Leno at his best:

Insight magazine, which is a pretty conservative publication, they report Dick Cheney will resign by 2007. Well, I mean, sure. Oil is $60, Halliburton has Iraqi contracts, Dubai has all our seaports. His work is done.

-- Jay Leno

Alito's ties to the religious right

Maybe the thank you letter Justice Alito sent to James Dobson has come to your attention. I want to share with you what Americans United for Separation of Church and State has to say about it in an article entitled, "Alito Thank-You Letter To Religious Right Leader Is Grossly Inappropriate, Says Americans United":

New High Court Justice Should Follow Command Of Constitution, Not Dobson, Asserts Church-State Watchdog Group

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito has sent a cloying thank-you note to Focus on the Family head James C. Dobson, a move Americans United for Separation of Church and State says is further evidence the new justice is firmly in the pocket of the Religious Right.

“Justice Alito should follow the commands of the Constitution, not the orders of Dobson and the Religious Right,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “This note strongly suggests that Alito is carrying out a right-wing agenda instead of being a justice for all.

“This is grossly inappropriate,” said Lynn. “Alito sounds like a political candidate doing a victory lap and thanking his backers rather than being a fair and independent judge.”

The Associated Press reported today Dobson received a six-paragraph personal note from Alito. In the letter, Alito thanked Dobson for backing his nomination to the Supreme Court.

Read the note, “This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support during the past few challenging months. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family during this period.”

Alito went on to write, “As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me” and expressed his desire for a personal meeting with Dobson.

Dobson and other Religious Right leaders enthusiastically backed Alito’s confirmation because they think he will restrict civil rights and civil liberties and rule against church-state separation.

The implication, of course, is that Alito is mindful of the trust Dobson's organization has placed in him. Sounds like he's been bought and sold.

Archbishop Williams on Guantanamo

Well, most people who know me well know that I'm disappointed in Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury because of the way he's pandering to the reactionary fundamentalists in the world-wide Anglican Communion. But on the issue of indefinite detentions he has shown some courage as is reported in an article entitled, "Anglican Leader Criticizes Guantanamo, Terrorism":

The leader of the world's Anglicans branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay an "extraordinary legal anomaly" on Sunday and said it set a dangerous precedent for dictators around the world.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans, also described Islamist extremism as "appalling" and terrorism as "an insult to God and man."

"I think what we've got in Guantanamo is an extraordinary legal anomaly ... creating a new category of custody," Williams said in an interview with BBC television in Sudan during a visit there with the United Nations World Food Programme.

"These are people who don't have the sort of legal access we would probably assume to be important," he said, referring to the nearly 500 foreigners held at the naval base in Cuba.

"Any message given that any state can just override some of the basic habeas corpus-type provisions is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the world, now and in the future," Williams said.

"What, in 10 years time, are people going to be able to say about a system that tolerates this?"

The Anglican Church has frequently joined human rights groups is condemning the indefinite detentions and lack of legal rights for prisoners at the camp.

Only 10 Guantanamo detainees have been formally charged with a crime and U.N. rights investigators have urged Washington to close the camp.

Former detainees, lawyers representing inmates and U.N. human rights investigators have accused the United States of using torture at Guantanamo, a charge denied by the Pentagon.

It's so stupid for the Pentagon to deny they're torturing people. We all know that they're doing it. President Bush even had is so-called "signing statement" that he claims exempts him from the law condemning torture. I guess it's the old propaganda rule: repeat a big lie often enough and long enough and it "becomes" the truth. It is, of course, unspeakably revolting.

More on Katrina

I've posted on this before but I really want you to see the editorial from the Baltimore Sun on Bush's behavior during his briefing on Katrina. Here's part of what it says:

No one who watches the Aug. 28 video of Mr. Bush in a conference room at his Texas ranch receiving briefings - from Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Max Mayfield, of the National Hurricane Center - can say the president wasn't warned.

Mr. Bush was directly told that the approaching storm was frighteningly dangerous, New Orleans' levees might not hold, and there was a big potential for catastrophic damage and deaths - warnings that, of course, turned out to be sadly prophetic.

And here's the rub: The president sat and listened, but his level of interest was such that he didn't ask a single question. Not one. Not about anything.

Apart from Mr. Bush's even more devastating bait-and-switch on Iraq, can there be any graver indictment of this president?

Of course the White House spin on this is that the president was "fully engaged". Why do they need to say it if it was true? Was he even truly listening? Methinks they protest too much.

Distressed dolphins

Global warming is now affecting the dolphins in a negative way. I'm sharing with you an article called, "Dolphins Discovered Fleeing Warming Tropical Waters". Here's part of what it says:

(Miami, Florida) Marine researchers who have been observing the same pod of dolphins off Florida's eastern coast for three years have now, for the first time, photographed the dolphins swimming directly northward.

"These bottlenose dolphins, possibly the smartest creatures on Earth, were observed swimming directly northward", said Prof. Bonita Krillman. "Given the recently observed warming of the tropical oceans, we theorize that this pod is heading poleward in search of cooler waters".

Underwater listening devices, used to pick up the normal playful squeals of the fun-loving dolphins, recorded squeals with a noticably different timbre, the researchers reported. "They sounded more terrified than playful", claimed Crystal Dearing, a graduate student working toward a degree in Anthropogenic Environmental Disasters at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. "They sounded distressed and fearful".

The scientists, who perform their work aboard the research ship "Gaia's Revenge" were noticeably shaken by the observation of the dolphin pod's behavior. "We were performing our usual tasks -- photographing and communing with the pod -- when someone yelled, 'Oh my God! They are travelling directly northward!'. We were stunned at the obvious implications of this unusual behavior", related Ms. Dearing.

You know, we're only going to be getting more news like this as the warming progresses. It's horrible what we have done to the earth - and to other innocent sentient beings.

Another article from the same website is entitled, "Polar Bears "Dropping Like Flies" From Heat Exhaustion". We already knew they were drowning because the ice they usually swim to is melting. Now it seems there are times that they just can't keep going due to rising temperatures.

Class warfare

Here's an excerpt from a depressing article by Stan Moore:

The ratio of rich to middle class to poor is less and less relevant in America, with the middle class dropping continually and headed towards poverty, where there is no political power. Soon, it will be rich vs. poor in America, and the rich will have sewed up the deal, with spying, martial law (if "necessary") and claims of terrorism against any citizen who resists this infernal process.

It's class warfare, and if you aren't worth a million dollars in America in the near future, you won't be worth much at all. Your kids can join the military and go fight to protect the wealthy. That will be job prospect number one for America's youth in the decades ahead. One day, the memories of making union-scale wages at the automobile factory will be a thing of the past. Unions will be long gone. Service class wages will be set low. Poverty, hunger, and violence will expand as the standard of living sinks like a rock.

As I said, depressing. And true. And exactly what the neo-cons want.

Bush and flattery

Oh my goodness. You've just got to go over to Smirking Chimp and read Sidney Blumenthal's latest. It's called "The imprisoned president" and it gets started like this:

Republicans representative of their permanent establishment have recently and quietly sent emissaries to President Bush, like diplomats to a foreign ruler isolated in his forbidden city, to probe whether he could be persuaded to become politically flexible. These ambassadors were not connected to the elder Bush or his closest associate, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was purged in 2005 from the president's foreign intelligence advisory board and scorned by the current president.

Scowcroft privately tells friends who ask if he could somehow help that Bush would never turn to him for advice. So, in one case, a Republican wise man, a prominent lawyer in Washington who had served in the Reagan White House, sought no appointments or favours and was thought to be unthreatening to Bush, gained an audience with him. In a gentle tone, he explained that many presidents had difficult second terms, but that by adapting their approaches they ended successfully, as President Reagan had.

Bush instantly replied with a vehement blast. He would not change. He would stay the course. He would not follow the polls. The Republican wise man tried again. Oh, no, he didn't mean anything about polls. But Bush fortified his wall of self-defensiveness and let fly with another heated riposte that he would not change.

Later Blumenthal talks about how the president demands flattery and that this is how Condi Rice and Karen Hughes have risen so high. The article ends this way:

The greater Bush's difficulties, the more precipitously he falls in the polls, the increased frequency with which he is beseeched by anxious Republicans and the harsher the realities, the tighter he clings to his self-image. Cheney and the others encourage his illusions, at least partly because the more intensely Bush embraces the heroic conception of himself, the more he resists change and the firmer their grip.

"It is an infallible rule," Machiavelli wrote in his chapter on flatterers, "that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised, unless by chance he leaves himself entirely in the hands of one man who rules him in everything, and happens to be a very prudent man. In this case he may doubtless be well governed, but it would not last long, for that governor would in a short time deprive him of the state."

Well, that "governor" is undoubtedly Cheney. But Cheney's health is likely to keep him from depriving Bush of the state. But perhaps Blumenthal means that, in effect, Cheney has already deprived Bush of the state and that Bush is merely a figurehead.

Who knows how the rest of the presidential term will play out? I certainly don't but I can be confident that it won't be a pretty picture.

Friday cat blogging!

Henry

Photo by Ellie Finlay

Ponder this:

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

-- Gandhi

Antarctica

All right. The ice sheet is melting. The Washington Post reports on it in an article entitled, "Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting Rapidly":

The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper that provides the first evidence that the sheet's total mass is shrinking significantly.

The new findings, which are being published today in the journal Science, suggest that global sea level could rise substantially over the next several centuries.

It is one of a slew of scientific papers in recent weeks that have sought to gauge the impact of climate change on the world's oceans and lakes. Just last month two researchers reported that Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, and a separate paper in Science today predicts that by the end of this century lakes and streams on one-fourth of the African continent could be drying up because of higher temperatures.

The new Antarctic measurements, using data from two NASA satellites called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), found that the amount of water pouring annually from the ice sheet into the ocean -- equivalent to the amount of water the United States uses in three months -- is causing global sea level to rise by 0.4 millimeters a year. The continent holds 90 percent of the world's ice, and the disappearance of even its smaller West Antarctic ice sheet could raise worldwide sea levels by an estimated 20 feet.

Now here're some facts I got from a comment off of AMERICAblog:

1. Mt. Killamanjaro ice free first time in 11,000 years.

2. CO2 highest in over 650,000 years by 30%

3. Arctic Ecosystem nose diving

4. Weather patterns changing

5. Massive bird kills due to migrating algae

6. Methane escaping into atmosphere (last time this happened the Earth experienced its largest extinction ever)

7. Probably beyond the tipping point (irrev)

8. Ocean temperature increase now known to be due to hydrocarbons.

9. Rising sea levels expected to inundate and destroy coastal ecosystems

10. Mass extinction is probable.

But hey, the GOP and their drug induced spokesman, Lush Limba, says all is 'ok'; that all this shit about climate change is just left wing communist conspiratorial garbage.

It makes me hope there really is a Judgment Day so that these people will have to come to terms with what they've done to the earth.

Gasoline and vanillin from cattle dung

Now this is truly amazing. Here's a CNN report entitled, "Scientists extract gasoline from cattle dung".

Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, said his team has successfully extracted 1.4 milliliters (0.042 ounces) of gasoline from every 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.

"The new technology will be a boon for livestock breeders" to reduce the burden of disposing of large amounts of waste, Shibusawa said.

About 500,000 metric tons (551,155 U.S. tons) of cattle dung are produced each year in Japan, he said.
...
In a separate experiment revealing another unusual business potential for cow dung, another group of researchers has successfully extracted an aromatic ingredient of vanilla from cattle dung, said Miki Tsuruta, a Sekisui Chemical Co. spokeswoman.

The extracted ingredient, vanillin, can be used as fragrance in shampoo and candles, she said.

Just thought you should know.

God, he's stupid

Here's a comment off of AMERICAblog:

Here's what Chimpy said when he landed in Pakistan:

"I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world."

Of course, first the Pakistanis will have to learn to speak Arabic.

The man is an embarrassment. Seriously.

Why we're doomed as a nation

You're not going to believe this. Or maybe you will. Please click through and read this short article and then you'll understand why Americans are happy to give away their birthright without so much as a fare-thee-well. Here's the article: "Americans' answer to what are your rights? 'D'oh'"

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Most Americans have an easier time naming members of the cartoon Simpson family than listing the five freedoms granted by the nation's founders, a survey by a museum released on Wednesday said.

Here's a hint: one of them is not the right to own and raise pets, an error committed by one in five respondents.

Half of 1,000 Americans randomly surveyed by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum could name at least two of the five members of Fox Television's Simpson family, the stars of the network's long-running show.

But just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment -- about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV's top-rated "American Idol."

Just 8 percent could recall three First Amendment freedoms.

I'm sorry to be so pessimistic today but, honestly, after reading this I just don't think we even deserve to be free.

More warnings

While we're on the subject of warnings that Bush received, it seems he was warned of civil war in Iraq back in 2003. The article I'm linking here is entitled, "Knight Ridder: White House Warned of Civil War in Iraq in 2003". Here's how it gets started:

NEW YORK In an article distributed by Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau late Tuesday, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report that U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House, starting in 2003, “that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.”

Among the warnings was a National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2003 that concluded the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops. Its existence had not been previously disclosed to a wide public audience.

“The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration policymakers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time,” Landay and Strobel relate.“

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists - even as the U.S. intelligence community was warning otherwise.”

So, he doesn't listen to his own intelligence people. He thinks it's just fine to make up his own facts.

Katrina warnings

All right. This is just disgusting. We now have footage of Bush being warned that the levees could give way and we have proof that he simply lied when he said nobody anticipated the breaching of the levees. The article I'm linking for you is an AP report entitled, "Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina". Now the White House spin is that Bush was "engaged" during the briefing. Suuuure. He didn't ask a single question. How engaged is that? Here's an excerpt for you:

WASHINGTON - In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

So the president thinks bravado - "We are fully prepared" - is all that is needed. Disgust is really too mild a word for what I'm feeling upon learning of all this.

34%

That's the president's current approval rating according to a CBS poll.

Matthew Rothschild analyzes the new poll numbers in an article entitled, "Bush's support finally peels off". Here's something he says:

(Those serving in Iraq remain confused about why Bush put them there. An astronomical 85% said they were there "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks," though he played no role. And 77% said they were there "to stop Saddam from protecting Al Qaeda in Iraq," though there were no operational links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, according to the 9/11 Commission.)

With discontent in the ranks and among the public, Bush is fast losing the popularity needed to govern and command effectively, though he never had the ability to do so in the first place.

Only 17% of the American public says Bush cares about people like them, according to the CBS poll. And his unfavorable to favorable rating is at a dismal 53% to 29% level. (Cheney's is also abysmal: 46% unfavorable to 18% favorable.)

America is finally waking up to Bush's incompetence, cronyism, recklessness, and lawlessness.

It's been a long slumber.

It's really amazing that the poll numbers are as low as they are given the massive ignorance out there.

That ports deal

Makes sense to me:

But, excuse me, how would you think President Bush would feel if we said to him, 'Okay, let's have your Secret Service detail be taken over by the United Arab Emirates? If it's okay for all of us, let's have the Arabs protect you, and just hope that ticking sound is Dick Cheney's pacemaker.'

- - Bill Maher

Are we there yet?

Have we become a dictatorship yet? Take a look at what Paul Craig Roberts says in "Twilight of the hegemony: From superpower to tinhorn dictatorship?" Here's the telling excerpt:

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush's second term. Whether any American has civil rights will be decided by the discretionary power of federal officials. The public in general will tolerate the soft dictatorship as its discretionary powers will mainly be felt by those few who challenge it.

The congressional elections this coming November is the last chance for for Americans to reaffirm the separation of powers that is the basis of their civil liberties. Unless the voters correct their mistake of putting both the executive and legislative branches in the hands of the same party and deliver the House or the Senate to the Democrats, there is nothing on the domestic scene to stand in the way of more power, and less accountability, being accumulated in the executive.

The Democrats have been a totally ineffective opposition and might not inspire any voter response other than apathy. Rather than vote for a cowardly party that is afraid to defend the Constitution, voters might simply not vote at all.

In this unfortunate event, the only check on the Bush regime is its own hubris.

I guess Roberts is calling the dictatorship "soft" because most people aren't even noticing that it's happening. But it doesn't feel "soft" to me. It feels just horrible. And I wonder what's going to happen to those of us who have spoken out during this transition. I truly fear for our country if the Democrats don't take back either the House or the Senate later this year.

Dire warning

The Guardian has published another disturbing article on global warming. It's called, "Climate scientists issue dire warning". Here's part of what it says:

The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

A draft of the next influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will tell politicians that scientists are now unable to place a reliable upper limit on how quickly the atmosphere will warm as carbon dioxide levels increase. The report draws together research over the past five years and will be presented to national governments in April and made public next year. It raises the possibility of the Earth's temperature rising well above the ceiling quoted in earlier accounts.

Such an outcome would have severe consequences, such as the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and disruption of the Gulf Stream ocean current.

The shift in position comes as Tony Blair is expected to pledge today to work towards a date for stabilising international greenhouse gas emissions when he meets Stop Climate Chaos, the climate change equivalent of Make Poverty History. The group is campaigning for a target date of 2015 for stabilisation, saying a later date would endanger the planet.
...
The IPCC's removal of the upper temperature estimation is posited on new predictions about how the atmosphere would react to the carbon blanket wrapped around it. The three previous reports assumed that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase average global temperature by between 1.5 and 4.5C. Since then, computer models have foreseen increases as high as 11C, and some scientists wanted the naturally conservative IPCC to raise the upper end of the range. Others said such a move would be increase would be misleading and alarmist.

According to sources who have seen it, the draft now assumes a doubling of carbon dioxide would cause a likely temperature rise of between 2 and 4.5C, but says higher increases are possible.

The shift follows several high profile studies convincing some scientists the atmosphere may be much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than they had thought. Peter Cox, a leading climate expert at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Winfrith, Dorset, said: "The scientific agenda has moved from improving the predictions to thinking about what are the chances of something awful happening."

Something awful has already happened and it's only going to get worse. I think we need to reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that humans will become extinct at some point during this century. I have certainly read that prediction before and all the news coming out about climate change indicates that it is a distinct possibility.

He tells it like it is

I owe Lisa over at All Hat No Cattle for this one:

Jack Cafferty, CNN's resident curmudgeon, is drawing some flak for his rhetorical bombshells.

In a typical rant, Cafferty, a New York local anchor for two decades who now delivers his short bursts on "The Situation Room," said of the Bush administration: "Who cares if the Patriot Act gets renewed? Want to abuse our civil liberties -- just do it! Who cares about the Geneva conventions? Want to torture prisoners -- just do it! Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents? Want to reveal the name of a covert operative -- just do it!"

It's from Howard Kurtz's column at the Washington Post. Scroll down to where it says, "Caustic Commentator."