Friday Mashup (11/27/09)

1) I don’t know if anyone else noticed that the New York Times was able to discover some typos on the menu for the state dinner the White House recently held for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and his wife, Gursharan Kaur (with CNN taking note here).

However, what would really impress me would be if they weren’t quite so brainless in their feature writing (here), to say nothing of acting as a propaganda conduit for global warming denialists (here).

2) Also, get a load of the latest from U.S. House Minority Leader John “Man Tan” Boehner here…

At every turn this year, Republicans have offered better, fiscally-responsible solutions to tackle the immediate challenges facing the American people, including an economic recovery plan that would have created twice the jobs at half the cost, a budget that would impose strict caps to limit federal spending on an annual basis, and the only health care bill that would cut the deficit and consistently reduce federal spending on health care over the next two decades.

When Boehner is referring to “fiscally-responsible solutions,” would he be talking about the budget alternative noted by Nate Silver here (the one with, like, no actual numbers in it)? You know, something containing all the worst ideas from right-wing “think tanks” (here)?

And when he’s talking about an alternative health care bill, is he referring to the one noted here, with “eight or nine ideas” posted on the RNC web site?

Yes, busting on Boehner in this way is like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, but he makes the temptation irresistible when he continues to peddle such obvious nonsense.

3) And finally, former Dubya speechwriter Michael Gerson laments the demise of journalism today in the WaPo (here – hint; as far as Gerson is concerned, it’s the fault of those darned U.S. bloggers who mostly don’t report from war zones and cable TV).

Oh, and by the way, what exactly are the “lies” of Dan Rather to which Gerson refers, I wonder (here)?

Such pontifications are actually funny from someone like Gerson, who, as noted here, ignored a speech President Obama gave to evangelicals and then accused Obama of not reaching out to them.

And as noted here, Gerson said Obama should “come out strongly for policies reducing the number of abortions,” even though did just that. And this tells us how Gerson inflated his role in the development of his former boss’s AIDS initiative in Africa, otherwise known as PEPFAR, which, as I noted here, had strings attached all over the place.

Oh, and this discusses the phrase “pulling a Gerson” (linked to the post)…

“Gerson is a ‘planner,’ not a ‘plunger,’” a 2005 National Journal profile noted, “meaning that he makes a meticulous outline, which he consults during the writing process.” This is true, and equal care and intensity went into crafting the Gerson image. Colleagues were not in the outline, nor were the normal standards of discretion in White House speechwriting. People have a way of disappearing in Mike’s stories. The artful shaping of narrative and editing out of inconvenient detail was never confined to the speechwriting. (The phrase pulling a Gerson, as I recently heard it used around the West Wing, does not refer to graceful writing.) And though in (Gerson’s book) Heroic Conservatism (ugh!) Mike has doubtless offered a kind word or two for speechwriting colleagues, no man I have ever encountered was truer to the saying that, in Washington, one should never take friendship personally.

And as noted here, Dubya and his pals (including Gerson) “came into office determined to tightly control the flow of information,” which is the life blood of any decent journalist (a stretch in Gerson’s case, I know).

So the next time Gerson decides to go “tut-tut” over the “slow, sad death” of the profession to which he claims to be a member, he ought to take a good, long, hard look at himself in the mirror first before he ever decides again to waste our time with such sickeningly self-righteous drivel.

A Catalogue Of “Nothing”

This is embarrassing, even for Fix Noise.

And in response, I give you the reality-based point of view here (and that’s only as far as the end of April and doesn’t include this).

There is room for intelligent discussion about how Obama is proceeding in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other places, but of course “Clusterfox” will never be interested in intelligent discussion.

The Return Once More Of “Kristol Mess Monday”

The wanker-emeritus-in-residence of The Weakly Standard lamented the “dithering” of President Obama on Afghanistan today (here), linking once more to a poem called “Homage To A Government” written by Philip Larkin in 1969 (and with all due respect to Mr. Larkin, it should be pointed out that he didn’t serve in combat either).

Well, without trying to denigrate Larkin’s work, I think this is the proper response to Kristol, as closely as I can approximate to his inspiration…

Homage To Propagandists

This year we will leave the right-wing pundits alone
For lack of integrity, and it is all right.
Causes they denigrated, like health care reform
Disappeared in the ‘90s, and others outshone
Like PNAC signatories against Iraq. And this is all right?

It’s easy to say who wanted it to happen,
People like Kristol, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle…on all of their minds
They helped to squander our treasure a long way off, not here
This is not all right, and from what we fear
Our soldiers there didn’t make trouble happen
Though they found it anyway because of “chickenhawks” covering their behinds

Next year we may be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home due to lack of money
Their lives spent and ruined in a game
To try spreading democracy to a region enflamed
While at home with deadly stealth
Those war cheerleaders, while we looked far away, concentrated their wealth
At our expense, as our jobs and health care dwindled
In tribute to the architects of the great swindle
Who our media absolves and our religious leaders seeks prayers
And one day, their statues may adorn tree-muffed squares
Our children will not know it’s a different country
And we will be able to leave them nothing, least of all money

It’s easy to hold Kristol up to the ridicule he deserves, but it should be pointed out not only that he was perhaps the foremost media cheerleader for the Iraq war, but he was also the main saboteur of health care reform during the Clinton years. So just imagine all of the lives he has ended up negatively affecting over the last 15 years or more (when you count those who have died because they could not obtain health care coverage in this country or suffered debilitating illness, to say nothing of those in the Iraq coalition forces killed or wounded, as well as refugees from that country – the total number staggers the imagination).

And there are people who still take Kristol seriously instead of treating him like the unrepentant moral cretin that he is.

Tuesday Mashup (11/3/09)

As noted here, ten years ago today, Morgan Lee Pena, all of 2 ½ years old, died when the car in which she rode was broadsided by a driver who failed to stop for a stop sign while using his cellular phone.

With that in mind, this story tells us the following…

OXFORD, England — Inside the imposing British Crown Court here, Phillipa Curtis, 22, and her parents cried as she was remanded for 21 months to a high-security women’s prison, for killing someone much like herself. The victim was Victoria McBryde, an up-and-coming university-trained fashion designer.

Ms. Curtis had plowed her Peugeot into the rear end of Ms. McBryde’s neon yellow Fiat, which had broken down on the A40 Motorway, killing Ms. McBryde, 24, instantly.

The crash might once have been written off as a tragic accident. Ms. Curtis’s alcohol level was zero. But her phone, which had flown onto the road and was handed to the police by a witness, told a story that — under new British sentencing guidelines — would send its owner to jail.

In the hour before the crash, she had exchanged nearly two dozen messages with at least five friends, most concerning her encounter with a celebrity singer she had served at the restaurant where she worked.

They are filled with the mangled spellings and abbreviations that typify the new lingua franca of the young. “LOL did you sing to her?” a friend asks. Ms. Curtis replies by typing in an expletive and adding, “I sang the wrong song.” A last incoming message, never opened, came in seconds before the accident.

With that as evidence, Ms. Curtis was sentenced in February under 2008 British government directives that regard prolonged texting as a serious aggravating factor in “death by dangerous driving” — just like drinking — and generally recommend four to seven years in prison.

And to tell you what Pennsylvania is doing by contrast, this tells us of Senate Bill 1097 currently working its way through the legislature that “stipulates mobile telephones and hand-held communication devices. Similar to House Bill 1827, Senate Bill 1097 has exceptions built in for law enforcement and 911 calls. The fine for a violation of this law is $100. Hands-Free devices are allowed under the proposed driving law.”

H.B. 1827 stipulates a fine of $50, by the way.

As opposed to 21 months in a high-security prison for “death by dangerous driving.”

You tell which country is serious about trying to fix this problem and which one isn’t.

I believe that most people know to conduct themselves behind the wheel, but for the benefit of the few knuckleheads who may be reading this who actually don’t, I have a simple (if unoriginal) message:

Hang up and drive.

Also, I got a kick out of the following remark here from Mississippi Repug Governor Haley Barbour concerning the NY-23 U.S. congressional fiasco, in which Barbour claimed that the voters were “cheated” out of a primary between Dede Scozzafava (who of course dropped out and endorsed Dem Bill Owens) and conservative independent candidate Doug Hoffman (who, based on this, is apparently not a whiz at math).

In principle, Barbour is partly right, but all he cares about here is nursing his grudge over the fact that Hoffman wasn’t officially “blessed” by the New York State Repug politicos in advance of the general election (as opposed to that “values-voter” infidel Dede Scozzafava).

It’s hard to take seriously any pleas for good government from Barbour who, as noted here, was ordered to move the candidates for last year’s U.S. Senate race to the top of the ballot where they belonged in accordance with state law (the corrected ballot stood, by the way).

But just remember anyway that Barbour complained about the absence of a Republican primary in NY-23.

On CNN.

We’ll have to “leave it there.”

And finally, in last Sunday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman opined as follows here (just getting to this now)…

More and more lately, I find people asking me: What do you think President Obama really believes about this or that issue? I find that odd. How is it that a president who has taken on so many big issues, with very specific policies — and has even been awarded a Nobel Prize for all the hopes he has kindled — still has so many people asking what he really believes?

I don’t think that President Obama has a communications problem, per se. He has given many speeches and interviews broadly explaining his policies and justifying their necessity. Rather, he has a “narrative” problem.

…

“You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice,” said (Harvard political theorist Michael) Sandel, “and you cannot inspire shared sacrifice without a narrative that appeals to the common good — a narrative that challenges us to be citizens engaged in a common endeavor, not just consumers seeking the best deal for ourselves. Obama needs to energize the prose of his presidency by recapturing the poetry of his campaign.”

Yeah, maybe Obama can come up with something to rhyme with “Suck. On. This.,” eh, Tom?

And this was a “poetic” moment too, wasn’t it?

Monday Mashup (10/26/09)

I just have three words for this one: stay classy, Repugs.

Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik criticized the Obama Administration’s “thin-skinned, heavy-handed minions” here over the mindlessly obvious observation that Fix Noise is the media wing of the Republican Party.

Well, I don’t know how thin-skinned “Z on TV” is, but I have some evidence that he, at the very least, is a bit “heavy-handed” himself…

Here, Z. compares K.O and Rachel Maddow to Nazis (nice).

He said here that Fix Noise was “seriously questioning the administration of President Barack Obama as it pushes an agenda of massive social change not seen since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal” (when does Fix Noise “seriously” do anything, unless it’s Shep Smith going off-script and telling the truth?).

Z. compared K.O. to Joe McCarthy here with no proof (of course).

Here, Zurawik joined the hallelujah chorus deriding Dan Rather’s “disastrous” 2004 report on Dubya’s National Guard service; the criticism of “Z” focused on document minutiae but not the substance of the report describing how, among other pieces of this puzzle, “former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes in his first ever interview (said) that he had pulled strings to get the future president into the National Guard,” as noted by story producer Mary Mapes.

Here, Zurawik said he wants the White House to be “rally(ing) the spirits of the unemployed and the millions of others who fear they will soon lose jobs” instead of criticizing Fix Noise (huh?)

Oh, and “Z” expressed a bit of umbrage here over the fact that MSNBC airs episodes of “Locked Up” over the weekends in between news coverage here (and who else actually cares about that?).

Well then, on further review as they say, if “Z” gets worked into a froth over such a mindless objection (the “Locked Up” business), then maybe he is a bit thin-skinned after all.

Update 10/29/09: God, Zurawik is such a tool (here – h/t Atrios).

I try to avoid Zurawik’s fellow villager pundit Kathleen Parker, but her most recently concocted dreck (here) on the amendment sponsored by Sen. Al Franken in response to the ordeal suffered by KBR contractor Jamie Leigh Jones (pictured) is too odious to ignore…

The amendment, which passed Oct. 6 by a 68 to 30 vote, was intended to prevent the Pentagon from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve disputes over sexual assault and discrimination through arbitration rather than through the courts.

The impetus behind the amendment was the 2005 horror story of (Jones), then a 20-year-old employee of Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, who alleged that she was drugged, gang-raped and held captive for 24 hours in a shipping container without food or water. When Jones sought legal recourse, the defense contractor argued that, under its employment contract, she had to pursue her complaint through arbitration rather than the courts.

So far so good with Parker – but…

No one hearing details of the alleged assault wants to be on the side of those who attacked her — or the company that refused to help her. If you’re a remotely savvy politician, that’s not a battle you want to join.

How about a politician possessing a modicum of basic human decency? What does “savvy” have to do with trying to comprehend Jones’ horrifying ordeal?

One might assume, therefore, that there must be some reasonable explanation for 30 Republican senators taking a position that would invite vilification. It’s true that Halliburton donates seven times more campaign money to Republicans than to Democrats, according to http://CampaignMoney.com. Then again, while we’re crunching numbers, journalists donate disproportionately to Democrats — more than five times as much as they give to the GOP.

The implication that campaign funding for either party had anything whatsoever to do with deciding to do the right thing here is almost too repugnant for words.

And the only fault that Parker can find with the 30 senators who opposed the Franken amendment is that they “haven’t been brilliant in explaining their position” (of course, for these 30 utterly clueless and heartless life forms, they’re lucky I suppose that Parker is here to explain their position for them).

See, according to Parker, the amendment was opposed by the 30 senators, the Department of Defense and the White House because if was “overbroad,” which may or may not be true. However, according to TPM here…

The White House does say it supports “the intent of the amendment,” spokesman Tommy Vietor told TPM.

Vietor also said the White House is working with legislators to rework the amendment “to make sure it is enforceable.”

The Senate legislation, part of a defense appropriations bill, must still be merged with a House bill before it can be signed.

And just as a reminder, here are more details on what Jones endured, which led to the Franken amendment…

Ms Jones was working in Iraq during Iraqi Operation Freedom for KRB when she was brutally sexually assaulted. When she reported the gang rape, she was held imprisoned in a shipping container by two armed KBR guards until she could call the Embassy to reach her father, after which she was rescued.

…

Ms Jones needed reconstructive surgery due to the brutal nature of her attack. Reconstructive surgery! And the assailants claim it was “consensual”. Her breasts were misshapen and torn from the wall of her chest, among other painful injuries she sustained.

Of course, far be it for Parker to include all of this in her screed, a typically “through the looking glass” bit of bogus Beltway blather trying to defend the utterly indefensible.

I think I speak for many when I say that I think Jones is a hero. I cannot comprehend her bravery, and the very least we can do to honor it is to pass the amendment with whatever modifications for enforceability are necessary so that it is signed into law at the earliest possible moment.

Which would thus subvert the obstruction of at least 30 ignorant white men who only want Jones to shut up and go away.

Sweeping More “Turd Blossom” BS Under The “Afghan Rug”

“Bush’s Brain” opined as follows in the Murdoch Street Journal yesterday…

In an interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said President Obama is now asking tough questions about Afghanistan “that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side.” It was a not so subtle dig at Mr. Obama’s predecessor and was meant to distract from the White House’s mishandling of the war.

The Bush administration did in fact conduct a top-to-bottom strategic review of Afghanistan in 2008. That review was provoked by two developments.

The first was that Pakistan’s government wobbled starting in 2006. It cut deals with tribes that created safe havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda and then became distracted from fighting terrorism as President Pervez Musharraf was pressured to leave office and replaced by a new democratic government. The second was al Qaeda’s decision to refocus its efforts on Afghanistan after having been driven from Iraq.

In response, I’d like to provide this link that tells us that, while the threat of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq was quite real, to say nothing of the suicide attacks, “Pentagon documents leaked to the Washington Post (around April 2006) regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in Iraq is fabricated.” And just to refresh our memories, this McClatchy story tells us the pains the Bushco regime went through to try and fabricate a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

And as far as the Obama White House’s supposed “mishandling of the war,” Cenk Uygur “keeps his eye on the ball,” so to speak, by telling us the following (here)…

Right now, there is a debate as to what President Obama should do in Afghanistan. As there should be. Should he send in more troops? Does it make sense to escalate the war without a viable partner in the Afghan government? Will this be his Vietnam? Woh, woh, woh … whose Vietnam?

What is not being talked about enough is the disastrous situation George Bush left for Obama in Afghanistan (as he did in just about every aspect of government). What the hell did Bush do in Afghanistan for over seven years? Apparently, not a damn thing.

Do you know how many troops Bush had in Afghanistan in early 2008? He had an unbelievably small contingent of 26,000 troops in the whole country. At the same time, he had 160,000 troops in Iraq. I don’t know if you know this, but Iraq did not attack us. The people who did attack us on 9/11 lived in … Afghanistan.

So Bush had 26K troops in Afghanistan, and we’re debating about whether or not we should have almost four times that amount now.

And before any of this occurred, Afghanistan had been our radar, as it were, since the Soviets were driven out of the country, mainly for the following reason (as noted here)…

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

The Alternet article discusses in length how the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas, an Argentine energy company, who had leases to drill for oil in the region…

…and by November of 1996 (Bridas) had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

…

Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban’s U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn’t budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden — two months before 9/11 — with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

And Think Progress tells us of the following from here, as the Iraq war and the neglected Afghanistan war dragged on…

JANUARY 24, 2006: Army has become “thin green line”
Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a “thin green line” that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon. [AP, 1/24/06]

OCTOBER 4, 2006: Iraq and Afghanistan war vets say military is overstretched, underequipped. 63 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended. 67 percent of Army and Marine veterans believe their forces are overextended. [VoteVets Action Fund, 10/4/2006]

OCTOBER 19, 2006: Staff on the House Veterans Affairs Committee report that the “number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled — from nearly 4,500 to more than 9,000 — from October 2005 through June 2006.” [McClatchy, 10/18/2006]

And Bush’s “boy genius” tells us more…

There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the administration’s war deliberations. The president’s senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush’s senior political adviser.

For Rove to imply that he separated the wars from politics is laughable in the extreme; here is another reminder…

Implying that Democratic Party liberals were little better than traitors, Rove continued, “Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see … Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.”

Yep, I would call that an example of the “heavy whiff” of something, but not politics (certainly befitting of Rove’s nickname, though).

“Decisive support” of a new Afghan strategy is certainly required, though (one to help remedy the failures of the old strategy, or what passed for one, by Rove and the rest of the disreputable Bushco bunch).

Update 10/25/09: I guess it shouldn’t at this point any more, but it continually astonishes me how much our lapdog press seems to crave pro-Bushco BS like this (a “secret plan,” huh?).

Update 10/27/09: And silly me for thinking that Rove was telling the truth about supposedly not participating in “war cabinet meetings”; maybe he didn’t, but he’s a liar for saying that he never participated in high-level national security meetings, as noted here.

Oh, But A Change Of Heart Comes Slow

(Note: That’s a lyric from the U2 song, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.”)

I really wasn’t going to comment on the recent New York Times Op-Ed by Bono about “Rebranding America,” but I feel that I have to after reading this ridiculous Opinion column from Fix Noise about it today…

It means something to have been born breathing American air and waking day after day in this our country. Americans might not always be able to put into words the core features of their “brand” but they know them deeply and, more important, they know what those features are not.

This is the problem with someone like Bono telling us how to rebrand. He’s like that outside consultant who might have one or two insights into how to fix a part of a company. While he might have a couple of good ideas he doesn’t understand the entire culture, and more importantly he also doesn’t get why it has succeeded, even as it has occasionally stumbled, to fundamentally satisfy the needs of its Target Market (i.e., it’s own citizens) and even the needs of the world.

The more glaring problem with Bono’s approach is that his rebranding idea is a rebranding of America for the left. This is simply not how rebranding works. You can’t take a portion of what you want to rebrand –be it a company or a country—and think that you will succeed by ignoring the core characteristics of the rest of it.

Author John Tantillo, described as a “marketing expert,” also tells us that America believes in a “strong defense,” “individual opportunity” (as if most other countries somehow don’t, I wonder to myself), and, of course, has “never been about leading a life without risk and creating a big government that makes sure everything is taken care of” (which I’m sure is news to anyone covered by Medicare, Social Security, or health benefits through the VA).

All of Tantillo’s comments lead me to wonder whether he even so much as read a single word of what Bono wrote, so please allow me to provide some excerpts (including the following quote from President Obama, the basis for Bono’s whole “rebranding” argument)…

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

They’re not my words, they’re your president’s. If they’re not familiar, it’s because they didn’t make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.

The millennium goals, for those of you who don’t know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They’re a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn’t there in 2000, but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.

…

These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

All right … I don’t speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don’t even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.

In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.

…

…America shouldn’t turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. Obama won the Nobel, the United States was ranked as the most admired country in the world, leapfrogging from seventh to the top of the Nation Brands Index survey — the biggest jump any country has ever made. Like the Nobel, this can be written off as meaningless … a measure of Mr. Obama’s celebrity (and we know what people think of celebrities).

But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.

And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.

I have to admit, fairly or unfairly, that I get a bit tired of Bono’s brand of pontification, and there are more reputable individuals on the planet he could choose to “hobnob” with besides Bill Gates. However, I know he speaks from an international perspective that is sorely lacking in our discourse, and often ridiculed when we do hear it, as we’ve seen above.

And given that, I would only say to Tantillo that “you’ve been running away from what you don’t understand.”

(Another U2 lyric, from “Mysterious Ways” – so clever, I know…smile.)

It’s “Iran-A-Muck Monday” With The Mittster!

In case anyone had forgotten about former Repug presidential hopeful and former Governor “Penumbra Of Angst” (here), a certain Willard Mitt Romney decided to let us know he’s still around (here)…

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Mitt Romney has a message for the Obama administration: Stop talking to Iran. Period.

“The Iranian leadership is the greatest immediate threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany,” Romney said in a speech Monday to the pro-Israel group AIPAC at their national summit in San Diego, according to excerpts provided to CNN.

Funny, but I would consider al Qaeda to be “the greatest immediate threat to the world,” but considering that the above analysis came from a guy who said “it’s not worth heaven and earth” to try and capture bin Laden (here), I can’t say that I’m surprised.

And I would say that Romney has no room to criticize anyone on Iran, considering that, as noted here, Romney’s one-time employer and the company he founded has links to recent Iranian business deals…

Romney joined Boston-based Bain & Co., a management consulting firm, in 1978 and worked there until 1984. He was CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm, from 1984 to 1999, despite a two-year return as Bain & Co.’s chief executive officer from 1991 to 1992.

Bain & Co. Italy, described in company literature as “the Italian branch of Bain & Co.,” received a $2.3 million contract from the National Iranian Oil Co., in September 2004. Its task was to develop a master plan so NIOC — the state oil company of Iran — could become one of the world’s top oil companies, according to Iranian and U.S. news accounts of the deal.

Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that Romney started and made him a multimillionaire, teamed up with the Haier Group, a Chinese appliance maker that has a factory in Iran, in an unsuccessful 2005 buyout effort.

Also, this September 2006 story tells us that, when Romney was governor of that liberal Gomorrah Massachusetts (wink), he denied any security from his state to Mohammed Khatami, former Iranian president and a legitimate moderate who was visiting to speak at Harvard.

Now, while I do not cut Iran any slack because it is a run by a regime of criminals, I would say that it still is incumbent upon us to look for ways to initiate some kind of a dialogue with them, however slight the excuse may be; this news story tells us of a terrorist attack on Iran, quite likely originating from Pakistan, something you could definitely consider “chickens coming home to roost” given Iran’s support of Hamas. However, I still think this is an opportunity for us to remind Iran that, even though they sponsor terrorism, they have something to gain from “cleaning up their act,” especially when they face the threat from violence that other countries face.

But of course, Romney has other thoughts, being the good little Repug that he is…

“The notion that Hamas and violent jihadists are motivated by ’shared interests’ and ‘common goals’ is naïve in the extreme and dangerous to the entire free world,”

If The Mittster really believes that, though, then doesn’t that invalidate his Now And Forever You Godless Commie Lu-bu-ruul And Just Because That Kenyan American-Pretend Pre-zee-dint O’Yours Is In Charge Don’t Think We Ain’t Comin’ Back in 2010 Global War On Terra! Terra! Terra!?

Of course, compared to whatever latest scribblings happen to appear on Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin’s Facebook page on this subject, such sentiments from Romney are positively statesman-like for his party, however wrong they may be (and if that isn’t a pathetic commentary, I don’t know what is).

Friday Mashup (10/16/09)

I really try not to waste everyone’s time with trying to refute the nonsense of some of the right-wing media’s most visible suspects, but I have to say something about a certain Flush Limbore being denied a shot at owning the St. Louis Rams football team.

As noted here, this has provided an opportunity to assorted culprits in the wingnutosphere to claim that Flush lost out because of “political correctness,” resurrecting some quotes that may have been falsely attributed to him (such as supposedly claiming that James Earl Ray deserved a posthumous Medal of Honor and slavery keep the streets safe…or something).

Yes, well, I have an extremely hard time feeling sympathy for an individual who used some really cowardly code language to criticize Donavan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles (I’ve gotten ticked off at McNabb in the past, speaking for only myself, but I would never imagine that there was a “social concern” in somehow allowing him to become a top-flight NFL quarterback). And for more supposedly “color-blind” Limbore commentary, click here.

Also, aside from his typical race-baiting antics, Limbore seems to have a preoccupation with a particular portion of the anatomy (Salon.com took note of that here; I’ll merely let you choose to read the incidents in question for yourself, dear reader, to find out how truly odious an individual he is).

Beyond all of this, sportswriter Dave Zirin of The Nation tells us the following here (from HuffPo)…

(Flush’s) ownership group, led by St. Louis Blues boss Dave Checketts, dumped Rush without ceremony or pity. Checketts issued a statement saying, “It has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis. As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion.”

His comments came the day after Rush insisted on his show that they would fight this to the bitter end. But Checketts, like most owners a long time donor to right wing causes, had no desire to link arms with Limbaugh for a public crusade. You might think Rush would have gone on the air to slam Checketts’s absence of a spine. You might think he would have called out the hypocrisy of NFL owners who give prodigiously to right wing candidates and causes, but insist on doing it in the shadows. You might think he would rail against those who see their conservative support as something sordid and best done behind closed doors. You might think Rush would howl at the moon at those who think that being an open, unreconstructed right winger, actually hurts the almighty bottom line. You might think he would say that the right wing has failed a major test by refusing to back him. Or maybe you might think he would take a different tack and accept personal responsibility for why a group of billionaires wouldn’t want his presence affecting their bottom line.

But no.

Flush “accept personal responsibility”? That makes about as much sense as the Eagles continuing to run that idiotic “wildcat” formation with Michael Vick, which, thus far, has generated comic relief but not much else.

This Op-Ed on the Fix Noise site from Doug Schoen tells us the following…

The White House is making a profound political mistake by targeting Fox News and deliberately deciding to exclude them from interviews and access to the administration. And not only that, they are making a mistake on both a practical and a political level.

Frankly, it just doesn’t make sense.

Actually, what doesn’t make sense here is Schoen’s supposition that the White House intends to cut off access to the “news network”; as White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out here…

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

And here is more Schoen shilling for his corporate “betters” by the way (so he definitely knows about “profound political mistakes” – and it gets better with Schoen)…

Fox News’ news programs are straightforward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Most importantly, Fox News’ audience involves a substantial number of independents and moderate Republicans who should have access to, and might be persuaded by, some of the administration’s arguments. To simply believe that you can target Democrats and some of the independents through the rest of the mainstream media, and write off an audience of between two and four million people, is just plain illogical.

I love the way that Schoen basically assumes that the “blogosphere” (still don’t like that word, but can’t think of a better one) doesn’t exist, as if our corporate media is the only means by which voters can be accessed.

And if you want to get an idea as to exactly why the Obama White House would look upon Fix Noise this way, I think this story gives a bit of a hint (and I think you can consider this as a response to Dunn’s entirely accurate comments, by the way).

Update: Good – this is all they understand.

Update 10/19/09: Yep, I think this is curious also (h/t Atrios).

Update 10/21/09: And here is some perspective on this, by the way.

Finally, U.S. House Rep Virginia Foxx wrote the following from here…

This week I introduced the Fairness in Representation Act, legislation that requires the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The decennial census is not currently required to collect data regarding the legal status of immigrants in the U.S. This means that states with high numbers of illegal immigrants stand to gain additional seats in Congress in the once-every-10-years process of reapportionment. This also means that the law-abiding residents of states with low numbers of illegal immigrants stand to lose seats to those states with high numbers of illegal immigrants.

That is not fair and equal representation in Congress.

Sooo…basically, because the Repugs couldn’t get their act together on immigration reform when they ran Congress, they decided to “punt” the whole issue of trying to find out exactly how many illegal immigrants we have in this country to the Census Bureau.

Nice; also, this USA Today story tells us about the obstacles that Senate Repugs “Diaper Dave” Vitter and Bob Bennett ran into when they tried to do the same thing as Foxx, namely as follows…

The amendment comes less than six months before 2010 Census questionnaires are mailed to 135 million households. About 425 million forms have already been printed, according to the bureau. Some are in different languages; others are duplicates that will go to houses that do not respond to the first mailing.

The Census Bureau is launching an outreach campaign to persuade Americans that next year’s national head count will be a simple, painless process.

The “Take 10″ campaign promotes the idea that the Census form has only 10 questions and should take just 10 minutes to answer. Adding questions would require designing new forms. “It’s operationally impossible,” says Steve Jost, Census associate communications director. “The forms are printed, folded. We have bilingual forms. … We’re printing 1.5 million forms a day.”

…

Some Latino groups such as the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders are calling for immigrants to boycott the Census unless laws are changed to give those here illegally a chance to gain legal status.

“Already the public fears that the Census is too intrusive,” says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which opposes both the amendment and the boycott.

“Asking about citizenship status “would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is,” Vargas says.

Just file this under another failed attempt at intelligent governance by this country’s minority political party in Washington, D.C. (and God help any illegals who could be victims of hate crime, since Foxx has an awful record on that score too, as noted here).

Update 10/21/09: More from the New York Times on this here…

A NOLA/Katrina Reminder

For the president, who is visiting the “Crescent City” today…

Update: And speaking of matters pertaining to Louisiana, I haven’t made up my mind based on this as to whether Mary Landrieu is a hopelessly co-opted, bought-and-paid-for shill doing the bidding of the health insurance companies, or merely a dunce.