Magpie

Saturday, March 27

Condoleezza Rice on 60 Minutes.

We notice that articles about Rice's upcoming appearance on the same CBS program where Richard Clarke appeared last Sunday are all over the US press (like here, for example).

We'll just note that Rice won't be under oath when she answers questions.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:52 PM | Get permalink

Is Darwinism on the ropes?

As the cover below shows, that's obviously the opinion of the editors of World, a conservative Christian newsweekly.

'Darwin's Meltdown cover

For their current issue, World gave four prominent members of the so-called Intelligent Design Movement to do the following:

Imagine writing in 2025, on the 100th anniversary of the famous Scopes "monkey" trial, and explain how Darwinism has bit the dust, unable to rebut the evidence that what we see around us could not have arisen merely by time plus chance.

Intelligent design is the currently fashionable term on the religious right for what's more traditionally (and accurately, we suggest) called 'creationism' — the belief that God created the universe, as described in the Christian Bible. Where the proponents of intelligent design differ from most creationists is in their use of the language and other trappings of science to give essentially religious arguments a semblance of scientific respectability.

We're not going to go into the various futures for the theory of evolution described in the four articles in World. We'd suggest you go over there and have a look for yourself.

But we'd also suggest going over to The Panda's Thumb and read PZ Myers' masterful evisceration of the article by Jonathan Wells. To give you an idea of Myers has in store for you, here's the first paragraph:

It's a very creepy wankfest. Why not also invite Carrot Top to rhapsodize about what it will be like after he is elected President of the World in 2025? It has about as much relationship to reality.

The rest is even better.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:58 PM | Get permalink

That right-wing spot on your radio dial.

Doc Searls has an extremely well-researched post on how Christian broadcasters are acing out secular noncommercial broadcasters in the fight for space on the radio dial. Searls is to be commended for taking the time to write about an issue usually discussed only on public radio mailing lists and in print media aimed at the broadcast industry.

Despite the recent publicity over a public station in Maryland that bought a religious station and converted it to a public radio outlet, that kind of change is the exception, rather than the rule. As anyone in noncommercial broadcasting will tell you — especially someone who works at a station that has translators to take its signal past the area of its main transmitter — religious broadcaster have for years been encroaching on the signals of public broadcasters and sometimes (legally) replacing public radio service with the broadcasts of religious stations. (For an example, see this article about how American Family Radio eliminated the signals for two NPR stations from Lake Charles, Louisiana.)

Want some fascinating reading? Get the FCC's daily digest. (Thank you, Tim Pozar, for suggesting I subscribe to it.) Unlike those on the FCC Web site, links point to text (.txt) your browser will open, rather than ust .doc and .pdf files). The digest also demonstrates Patrick Gregston's maxim about the differences between business and government: Business is interested in outcome, and government is interested in output.

Among the items in the latest digest are these actions on applications for radio broadcast facilities...

•   Grant of one construction permit for Cornerstone Community Radio, which operates six other translators, apparently all for religious stations, in three states
•   Grants of sixteen construction permits for translators across ten states to the Educational Media Foudation (for K-Love, enlarging their already long list of stations and tranlators)
•   Grants of two construction permits for translators by Educational Communications of Colorado Springs (for KTLF, Light Praise Radio)
•   Minor changes to licensed construction permits for Communidad Cristiana of Pittsburg Texas (KLXI/100.5), and Halifax Christian Community Church Inc. of Flagler Beach Florida (WFBO/93.3), both for LPFM (Low Power FM) facilities
•   Dismissal of applications for translator construction permits in Bayou La Batre and Muscle Shoals, AL; both for Edgewater Broadcasting (another religious broadcaster), plus one in Nashville for R&L Non-Comm

Notice a pattern here? Nearly all (or perhaps all) of the applicants are religious broadcasters. And all the facilities are either LPFM or translator facilities. What we're seeing is religious broadcasters filling every opening left on every dial, everywhere in the country, like foam packing material filling a shipping box.

We'd suggest that no small part of the reason for the right wing's political success in the US over the past couple of decades is the ever-increasing web of religious stations that, along with the gospel, deliver a daily dose of reactionary politics. As we noticed during a recent cross-country drive, there are parts of the US where it's difficult to tune in a radio station that isn't a religious broadcaster.

Via The Revealer.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:49 PM | Get permalink

Could anyone have anticipated the use of airplanes as a terror weapon?

According to Dubya and various of his minions, no way. But it appears that Italian authorities certainly took this possibility seriously enough to set up missiles to keep terrorists from crashing a plane into the July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.

According to an LA Times story that appeared the week after 9/11, US and Italian officials had been warned that 'Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit.' In response to these reports, the Italian government closed the airspace over Genoa and installed surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns at various locations.

US officials, however, considered the warning 'unsubstantiated.'

[The] reports suggest that Western governments were aware that terrorists might one day use a hijacked airplane as a suicide weapon--as they did Sept. 11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Genoa warning was disclosed last week by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini. In remarks on a television talk show reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, Fini said: "Many people were ironic about the Italian secret services. But in fact they got the information that there was the possibility of an attack against the U.S. president using an airliner. That's why we closed the airspace and installed the missiles. Those who made cracks should now think a little."

An attack on the summit would have endangered not only President Bush, but also British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and others.

In an interview published Sept. 21 in the French newspaper Le Figaro, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said his government provided information to the United States about possible attacks on the Genoa summit by Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden. "There was a question of an airplane stuffed with explosives. As a result, precautions were taken."

Via xymphora.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:36 PM | Get permalink

A pox on Magpie?

Checking our logs today, we saw that someone visited Magpie via these search terms: Magpie Pox

We knew we had cooties (those nasty liberal ones), but the pox? Fretful about our health, we immediately went to AllTheWeb and ran the same search ourself. To our great relief, we found out that Magpie had the pox almost a year ago, which means we should be well over it by now.

Unfortunately, journalists in Iraq aren't faring any better than they were when we made our post last April.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:11 PM | Get permalink

Kerry blasts White House 'character assassination.'

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has accused the White House of 'character assassination in how it's treating former anti-terror advisor Richard Clarke. According to Kerry, the attacks on Clarke's character are an attempt to keep from answering the substantive questions that Clarke has raised about how Dubya has dealt with national security issues.

"I don't think people want questions about character; I think they want questions about our security to be answered," Kerry said Saturday. "That's what this is about."

Kerry also said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, should testify in public before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do '60 Minutes' on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath," Kerry told reporters. "We're talking about the security of our country."

We still would have preferred almost any of the other Democratic hopefuls to Kerry, but we have to admit that he's been doing the right thing in his defense of Richard Clarke.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:23 PM | Get permalink

Thos swing states.

This November, how many states will see a real electoral fight between Kerry and the prez? It all depends on who's counting, says Campaign Desk's Thomas Lang, in a post that looks at how the US media keeps inflating the number of swing states.

If this thing keeps growing, there won't be many states left that someone, somewhere, has not defined as "a battleground."

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:10 PM | Get permalink

Retired military leaders tell Dubya to toss his missile shield.

A group of 49 retired generals and admirals are urging Dubya not to deploy a planned missile defnse shield. Instead, the former brass say the money should be spent to secure nuclear materials outside the US, and to increase security at US ports and borders.

As things stand, Dubya's administration will spend US $3.7 billion to depoy the missile shield later this year. That shield is intended to enable the military to shoot down incoming missiles armed with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The 49 military leaders argue that this system is unproven — a contention backed up by the General Accounting Office, which has found that only two of the anti-missile system's ten key technologies have been fully tested. The ex-brass also say that the chance that another country would attack the US with missiles is far smaller than that likelihood that terrorists would smuggle WMDs into the country.

"As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction," wrote the former officers, including retired Admiral William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General Joseph P. Hoar, former chief of the US Central Command.

The retired officers added that "the militarily responsible course of action" is to use the funding for the missile shield "to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

Via Boston Globe.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:25 AM | Get permalink

Kerry challenges White House to put up or shut up.

Responding to Republican charges that Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 commission may not have been truthful, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has challenged the administration to formally charge Clarke with perjury.

'My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) is not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury because he is under oath,' Kerry told CBS's MarketWatch.

As numerous observers in the blogsphere have pointed out, formal perjury charges would give Clarke the right to see all relevant administration records — basically everything about Clarke's work as Dubya's anti-terror expert — during pre-trial discovery.

We suspect that the adminstration will find some reason to avoid taking up Kerry's challenge. Probably that old favorite: national security.

Via AFP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink

Friday, March 26

No marriage licenses in Benton County.

And even the NY Times has noticed, running an article about the Oregon county's decison not to issue any marriage licenses while the question of same-sex marriage is being litigated.

After first deciding to do what a bunch of other places had done and grant marriage licenses to gay couples, the county commissioners did what apparently no other place has done: they decided not to give marriage licenses to anybody.

"For me this doesn't have to do with gay marriage at all," said Linda Modrell, the chairwoman of the three-member county commission. "It has to do with equal treatment. It would be the same if we had a law that says we couldn't sell property to Japanese or redheaded Danish people. What would we do?"

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:24 PM | Get permalink

No good deed will go unpunished.

An article on the online Wall Street Journal compares the way that investors look at Wal-Mart and Costco. Wal-Mart is known for low worker pay and almost nonexistent benefits. Costco pays its workers well and, in the opinion of Wall Street, is entirely too generous with its benefits. You can guess which company's stock is valued higher.

"From the perspective of investors, Costco's benefits are overly generous," says Bill Dreher, retailing analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. "Public companies need to care for shareholders first. Costco runs its business like it is a private company."

Costco appears to pay a penalty for its largesse to workers. The company's shares trade at about 20 times projected per-share earnings for 2004, compared with about 24 for Wal-Mart. Mr. Dreher says the unusually high wages and benefits contribute to investor concerns that profit margins at Costco aren't as high as they should be.

Costco, which opened its first store in 1983 and now has 432 locations, disputes the contention that it takes care of workers at the expense of investors. "The last thing I want people to believe is that I don't care about the shareholder," says Jim Sinegal, Costco's president and chief executive since 1993... But I happen to believe that in order to reward the shareholder in the long term, you have to please your customers and workers."

We highly recommend the WSJ article, which goes into some depth about the business practices of each company. MetaFilter points to another article about Costco, which compares it and the Wal-Mart-owned chain, Sam's Club. We recommend it as well.

Via Obscure Store.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:05 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's 'hydrogen economy.'

In the Village Voice Mark Baard provides a bunch of reasons to distrust the White House's version of a future powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:27 PM | Get permalink

Culture wars.

What is a 'culture war,' anyway? This term has always struck us like the expression 'politically incorrect.': It refers to whatever a person is pointing to at the time they use the phrase.

At The Revealer, historian Julia Rabig doesn't have much use for the term, either. She suggests that 'culture war' has become a meaningless phrase that should be retired from use — especially by journalists:

Everyone from Pat Buchanan (credited with coining the phrase) to Todd Gitlin has relied on the term “culture wars” to describe conflicts over everything from the Vietnam War to Janet Jackson’s breast. The very ubiquity of the phrase has wrung it of its metaphorical power, allowing journalists to use it as a sort of "factual" description of any number of unlike situations. What political, ideological, and theological questions get overlooked when an actual war, a court case, and a nipple all get reduced to illustrations of one empty metaphor? [...]

Journalists rely on terms like “the culture wars” to comply with limited space and tight deadlines. But such shorthand is self-defeating when it sucks the political texture and historical context out of cultural conflict. Not only do opposing sides often share a common heritage, soldiers who are supposedly fighting on the same side of the “culture wars” often use the term to describe pressing conflicts among their own allies.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 PM | Get permalink

We love Ann Richards.

Courtesy of Susan at Suburban Guerrilla, here's former Texas governor Ann Richards speaking at last night's Democratic National Unity Dinner in Washington, DC:

We are so united, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton were on their way to San Francisco for a marriage license before their wives got wind of it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:37 AM | Get permalink

How seriously was Washington taking terrorism before 9/11?

Not very, according to a June 2002 AP story that Cursor dug up. According to the AP terrorism was the subject on only two meeting of Dubya's national security leadership before 9/11 — out of the almost 100 times that leadership met. Three White House sources verified this information to the AP, although all of them offered explanations that would put the small number of terrorism meetings in a better light.

"This was a failure in the Bush administration to recognize the nature of terrorism and its impact on the United States," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis. "Everybody felt that it was a chronic phenomenon, it would continue and the best we could hope was to contain it."

One official argued that the lack of regular meetings devoted to terrorism among Bush's upper-echelon advisers did not mean inadequate attention was paid to the subject. More work was done by lower-level council staffers, who regularly briefed the principals individually, even if the principals didn't meet frequently on the issue, this official said.

[J.P.] Crowley, who worked under Clinton [as NSC spokesman], argued that senior-level meetings are necessary for important work to be done.

"You really get the pull of the best information that each agency has when you bring together the principals with the purpose of making decisions and teeing up recommendations to the president," Crowley said. "It's the only way that you overcome those bureaucratic barriers."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:24 AM | Get permalink

When is a secret not a secret?

When congressional Republicans are looking for ammunition for attacks against Richard Clarke. According to the AP, Republican leaders want to de-classify testimony about the 9/11 attack that Clarke gave in 2002 when he was still part of Dubya's adminsration.

[Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist said the intent was to determine whether Clarke lied under oath — either in 2002 or this week — when he appeared before a bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and sharply criticized President Bush's handling of the war on terror.

"Until you have him under oath both times you don't know," Frist said.

One Republican aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the request had come from House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairman of the House intelligence committee.

There seems to be a clear pattern emerging here in how Dubya's adminstration deals with information: They classify anything that it would be 'inconvenient' for the US public to know about, then de-classifiy that same information if it might help them deal with a political embarrassment. (such as Richard Clarke's testimony to the 9/11 commission).

More: Kos' comment goes right to the heart of the matter:

In other words, Frist has no idea what was talked about in a closed hearing considering issues of national security. Nonetheless, he's willing to potentially compromise national security by dumping the transcripts into the open like he's sorting candy after trick-or-treating because he doesn't know if Clarke perjured himself?!

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:58 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, March 25

A very interesting conflict of interest.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a supposedly nonpartisan group of election and voter registration officials has taken money from manufacturers of electronic voting machines at the same time it has issued statements supporting the security of electronic voting systems.

The Texas-based Election Center advises federal, state, and local governments about election process issues. Executive director R. Doug Lewis has confirmed that his organization has accepted donations Sequoia Voting Systems, and Electronic Systems & Software, both of which manufacture electronic voting machines. He also told the Inquirer that the Election Center 'probably' received money from Diebold, a company whose CEO says he's 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year'

Against this background, the Election Center last year issued a report saying that 'well-intentioned people, some of them even highly educated and respected, scare voters and public officials with claims that the voting equipment and/or its software can be manipulated to change the outcome of elections.... Do not be misled into believing that elections are reliant upon technology which can be manipulated... . It may be possible to do many things, but like time travel (which is theoretically possible), it is highly unlikely at this time.'

Lewis said he did not think accepting donations from the manufacturers presented any conflict of interest or breach of ethics.

"I never approved a voting system anywhere in America," Lewis said. "The systems were approved by independent testing laboratories."

Now that's really accepting responsibility, isn't it?

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:02 PM | Get permalink

Everything hasn't changed since 9/11.

And that's a big reason why friends of the US are running out of patience with Dubya's post-9/11 policies, says William Pfaff in his review of a new book by foreign policy maven (and former White House national security advisor) Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Every country has a "story" it tells itself about its place in the contemporary world. We are familiar enough with the American story, beginning with the City on a Hill and progressing through Manifest Destiny toward Woodrow Wilson's conviction we are "to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty.... It was of this that we dreamed at our birth." The current version of the story says that this exalted destiny is fatefully challenged by rogue nations with nuclear weapons, failed states, and the menace of Islamic extremists. Something close to Huntington's war of civilizations has begun. National mobilization has already taken place. Years of struggle lie ahead.

The "isolation" of the United States today is caused by the fact that its claims about the threat of terrorism seem to others grossly exaggerated, and its reaction, as Brzezinski himself argues, dangerously disproportionate. Most advanced societies have already had, or have, their wars with "terrorism": the British with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque separatist ETA, the Germans, Italians, and Japanese with their Red Brigades, the French with Palestinian and Algerian terrorists, Greeks, Latin Americans, and Asians with their own varieties of extremists.

America's principal allies no longer believe its national "story." They have tried to believe in it, and have been courteous about it even while skepticism grew. They are alarmed about what has happened to the United States under the Bush administration, and see no good coming from it. They are struck by how impervious Americans seem to be to the notion that our September 11 was not the defining event of the age, after which "nothing could be the same." They are inclined to think that the international condition, like the human condition, is in fact very much the same as it has always been. It is the United States that has changed. They are disturbed that American leaders seem unable to understand this.

When American officials and policy experts come to Europe saying that "everything has changed," warning that allied governments must "do something" about the anti-Americanism displayed last year in connection with the Iraq invasion, the Western European reaction is often to marvel at the Americans' inability to appreciate that the source of the problem lies in how the United States has conducted itself since September 2001. They find this changed United States rather menacing. An Irish international banker recently observed to me that when Europeans suggest to visiting Americans that things have changed in Europe too, as a direct result of America's policies, "it's as if the Americans can't hear." A French writer has put it this way: it has been like discovering that a respected, even beloved, uncle has slipped into schizophrenia. When you visit him, his words no longer connect with the reality around him. It seems futile to talk about it with him. The family, embarrassed, is even reluctant to talk about it among themselves.

Via A Fistful of Euros.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:44 PM | Get permalink

Some things are better left unsaid.

Like how to make a Vegemite milkshake.

Via grow-a-brain.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:37 PM | Get permalink

Condoleezza Rice to resign?

The NY Times stuck this little tidbit into this story about how Rice hasn't appeared publicly before the 9/11 commission.

As she prepares to leave her job at the end of the year, Ms. Rice, the president's national security adviser, now finds herself at the center of a political storm, furiously defending both the White House and her own reputation. [emph. added]

That's the first we've heard that Rice is leaving. If the Times is right about this, we suspect there are interesting reasons behind her departure.

Via Southpaws.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:26 PM | Get permalink

The joys of candidacy.

At Wampum, MB fills out her first candidate survey. And the Gun Owners of America ('The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington') had some interesting questions for her to answer.

MB, incidentally, is running for a seat in the Maine legislature.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:51 PM | Get permalink

Can we say 'race-baiting'?

Exposing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative obviously wasn't a one-off for Robert Novak. Check out this excerpt from the transcript for today's edition of CNN's Crossfire, where Novak is questioning Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL):

NOVAK: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe watching these hearings that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: Say that again?

NOVAK: Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: No, no. Bob, give me a break. No. No.

Via Susan at Suburban Guerrilla, who got it from Sisyphus Shrugged via Julia at Busy Busy Busy. (How's that for a chain of custody?)

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:39 PM | Get permalink

Another brilliant move by the Republican Congress.

The US Senate has passed a bill making it a crime to harm a fetus during the commission of another crime against a pregnant woman. The vote was 61-38, meaning that a healthy handful of Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and others said they believed that once that definition was written into federal law it would ultimately be used as an argument to overturn existing laws protecting abortion rights.

"This will be the first strike against all abortion in the United States of America,'' Ms. Feinstein said. She said a federal statute declaring that life begins at conception could ultimately lead to a court finding that "embryonic stem cell research becomes murder and abortion in the first trimester becomes murder as well.''

"That's where this debate is taking us,'' Ms. Feinstein said, "that's the reason for this bill.''

But the Senate rejected on a vote of 50 to 49 her amendment that would have allowed criminals to be charged with a second offense for harming a fetus or terminating a woman's pregnancy without granting new legal status to the fetus.

Via NY Times

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:57 PM | Get permalink

Extra! Extra! White House honchos disagree.

Even the NY Times had to take note of the fact that Condoleezza Rice VP Dick Cheney and national security advisor can't agree on whether Richard Clarke was in the loop or out of the loop in Dubya's war on terrorism.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink

9/11 commission transcript.

The full transcript of Wednesday's hearing, including Richard Clarke's testimony, is here.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, March 24

Howdy.

To the new science group blog, The Panda's Thumb. From the very first post:

"The Panda's Thumb" is many things...

First, it is an example of jury-rigged evolutionary adaptation made famous by the late Stephen Jay Gould in an essay of the same name. Second, it is the legendary virtual bar serving the community of the legendary virtual University of Ediacara somewhere in the Ediacaran hills of southern Australia, growing out of the lore of the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup. And now it is a weblog giving another voice for the defenders of the integrity of science, the patrons of "The Panda's Thumb".

Much as in any tavern serving a university community, you can expect to hear a variety of levels of discussion, ranging from the picayune to the pedantic....

It's full of meaty posts that certainly stretch this magpie's brain. Go take a look.

Thanks to wood s lot for the pointer.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:17 PM | Get permalink

Maybe 'perfect storms' happen more often than we think.

Writing in the UK Guardian, Jeremy Rifkin suggests that rising gas prices make conditions ripe for a worldwide economic 'perfect storm,' in much the same way that a convergence of meteorological factors created the original 'Perfect Storm' that savaged eastern North America in the fall of 1991.

So we have all the conditions coming together to create the perfect economic storm: record oil prices triggering a restriction in US economic growth and an increase in the federal budget deficit, accompanied by further erosion in the value of the dollar - with increased budget deficits and the diminished value of the dollar leading in turn to higher interest rates to convince foreign investors to lend the US additional money, followed by a further retraction of the US economy as rising interest rates lead to a drop in domestic investment and consumption. The cascade of events touches off a tsunami that engulfs the rest of the global economy, submerging the world in deep recession.

But as we were reading Rifkin's article, we had the nagging feeling that we'd heard this comparison before. And we had: a Wampum post from last June in which MB likened the political problems that brought down the first Bush presidency to the 1991 'perfect storm:

Judging from the apparent randomness of the events of Bush Sr.'s 1991 "Perfect Storm", it seems nearly inconceivable that such a thing could ever happen a second time, let alone to the son of the former President. But although my expertise in meteorology extends barely beyond The Weather Channel, even I can see the storm clouds gathering. The similar climatological conditions are eerie enough, namely a stumbling, jobless recovery with ineffective attempts at needling growth through a bullish stock market. Add to that any of the myriad of potential political tempests lurking on the horizon, including the possibility of one or more Supreme Court nomination battles, and the forecast for Bush Jr., whether it be a hurricane or a steady, flooding monsoon, could turn out to be a lot less sunny than his current supporter's predict.

I, for one, am keeping my galoshes nearby.

And, sure enough, MB was right about us needing our galoshes soon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:59 PM | Get permalink

Holding Dubya responsible for his 9/11 failures.

Moveon.org's political action committee is asking for contributions to pay the cost of producing and airing a television ad that uses the words of Richard Clarke to nail Dubya for his failures to deal with terrorism before and after 9/11. Here's what the MoveOn PAC said in a message it sent out earlier today:

When the World Trade Center was hit on the morning of 9/11, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice dubbed Richard Clarke, the administration's top counter-terrorism official, 'crisis manager.' As the White House, which was thought to be the next target, was evacuated, Clarke heroically stayed on, coordinating the government's response from the Situation Room in the West Wing.

Clarke is viewed by colleagues as a hawk, a 'true believer' who doesn't play partisan politics. So the shocking facts he revealed about the Bush administration's approach to terrorism before 9/11 and its response after must be taken seriously. On Sunday, Clarke told reporters that the President and Defense Secretary downgraded counter-terrorism and ignored repeated warnings about an al Qaeda attack prior to 9/11. And, perhaps even more explosive, Clarke revealed that President Bush and senior administration officials wanted to bomb Iraq after 9/11 even though they knew that it had no connection to al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks.

Already, the White House spin machine is in overdrive. Since they can't rebut Clarke's facts -- which independent witnesses have confirmed -- they're trying to paint him as an angry partisan, even though he's a Republican. But Clarke's words remain a searing indictment of the Bush Administration's campaign against terrorism. Together, if we act today, we can beat back the spin by widely airing a TV ad which gets these uniquely credible comments directly to TV viewers.

Go here to donate money for the ad. You can see the storyboards for the ad here [PDF file].

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:41 PM | Get permalink

Leaning on the Aussies.

The US is trying to keep Australia from being the next member of the 'coalition of the willing' to pull its troops out of Iraq. Australia is expected to hold national elections by the end of the year, and trends in the polls make it look likely that Labor party leader Mark Latham will be Australia's next prime minister. Latham has promised that, if Labor comes to power, his government will pull Aussie troops out of Iraq by the end of the year.

Latham's promise is not sitting well in Washington. In a fairly blatant attempt to interfere in Australian politics, US ambassador Tom Schieffer has warned Latham that an Australian pullout from Iraq would harm the country's relationship with the US.

"We don't want terrorists to get the wrong message here," Mr Schieffer said.

"We don't want them to think that the bombing in Madrid has paid some sort of political dividend, whether it is in Spain or elsewhere."

Latham is standing by his promise to withdraw the troops, however, despite Schieffer's warning and an attack from current PM John Howard:

[Latham] said this was a decision for Australians, not the United States or United Kingdom, and Labor would not change its stance.

"No, we won't. We don't believe that chopping and changing a position is good for the defence of Australia," he told the Nine network.

"Unfortunately, it is (Prime Minister John Howard) who has been chopping and changing. In May last year he said he didn't want Australians deployed in Iraq for years.

"Labor has a realistic proposal here and we are sticking to it."

Mr Latham said Labor's position had always been to get the troops home as soon as possible once international responsibilities had been discharged.

Via ABC News (Australia), Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:18 PM | Get permalink

'Collateral damage' and 'red lines.'

In Haaretz, Amira Hass has a chilling article about the escalating violence in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Sooner or later, the next reprisal terrorist attack will come. Eleven Israeli victims, or 19, dozens of wounded, harsh scenes from the hospital, suffering of the families - these will prove the murderousness of the Palestinians, who kill Jews simply for being Jews. And this terrorist attack, or the one after it, which we will not forget and not forgive, will make it okay to cross another red line. On Monday, they waited for Yassin to leave the mosque. Is the day far off when the helicopter crew obeys an order to launch a missile or bomb at the mosque itself? After which it will be explained: there were four deserving-of-death terrorists inside, each with four armed escorts, and, anyway, the imam there refers to Jews as monkeys and pigs.

And will the day arrive when an Israeli pilot fires a missile or bomb at a Palestinian mourning procession because marching in its two front rows are ranking members of Palestinian organizations, and right behind them are 30 armed masked men waving Kalashnikovs or Qassam launchers? Will that happen after or before the attack on a Jewish target abroad, which would take place after Hamas understands how hard it is, under conditions of a closure, to execute a local terrorist attack?

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:40 PM | Get permalink

Teenage Employment Hits Record Lows

To add to Magpie's point below, the CDF also issued a press release about the state of teenage unemployment.

...Overall, youths age 16 to 19 have lost more than one million jobs since January 2000, according to Labor Department data (not seasonally). The same data show that, as of January 2004:

• 33.2 percent of male teens worked - the lowest percentage on record (records start in 1948).
• 34.9 percent of female teens worked - the lowest since 1972.
• 19.6 percent of Black teens worked - the lowest since 1984.
• 27.2 percent of Latino teens worked - the lowest on record (records for Latino teens start in 1994).

Although January's employment report contained bad news for many age groups, CDF said the employment decline was steeper for teens than any other age group. CDF added that for teens, as for other age groups, the employment decline was not fully reflected in the official unemployment statistics. Instead, it was largely driven by workers departing from the labor force, a group that is not considered in official unemployment calculations. ...

The release goes on to state that this higher unemployment rate was reflected even in the summer months, and among high school graduates not attending college.

| | Posted by Natasha at 2:27 PM | Get permalink

One week before the 9/11 attacks.

Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke sent a letter to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice blasting the CIA and FBI for failing to deal with al-Qaeda, and urging adminstration officials to imagine how they'd feel if terrorists killed hundreds of Americans.

The existence of the letter came to light in testimony on Wednesday to the national commission investigating the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, referred to the letter when questioning Clarke.

"You urge policymakers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home and abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done. You write this on Sept. 4, seven days before Sept. 11."

We don't think there's anything we could add to this.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:09 PM | Get permalink

US states leaving more children behind.

This might be old news to some, but we hadn't seen this report from the Children's Defense Fund before today. According to the CDF, budget crises and the lack of federal money has caused states to cut funding for child care subsidies and early education. Because of these cuts, the number of children on waiting lists for child care assistance went up by 10 percent from 2002 to 2003. Low-income working families are being hit the hardest.

CDF's report shows that funding cuts have affected child care assistance in a variety of ways: Many more families have been put on waiting lists; fewer families are eligible for assistance because income eligibility limits have been lowered; parent co-pays have increased; and provider reimbursements have been reduced.

States have also eliminated or reduced funding for quality initiatives such as professional development and training for providers; improvements in infant and toddler care, as well as improvements in pre-kindergarten programs, and school-age programs. These steps have severely limited low-income working families' access to high quality, affordable child care and early education. The report finds that in 2003:

• 550,000 children were on waiting lists in 23 states;
• Sixteen states reduced eligibility levels so that fewer children in need qualify for assistance;
• Nine states cut funding for after-school care; and
• Nine states scaled back prekindergarten initiatives that improve access to early learning.

This situation could get worse, says the CDF. While some states have avoided making major cuts to child care and early education programs, the usual method for doing this is to spend reserve funds or provide one-time funding that will dry up quickly.

Why are state programs for children in such financial straits? According to the CDF, the major culprit is Dubya's adminstration, which has cut federal funding for child care programs. From the report:

Despite the bleak times state governments and families are facing, the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye to their needs. The Administration makes no room for more child care dollars for working families, leaving hundreds of thousands of children across the nation on waiting lists for help and doing nothing to help the six out of seven children eligible for assistance but not currently getting any. The Bush Administration’s fiscal year 2005 budget puts millions of dollars in the pockets of wealthy Americans, thus putting millions of children at risk. The President’s budget continues to help the rich with permanent tax cuts and eliminates or severely cuts more than 160 programs — many of which serve our nation’s children with the greatest needs.

The full CDF report is available in PDF format here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:03 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, March 23

Do political demonstrations make any difference?

There's an interesting discussion on this subject going on at veracious' diary at Daily Kos. Here's some of how veracious kicked it off:

I read an opinion piece last week that started with the following paragraph:
Yet again tens of thousands prepare to descend on major metropolitan areas to march in circles through empty streets. We will exercise our legs and our lungs and our egos and then go home again. Nothing will change and nobody will be surprised at that. As usual, exorbitant expenditures of time and money will add up to exactly zero. Meanwhile, people and animals and ecosystems in Iraq and elsewhere will continue to pay the price for our failures of courage and imagination.

This caught my attention because I burned out long ago on marching in the streets, trying to come up with clever chants, trying to get people to be loud, getting too cold or too hot, and wondering, at the end of the day, if anyone cared that hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people had been marching. The media certainly didn't. I began to feel like going to protests was required to retain my lefty credentials, but I wasn't sure if it was the most effective use of my time. Am I just lazy? Getting old? Burned out? Maybe. Or maybe not.

The further in time that we've moved past our first heady experiences of being part of a political demonstration, the more we've wondered whether demonstrations are as effective a tactic as the frequency of their use might indicate. It often seems that the first reaction of many people to a political problem is to go into the streets — whether there's any chance that a demonstraton will achieve any concrete ends. Yeah, there are benefits to just being with others of a like mind, but we worry that demonstrations can give people the feeling of having taken political action without producing any movement toward political change.

Certainly if you live in any reasonably large US or Canadian city, you know what we are talking about. Here in Portland, for example, we almost always see pretty much the same cast of people at a demonstration (the notable exception being last year's very large demonstrations against the buildup toward the Iraq invasion). People go out to the federal building or city hall, chant variations on the same slogans, hear the same speakers, maybe have some trouble on the police, and generally get ignored by the local media. If there is coverage, it's usually pictures of whatever window breaking or spraypainting that the most 'radical' demonstrators engaged in, and maybe some incoherently edited comments from a rally speaker or organizer. The contribution to political debate is minimal, but most everyone gets to go home thinking they've done something worthwhile.

Admittedly, we are exaggerating a bit here. But, if you're a person who has gone to political demonstrations, haven't a lot of the things we're talking about here (and that veracious talks about above) gone through your mind, too? Don't you wonder whether your presence in the street changes anyone's mind or makes anyone think?

We'd love to hear your comments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:41 PM | Get permalink

Saudis Move to Block UK Book Release

As this (premium) Salon story reveals, prominent Saudis have gotten "House of Bush, House of Saud" pulled in Britain. From the article:

...[Craig Unger's] new book raises serious questions about the close bonds, including financial ones, between the Bush and Saud families and the ramifications of that alliance immediately prior to and after the attacks of 9/11. The book details how, in the traumatic days following the bombing, dozens of Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family fled the United States in a secret airlift authorized by the Bush White House, without being questioned by the FBI.

...The allure of the British libel laws has spawned a new practice, dubbed "libel tourism," conducted by foreigners who fly to England to file lawsuits against press outlets. The Guardian newspaper reported one case last year, having to do with the Sept. 11 attacks: "A group of wealthy Saudi businessmen are suing for libel in the high court over separate allegations that they may have helped to finance Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The Saudis, who say the allegations are untrue, have made London the venue of choice for their defamation actions because of the globally recognized reputation of a judgment under English law, which is notoriously claimant friendly in libel cases." ...

Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit. I don't know about you, but I *really* want to read that book now.

| | Posted by Natasha at 11:03 PM | Get permalink

An interesting omission.

That the US press hasn't noticed, and that this Magpie is embarassed to admit that we didn't notice, either. While there has been a ton of coverage of the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and the likely political consequence for the Middle East, there has been almost no coverage of Yassin's spiritual beliefs. Into this gap steps The Revealer, which excels at examining how religion is covered in the press:

[W]hy has our press ignored the "spiritual" dimensions of this "spiritual leader"? Two possibilities. One is that the journalists assigned to cover the Middle East are political reporters. They approach religion as simply a veneer for political motives, and rarely bother to learn its intricacies.

The other, deeper problem, is with the narratives available for religion stories even when a reporter tries to pay attention. Most religion writing is divided between innocuous spirituality and dangerous fanaticism, with subcategories for "corruption," "traditionalism," and wacky.

Yassin's broad support amongst Palestinians forces the press to concede that he was not purely a psychopath channeling his aggression through religion. And yet he was certainly not "innocuous." Corruption can't explain him, as he was revered for his honesty with Hamas funds, and, despite the use of empty terms such as "fundamentalism," nor can traditionalism, since his violence grew out of his rejection of tradition.

So what does our press do? Nothing. A major enemy of peace in the Middle East has just been killed, and yet we learn almost nothing about what made him fight or why he is mourned. Opponents and supporters of the Palestinians remain in the dark, uninformed by a press incapable of breaking the narrative to investigate -- and perhaps help eradicate -- the roots of terrorism. It's easier to stick to the "he-said/she-said"-with-guns version of events that reduces it all to retaliation, to hopeless spirals of violence and ancient ethnic hatreds, to enmity without reason.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:54 PM | Get permalink

Unserious, Irresponsible, and Just Plain Boneheaded

According to information from the office of House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, the Republican budget proposal to be debated tomorrow in the House will proudly accomplish, but not limit itself to, the following travesties of responsible fiscal policy:

It will spend the entire $1 trillion Social Security surplus available between now and 2009.

It will not extend unemployment for the 4.6 million workers who currently qualify.

It will not increase separation or imminent danger pay for military personnel serving abroad, and underfunds veterans' healthcare and retirement benefits.

It cuts healthcare, environmental, and educational funding by billions.

And very close to home, It cuts funding for first responders and port security.

In a February, 2004 press release, the Port of Seattle had the following to say about commercial activity at our busy waterfront.

...Container volume grew by 3 percent to 1,486,465 TEUs (twenty-foot-equivalent units). Export volumes grew by 4.5 percent to 748,021 TEUs and import volumes grew 2 percent to 738,444 TEUs. By region, the strongest growth was in the domestic tradelanes. Alaskan container volumes increased by 13 percent and Hawaiian volumes were up 14 percent. ...

The total number of cruise ship calls at Terminal 30 and Pier 66 (the Port's first cruise terminal) in 2003 was 99 - a 31 percent increase over 2002. Passenger volumes reached 345,000 - a 41 increase over 2003 levels. The projection for 2004 is 140 cruise ship calls and more than 500,000 passengers. ...

Despite a tough year for the regional real estate market the Port maintained a 94 percent occupancy rate for its non-maritime commercial and industrial properties. Thirty-four leases were renewed and 51 new leases were signed. ...

As the statement reveals, the Port of Seattle has received some funding to date for anti-terrorism efforts, but if ongoing security funding should suffer it would make for a very appealing target. Washington state's first responder funding has been cut by millions, and neither our state nor the country can well afford an incident that shuts down shipping through PoS, where around 80% of trafficked goods end up at other final destinations.

I'm sure there are many other reasons local to everyone reading this for why we should vigorously oppose this ruinous budget which will cut funding for both our quality of life and our security, shovel money to Republican contributors, and save the country not one thin dime in overall expenditure. They really are the credit card party. That is, as long as they can use someone else's credit card.

| | Posted by Natasha at 10:52 PM | Get permalink

That bloody shirt.

For decades after the US Civil War, the Republican Party used the Democrats' supposed responsibilty for the war and the suffering of Union soldiers as a 'bloody shirt' to wave at voters when national elections came around. But the bloody shirt isn't just old history. Starting in the 1970s, the Republicans brought the it out again, this time using the 'loss of Vietnam' and the veterans of the Vietnam War.

Until recently, that is. Billmon explains. Read the comments, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:16 PM | Get permalink

Curious Caption

I watched bits of the C-SPAN coverage of the 9-11 commission today, and though there were interesting points made, I just wasn't in my 'junior reporter' mode much and didn't take notes.

But something did catch my attention loud and clear. At the end, when the call-in numbers were put up on the screen, the three phone numbers were captioned as follows:

Support Democrats
Support Bush
9-11 Families

And what I want to know is, what does supporting Bush or the Democrats have to do with finding out what the *&^%ing blazes really happened? Do you have to be a Democrat to want to know? Are Republicans inherently satisfied with the story thus far, and convinced to a person that nothing can be revealed by questioning? Is the 9-11 panel inherently anti-Bush, and if so, why? Do all of us know enough by now to be absolutely certain which side to support, or that the sides divide in all cases so evenly?

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

| | Posted by Natasha at 9:08 PM | Get permalink

Have Clue, Will Travel

A new Washington Post article could reasonably be titled: progressive movements get hit with giant clue stick.

"...According to an independent expert and a Media Fund analysis of campaign ad spending in 17 swing states, Bush was actually reaching fewer people with his ads in several key markets than the combined Democratic effort. For example, the president was advertising at more than twice the ad level of Kerry alone in Des Moines -- but at only half the rate of all the Democrats once the Media Fund and MoveOn commercials were added in. The president also was behind in several populous regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, West Virginia and Wisconsin. ..."

Could it be that a message, nay, ... a *vision* is developing? Something that will put an end to the impression of left of center politics as a cacophony of competing cultural camps? Better hope so.

| | Posted by Natasha at 8:58 PM | Get permalink

We just love headlines with unintended meanings.

We found this one while going through RSS feeds, looking for possible Magpie stories. It's for a CNN report on US Representative Barney Frank's testimony before the Senate committee that's considering the constitutional amendment against same-sex marriages.

Interesting CNN headline

As our friend Michelle always says, 'Scratch a 'phobe, find a queer.' Snort.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:49 PM | Get permalink

Crows can be left-beaked or right-beaked.

In our continuing quest to keep you up with news about our corvid relatives, we have a story about how the way crows show 'beakedness' differs frow the way humans show handedness. These new findings on how crows make and use tools may mean that, contrary to long-held assumptions, the parts of the brain used for tool-making and those used for using tools are not the same in all species.

New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are proficient tool users, extracting insects from holes and crevices using elegant hooks made from leaves.

"Crows are more competent tool users than even chimpanzees," says zoologist Alex Weir of the University of Oxford, who led the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. They also appear to have a different set of rules for handedness than people and chimps, he says.

Previous research has shown that crows usually attack the left side of a leaf, using their right eye and the right side of their beak.

Weir's team went one step further and watched ten birds using their tools. Five leaned the tool to the left, and five to the right, they found. Each crow almost always stuck to one side.

Making and using tools may require different sets of muscles and brain signals, says McGrew.

New Caledonian crows are the only non-primate species known to make and use tools to fit particular situations. Science magazine's website has an amazing video of a crow making a tool.

Via Nature Science Update.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:18 PM | Get permalink

By the sea, by the beautiful sea.

New data suggests that NASA's Opportunity rover is sitting on the shore of an ancient Martian sea.

Via BBC.

More: New Scientist has a somewhat more detailed report on the new findings, including a photo of the sedimentary rock layers that scientists believe indicate underwater ripples.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:00 PM | Get permalink

Seen on the web.

The subtitle for Tikkabik:

Bush/Cheney '04: Why change horsemen mid-Apocalypse?

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:20 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's attack dogs are on the job.

They've been set loose on former anti-terror czar Richard Clarke over the past few days, often contradicting themselves and other administraton spokespeople in their efforts. The Center for American Progress has been listening to the attack drumbeat, and has come up with this handy list that compares administration claims with known facts. Given the stuff that's coming out of the 9/11 commission's hearings, we hope this list is kept up to date.

CLAIM #5: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11."
– National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks."
– Washington Post, 3/22/04

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:26 PM | Get permalink

Microsoft seems a bit confused.

Froma a Wired news story:

Microsoft accused the European Union of going too far in seeking a record fine of about $615 million against the company for alleged antitrust abuses, saying it was being penalized for behavior permitted in the United States.

Note to the folks at Microsoft HQ: The EU is made up of countries, not US states. They have different laws over there. What the US does often has no bearing on what the EU does. You might want to write this info down so you can refer to it in the future.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:52 AM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

Some wonderful photographs of Irish traditional musicians by Christy McNamara.

Claire Keville & concertina

This is Claire Keville, a concertina player from Galway.

This photo and some others on this site were used in the book The Living Note (or in the US version, The Heartbeat of Irish Music) for which McNamara provided the pictures and Peter Woods the text. We'd suggest that it is one of the indispensible books about Irish traditional music, and that it belongs on your shelf right next to Ciaran Carson's classic Last Night's Fun.

[If you don't have a your own copy of either of these books, we see that Powell's has used copies of both of them.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:38 AM | Get permalink

Monday, March 22

Krugman on whistle-blowing.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman puts in his two cents on Richard Clarke's revelations about how Dubya's adminstration has bungled the 'war on terrorism':

It's important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration. When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration's prescription drug plan.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:08 PM | Get permalink

Oregon same-sex marriage update.

They're still going on in Multnomah County (Portland). But Benton County (Corvallis) has stopped issuing licenses for any marriages, including the same-sex ones. The two counties have reacted differently to state attorney general Hardy Myers' request Friday that counties stop issuing same-sex licenses until a Multnomah County court can rule on constitutional issues involved in same-sex marriages.

While we'll keep you informed on the major developments with this issue, the best place to look for the day-to-day story (and the first place we check) is the Portland Communique. The One True b!X is doing an excellent job of tracking developments in Oregon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:44 PM | Get permalink

What happens?

When you combine this:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Monday forecast unrelenting gasoline demand and high prices for gasoline and natural gas this year. [...]

The EIA forecast a U.S. average gasoline price of $1.67 per gallon for the full year 2004.

Caruso said this figure is up 10 cents from EIA's projection which was released just last month.

And this?

Investors increasingly worried about terrorism extended Wall Street's sharp decline into another week Monday, selling stocks across the market and giving the Dow Jones industrials their fifth triple-digit drop in the past nine sessions. [...]

The turbulence in the Middle East discouraged equity investors already uneasy about a slow economic recovery and tepid job growth. Wall Street was also worried about decreased consumer spending due to rising oil prices. [emphasis added]

Nothing very good, says MB:

So I've only been blathering on about this very possibility [decreased consumer spending because of oil prices] for nigh over a year now, about every time we've seen a serious spike in prices. $40/barrel has generally been what more analysts regard as the potential tipping point back into recession, and prices have bounded above $38/barrel in recent weeks.

But that it took this long for Wall Street to put 2 and 2 together is remarkably surprising...or maybe just plain worrisome. If consumers are pouring $30 bucks or more into their gas tanks every time they fill up, it's likely they won't be spenting that money elsewhere, like at the Gap or Home Depot.

How many US jobs will be lost, we wonder, as a result of increasing fuel costs? And how many votes will Dubya lose for each penny gas prices rise?

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:10 PM | Get permalink

No comment.

From the Jerusalem Post:

"PA Chairman Yasser Arafat is not immune; no one is immune anymore. We should stop apologizing for defending ourselves," Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said Monday night in a statement on the assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

"The time came for someone to close accounts with him [Yassin]," Hanegbi added. [Hamas political leader Abdel Aziz] Rantisi's time will also come," he warned. Rantisi survived an IAF targted killing last year.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:55 PM | Get permalink

Judith Miller's NY Times piece on Richard Clarke.

We're not going to comment much on Judith Miller's history of journalistic lapses — you can find plenty of other blogs that can tell you far more on that subject than we can. But we did want to say something about the problems with Miller's article on ex-Dubya terrorism czar Richard Clarke that appears in today's NY Times.

Here's how that article begins:

In a new book, Richard A. Clarke, who was counterterrorism coordinator for President Bill Clinton and President Bush, asserts that while neither president did enough to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has undermined American national security by using the 9/11 attacks for political advantage and ignoring the threat of Al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq.

Mr. Clarke, who has spent more than 30 years as a civil servant in Republican and Democratic administrations, issues a highly critical assessment of the Bush White House in "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," which is being released on Monday.

Mr. Clarke resigned from government in March 2003.

In an interview Sunday evening, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, dismissed Mr. Clarke's charges as "politically motivated," "reckless" and "baseless."

"If Dick Clarke had such grave concerns about the direction of the war on terror, why did he stay on the team as long as he did, and why did he wait till the beginning of a presidential campaign to speak out?" Mr. Bartlett said. He said the book's timing showed that it was "more about politics than policy."

Do you notice anything odd about this? Did you catch the fact that, before Miller gives details about Clarke's criticisms of how Dubya and the White House gang have handled the fight against terrorism, she includes a couple of paragraphs in which White House communication director Dan Bartlett tries to discredit Clarke by questioning his motives?

One of the basic rules of writing a news story (at least as this magpie was taught) is that once you say what you are going to talk about — in this case, Clarke's charges — you spend some time talking about it before you digress. And Bartlett's dismissal of Clarke's charges certainly counts as a digression, since the dismissal isn't the main subject of the story.

What's even more interesting about the inclusion of the dismissal is the fact that Miller says that Bartlett gave his interview on 'Sunday evening.' Strangely enough, the 60 Minutes interview with Clarke also aired on Sunday evening. Why didn't Miller include material from this interview, too? Yeah, we suppose that the Bartlett interview could have been at, say, 6 pm and the airing of the Clarke interview at 7 pm. But since Bartlett was obviously responding to either a tape or transcript of the Clarke interview, this possible explanation doesn't wash. Jeez, even lowly old Magpie posted parts of it before the interview aired on CBS. Unless Miller was off-planet or something, there's no way she couldn't have had access to at least some of the contents of Clarke's 60 Minutes interview.

And what makes the omission of material from the 60 Minutes interveiw with Clarke even more inexplicable — at least in any way that preserves Miller's journalistic integrity — is that the article includes quotes from an interview with Dubya's security advisor Stephen Hadley. In case you weren't watching TV last night, that interview that ran in the middle of the 60 Minutes piece on Richard Clarke.

At best, these lapses indicate that Judith Miller is not a very good reporter. There are other possible reasons, too, but we'll leave you to supply those for yourself.

But as easy as it is to criticize Miller (or any other reporter) for poor work, there's another guilty party when this kind of journalistic hack job appears in the press: the editor who let the story go by. Given that this is far from the first time that Miller has been criticized for journalistic lapses, we want to know why her NY Times editor didn't insist on a rewrite. If even Magpie knew yesterday that there was no way that Miller could be aware of the contents of the Hadley interview without also being aware of the contents of the Clarke interview, why didn't a Times editor catch this? We'd like to think that, at a newspaper that considers itself one of the best in the world, the editors are capable of figuring out that important information is missing from a news story, or that a reporter is unethically trying to force readers to a particular conclusion.

But then our expectations are always so unreasonable.

Interesting tidbit: Since we read the online edition of the Times, not the print paper, we didn't know that Miller's story appeared on page 18 — a curious location for the serious criticisms of the administration that Clarke has made. Thanks to Geraldine Sealy at Salon for the info.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:14 PM | Get permalink

A clear intent to deceive.

Campaign Desk's Zachary Roth has an excellent long post on the use of video news releases by US media, and why so many TV stations used the recent puff piece on Dubya's medicare 'reforms.' While news directors at the stations that used the release accepted blame for their mistake (but only one station acknowledged the error on-air), they also pointed to the organizations that they felt were the real culprits. Roth's piece is a must-read.

Most of the news directors we spoke with were also genuinely angry at the Bush administration, for what they saw as a deceptive public relations campaign that took conscious advantage of the smaller stations' well-known lack of resources: "Shame on them -- that's pretty sneaky," said Veazey, referring to HHS. Julie Akins of KSEE-Fresno was harsher: "It's clear that there was an attempt to deceive ... It's shocking that the Bush administration would manipulate the news media in this way."

But some also expressed strong displeasure with CNN, which distributes pre-packaged stories to local stations around the country through its CNN Newsource service, acting as a sort of wire service for TV. Veazey said that when his station receives VNR footage from CNN, it's clearly labeled in the slug at the top as VNR. But other news directors told us that's not the case in their systems: You have to search through the footage to find the VNR I.D. Henderson, of WTVC-Chattanooga, told us his station "ran what appeared to be a reporter's package, which aggravates the mistake." And Lynn Brooks of WVUA-Tuscaloosa, confirmed in an email to a viewer, obtained by Campaign Desk, that when her station received the Medicare story, it "was designated as a 'reporter package', with nothing distinguishing it as a video news release." CNN, she said, "dropped the ball." Akins of KSEE-Fresno agreed: "I think CNN does a disservice to its affiliates" by including VNR packages in its stream of news footage. "They should create a separate VNR feed," she said.

According to the news directors, CNN makes money on both ends of the process. Understandably, it charges the news stations a fee to subscribe to its satellite news feed service, just as the Associated Press charges the newspapers it serves. But Larry Moskowitz of Medialink (which Moskowitz told Campaign Desk is the world's largest producer and distributor of VNRs) confirmed that CNN Newsource and other similar services also charge the VNR distributor, by leasing transmission time on the satellite news feed that then goes out to local stations.

This suggests a clear conflict of interest for CNN, which is apparently charging both the party with a vested interest in promoting a particular story -- in the case of the now-notorious Karen Ryan, that would be HHS -- and the receiving station. Along the way, it mixes in the client's material with legitimate, CNN-produced news stories to be used by local stations - acting as a paid "news launderer" on behalf of the VNR producers.

CNN did not return repeated calls for comment over a three-day period. A news director who had received the Medicare VNR from CNN and run it told Campaign Desk she contacted CNN to complain. She was referred to the company's lawyers.

For more on the adminstration's Medicare 'news release,' see this Magpie post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:45 AM | Get permalink

'Sometimes the spark jumps, and the people lead.'

Making comparisons between the lesbian/gay rights movement and the black civil rights movement can be difficult, since many people in the US do not agree that discrimination on the basis of race and on the basis of sexuality are comparable. In today's online issue of USA Today, however, reporter John Ritter has an excellent piece on the movement for same-sex marriage which avoids this problem. Ritter chooses to make his comparison of the two movements on the tactics and organizing strategies that each has used. Especially interesting is his evidence that, as happened when student civil rights activists working in the field forced mainline civil rights groups to take advantage of the political momentum resulting from sit-ins and freedom rides, pressure from the lesbian and gay 'rank and file' are exerting a similar pressure on mainline gay rights groups.

In presidential politics, both sides walk a tightrope. Gay marriage is rousing voters at the political extremes, but how much the moderate center cares is unclear. With polls showing gay marriage the top issue for only 5% of voters - the economy is No. 1 for 29% - a strident debate on the issue may not serve either party. Republicans don't want to appear intolerant. Democrats want to avoid a "gay party" label. Gay rights groups say the 5% are Bush loyalists anyway but fear that conservatives' wedge-issue politics will siphon off key Democratic faithful.

That's why Perkins of the Family Research Council stood shoulder-to-shoulder with seven black pastors in Boston earlier this month to decry same-sex marriage as the Massachusetts Legislature debated an amendment to the state constitution that would ban it.

But Rep. John Lewis (news, bio, voting record), D-Ga., a pillar of the civil rights movement, says excluding gays from marriage "degrades them and their families." Reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, Lewis wrote in The Boston Globe, "stink of the same fear, hatred and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry."

The undisciplined drive for gay marriage echoes early civil rights activism. Lunch-counter sit-ins stretched through the South spontaneously as students heard reports from Greensboro. Only later did national civil rights groups, including Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, join and exploit the students' momentum.

"Read the writings of King, Lewis and Thurgood Marshall. None of them felt like they were 'in control,' " says Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, which supports gay marriage.

Gay rights groups know they can't control the marriage upheaval, nor do they want to.

"We're seeing a pent-up desire for justice and recognition," says Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Sometimes organizations lead; sometimes the spark jumps, and the people lead."

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:13 AM | Get permalink

Bad News, Good News

Well, the 9-11 panel won't have Condoleeza Rice to kick around. She will not be testifying before them, as the article says, she "refuses to testify under oath, insisting that presidential advisers need not answer to legislative bodies." Not surprising, since she works directly for a guy who thinks he doesn't have to explain anything to the people 'beneath' him, either. The man who will be testifying instead, Richard Clarke, is now being described by FrontPage as a Clintonite fraud. A charge handily dispatched by Billmon.

In good news, Malaysia's voters gave a landslide electoral victory to their incumbent Prime Minister, a secular minded moderate who won voters back from the radical Islamist opposition after their disenchantment with his predecessor. Their economy is expected to benefit, which should further insulate the populous Muslim nation from sliding into radicalism. Not like we're in any position to point a finger about that kind of thing until we kick our own wingnuts out, but still.

| | Posted by Natasha at 2:12 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, March 21

More on the 60 Minutes interview with Richard Clarke.

Sadly, No has posted a rush transcript of Lesley Stahl's interview of former White House anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke.

After looking at the transcript, we can see that our remembered version of Stahl's questioning that we posted a few hours ago here was even more off than we'd thought. Fortunately for our credibility, however, the transcript shows that Stahl was even more out of line than we suggested:

STAHL: Does a person who works in a White House owe the President his loyalty?

CLARKE: Yes. Up to --

STAHL: Well --

CLARKE: -- up to a point.

STAHL: Well, this is not a loyal book, I'm sorry.

CLARKE: No no it 's yes, up to a point. Up to a point. When the President starts doing things that risk American lives, then loyalty to him has to be put aside, and the way he has --

STAHL: You think he risked American lives?

CLARKE: I think the way he has responded to al Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing and by what he's done after 9/11 has made us less safe. Absolutely.

STAHL: Don't you think he handled himself and hit all the right notes after 9/11, showed strength, got us through it, you don't give him credit for that?

CLARKE: He gave a really good speech right after 9/11.

STAHL: You don't give him credit for anything. Nothing.

CLARKE: I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:12 PM | Get permalink

Carter lays into Dubya and Blair for the war in Iraq.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has accused Dubya and Tony Blair of using 'lies or misinterpretations' to justify waging an unnecessary war on Iraq. Carter made his remarks in an interview with the UK Independent.

Carter's strong criticisms of Dubya and Blair indicates how strongly he disagrees with their handling of the war. In general, former US presidents refrain from public criticism of their successors in the White House, or of the current head of government of a 'friendly' country.

"There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'." [...]

Mr Carter said he believed the momentum for the invasion came from Washington and that many of Mr Bush's senior advisers had long ago signalled their desire to remove Saddam by force. Once a decision had been taken to go to war, every effort was made to find a reason for doing do, he said.

"I think the basic reason was made not in London but in Washington. I think that Bush Jnr was inclined to finish a war that his father had precipitated against Iraq. I think it was that commitment of Bush that prevailed over, I think, the better judgement of Tony Blair and Tony Blair became an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush policy".

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:45 PM | Get permalink

Now this was really smart.

Israel has assassinated the spiritual leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Reuters reports that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and at least three others were killed by a missile strike as they left a Gaza mosque.

"This is a crazy and very dangerous act. It opens the door wide to chaos. Yassin is known for his moderation and he was controlling Hamas and therefore this is a dangerous, cowardly act," said Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.

Even by the standards of the Sharon government, killing Yassin was short-sighted. We suspect that Israel will reap a whirlwind.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:18 PM | Get permalink

So Lesley Stahl gets the big bucks for asking these questions?

We're in the middle of watching the 60 Minutes interview with Richard Clarke (Dubya's former counter-terrorism advisor) conducted by Lesley Stahl.

During the first segment of the interview, Clarke described in detail the unsuccessful efforts that he and others went through during the time from the inauguaration to the week before 9/11 to get Dubya and his cabinet to take seriously the threat posed by al-Queda. He also went into detail about how, after the attack, Dubya and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld immediately wanted to attack Iraq, and rejected reports from the CIA, FBI and others that Iraq was not connected to al-Qaeda or responsible for terrorist acts against the US.

After all of this, Stahl thought these were the important questions:

Don't you think a high administration official should be loyal to the president?
Haven't you been disloyal?

We're sorry, but if one of the people that we trained to do broadcast news, or whose work we edited, had asked these questions, we'd have given them a long lecture about not making conclusions for the audience. (Unless, of course, those questions had been asked because specific public charges of disloyalty had been made by Dubya's administration. Which they haven't — yet.) Stahl was so out of line in asking these questions that we're still amazed that she 1) really asked them and 2) they remained in the interview after editing.

[We don't have a transcript, so while we have kept the meaning of Stahl's questions accurate, our wording is only close to what she said, not exact.]

Not content with those questions, however, Stahl went on to this one:

Do you really think that the president's actions put people in danger?

Hello? Clarke had just gone through a long description of how he thinks Dubya bungled the issue of terrorism before 9/11 — to the degree Clarke thinks it possible the attacks might have been prevented — and how he thinks Dubya and his immediate circle responded sluggishly and inappropriately in the aftermath of the attack. After all that, Stahl seriously thought that this question needed to be asked? Was she listening at all? Or did she just want to undercut Clarke?

Again, this was the kind of question that as a news editor, we would have made Stahl leave on the cutting room floor.

We can't say that we're surprised to see this kind of poor journalism on what passes for a flagship news program on US television. But we're still very disappointed. The US public deserves better from their journalists.

So did you see the interview? What did you think?

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:39 PM | Get permalink

Canada may make marijuana available in pharmacies.

Health Canada is launching a pilot program to make marijuana available in British Columbia phramacies. The program is expected to begin later in the year and, if the pilot is successful, pharmacy distribution of marijuana could be introduced nationwide.

Currently, registered users (78 in all of Canada) can legally buy 30-gram bags of marijuana buds from Health Canada, which grows hydroponic dope in an old mine in Manitoba. The users either have their marijuna mailed to them, or picks it up at their doctor's office. Under the new plan, users would still have to register with the government, but they would be able to buy Health Canada marijuana through a local pharmacy without having to show a doctor's prescription.

Health Canada chose BC for the pilot because the province's pharmacists have already indicated their support for drugstore distribution of marijuana. Surveys done for the agency show that up to 7 percent of the province's residents may already be using illegal marijuana for medicinal purposes, a figure that has led critics to suggest that the new program will lead to an increase in the number of registered users.

However, some approved users say the Health Canada dope is of such poor quality that wider distribution and novel forms will not necessarily attract more users.

"It is of incredibly poor quality," Philippe Lucas of Victoria said, who is authorized to receive government marijuana. "A very raunchy, poor quality smoke."

Mr. Lucas and other users have said the marijuana, which Health Canada says contains about 10 per cent THC, is actually much weaker.

Jari Dvorak, one of the first to receive Health Canada marijuana last fall, says he stopped using the product three months ago because the department has not lived up to its promises to improve the quality.

"I have not seen any evidence of change yet," Mr. Dvorak said from Toronto.

A department spokeswoman says tests are under way to improve the marijuana after numerous complaints from users.

"We are taking the concerns of users seriously," said Aggie Adamczyk.

Via Globe & Mail.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:28 PM | Get permalink

Handing over sovereignty to Iraq.

That June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty is going to be pretty meaningless, since the US occupiers will still be calling almost all the shots in Iraq.

The fledgling Iraqi government will be capable of tackling little more than drawing up a budget and preparing for elections, top U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

"We're still here. We'll be paying a lot of attention and we'll have a lot of influence," a top U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. "We're going to have the world's largest diplomatic mission with a significant amount of political weight."

A new Iraqi government is slated to be elected in January or February 2005, but the US is putting things into place that will control what the new government can do. For example, US-appointed inspector generals will be working in all government ministries, and the new government will not be allowed to replace them. New US-mandated border controls won't be implemented for a year. The US has also mandated new border controls that will take at least a year to put into effect.

We'd be willing to bet that the new Iraqi government will have to accept a permanent US military presence as well.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:08 PM | Get permalink

Get A Different Job, Then

"[I'm] tired of the whole thing already."

Talking head Jack Cafferty blathering about the campaign season in a world-weary request to Kerry and Bush to lay off already. After all, gosh darn it, it's only March.

| | Posted by Natasha at 12:09 PM | Get permalink

Re-elect the president.

With all the brouhaha about the supposed support from 'foreign leaders' that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is getting, you'd think that somebody would be looking to see whether Dubya is getting support from abroad, too. Well, it appears that some of the prez's supporters have kindly raised their hands: The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri — which has claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombings — says it wants to see Dubya get re-elected.

The group said it needs what it calls Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" to "wake up" the Islamic world.

Via Bostonchannel.com.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 PM | Get permalink

'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.'

Susan at Suburban Guerrilla points to this story about the 60 Minutes interveiw with former Dubya terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, which includes substantial excerpts. The newly available parts of the interview are even more damning of Washington's response to terrorism and of the decision to invade Iraq than what we've already heard from Clarke.

"Frankly," [Clarke] said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know." [...]

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to [CBS News correspondent Lesley] Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection." [...]

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

The full interview is scheduled to air on CBS' 60 Minutes tonight.

Via CBS News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:47 AM | Get permalink

Meow.

We're a sucker for stories about library cats. Here's a good one.

"Not every cat could work in a library," notes Judy Whitt, director of the Azle Public Library in Azle, Texas, (pop. 9,600) "but this one is doing just fine. Molli loves people."

Stephanie Boren, a patron, has a favorite Molli story: "One day my son Michael sat down at the computer and Molli hopped on the table behind him and started massaging his neck," she recalls. "Everyone loves the library cat."

Molli is so popular, in fact, that she was catnapped near closing time one Saturday. Frantic staff members taped up "Molli Missing" posters. On Monday morning, a resident returned the overdue cat.

"She claimed to have found her, but then slipped and said the cat didn’t really get along with her dog," Whitt says. No fines were collected. They were just happy to have Molli out of circulation and back on the job.

Via librarian.net.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:30 AM | Get permalink

Need a job?

Look at this great opportunity with the US government: Entertainment Liaison in the Department of Homeland Security:

The Office of Public Affairs communicates the Department of Homeland Security's mission, policies, and activities to both internal and external audiences. The Office of Public Affairs conducts aggressive outreach so that the general public has a better understanding of the threat of terrorism and how to respond. In addition, the Office of Public Affairs coordinates incident communication in the event of a terrorist attack or major disaster. Finally, the Office of Public Affairs works to build commitment to the DHS mission among employees and stakeholders. The Entertainment Liaison Office supports the Office of Public Affairs by influencing how the Department of Homeland Security is portrayed in mass entertainment media. It helps to ensure accurate portrayal of the department's mission, policies, and activities, while proactively working to help the American public better identify DHS functions. [Empahasis ours]

Perhaps 'Propaganda Czar' would be a better title?

Via boing boing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:19 AM | Get permalink

Making The Case

Donald Trump as interviewed today by Wolf Blitzer:

"It just seems that the economy does better under Democrats."

| | Posted by Natasha at 11:05 AM | Get permalink