living in the past, but it needs that past to validate a business model that is as out-of-date as traditional media itself. Now, by pressing the matter, they run the significant risk of being in a contrary legal position, and what will be left for them after that?

I think the answer to that last question is pretty simple: they'll follow RIAA and MPAA into the gutter by attempting to sue their customers into submission. It isn't working for RIAA, it isn't working for MPAA, and it won't work for AP.

One of the AP's arguments against the Drudge Retort was that, in some cases, "the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very few words." If AP articles are that shallow and devoid of content, they aren't worth quoting in the first place.

If the AP doesn't drop this issue and fast, the boycott against them will make the AP an irrelevancy so fast it'll make their lawyers' heads spin.

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Chalk one up for the Constitution

RussMcBee — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:10:00 GMT

This morning, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. As SCOTUSblog said:

The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

[...]

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005, since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights. The Court refused to interpret the Detainee Treatment Act — as the Bush Administration had suggested — to include enough legal protection to make it an adequate replacement for habeas. Congress, it concluded, unconstitutionally suspended the writ in enacting that Act.

Respect for the rule of law and for this nation's founding principles may be making a comeback, albeit at the sometimes glacial pace of the court system. This is made abundantly clear by Justice Kennedy's statement in the decision (PDF is here):

To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say "what the law is." ... These concerns have particular bearing upon the Suspension Clause question here, for the habeas writ is itself an indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers.

After nearly seven years of official lawlessness in the White House and spineless capitulation by a timid and weak Congress, we may be witnessing a renaissance of respect for this country's fundamental essence.

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Snarky reasons to vote Republican

RussMcBee — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:35:00 GMT

Via Doug McCaughan:

That pretty much says it all.

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The growing ranks of the underinsured

RussMcBee — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:27:00 GMT

In addition to the 47 million Americans with no health insurance, the ranks of those considered underinsured are growing at an alarming rate.

A new study by the Commonwealth Fund has found that the number of Americans with inadequate health insurance coverage mushroomed from 16 million in 2003 to 25 million in 2007.

That's a jump of 56 percent in just four years.

"Underinsured" is defined this way:

Respondents were identified as underinsured if they spent 10 percent of more of their income (or 5 percent if they were low-income) on out-of-pocket medical expenses, or if they had deductibles that equaled 5 percent or more of their income.

As the study notes (the PDF is here), the underinsured are likely to forgo needed care, wait until health problems become much more serious before seeking treatment, and let prescriptions go unfilled, all due to escalating out-of-pocket costs. The study also notes that over the period from 2000 to 2007, average health insurance premiums jumped 91 percent, but wages only increased by 24 percent.

Employers are becoming more likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers due to escalating costs, leaving individuals to fend for themselves. Individual health insurance policies are unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, so those who do manage to carry some kind of individual policy end up with high deductibles, outlandish premiums, and onerous terms on the rare occasions when claims are actually paid.

In this situation, no one wins except the vultures in the for-profit health insurance industry.

Unfortunately, neither of the two major presidential candidates offers anything close to the significant health care reforms this country needs. McCain is recycling the nonsensical right-wing canard of tax breaks to purchase health insurance, which would amount to either a pittance or nothing for most American workers. Obama's milquetoast approach would do almost nothing to reduce the ranks of the uninsured, and, like McCain, Obama seems perfectly willing to ignore the underinsured.

Regardless of who wins the White House in November, the mushrooming health care crisis will not be meaningfully addressed anytime soon. The underinsured will get the shaft in 2009, just like they're getting the shaft today.

"Change"? What change?

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Bionic hand wins engineering prize

RussMcBee — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:06:00 GMT

This is just unbelievably cool:

The world's most advanced, commercially available, bionic hand has won the UK's top engineering prize.

The i-LIMB, a prosthetic device with five individually powered digits, beat three other finalists to win this year's MacRobert award.

The technology has been fitted to more than 200 people, including US soldiers who lost limbs during the war in Iraq.

[...]

"It's such a fantastic invention," Ray Edwards, a quadruple amputee and one of the first people in the UK to be fitted with the device, told BBC News.

"When the arm was put on, I had tears rolling down my face. It was the first time in 21 years that I had seen a hand open.

"I can do a thumbs-up, I can hold a pen and I can do many things that I couldn't do before."

Wow.

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The Sunday roundup

RussMcBee — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:35:00 GMT

R. Neal has this week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers, focusing on Clinton's withdrawal from the race and her endorsement of Obama.

Go here.

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