Tristero

Saturday, January 17, 2004

What The Invasion Of Mars Is About  

Transferring the NASA budget to Halliburton's coffers:

As an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission, Steve Streich, a veteran Halliburton scientific adviser, was among the authors of an article in Oil & Gas Journal in 2000 titled "Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries." The article called a Mars exploration program "an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth," because technology developed for the mission could be used on this planet.

Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky expressed similar enthusiasm. "Today our people in Houston, our people at Cape Canaveral, at the Marshall Space Center . . . are talking to their counterparts at NASA -- at headquarters, at all levels," he said.

Really sick.

via Joe Conason
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:24 PM

The Saddam/bin Laden Conncection  

An academic scholar of Satan explains:

"Evil, like God, is One. So you can say, and believe in, an 'Axis of Evil,' because you know that the person who is giving the orders to bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the leader of Iran and the leader of North Korea is, of course, Satan."

A rather interesting interview at Salon. Worth subscribing for, or watching a short ad.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:16 PM

Perle In Fantasyland  

Kevin Drum posts an anecdote about Perle from the Soviet/Afghan war. Yes, he was crazy then. It's worth reading 'cause it's so idiotic and funny.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:00 PM

In 2,000 years, will the world remember Disney or Plato?  

To paraphrase our Fearless LeaderWhat's the difference?

If it took two millenniums [sic] for Plato's "Republic" to reach North America, the latest hit from Justin Timberlake can be found in Greek (and Japanese) stores within days.

Dang! And I always thought that jumpcut from the apes to the spaceship in 2001 was one heckuva leap.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:35 PM

Global Warming Can Lead To Record Cold, Folks  

The Bushites have derived a lot of merriment from the fact that Al Gore's speech on global warming was delivered on the coldest day of the year. Here's a typical comment:

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, said it was "fitting that Mr. Gore chose one of the coldest days of the year to spread false information about the Bush administration's record on global warming."
"Mother Nature didn't agree with his message, and neither do I," the congressman said. "Al, it's cold outside."

Haha. Ha ha ha. Ha. Well, let some experts explain why this is a confirmation of global warming.

As several scientists have warned, global warming will be full of surprises. Warming over the past half-century has already brought more erratic and extreme weather.

Some climatologists are increasingly concerned about the stability of the climate system itself and the potential for abrupt shifts -- to warmer or even much colder states. Can we make sense of the present cold snap?

Part of the explanation comes from changes to our north.

Warming causes ice to melt, forming cold fresh water. And increased input of cold fresh water to the ocean can affect weather patterns as well as global ocean circulation.

Recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere has melted a lot of North Polar ice. Since the 1970s the floating North Polar ice cap has thinned by almost half.

A second source of cold fresh water comes from Greenland, where continental ice is now melting at higher elevations each year.

Some melt water is trickling down through crevasses; lubricating the base, accelerating ice "rivers,'' and increasing the potential for sudden slippage.

A third source of cold fresh water is rain at high latitudes. Overall ocean warming speeds up the water cycle, increasing evaporation. The warmed atmosphere can also hold and transport more water vapor from low to high latitudes.

Water falling over land is enhancing discharge from five major Siberian rivers into the Arctic, and water falling directly over the ocean adds even more fresh water to the surface.

The cold, freshened waters of the North Atlantic accelerate transatlantic winds, and this may be one factor driving frigid fronts down the Eastern U.S. seaboard and across to Europe and Asia...

Natural variability and human influence together explain the observed changes in the North Atlantic. Calculations (of orbital cycles) indicate that our hospitable climate regime was not likely to end due to natural causes anytime soon.

But due to the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are now greater than at any time in the last half million years. The recent buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is forcing the climate system in new ways and into uncharted seas...

Dr. Paul R. Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. James J. McCarthy is professor of oceanography at Harvard University and was co-chair of the IPCC 2001 Assessment, Working Group II.

[UPDATE] CNN's got more:

Parts of Europe and North America could get drastically colder if warming Atlantic ocean currents are halted by a surprise side-effect of global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

The possible shut-down of the Gulf Stream is one of several catastrophic changes -- ranging from collapses of fish stocks to more frequent forest fires -- that could be triggered by human activities, they said in a book launched in Sweden.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:11 PM

Political Hate Speech  

Political hate speech courtesy of the letters section from The Daily Oklahoman:

"anyone who votes for any politician who feels homosexuality is inherited, abortion as birth control is OK and the federal government knows better than the states do, is an idiot. "

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:29 AM

Seraphiel's Daily Cartoon Roundup  

1
2
3

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:54 AM

3 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Bomb Attack in Iraq  

Total has now reached 500

The number of American service members who have died in the Iraq conflict since war started last March reached 500 Saturday after a roadside bomb exploded near Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civil defense troopers.

Two Americans also were wounded when a Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit the explosive device and caught fire on a road near Taji, about 20 miles north of the Iraq capital, said Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division.

Those killed and wounded had been part of a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol looking for roadside bombs, a frequent attack method by insurgents targeting the U.S.-led occupation, MacDonald said. Three men fleeing in a white truck were detained, and soldiers found bomb-making material in the vehicle, he added.

Also Saturday, the military said a U.S. soldier died from a non-hostile gunshot wound south of Baghdad. The incident occurred Friday evening near Diwaniyah south of Baghdad, the command said in a statement. No further details were released.

The deaths raised to 500 the number of U.S. forces who have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq started March 20. Of those, 346 died as a result of hostile action and 154 of non-hostile causes, according to Defense Department figures in addition to those reported Saturday.

Most of the deaths -- both combat and non-combat -- have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:51 AM

Cheney Pleads For the Return Of The Clinton Administration  

Think I'm kidding? In a recent speech, Cheney said:

Cheney devoted the half-hour speech to a frightening characterization of the war on terrorism and the new kind of mobilization he said it demanded. He sounded the alarm about the increasing prospects of a major new terrorist attack and the extraordinary responses that are required. While many of his remarks echoed past comments by the president and senior officials, Cheney struck a surprisingly dour note and suggested only an administration of proven ability could manage the dramatic overhaul necessary for the nation's security apparatus. [emphasis added]

Surely, he couldn't mean his own administration, of course.

Here's some other choice excerpts/observations.

"Scattered in more than 50 nations, the al Qaeda network and other terrorist groups constitute an enemy unlike any other that we have ever faced, " he said. "And as our intelligence shows, the terrorists continue plotting to kill on an ever-larger scale, including here in the United States..."

"Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives as the result of a single attack, or a set coordinated of attacks," Cheney said.

Yessirree. The GOP is without a doubt the party of pessimism and fear.

But, y'know, even paranoids have real enemies.

So boys and girls, before going to sleep at night, be sure to check under your bed and make sure there are no terrorists hiding under there.


posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:52 AM

Quote Of The Day  

Washington Times: "The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto."

Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, and arch conservative lunatic.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:41 AM

More On Bush's Spacey Plans  

Wired:

President Bush's plan to go to the moon and to Mars without much additional funding will force NASA and Congress to make hard choices -- particularly regarding the space shuttle and the hugely expensive International Space Station, observers said.

The Bush plan increases NASA's budget by just $1 billion over the next five years. That means the space agency has to figure out how to carry out the mission -- first a return to the moon and later a trip to Mars -- without a lot of additional money in its budget...

"Logically, if we want to go to the moon and Mars, we should be shutting things down now," McCurdy said.

McCurdy noted that the current President Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, similarly proposed going to the moon and Mars in 1989. However, that plan fell apart when NASA came back with a jaw-dropping $400 billion price tag.

The current President Bush only signed on to a new moon-Mars plan after assurances from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe that the agency had returned to being the can-do outfit that sent men to the moon in the 1960s, McCurdy said.

"Everyone here this morning is sobering up," McCurdy said, characterizing the scene Thursday in Washington. "There was a lot of celebration in the space community last night, but now they're realizing what they've gotten themselves into. Because of the deal they've had to cut, there will (be) no new funding at least for the near term, and perhaps the long term..."

Pike said he was skeptical of the administration's motives in articulating the moon-Mars plan. He noted that a new moon landing would not take place until at least 11 years after the end of a possible second Bush term.

He went so far as to indicate that the plan is a Trojan Horse for killing the shuttle and station -- and that the moon-Mars initiative will never materialize beyond "paying contractors for artwork."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:37 AM

Bush Science: If It Ain't Broke, Let It Break  

Outrage:

In a midday meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., two days after President Bush ordered NASA to redirect its resources toward human exploration of the Moon and Mars, the agency's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, told the managers of the space telescope that there would be no more shuttle visits to maintain it.

A visit by astronauts to install a couple of the telescope's scientific instruments and replace the gyroscopes and batteries had been planned for next year. Without any more visits, the telescope, the crown jewel of astronomy for 10 years, will probably die in orbit sometime in 2007, depending on when its batteries or gyroscopes fail for good.

"It could die tomorrow, it could last to 2011," said Dr. Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore. Dr. Beckwith said he and his colleagues were devastated.

At a news conference last night, Dr. John M. Grunsfeld, the agency's chief scientist and an astronaut who has been to the Hubble two times, called the the telescope the "best marriage of human spaceflight and science."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:12 AM

Friday, January 16, 2004

Al Gore Gets It  

Boy, does he ever get it:

The Bush Administration has... explored new frontiers in cynicism by time and time again actually appointing the principal lobbyists and lawyers for the biggest polluters to be in charge of administering the laws that their clients are charged with violating. Some of these appointees have continued to work very closely with the outside pseudo-scientific front groups even though they are now on the public payroll.

Two Attorneys General have now publicly accused officials in the Bush White House Council on Environmental Quality of conspiring with one of the outside groups to encourage the filing of a lawsuit as part of a shared strategy to undermine the possibility of government action on Global Warming.

Vice President Cheney’s infamous “Energy Task Force” advised lobbyists for polluters early in the new administration that there would be no action by the Bush White House on Global Warming and then asked for their help in designing a totally meaningless “voluntary” program. One of the industry lobbyists who heard this pitch later made an unguarded speech to his peers about the experience and said the following:

“Let me put it to you in political terms. The President needs a fig leaf. He’s dismantling Kyoto, but he’s out there on a limb.”

The White House has routinely gone out on a limb to involve large contributors representing companies charged with violating environmental laws and regulations in the drafting of new laws and regulations designed to let their clients off the hook.

The story is the same when it comes to protecting the American people from pollution. The Bush administration chooses special interests over the public interest, ignoring the scientific evidence in favor of policies its contributors demand.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:28 AM

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Kennedy's Speech  

One of the finest summaries of recent American history around. Download. Read it all.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:20 PM

The Real George Bush  

Blumenthal in Salon:

Bush appears as a bully, using nicknames to demean people. He appears querulous (When Bush orders a cheeseburger and it doesn't arrive quickly, he summons his chief of staff. "'You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?' Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room"). He appears manipulated ("'Stick to principle' is another phrase that has a tonic effect on Bush" -- it was used by his senior political advisor Karl Rove to push for additional tax cuts). He appears incurious and, above all, intently political. When Bush holds forth it is often to demonstrate that he's not Clinton. He informs his NSC that on Middle East peace "Clinton overreached," but that he will take Ariel Sharon "at face value," and will not commit himself to the peace process: "I don't see much we can do over there at this point. I think it's time to pull out of that situation." Powell is "startled," but Bush reverts in the meeting to "the same flat, unquestioning demeanor that O'Neill was familiar with."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:12 PM

Political hate speech  

More political hate speech, this time from National Review

Kennedy, a man so convinced of his entitlement to the Oval Office he couldn't be bothered to explain why he was running for the job, declared that the Bush White House is "breathtakingly arrogant." A guy who recently took to the well of the Senate to deny scholarships to poor black kids because the teacher's unions own him and his party had the effrontery to declare this White House "vindictive and mean-spirited."

I don't mean to get too worked up. I know people think Ted Kennedy is the "conscience of his party" (that's the Democratic party; any other party where Ted's involved you're gonna want to bring your snorkel). ..

...if you think this war was a no-brainer political coup for the president, you're a moron. If you think this White House saw it as such from the beginning, you're a moron with ADD. Nonetheless, I would point out that this notion that President Bush toppled Saddam simply to get reelected contradicts numerous other theories held by Brother Ted and/or his fans. For example, if this was a crass reelection ploy, could the perfidious bagel-snarfing Rasputins we call "neocons" still be the string-pullers behind the scenes? After all, if their real interest is in helping Israel, or "perpetual war," presumably Bush's reelection is an afterthought...

Regardless, let's refer back to Wednesday's gas leak...I mean, speech:...

I'm on record as believing that Paul O'Neill is a feckless crapweasel, and I stand by that. But in his defense, he's astoundingly stupid about how Washington works (no really, stupidity is a defense)...

Kennedy, on the other hand, is not new to anything — including, I believe, all seven of the deadly sins and the naughty side of at least nine out of ten of the Ten Commandments.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 1:23 PM

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Short Blogging Hiatus  

Family emergency.

Meanwhile, here's where your tax dollars are going if there's a Bush II.

Yes, marriage is a good idea. So is eating your string beans, looking people straight in the eye when you talk to them, wearing socks, and a cheerful countenance. Oh, apple pie is also good, and so is loving your neighbor, but not in the Biblical sense, of course.

Not to mention flossing. We should promote that too. Let's set aside another 1.5 bil for that initiative.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:58 AM

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Florida Judges Must Be Religiously Correct  

Unbelievable:

"Will you be able to balance your duties as a single mother of twins with your duties as a Broward judge?"

That was the question Broward County Assistant Public Defender Jayme Cassidy says she was asked by a member of the 15th Judicial Circuit Judicial Nomination Commission during her two judicial screening interviews in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Cassidy says the first time she was asked the question by JNC member O'Neal Dozier, pastor of the fundamentalist Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, she was so surprised that she could barely answer. The second time, she says, she was livid and told the panel that the question was inappropriate...

Cassidy is one of a number of Broward judicial candidates who have complaints about the appropriateness of questions they were asked in recent months by Dozier and other members of the Broward Circuit Court JNC during interviews for bench vacancies. Most of the criticism is directed at Dozier, who, like all JNC members, was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush...

...JNC members have asked them:

• Whether they are active in their church.

• Whether the candidate is a "God-fearing person."

• How they feel about the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling striking down a Texas law criminalizing homosexual activity.

• How they would feel about having the Ten Commandments posted in their courtroom...

In an interview, the Rev. Dozier, a non-practicing attorney, acknowledged asking some of the questions. But he defended their appropriateness. "I want to know the applicants' spiritual makeup," Dozier said. "It tells me a lot about a person. I think a judge should be God-fearing." ...

The governor formerly shared responsibility with the Bar for appointing JNC members. But Bush and Republican legislative leaders complained that the state judiciary was blocking their legislative agenda.

In 2001, in a move widely seen as greatly increasing the governor's power to shape the judiciary, the GOP-dominated Legislature gave the governor the right to appoint all nine members of each JNC; the Bar's role was reduced to merely recommending four candidates to the governor.

Bush repeatedly has said that he wants a judiciary that reflects his philosophy of government, and has appointed many conservatives to the JNCs. "I'm looking for people who share my philosophy: respect the separation of powers and recognize the judiciary has an important role," Bush said at a JNC training seminar in Orlando, Fla., last September. "They don't need to be legislating."

Any questions, boys and girls, as to how seriously dangerous to American values the Bush dynasty is?
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:47 AM

Strange Bedfellows? Not Really  

ACLU comes to Limbaugh's defense. A perfect example of why I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I despise Limbaugh's politics and have no respect for his character. Nevertheless, Limbaugh, like Jose Padilla and every other citizen, has the right to be treated in a disinterested fashion. The ACLU defends that right regardless of who is being trampled upon.

So, while I'm not happy that my ACLU dough is helping Limbaugh defend himself, I recognize that they will do things that will often make me unhappy in order to serve a far more important principle. And that makes me very happy.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:20 AM

Krugman On O'Neill and Beyond  

One of his most concise and focused columns:

One [new revelation] is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was a mistake to lock in huge tax cuts based on questionable projections of future surpluses. In May 2001 Mr. Greenspan gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax cut didn't include triggers — it went forward regardless of how the budget turned out — it was "irresponsible fiscal policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were ridiculed for saying exactly the same thing.

Another is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?"

Most startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001...

The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations?

So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.

Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they're cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.

More important, having a few months of good news doesn't excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.  

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 3:24 AM

Monday, January 12, 2004

Iraq: Who's Really In Charge?  

Let's put it this way: Bush is just Sistani's poodle.

The Bush administration, seeking to overcome new resistance on the political and security fronts in Iraq, is revising its proposed process for handing over power to an interim Iraqi government by June 30, administration officials said Monday.

Officials held a round of urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad in the wake of the rejection on Sunday by a powerful Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, of the administration's complex plans to hold caucuses around the country to select an interim legislature and executive in a newly self-governing Iraq.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:24 PM

The Neocons Up Close And Personal  

Some recollections of Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski who worked in the Defense Department.

I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor. At another time, I discussed with a political appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell in the early winter and was told the best service he could offer would be to quit. I heard in another staff meeting a derogatory story about a little Tommy Fargo who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course, Commander, Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was shared with the rest of us as a Bill Luti lesson in civilian control of the military. It was certainly not civil or controlled, but the message was crystal...

When General Zinni was removed as Bush’s Middle East envoy and Elliot Abrams joined the National Security Council (NSC) to lead the Mideast division, whoops and high-fives had erupted from the neocon cubicles. By midwinter, echoes of those celebrations seemed to mutate into a kind of anxious anticipation, shared by most of the Pentagon...

Around that same time [Powell's speech to the UN February 5], our deputy director forwarded a State Department cable that had gone out to our embassy in Turkey. The cable contained answers to 51 questions that had been asked of our ambassador by the Turkish government. The questions addressed things like after-war security arrangements, refugees, border control, stability in the Kurdish north, and occupation plans. But every third answer was either “To be determined” or “We’re working on that” or “This scenario is unlikely.” At one point, an answer included the “fact” that the United States military would physically secure the geographic border of Iraq. Curious, I checked the length of the physical border of Iraq. Then I checked out the length of our own border with Mexico. Given our exceptional success in securing our own desert borders, I found this statement interesting...

My personal experience leaning precariously toward the neoconservative maw showed me that their philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values. My years of military service taught me that values and ideas matter, but these most important aspects of our great nation cannot be defended adequately by those in uniform. This time, salvaging our honor will require a conscious, thoughtful, and stubborn commitment from each and every one of us, and though I no longer wear the uniform, I have not given up the fight. 

via t r u t h o u t
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:42 PM

Political Hate Speech  

The Horse has a great example today of more political hate speech, this time from Franken's poodle, Bill O'Reilly, who had this to say about the ACLU:

Now the ACLU is free to come to your town and sue the heck out of it.  And believe me, that organization will.  The ACLU doesn't care about the law or the constitution or what the people want.  It's a fascist organization that uses lawyers instead of Panzers.  It'll find a way to inflict financial damage on any concern that opposes its secular agenda and its growing in power.

The Horse lists some sponsors. You might want to ring them or email them.

Needless to say, O'Reilly doesn't know what the *(&#$) he is talking about. He has the right to say whatever he wants; no matter how untruthful, ignorant, and offensive. He avails himself of this right quite often, and that's fine in my book.

But he does not have a right to a microphone and a tv camera. And we have the right to tell his sponsors we won't buy their products until they drop him.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:02 PM

CNN On MoveOn  

A pretty good interview with Wes Boyd which also contains this:

MoveOn's main target may be Bush and his allies, but its tactics also are a slap at Democrats. Boyd says they generally lack leadership and creativity, and could learn something from MoveOn's amateurs.

"In talking to a lot of the campaigns, you realize they're all run by the same group of a dozen professionals." Boyd said. "They're like carnies, they go from campaign to campaign, and the only way they can lose is doing something that seems stupid so they never try anything new."

Despite MoveOn's considerable buzz, it has yet to prove it can make voters turn out at the polls.

"They've shown us how to raise money but I don't know what it means electorally yet," Backus said, "and Republicans want the public to think of Democrats as elitist. That's the danger of an Internet-based strategy."

Hoo, boy, Mr. Backus doesn't get it. The Democratic leaders should be praying that MoveOn never has to show the Democratic Party what it's electoral clout can be. 'Cause it won't be a pretty sight.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:42 PM

Going To Mars Can Be More Than Inspiring...For Halliburton  

The great Joe Conason explains:

When President Bush inspires us onward and upward to Mars this week, his political calculations may be more earthly. Expanding space exploration is a wonderful aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for the Houston economy, the national aerospace industry, and one company in particular that has long pondered exploration of the red planet: Halliburton.

Yes, the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney -- fabled beneficiary of no-bid multibillion-dollar military contracts and high-priced provider of Kuwaiti oil -- is determined to drill on Mars and the moon. Surely this scheme has nothing to do with the Bush space initiative. But somehow, no matter what worthy motivations lie behind the president's policies, he and Cheney always appear to be shilling for their corporate clientele....

Dreams about drilling on Mars date back several years at least. In 1998, a handful of top firms, including Halliburton, Shell and Schlumberger, showed up for a NASA "workshop" at Los Alamos, N.M., to discuss the prospects. Research seems to have intensified since 2001, with Halliburton and other firms engaged in proprietary research on such advanced technologies as laser-powered drills . They appear to have been awaiting this week's announcement, according to this old clip from Petroleum News, which reported:

"The earliest drilling opportunity would be 2007 ... Deeper drilling, into the multi-kilometer range, might occur as part of a 2014 Mars mission which would put astronauts on the planet to assist."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:28 PM

Paul O'Neill on 60 Minutes  

Courtesy Kicking Ass you can see this fabulous 60 minutes interview that O'Neill, Suskind and others had with Lesley Stahl. Oh, and while you still have the chance, buy the book like totally right now because, as Atrios sez, they're moving fast to shut him up.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:18 PM

Torture Wolf Now  

Go.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 2:15 PM

Political Hate Speech  

In the Asia Times today Spengler indulges in some political hate speech as he expands the list of available bad guys with which to smear Howard Dean. I have decided, as a matter of policy, not to repeat such canards here: you can follow the link above if you like. Suffice it to say, the comparisons are, to be kind, thoroughly ignorant, malicious, and wrong.

You can protest this garbage by writing to the Asia Times editor at letters@asiatimes.com

The campaign heats up.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:25 AM

One More US soldier Killed  

One killed, two wounded:

A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Monday in an improvised explosive device attack in central Baghdad, the 1st Armored Division said.

All three were soldiers of the division. The attack took place about 10 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) and is under investigation, according to a statement from the 1st Armored Division. No other details of the attack were released.

According to Pentagon and Central Command figures, 357 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations there on May 1. Of those, 228 lost their lives in hostile activities, according to the military.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:05 AM

Photoshop Mavens: A Suggestion  

If you know Photoshop, here's an idea for fun and profit:

As you know, Bush is about to propose colonizing the moon as a waystation for manned exploration of Mars. This idea is coming from a man so scientifically clueless that he has needlessly restricted stem cell research, funded useless AIDS and teen pregnancy initiatives, and actually believes that the myth of creation in Genesis I is scientifically more accurate than the theory of evolution.

In other words, it goes without saying that Bush once again is on the verge of making hash out of a perfectly reasonable idea, namely the manned exploration of space. When you're a fan of "instinct" and practice magical thinking, you are intellectually disqualified from setting goals for a program that requires rationality and contingency planning.

Nevertheless some good can come from this initiative. Let's send the Bush cabal to Mars first! That's right: Bundle up Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Perle, and all the other creeps into space suits and fly them to Mars.

So photoshoppers, you know what to do: pictures of these guys in spacesuits in their moon colony, or hunting for wmd's in Valle Marineris, photo ops of Bush clearing away Martian brush on his interplanetary ranch, etc.

Go for it!
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:42 AM

"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."  

Well, you can't accuse Bush of false modesty, or any sense of history either:

He didn't free the slaves.

He didn't rid the world of Hitler.

He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.

The President's eyebrow-raising assertion comes during some Oval Office chitchat after Auletta - writing about the testy relations between the Bush White House and the news media - sits in on an interview with a British newspaper reporter.

In the latest New Yorker, Auletta reports that Bush and his minions have little use for the Fourth Estate.

Political guru Karl Rove claims that the job of journalists is "not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more."

And Chief of Staff Andy Card scoffs: "[The media] don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election."

Card argues that it's not the responsibility of top White House policymakers to provide reporters with facts.

"It's not our job to be sources. The taxpayers don't pay us to leak!" Card tells Auletta. "Our job is not to make your job easy."

I'll post excerpts from Auletta's piece if the New Yorker posts it. Still waiting for their Mark Danner essay.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:39 AM

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Digibarn  

Hitail on over to The DigiBarn Computer Museum where you can browse through an amazing collection of stuff from the Dawn of Personal Computing including the original Mac 512k schematic (purported to be the last computer designed on a single sheet of paper), the first and second issues of Byte and more odd quirky things than you can shake an opamp at.

Currently featuring an online exhibit entitled The 20th Anniversy of the Macintosh. Among other rarities: the original Mac logo (never saw it before and it's truly atrocious), Steve Jobs' High School graduation pic, and groovy pics of mac prototypes, manuals, etc. Yum.

But that's not all. There's scads of other computers including some of that still warm the cockles of my heart when I recall them, like the near perfect Radio Shack Model 100, my favorite computer for maybe 15 years, until I got my powerbook g3 dubbed "mini-me." And there are early computers I never heard of, even though I was following the industry obsessively from 1975 to 1980.

It's curated by Bruce Damer, good guy and husband to my lifelong pal, singer/composer Galen Brandt. So while you're there, check out all their groovy pix from their world travels.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:15 PM

Here's Some Real Coded Anti-Semitism, Mr. Brooks  

As everyone knows by now, I am not permitted to read, for health reasons, David Brooks anymore. Yet, I could not fail to notice that Brooks riled up everyone this week by calling critics of the neocons anti-semitic and, as The Howler pointed out, lumped together responsible critics with real live certified lunatics. Since he's so sensitive to anti-Jewish propaganda, let's see if David has anything to say about this piece of bigoted garbage from the pen of Peggy Noonan:

There is a disjunction between Dean's ethnic background and his personal style. His background is eastern WASP--Park Avenue, the Hamptons, boarding school, Yale. But he doesn't seem like a WASP. I know it's not nice to deal in stereotypes, but there seems very little Thurston Howell III, or George Bush the elder for that matter, in Mr. Dean. He seems unpolished, doesn't hide his aggression, is proudly pugnacious. He doesn't look or act the part of the WASP. This may be partly because of his generation. Boomer WASPs didn't really learn How It's Done the way their forebears did.

Catch all the code words, boys and girls? Unpolished, aggressive, proudly pugnacious. Not WASP-y, more like a push Je...Well, we know about his wife, don't we?

Courtesy downwithbush.com
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:00 PM

Sistani Refuses To Endorse Provisional Government W/O Elections  

It's supposed to become a democracy, yes? Well, then, Sistani's making sense. The problem of course is that a genuine democracy in Iraq would elect a leadership as hostile to the US as it would be to Saddamites.

Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, has rejected a fresh entreaty by the interim Governing Council to endorse US plans to set up a provisional government without elections.

"The ayat Allah invoked his position that the planned transitional national assembly cannot represent the Iraqis in the ideal manner," said a statement released by Sistani's office after his latest meeting with a delegation from the US-appointed council.

"In this situation, experts think it is possible to organise fair and transparent elections in the coming months," the text said, restating Sistani's position.
 
Without an elected government, Sistani questioned Washington's right to negotiate a security agreement allowing US troops to stay in Iraq and the validity of a fundamental law to rule Iraq in the coming transition period.

Both documents "must be submitted to elected representatives of the people in order to have legitimacy."

Sistani warned the current plans for a provisional government "would create numerous problems.

Let's hope that last remark is not a threat. It sounds like it could be.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:02 PM

Quote of the Day  

Paul o'Neill:

Weeks after Bush had assured O'Neill that rumored staff changes in the economic team did not mean his job was in peril, Cheney called. "Paul, the President has decided to make some changes in the economic team. And you're part of the change," he told O'Neill. The bloodless way he was cut loose by his old chum shocked O'Neill, Suskind writes, but what came after was even more shocking. Cheney asked him to announce that it was O'Neill's decision to leave Washington to return to private life. O'Neill refused, saying "I'm too old to begin telling lies now."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:49 PM

Thanks, Eric Alterman  

Thank you, Eric for the references to an updated, and more accurate version of the Kennedy Tapes from the Missile Crisis. The original release of transcripts was, apparently, very inaccurate, according to an historian at the JFK Library. The new collection, which contains many, many other transcripts and a cd-rom with the original recordings, looks like a must for anyone seriously interested in the single most dangerous week in the world's history since that asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Also, thanks for the other references. Deeply appreciated.

But Eric, put a lid on the meshugginah silliness with Morris. His film, "The Fog of War" is not what you think it is and in no way exonerates McNamara. I can see why you would think so, as he gets to tell his story without any rebuttal. What you fail to realize is that McNamara himself is his own best rebuttal, that the more you contemplate his own story, the more holes you can poke in it. For example, in one of the uglier scenes, Mcnamara compares his sensitive nature to that of a man who immolated himself just below his window at the Pentagon. If he's so sensitive, why, having participated in what even then he knew were "war crimes" against an Asian people, did he accept the job of Secretary of Defense after turning down a Treasury Secretary appointment? Why didn't he leave when Johnson's supposed warmongering tendencies became obvious to him? Why does he carefully mince his words about Lemay's behavior during the Missile Crisis? And so on, so on, etc.

The Fog of War is not so much "about" McNamara's career as it is a work of art about a brutally conflicted soul; it doesn't answer questions at all. Rather, it poses excrutiatingly difficult questions in a relentless way, without pity or excuses, questions that the subjects of the film -McNamara and Morris himself - are barely conscious of. It is a superbly accessible postmodern "text", containing clear signs of its own deconstruction that undermines the reliability of McNamara as the narrator. As history, of course, it is infuriating as it leaves out so much that those of us who endured McNamara when he was in power well know. But as art, there has rarely been a more complicated and ambiguous portrayal in cinema of the classic subject of so many great novels: how good and evil coexist, interact and even change sides. Using the sparest of means and the cleverest of editing, Morris destroys McNamara's narrative, but preserves the sense of a brilliant, arrogant, sensitive (yes), complicated and thoroughly damaged human being. That was Morris' intent, obviously, and he succeeded in surpassing even the sublime and utterly extraordinary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (2000), the minimalist structure of which was marred by the overarching moral imperative of directly confronting Leuchter's delusional thinking on the Holocaust. With McNamara, Morris has a much smarter subject and a more revealing one.

Within the aesthetic context of the film, we don't need to know the details of McNamara's lies to realize that he is not what he says he is; everything he says, every movement of his head makes the point to beware. And the content of what he says, the lack of personal friendships (his wife excepted), his weirdly dissociated gauging of morally gray areas -like saying that even though it hastened his wife's death and gave his son ulcers, his years in Washington were good for everyone in the family - repel us the more we think about them.

No one who understands what history takes in order to be "true" gets their history from a film, even a documentary film. Likewise no one who knows what art is knows that you can't find art, or more accurately rarely find art in works of history.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:55 AM

Dick Cheney Has Some New "Other Priorities"  

It is obvious if you read the article, that the headline "Cheney Would Support Gay Marriage Ban" lets Cheney down lightly.

`What I said in 2000 was that the question of whether or not some sort of status, legal status or sanction, ought to be granted in the case of a relationship between two individuals of the same sex was historically a matter the states had decided and resolved and that is the way I preferred it,'' Cheney told the Post.

In the interview with the News, Cheney said that is still his opinion.

To say the least, this is an utterly specious position. If, say, Alabama issues marriage licenses to gay couples (dream on, I know), the issues connected with the rights of a married couple makes it all but certain that every other state must recognize that marriage as legal. To appeal to states' rights in this case is a spineless way to express support for gay marriage without coming out and saying it.(To be sure, Cheney understands this; this must be how he resolved the personally wrenching challenge of dealing with his daughter's gender preferences while professing fealty to that conservative sacred cow, states' rights.)

There's just one problem. Just as he had "other priorities" when he was a young conservative draft dodger, Cheney has "other priorities" even when it comes to his own children:

``At this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes,'' Cheney told the Post.

Translated: If the fundamentalist loons don't get some red meat this year, they could easily stay home, costing Bush/Cheney the election. So, despite the fact that an anti-marriage amendment would turn his own daughter into a second class citizen and make bastards of his grandchildren, should Mary Cheney have kids, Cheney is prepared to betray them all.

The sacrifice of one's child for political power represents such a repellent willingness to abandon fundamental principles of human decency that it can only be described as a bottomless moral cowardice. And that, in a nutshell, is why so many Americans are appalled at what Bush has done to this country. For moral cowardice so deep and so heartless that you would turn your back on your own child for worldly power is the defining characteristic of the Bush administration, despite their hypocritcal statements to the contrary.

Now if there is someone really smart working for the DNC, they will seize on Cheney's remarks and never let him forget that he said he would sell his daughter down the river to stay in power. For this is not about gay rights; this is about family values and personal character. Cheney has demonstrated his utter lack of both and we should not let the country forget it.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:39 AM